Book Review: Mr. Fortune’s Maggot

[osprey_archer]

A couple months ago, littlerhymes and I read Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes. My library copy was an omnibus edition also containing Warner’s Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, and for no better reason than this I decided to read this second book as well.

(Mr. Fortune’s Maggot is usually published in the US as Mr. Fortune, presumably because we don’t tend to use maggot in the sense it’s used in the title, which means something between “hobbyhorse” and “obsession.” Do the British still use it this way?)

To be honest, I assumed the two books were published as an omnibus because they were both about the same rather short length, and therefore made a pleasingly sized book together. In fact, as it turns out, they make a sort of diptych: What If You Just Abandon Society and Social Expectations, female and male versions.

In Lolly Willowes, Laura leaves London for the country town of Great Mop, where she becomes a witch. In Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, Mr. Fortune sails all the way around the world to an idyllic Pacific island, where he becomes a Christian missionary.

He’s quite bad at being a missionary. In fact, in his whole time on the island, he only makes one convert, Lueli, who is not so much a convert as a boy fascinated by all forms of novelty. Mr. Fortune’s weird stories about a god who was a man who died on the cross are just as strange and interesting as Mr. Fortune’s harpsichord, and Lueli sees no reason why listening to them should stop him from also hanging onto his own carved wooden god (for each islander has their own god).

At last, the unobservant Mr. Fortune realizes that Lueli is still worshipping his own wooden god in secret. They have a confrontation, where Mr. Fortune orders Lueli to burn his idol, and Lueli can neither bring himself to refuse or comply, and it seems that at very least their friendship is about to go up in smoke when the volcano at the center of the island erupts, forcing Mr. Fortune and Lueli to flee, leaving the idol behind to be burnt to a cinder by the lava.

Which might seem like the act of a jealous God, insisting that Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me. But in the aftermath, it’s Mr. Fortune who loses his faith in God. Lueli, as faithful to his burnt god as ever, collapses into a depression, because surely he can’t long survive its destruction.

First, Mr. Fortune attempts to heal Lueli by teaching him calculus. When this fails and Lueli tries to drown himself (only to be saved by the girl he soon after decides to marry), Mr. Fortune carves him another idol, which cheers Lueli far more effectively than writing equations in the sand. Having given Lueli this new wooden god, Mr. Fortune leaves the island, and we last see him sailing away in a launch.

Comments

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

I had heard of Mr Fortune's Maggot but I had no idea (as a British English speaker) that "maggot" could be used with that meaning and I've never encountered it elsewhere IRL or in fiction! :O That clears a lot up actually, the title always had me vaguely confused.

[sanguinity]

First, Mr. Fortune attempts to heal Lueli by teaching him calculus.

I love this deranged and quixotic man.

[conuly]

What a fascinatingly unexpected ending.

[landofnowhere]

That's quite a story! Also I realized that I have actually read part of this as a kid -- an excerpt of it was included in the anthology The World of Mathematics. I don't remember it well but think it was one of my favorite bits of the "Mathematics in Literature" section (which also included a bit from Gulliver's Travels and Aldous Huxley's story Young Archimedes).

[littlerhymes]

Well, all things considered, it seems to have worked out okay for both Lueli and Mr Fortune?

[genarti]

Is THAT what maggot means here! I admit the name has been offputting to me, but I figured there must be some sort of slang or regional or archaic meaning I didn't know... As indeed there is, apparently.

What a fascinatingly odd story! One always winces more than a little at a tale of missionaries and idyllic made-up Pacific islands, but at least this one seems to have turned out okay for everybody (except possibly Mr. Fortune, depending on how upset he is about his crisis of faith, I suppose).

[asakiyume]

Wow! What's the state of Mr. Fortune's heart and soul at the end? Having given up on Christian God (TM) has he decided life is much better with Agnosticism/Atheism/Wooden Idolism ... or just given up on that train of thought altogether?

[regshoe]

Do the British still use it this way?

Adding to the 'possibly no'—I didn't know until now that that was what the title meant. I've been intrigued by the thought of this book for years, partly by the odd title and partly by the similar oddness of Sylvia Townsend Warner writing something that sounds so much like E. M. Forster's 'The Life to Come', but have been putting off reading it—I must do so soon!

[skygiants]

This is not at all what I expected by the title 'Mr. Fortune's Maggot' either!

[silverusagi]

I have only encountered 'maggot' in the old timey sense in the title of the song that Elizabeth and Darcy dance to in the 1995 P&P, which is Mr Beveridge's Maggot.