Pippins & Sea Power

PROUD NEW FLAGS (493 pp.)--F. van Wyck Mason--Lippincott ($3).

"YESTERDAY OFF FORTRESS MONROE IN VIRGINIA," the telegram read, "THE C.C.S.

RAM MERRIMAC FOUGHT AND SANK THE U.S.S. STEAM FRIGATE CONGRESS, FIFTY

GUNS . . . Gripped by overwhelming satisfaction and emotion, Sam caught Kitty Pingree's softly firm body close and kissed her hard on her warm, coral-tinted mouth.

" 'At last!' he cried, swinging her about in a wild, capering dance. 'At last the

Confederacy understands the meaning and taste of sea power. Just think! Now all Chesapeake Bay lies open to us ... Why, within a few days we'll be throwing nine-inch shells into Abe Lincoln's lap!'':

Barrel A-Rolling. The shotgun wedding of history and sex has produced enough incongruities in U.S. fiction to fill a literary museum of horrors. This one comes from Proud New Flags, the latest historical novel by F. (for Francis) van Wyck Mason.* His tetralogy on the Revolutionary War at sea has sold over 1,000,000 copies in all editions. With his new tetralogy on the Civil War at sea, Mason ought to do as well or better.

For Mason's novels are wonderful fun to read, despite a disinterest in the fine points of human character, and even despite his high-spirited approach to the English language--which he seems to regard as a lariat for the roping of great strong verbs, soft lovely nouns, and even helpless little prepositions. Nevertheless, Author Mason can keep a story rolling like a navvy with a barrel, and that one perilous, amazing skill makes it hard to ignore what's happening.

Belles A-Ringing. This is what happens: a few days before a Union fleet is scuttled at Norfolk, the beauteous Mrs. Irad Seymour is taken prize on a Chippendale couch by her dashing brother-in-law Sam Seymour. Sam promptly dashes south to catch the cruiser Sumter as she runs the Union blockade off New Orleans. Set ashore at Cienfuegos, Cuba, he plays the big game against a Yankee consul and the little game with a local pippin named Coralita.

Then on to Richmond with Sam to watch the struggles of the young Confederate government and the death agonies of his illegitimate son and his brother in a carriage accident. Next, back to New Orleans, where he sets all the belles a-ringing. A lustrous Creole named Louise Cottier strikes just the right note for Sam, and as the Union fleet captures New Orleans, Sam seizes her "cruelly close" and declaims in the teeth of Confederate defeat: "Come then, my dear. So long as there remain women like you to sustain our Cause, we can never falter."

*Also the highly successful concocter of 17 Major-North-of-G-2 stories (The Bucharest Ballerina Murders, The Saigon Singer, Dardanelles Derelict).

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