The novel which first introduced Walpole to America was _Fortitude_,
that most beautiful, most strong story of a man's fight against heredity
and circumstance for mastery over himself. The theme of the book lies
in a saying of the Cornish fisherman, old Frosted Moses: "'Tisn't life
that matters, but the courage you bring to it."
Peter Westcott, son of the black and sullen generations of Scaw House,
heard Frosted Moses say that, as he, a tiny little boy, crouched in a
chimney corner at the old inn and heard the sages talk of ancient
Cornish legends, and of the glory of the great world without. So did he
imbibe a spirit of adventure which he never lost.
He left Scaw House and his gloomy father, fought his way through school,
through the welter of a London boarding-house, through poverty and
failure to success as a novelist. But his struggle and his success were
not the poor desire for petty fame which many conventional heroes of
fiction regard as struggle. What he desired in life was fortitude, not
headlines; the power to face failure as well as the ability to become
known. The spirit of adventure, humanity, these ever stirred him, and
he lost neither in becoming a victor.
Of the woman who loved Peter and the woman whom Peter loved, Walpole
makes a magnificent love story. There were many hours of dramatic
misunderstanding in the passion that sprang up between the solid,
broad-shouldered Peter, with his quiet desire to write and be friendly
toward all sorts of people, and Clare, the slender, nervous, gay,
red-haired girl who had always been protected. But there was a great
and beautiful wonder of passion as well; and the happiness of the little
London house to which they returned from the honeymoon is not to be
forgotten.
And throughout there are very many people who are not to be
forgotten--Stephen, the Cornishman, huge and bearded and bewildered and
inarticulate, loving the youngster Peter and the girl he could not have,
tramping the hard white roads of England, an outcast for love; Zanti,
the "foreigner," always a-quiver with babbling excitement over some new
adventure on whose trail he was following; quiet Norah, untidy and pale,
yet burning with a love which gave back his fortitude to Peter when it
seemed lost; Cardillac, the elegant; Galleon, the great novelist; the
kiddies who adored big Peter; Peter's own son, whom he so terribly
loved.
It is a marvellous gallery, and more marvellous, even, is the gallery of
scenes, not painted in long and laborious descriptions, but in quick
snatches, which show the fact that Walpole watches sky and wind and tree
as does no other novelist.
Do you not come from the heart of dusty country back to the sea again as
you read this? If you do not, then you do not love the sea, whose very
breath is here in this description from _Fortitude_:
"They were at the top of the hill now. The sea broke upon them with an
instant menacing roar. Between them and this violence there was now only
moorland, rough with gorse bushes, uneven with little pits of sand,
scented with sea pinks, with stony tracks here and there where the
moonlight touched it."
Put this with the first lines in _Maradick at Forty_ and you have a
whole seaside holiday:
"The gray twilight gives to the long, pale stretches of sand the sense
of something strangely unreal. As far as the eye can reach, it curves
out into the mist, the last vanishing garments of some fleeing ghost.
The sea comes smoothly, quite silently, over the breast of it; there is
a trembling whisper as it catches the highest stretch of sand and drags
it for a moment down the slope; then, with a little sigh, creeps back
again a defeated lover."
Or, if you will have the soul of the gay city, here it is in a quotation
from _Fortitude_:
"The street stirred with the pattering of dogs out for an airing. The
light slid down the sky--voices rang in the clear air softly as though
the dying day besought them to be tender. The colours of the shops, of
the green trees, of slim and beautifully dressed houses, were powdered
with gold-dust; the church in Sloane Square began to ring its bells."
But it is not so much beautiful imagery, not so much interesting people,
that distinguish _Fortitude_ and make it a great-hearted book, as the
courage for life, the demand for fortitude.
"_Fortitude_ is a book in which the writer has put much passionate
intensity of thought and conviction. It has no faults of insincerity,
weakness, nor poverty of mind or heart. It is fascinating. It is the
expression of a born writer. One reads it all. There is humor, there is
generosity; as of some big man overflowing with ideas. There is a noble
spirit in the book that blows fresh upon one, like a wind from the sea.
The wind may have blown through desperate places and seen bitter things,
but it is clean and bracing, and one is glad of it."--_Hildegarde
Hawthorne In The New York Times_.
"_Fortitude_ is a story that one will like to linger over after it is
read. It is reminiscent of Thackeray at his best, mellowed with the
charity of well-proportioned truth."--_New York American_.
"_Fortitude_ is impressive. Its revelations of life strike deeply into
those springs of youth from which are filled the wells of
manhood."--_The New York World_.
"This novel is a genuine performance. All is worked out in the finest
detail, like the careful etching of a great, stone-made
cathedral."--_The Chicago Evening Post_.
"Hugh Walpole is a literary force to be reckoned with. He knows life;
he is not afraid to depict it. He can be sympathetic without being
sentimental. He is afraid neither of pleasure nor pain--nor of seeming
to fear the conventionalities. He has the true idea of romance. He
knows that the enchanted land of adventure may be found in a London
boarding house as surely as on stormy seas or in deep hidden gold mines.
He knows that man's fiercest battles seldom are fought to the
accompaniment of cannon. He knows that loneliness is one of the
hardest, one of the most universal of humanity's tests and sorrows.
_Fortitude_ is a book to read more than once, to ponder. Instinct with
life and vigor, lovers of sentiment, fighting, psychology, romance,
realism, each will find it worth while."--_The Chicago Record-Herald_.
"_Fortitude_ is a book of splendid strength and significance. It is
done with much care for workmanship and with a large understanding of
the meaning of life, so proving doubly worth while.... Throughout the
book is marked by a penetrating knowledge of humanity, so that it brings
one continually into touch with real people and real human
crises."--_The Continent_.
"Mr. Hugh Walpole has the faculty of infusing vibrant life into his
characters in fiction, and in _Fortitude_ he presents one of the
strongest and best novels of the season."--_The Baltimore Sun_.
"The people here are as real as life. The theme is big. The movement
is controlled and steady, a leisurely movement, as stories that deal
with character rather than action must be. The sketches of London, in
their whimsically personal note, make one think of Dickens in the same
field. The whole is big in every sense. One of the two or three or
maybe four novels of the year that will live to celebrate even a single
birthday."--_The Washington Evening Star_.
"There is not a dull page in the book. Its people are real flesh and
blood beings, with courage, with love and with humor in their souls.
All of them are interesting, while the circumstances which surround them
in _Fortitude_ increase the delight of the many readers the book is
certain to achieve."--_The Boston Globe_.
"The book is full of thought. Mr. Walpole has written a chapter of
life, pure and simple. The reader cannot skip one page."--_The
Philadelphia Public Ledger_.
"Fortitude is a great book. It marks the arrival of Hugh Walpole as a
novelist to be reckoned with. We will await further performance with an
anticipation like that with which we look forward to a new Five Towns
tale by Bennett."--_Norma Bright Carson in Book News Monthly_.
"One of the remarkable novels of the year. This is a great book."--_The
San Francisco Chronicle_.
"This book of humor, romance, and realism is a paean of youth and
strength and love, a valiant and bracing sermon."--_The Nashville
Tennessean_.