Books: William McFee

Stocky Man, Bluff Man, He Shakes a Gallant Mast As I heard Joseph Conrad, hunched down in his chair, puzzled by the questions that were thrown at him, say again that English had chosen him for a medium of expression, that he had not chosen English, I wondered if America had not chosen William McFee. This younger novelist of the sea is becoming of the United States in everything but appearance, speech and literary style.

William McFee was born in London. Most of his life he has spent in ships as a seagoing engineer. He has shown me the engine-room of a fruit vessel with as much pride as the script of a new novel. His stateroom, however, was always filled with a store of books, books piled here and there, until there was scarcely a place to sit, and McFee in the midst of them, spinning a yarn to the captain, explaining with pride to his visitors the glories of the ship.

A stocky man, and a bluff man, William McFee, with a seaman’s sense of humor and a book-lover’s wisdom. He does not bemoan the vanished days of sailing vessels. His romances are those of the swift modern ships, of merchantman and transport. As an essayist and critic he is almost as well known as for his novels. His opinions of books are often violent; but usually well founded.

Now, he has left the sea, bought a cottage at Westport, Conn., and will live there with his mother, who is coming from England to join him. Here is an Englishman who has firmly adopted the ways of America. In the New England country, he will dream of the sea. He is writing another novel now, to follow his recent Command.

Together with Christopher Morley and other valiant seamen, McFee has taken share in the Tusitala, a rechristened ship which will soon be given over to transporting those who wish to travel according to old sailing vessel methods.

What voyages may be undertaken on this curious pleasure cruiser! What a pity that Gelett Burgess and Theodore Dreiser cannot be given adjacent cabins and sent off for a good long argument to the Malay Peninsula. I should suggest that Dr. Frank Crane and H. L. Mencken he included in that party; then, to complete it, Ben Hecht, D. H. Lawrence and Justice Ford. What a happy time they would all have! Seriously, what could be better in warm weather like this, than a shipload of conveniently opposed viewpoints, outside the three-mile limit, with a fair breeze and a cool coral island as destination. I should like to describe the Tusitala. I think that it is a three-masted, square-rigged schooner. Is that right, my salty lads? J. F.