.Mjk0.MjMwMw
[Newspaper Article]
"Time Out of Mind ______________
Passing of Maine Shipping Theme of Delight- ful Novel by Rachel Field, Summer Resident of Pine Tree State
[Photograph] RACHEL FIELD Author of "Time Out of Mind" (Macmillan)
Words of a reviewer fail to convey the charm of Rachel Field's new novel, "Time Out of Mind, and the hold it takes on the reader. Its charm is indefinable. The title conveys the atmosphere and the essence of the book. Natives of northern New England will recognize the expression at once. It was commonly used in all old families and it suggests things that have been a common part of life farther back than one can remember. It is used frequently by Kate, the character whom Rachel Field has made the chronicler of this story.
Miss Field whose summers are spent in her island home near Mt. Desert, has absorbed the atmosphere and acquainted herself with the rich store of Maine coast lore to be found in that region. As in the case of other writers Miss Field appreciates the romance of Maine's shipping days and the tragedy its passing brought into many lives. She has built her novel around it. That it finds response, not only in the hearts of Maine readers, but in readers all over the country is proven by the fact that since the first week the book went on sale it has had a place on the lists of the "Six best sellers" in fiction in all the large cities of the United States.
It happens that this is the fourth outstanding novel within a year that has been inspired by the sea-faring people of Maine. It is preceded by Kenneth Roberts' "Captain Caution," Mary Ellen Chase's "'Mary Peters" and Elaine Myers' "Loaves and Fishes." It is "Mary Peters" that is inevitably recalled in reading "Time Out of Mind" for Miss Chase, like Miss Field, wove her tale around the displacement of sailing vessels by steam, the decay of the old shipyards and old families and the giving way of shipping to the summer resort business, and we sense that Miss Field, like Miss Chase, recognizes a certain loss to the State and has a feeling of regret for it.
* * *
In Kate Fernald Miss Field has created a character as strong and as admirable in her way as Mary Peters, a character so vital and so human that her appeal must be universal. We see her as she sees herself in retrospect, but we feel that the past which she recalls is much more real and alive to her than the present in which she lives, a spinster, in a degree of uninspiring and uneventful security thru her work at the village postoffice and the loyalty of a friend whom she once helped thru a difficult time of her life when friends were few.
She is the only one living of those she loved and among whom she grew up in the stately mansion called Fortune's Folly, which lorded it over the rest of the community spread out below it and at a respectful distance.
It is easy to locate Little Prospect, which is not far from the city of Rockland, but every little seaport town has at least one such old sea captain house as "Fortune's Folly," sitting in grandeur on an eminence overlooking the harbor, its white columns and cupola glistening above the greenery and bloom or its spacious gardens. There is one or more known by the name of "Folly," with accompanying traditions of the builder's extravagance and foolhardiness, but it is not likely that the author borrowed one of these.
"Fortune's Folly" had belonged to three generations of a family of shipbuilders, who had won distinction on the sea and in military service, when Kate came there to live and had it impressed upon her that "there's no port too far for Fortune's pines to cast their shadows." Kate was the sturdy product of a hilly Maine farm, a "Square-rigged girl, the Major pronounced, on his first sight of her, and Old Lady Phibben, who told fortunes with a curious pebble which she called her "lucky stone," exclaimed over her unbroken lifeline and prophesied that she would keep her health thru thick and thin. Kate was ten when she came to Fortune's Folly and she grew up in the companionship of the Major's children, Clarissa, a year older, and Nathaniel, a year younger than herself, acquiring some of their genteel ways and refinements of speech, tho she remained essentially a child of the earth with the nearness to nature and capacity for hard work that was the heritage of her country breeding.
Music and art have their influence on this story, whose development, in form, suggests a Fugue, with the disintegration of shipping and one powerful shipping family and the love of Kate Fernald for Nat Fortune as the major themes—who typifies the new and persistently determined ambition, which sees opportunity in the new order of things and turns the tide of summer visitors to his own profits, ruthless in his violation of old sentiments as in his destruction of old trees; the village folks with their small gossip and narrow minds; the deferred romance of Rissa and Dick Halter, who must always be secondary to Nat in Rissa's fierce and possessive devotion to her brother; the devotion of Sam Jordan to the Fortunes, turned to hatred and an obsession for revenge in a single night.
All these are combined in one complex and baffling whole, thru which one must seek to find the great, underlying harmony. And thru it all sounds the beat and surge of the sea. It was that same sea that inspired Nat to write his great "Sea Symphony," altho it had nearly taken his life.
The whole downfall of the Fortune family is encompassed in this story. Kate shows how it was due to the pride and stubbornness of the Major, whose presence hung like a grim and threatening shadow over the carefree joyousness of childhood. In after years Kate came to understand the nature of the man better and compassion was mingled with condemnation.
His daughter, Rissa, never forgave him, for what she considered his heartless cruelty to her brother, and, strangely enough, it was Kate the girl who came into his home as the child of his housekeeper, who brought some measure of alleviation to his despair, when, with fortune dwindled, health and pride shattered, deserted by his children—ships, forests, family, all gone—he approached his melancholy end.
Major Fortune obstinately blinded his eyes to all that he did not desire. Otherwise he would have seen the inevitable doom of the sailing vessel in time to have saved his fortune, and not defied the signs of the times and the advice of his best counsellors by investing huge sums in a new ship, surpassing any he had yet built—a ship that brought him only bad luck. He would have seen that his son, Nat was physically and temperamentally incapable of carrying on the Fortune traditions as a ruler of the sea. That life on board ship under a rough and unfeeling commander like the hated Capt. MacMurty would crush him. That by refusing to indulge the boy in his passion for music he was barring him from the only way by which he might gain the distinction and world-recognition the father craved for him,
All these things were apparent to the clear-sighted Kate, whose sensibilities, practical tho she was, were sharpened by love and sympathy.
* * *
The character of Kate Fernald was comprehendingly portrayed by her artist-friend, Dick Halter, when he painted her beneath an apple-tree. He perceived her kinship with the apple, full-flavored, sound-hearted, with the gold and ruddy glow of full development. Only Dick, it seems, knew how much Kate had to give or how lavish she would be with her gifts, asking nothing in return. The old fortune-telling woman expressed the same idea when she said: "You've got a heart that's bigger'n your head, child. It's wide enough to take a raft of people and those