THE SON OF MARIETTA—Johan Fabricius—Little, Brown ($3). Looking back on the earlier 1930’s, what would some Mark Sullivan of the future pick as typical novels of that bygone day? He might well choose such a lean and lustful tale as John O’Hara’s Butterfield 8. He might mention in passing such names as John Dos Passes, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner. But these would all be sideshows. Most phenomenally popular book of the quinquennium, he would report, was Hervey Allen’s Anthony Adverse. By 1935 critics who had tried to blink it off as simply a big flash in a shallow pan were opening their eyes wider, slowly admitting that for the umpteenth time Romance was again rearing its tousled head. With such an enormous good companion as Anthony Adverse to make smooth their path, romances everywhere came in on the wings of the morning, set off down the broad highway. In England, Jeffery Farnol’s Beltane the Smith, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, felt new life in their bones. A Dutchman named Johan Fabricius wrote his version of the old sweet song.
The Son of Marietta reminded readers of Anthony Adverse, not only by its length (813 pp.) but by its time (18th Century), its scene (Italy), its general scheme (picaresque chronicle). And like Anthony, Marietta’s son was long aborning. Aside from these surface similarities, The Son of Marietta could not fairly be compared with Anthony Adverse, in all senses a bigger book. More protracted than packed, Author Fabricius’ narrative could be simply described as a tale of guilty mother love and a spoiled son who turned out according to rule. Really two separate novels laid end to end, it gave thrifty readers the pleasant sense of getting their money’s worth, perhaps a little more.
Marietta herself got off to a bad start. Abandoned as an infant by her actress mother, she was brought up by a surly innkeeper, ran wild in the small-town streets. When her foster-father grew threatening she took refuge in a convent, graduated from there to the bishop’s household. When the bishop, a fine upstanding man, found Marietta’s nubility troubling, he married her off to a young coffinmaker. She liked marriage and wanted children but got none; so she went back to the bishop for help. Then she ran away. A year later she turned up in Rome with a baby, was taken back by her forgiving husband.
As Baby Benedetto grew older it became obvious that he had very little coffinmaker in him. He roamed the streets, took to dicing and card-sharping at a tender age. While still a schoolboy he became an adept with the girls. The bishop, who took a paternal interest in the lad, rescued him from such scrapes as seducing a nun in her cell, but when he got to grave-robbing Benedetto had to leave town. He turned up in Venice under an assumed name, roistered it gamily with a night-livered crew. One faithless wench got his tongue wagging too freely, and when they quarreled she turned him in to the sbirri. Even then the bishop might have saved him, but Benedetto had no stomach for more of the same, no appetite for anything different.
The Author, like many a Dutchman, was born in Java, got used to travel at an early age. At 14 he was sent to school in Paris, tried to learn painting after hours. Deciding that there were enough painters, and that a writer’s tools were less expensive, he took to wandering around the Mediterranean countries, “learning to drink wine and to tighten my belt from time to time.” Other places seen: the Austro-Italian front (as a war-artist), South America (where he was lost in the Gran Chaco). At 36 he is married, settled at The Hague. One other novel of Fabricius’, Lions Starve in Naples, has been published in the U. S.
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