Monday, Apr. 27, 1953

Cad on the Make

THE FORTUNATE MAN (376 pp.]--Frank Tilsley--Messner ($3.95).

The main thing about Jimmy Magnall was that he meant to get ahead. But what was just as important was the fact that he did not mind using other people on the way up, cheerfully trampling them if they were still around after they had stopped being of use. And who was Jimmy? A nobody, really; in 1919 just a cocky kid from Birmingham, not long out of the army, and trying to make his way in a postwar London that had far fewer jobs than hungry Jimmies looking for them.

In The Fortunate Man, English Novelist Frank Tilsley proves that he knows the Jimmy Magnalls of England, at least, down to their last vulgarity and their final weakness. He also creates a picture of lower-class Londoners that jumps and twitches with life. Author Tilsley is no delicate craftsman; England is vastly overstocked with novelists who write silkier books. But compared to Tilsley, most of them seem pale fellows indeed. He has, as an English critic has said, "that uncommon thing, the Common Touch."

Devil with the Groceries. The common touch makes The Fortunate Man a readable book about what at first glance might seem to be dull people punching it out with life in a dull world. Jimmy got his start in a wholesale greengrocer's office in Covent Garden. Henderson, Grieve & Co. didn't know it, but this smiling, stocky braggart was going to make things pop for all of them. He started with the secretary, Florrie. In no time he had seduced her. Calling at her dismal slum home to tell her he would not marry her, Jimmy met her handsome younger sister Madge, promptly switched his affections and made Madge his mistress. As for poor Florrie, what else could she do but shine up to Herbert, a dull, decent office clerk, persuade him that she was carrying his child, and accept his offer of marriage?

But Jimmy was more than just a devil with the women. He had intelligence, and the brashness to throw it around. With his smiling ruthlessness he went up, up, up in Henderson & Grieve, was soon running it. When he tired of Madge, he turned her over to Henderson, and Henderson was grateful. Jimmy got rich sponging on wealthy women and outsmarting timid competitors. By the mid-'30s he was a big man, but for his restless ambition not nearly big enough. He took Madge back when she picked up a big chunk of money as a rich man's mistress, but ditched her a second time. He married for money, dropped his wife when he could get nothing more out of her.

To the Top. Of course he had to have his comeuppance. His overextended business schemes went bust. He had stepped on his friends and walked out on his girls too often. Even stodgy Herbert and Florrie had lived more fully and had more to live for, even if their son was Jimmy's. But Jimmy stayed in character to the end. When he joined the army as a private at the start of World War II, he knew it would not be long before he was made a major. "Major?" He asked the question and corrected himself: "Brigadier!"

At 49, Author Tilsley has more than a dozen novels to his credit, but only one of them, Champion Road (1950), the story of a building promoter, has ever been picked for the export market. U.S. readers who choose British novels for their fine texture will not care for The Fortunate Man; those who like an older and lustier tradition well may.

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