Evening star., 1935-09-01
A NOVEL OF JAPANESE LIFE
Baroness hmoto Presents Study of the Mind of Her People,
Murder in Great Britain-The Beachcomber and
Other Recent Works.

Is required 10 QSSCIlDc IL. we ACCOTQ@
ingly make use Of our yearly allowance
of quotations from F. p. A. THE
Beachcomber" Is "just terrible"
Had 1t been anybody else! Then
1t might have been borne. But
now We shall break our swords,
shave our heads, sit in sackcloth and
ashes and utter lamentations. The
author of the immortal "Casuals" has
written bad book.
Only one thing can be said. And
that Is that Mr.. McFee never does
anything by halves. So, being bad.
"The Beachcomber" may well be taken
for a masterpiece Of badness. It Is
completely awful. 1t would be hard
to find virtue In it, from beginning
to end.
1t is the story Of young sea cap
tain whose career suffers from inter-
ference by women. He is a vague
creature, with no more entity to the
reader than the name In q minor
news item of the daily press. The
women who plague him seem to cause
Mr.. McFee great indignation and
heartburning, but to the reader they
are, with one exception, simply proper
nouns, and the mischief they do is
as unmoving as news that the Alaskan
seals have forsaken their customary
breeding grounds.
Moreover, 1t would battle the intel
ngence of Einstein to discover what
Mr.. McFee is trying to reveal. Some
thing, no doubt. But to the reader, his
book is only q dull catalogue Of vague
misadventures happening to people
whom he cannot possibly care about.
Not really does not seem possible.
Even in the method Of telling the
story the book is unfelicitous. Like
Conrad, Mr.. McFee has used the de-
vice Of having character in his story
do the narrating. Mr.. Spenlove, an
elderly chief engineer steamship, Of
course) imparts the hero's history to
q remarkably patient passenger. The
interminable NARROW Of Chance" has
nothing on this gentleman. He talks
on and on. But he tells us practically
nothing. At the end Of the book one Is
of the opinion that there never was
anything to tell In the first place.
Kindness would seem to indicate
that this Is enough, but, fortunately.
William McFee does not stand In need
of good Offices. II his present book Is
a failure, as it deserves to be, he can
weather 1t. So, at the risk Of seeming
a bit nasty, one Is impelled to COM
ment on the character Athalie, the
one woman Of all those who pursue
the hero who Is not, according to Mr..
McFee, selfish husSy. This Athalie,
one feels, is the result Of an authors
sincere and deliberate travail in the
effort to bring forth an ideal woman.
Behold the paragon!
She Is past 80, but men mistake
her for 16. She Is emotionally ex-
perienced, having had a lover, hus-
band and two children, to say nothing
of having earned her living In New
York for several years, but she is as
innocent of the evil in the world as
a newborn infant. She Is heavy
with allure and mystery; men (and
women, tool feel 1t without knowing
that she was present-simply feel 1t
in the atmosphere. She uses no cos
metics. She has "impossibly little
feet" She does not smoke. She does
not drink. She eats, to be sure, but
so negligibiy that her male dining
companions invariably feel tremendous
and carnivorus by contrast. She en-
cages in no sports. She Is timid as
startled fawn; when she meets a man
Unexpectedly she steps back and places
her hand to her brow. She bushes
when she receives q compliment.
(And droops.) But, chiefly, she
suffers. All! How that poor girl
suffers!
When the reader first meets her
she IS supposedly the daughter Of
wealthy planter of Jamaica, she Is
taking an expensive pleasure cruise,
has a Park avenue apartment. and
speaks of her estates in Wales"
this splendor. she is
suffering even then. One does not
know why-it is a mysterious spiritual
agony which she cannot impart to
any one. Only death, she remarks,
can release her.
Later, financial trouble overtakes
her and starvation is added to the
tale of her woes. Still she remains
distract, suffering. The
young sea captain, who wants to
marry her, implores her to tell him
what 1t Is all about. He gets no salts
faction. She goes on, mysteriously
suffering. Practically the same thing,
it should be remarked, is happening
to the reader.
And, to complete this masculine
dream Of what women should be, the
fair Athalie is Just a shade this side
Of being feeble-minded. She lives
in world Of her own making, q
world Of aristocratic ancestry and
gentle tradition which has no exist
ence except in her imagination. Her
estates in Wales" are non-existent.
Her forbears were shopkeepers. But
she uses a crest on her stationery and
believes in it. AS one Of the charac-
ters remarks of her, "She never said
you could make an afi1davit
of, but she never falsified." The
little dear simply does not know the
difference between truth and f1c-
ton. Finally, although her husband
dies and she is free to marry the cap
tain who adores her, she kills herself.
This is never explained. One has the
feeling that Mr.. McFee considered
that happiness for the delicate dar-
ling would be just q trife vulgar.
Better have her die-still suffering.
Behold. then, the paragonl Allur-
ing beyond description, fragile, an
guished and silly. As near as may
be found, this Is the common denom-
inator Of masculine desire in women.
For this reason. and this alone, the
impossible Athalia Is discussed In
detail.
WE, THE ACCUSED. BY Ernest Ray
mond. New York: Frederick A.
Stokes & Co.
THIS is q story Of little middle
l. ooad Tnolichr,op vuho cova AS.