Story-Portal

Picnics on Monte Ventoso, bacchanals in curious grottoes and an insatiable demand for malicious gossip are matters of course for the expatriate community on sublime Sirene, an island set in the glittering waters of the Salernian Gulf. The livelong day, Americans and British, poets, dry-as-dusts and studied eccentrics bask in the dolce far niente.

At the hub of this cosmopolitan throng lies the exotic Villa Amabile of the Pepworth-Nortons, Miss Virginia and Miss Maimie, whose enthusiasm for the mysterious but impeccably wealthy Count Marsac is of consuming interest to all (as is his dinner ‘couleur de rose’ replete with roast flamingo). The Count is not only outrageous but incorrigible, however, and a catspaw of rumour concerning his past soon becomes a whirlwind of controversy. The island can never be the same again.

Vestal Fire is an exuberant extravaganza, a glorious canvas of comic characters painted with Dickensian energy. Yet the longing for a lost idyll underlies the humour, and the novel is ultimately as moving as it is funny.

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It is an understandable weakness in young writers and a deplorable propensity in famous ones, to become personally verbose at the expense of the story. Both classes talk too much themselves and let their characters talk too little. Compton Mackenzie, who long ago won his laurels with "Sinister Street" and "Carnival," is unfortunately indulging himself in the prerogative of fame. In "Vestal Fire" he has a good story to unfold. It is a study in the disintegration of a colony of Americans and Europeans on a pleasant island in the Bay of Naples, brought about by the intrusion of an exotic French nobleman with Hellenic ideas. The book is worth reading, because Compton Mackenzie wrote it. Even at his worst there is a remarkable glamour about his style. But he very nearly ruins it by his tendency to write as though the story were being read aloud, while he stood by and interposed comments on the plot and added characterizations of the people in the story, of his own. With a classical island for a setting, the story is garlanded in classical quotations and allusions, but though the theme is itself rather classical, the point of view and the manner of telling are entirely British. Sirene is an island owned by Italy, which has gradually become a social league of nations, as foreigners who came to it for a week or two in the course of their travels have stayed on and settled, building themselves villas according to their means, with such flowery names as the Villa Decamerone, the Villa Amabile, the Villa Paradiso, the Villa Hylas, or the Villa Parnasso. English, French, Russians, Americans and Italians to varying degrees, they are living together in harmony when the story opens. In fact, the polite population of the island is about to honor a custom which has become a rite: Sunday afternoon tea at the Villa Amabile, the home of the Pepworth-Nortons. It is about the Pepworth-Nortons that the story revolves, and all the storms and stresses that are to come. There are two kindly spinsters, Miss Virginia Norton and Miss Mamie Pepworth-or perhaps it is the other way around-who have bracketed their names and devoted the afternoon of their lives after a long morning in Idaho to dispensing hospitality in Sirene. It is something more accurate than a figure of speech to say that the name of their friends is legion. The book is practically teeming with characters, and each one is portrayed at length. Mr. Mackenzie seems to have collected the acquaintances of a lifetime in this book. Whenever a new person is introduced to the story he pauses and delivers himself of a short biography of that person. These characterizations are written with the bright wit of malice and some of them are rather entertaining. But there are too many. Count Marnac, who is the villain of the piece, comes to Sirene at the invitation of the Pepworth-Nortons, who met him and were charmed by his gracious manners while on a classical pilgrimage. Every one on the island who is of any importance has been apprised of his coming. They have heard that he is extremely wealthy and charming. So they are all there to meet him at the Pepworth-Nortons. He is an instantaneous success on the island, from the moment of his arrival, accompanied by a handsome boy named Carlo-whose place in the story assumes a questionable aspect, soon enough. Count Marsac decides that he will live in Sirene. He will build himself a villa and meantime he will live in a rented one. There he gives elaborate entertainments of the most exotic sort, while the magnificent Ville Hylas is being built for him. Then, gradually, the poison in the story begins to work. There are stories about Marsac's androgynous propensities. Sirene is tolerant, though, and nothing is done. But other forces of dissension are at work. Some one discovers that the Count has a past. And the outcome is that Sirene is divided forever into two warring camps. As the years go on, the conflict becomes more and more bitter. It is a long conflict, beginning more than a decade before the war and lasting through it.