Lovely Ship

The Story is that of a woman for whom love is not enough.* She, Mary Hansyke, is 14 years old and very beautiful when Gerry Hardman meets her for the first time, When she has vainly waited a year for a second meeting, she marries Archie Roxby, bears him a son, becomes his widow. At home again, Mary Hansyke goes into her uncle's shipyards, watches the tall clippers she has built swing through the harbor of Danesacre to the wide sea; her worship of lovely ships is a more compelling idolatry than that which she offers her second husband, Hugh Hervey. She loves him deeply, but, since love and ship-building touch in her the same depths, ship-building more perfectly satisfies her sense of command. Just after her marriage:

"It was impossible that she should be aware as she lay there, so small, soft and yielding that she was indulging her most powerful instinct, the instinct of possession, the longing, the passionate need to possess that she had inherited from generations of fiercely grasping Gartons, men who had torn possessions from the grudging hand of life. . . . Her adoration of Hugh was rooted in the knowledge that he was hers, as nothing had ever been, as her son could not be."

The bitterest test comes to her when Gerry returns, years after her second marriage. Then she says: "You will ask--all men do--and whatever you ask I'll do for you." Yet he guesses that away from the ships, Mary Hansyke's eager and concentrated mind could not for long be satisfied. They plan to go away together, but quietly, alone, he goes first. "Forever young, forever brave, forever proud, Mary Hansyke walked across the old shipyard, while the John Garton moved down the harbor, her keel parting a shoreless sea, her prow lifted to the air of eternity. A lovely ship."

The Significance. Author Jameson contradicts the conceit which makes many women writers concentrate on the opposite sex. Her best characters have all been women. Her themes, it is true, often concern women doing men's work, organizing their lives toward a new freedom. The Lovely Ship in manner bears some resemblance to the writings of Joseph Hergesheimer, but Miss Jameson is more interested in making her people live than in describing ten-course dinners. Her performance in this book is one of almost pure perfection. An intention beautifully realized excuses an occasional prolixity. An infrequent weakness is overbalanced by Miss Jameson's subtlety in emotional perceptions, her shining artistry.

The Author will technically be come a member of the older generation when she reaches her 30th birthday next year. At that time she will be able to remember seven books written, of which four--The Pot Boils, The Pitiful Wife, Three Kingdoms and now, The Lovely Ship are inferior to little that the last decade has produced. She would be justified in feeling that her education in London University, her journalistic and advertising preliminaries, have molded talent to a secure success.

*THE LOVELY SHIP--Storm Jameson--Knopf ($2.50).