James  Fenimore  Cooper

THE  WING-AND WING

Wildside Press. 2008. 480 pages.

ISBN-10: 1434475980

Reviewed by Patrick Killough

"If it be really a world, some all-powerful hand must have created it. Chance never made a world, more than chance made a ship. Thought -- mind -- intelligence must have governed at the formation of one as well as of the other" (Ch. XXX).

"There is something so gratifying to human vanity in fancying ourselves superior to most around us, that we believe few young men attain their majority without imbibing more or less of the taint of unbelief, and passing through the mists of a vapid moral atmosphere, before they come to the clear, manly, and yet humble perceptions that teach most of us, in the end, our own insignificance. ...  Perhaps the greatest stumbling-block of the young, is a dispostion not to yield their belief unless it conforms to their own crude notions of propriety and reason. ... From arrogantly claiming a right to worship a deity we comprehend, we soon come to feel ... (that) a being that can be comprehended, is not a being to be worshipped."

-- The color "portrait" by renowned sailing ship depictor Geoff Hunt could be the very Feu Follet sailing "wing-and-wing" (i. e., sails spread beyond both sides of the ship) with the island of Elba in the background.

-- Who among today's readers is a master of the rigging and paraphernalia of sailing vessels of August and September 1799? A sailor himself, Cooper liberally sprinkles his text with nautical terms like "bearings." Fortunately, a note among scores by editor Philbrick informs that this is "the widest part of the underbody of the hull."

-- We also have two pages of maps (with insets) by cartographer Jeffrey Ward of the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Italy. Every place described in the novel is clearly depicted, including the Island of the Sirens in the Gulf of Salerno, scene of the novel's memorable final battle by land and by sea.

-- It has a tragic romance of 26-year old atheistic French privateer Raoul Yvard and pious Italian 19-year old beauty Ghita Carracioli. Ghita loves Raoul passionately but not enough to marry him, fearing he would tempt her away from love of God.

-- The novel also has two high comic Italian characters, the Vice-Governor of Elba and his podesta (chief magistrate). It is during a debate the two hold aboard a British warship that captured Raoul makes his daring escape with his first mate, wily England-hating Ithuel Bolt. The two Italians were discussing Bishop Berkeley and arguing whether the world is or is not delusion -- a theme given great meaning at novel's end in reflections on the fate of a dying sailor.

-- THE WING-AND-WING is a novel of injustice: British Admiral Nelson's vengeful hanging from the yardarm of a ship of an historial Italian prince who, it turns out, is fictional Ghita's grandfather. And Granite Stater Ithuel Bolt is one of thousands of American seamen illegally seized at sea and "impressed," i. e., made to serve on British warships, theoretically until they can prove their non-British citizenship. The resultant hate of Ithuel Bolt costs many a British life in the novel.

-- Vintage elements of Cooper's LEATHERSTOCKING TALES and Sea Tales are in this novel: pursuit, ambush, capture, escape, conflict by land or by sea. And this is a tale of the age of Bonaparte, when one man from Corsica held Europe in suspense about its fate.

-- The going nowhere romance of atheist Captain Raoul Yvard and ardent Catholic Ghita Caraccioli;

-- The baneful influence on Admiral Horatio Nelson of his Irish inamorata, Lady Emma Hamilton; why else would so just a man put to hasty and unseemly death by hanging the great Neapolitan Prince and Admiral Francesco Caraccioli, Ghita's grandfather;

-- The philosophical arguments between the Vice-Governor of Elba and his podesta (head of civil service) about whether this world in general or sailing the seas in particular is real or illusion;

-- One of the most exciting, easily grasped (because it plays out on only a few acres near the Isle of Sirens) little land-sea battles in English literature;

-- The UK's great injustice during the wars with Napoleon of "impressing" (coercing into service on British warships) of thousands of American citizens -- including Ithuel Bolt of New Hampshire, the novel's sole Yankee character;

-- a sailor's love for his ship

-- and sea chases.

-- The first is a 180 ton French lugger, the privateer Le Feu Follet (will of the wisp or jack o'lantern). Its captain and owner Raoul Yvard flies it initially under the Union Jack so that he can visit enemy Elba and meet his girl friend. The ship with its two unusual wings spread "wing-and-wing," extending beyond either side of the vessel, he deceptively names to the Vice-Governor of Elba "The Wing and Wing" or Italian "Ala e Ala." It may be the fastest vessel afloat in the Mediterranean and even its bitterest enemies want to capture it and put it to work for King George.

-- The french lugger's great enemy is the British frigate Proserpine, vastly larger and almost as fast. The love and pride that the crews of both vessels display for their floating homes is palpable. A beautiful ship is like a beautiful woman; its flanks are for caressing. Cooper makes, detailed comparisons in various novels of ships to various parts of the living female anatomy: hair, eyes, etc.

-- One might dwell on the improbable romance between 26-year old French atheist privateer captain Raoul Yvard and 19-year old passionately devout Italian Catholic Ghita Caraccioli.

-- Another would lift the veil on the evil influence on Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson by married Irishwoman Lady Emma Hamilton. How could Emma persuade Horatio to exercise totally untypical vengeance on a fallen foe, historical Prince Francesco Carccioli? The Prince is the to-be-hanged grandfather of fictional Ghita.

-- In an eighth review I might probe Britain's vile practice down the decades of the Napoleonic wars of "impressing" American citizens to fight in her navies. That is a heavy theme of THE WING-IN-WING and motivates impressed New Hampshireman Ithuel Bolt to hate all things British and to wreak vengeance on that nation's navy at every opportunity.

-- First, the unusually high, reader-friendly quality of of one particular edition you will find among the many currently available: the 1998 Henry Holt/Owl Book edition THE-WING-AND-WING of LE FEU-FOLLET in the Heart of Oak Sea Classics Series.

-- Second, the role of philosophy (Platonic and Berkeleyan Idealism) in the plot.

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      (a) Two Italian officials of the island of Elba (briefly Napoleon's home not many years after 1799) weigh the pros and cons of Idealistic philosophy. They are Vice-Governor Andrea Barrofaldi and his senior civil servant Vito Viti, podesta of Elba. Andrea is a deeply read antiquarian and savant who has an element of Don Quixote about him. Vito is much more self-serving, a feet on the ground Sancho Panza.

At a turning point in the novel the two Italian officials are in the prisoner's cabin of young hero Raoul Yvard. Raoul, having been denounced to British frigate captain Cuffe by profoundly, albeit unwittingly, comic Andrea and Vito, has been condemned to be hanged on the morrow as a spy. At the very last second, Raoul Yvard has been spared for the moment by Nelson, on being informed that he was in the Bay of Naples for love of Ghita, not to spy on British warships.

      (b) The podesta marvels at the sudden turns of fate: one minute with neck in noose, the next a life spared. The Vice-Governor mentions the belief of philosophers that we imagine everything. Both you and I and Elba may be imaginary. Are we going below deck to visit an imaginary prisoner?

Vito resumes the debate in Raoul's presence, learns that the theory discussed belongs to "heretical" Anglican bishop George Berkeley, who had published his theory of philosophical idealism in 1710. For the next several minutes voices rise as the Vice-Governor explains Berkeleyan philosophy to his deputy. All eyes are off Raoul, who uses the opportunity to lower himself through a porthole to a waiting skiff prepared by Ithuel, Ghita and her uncle. They escape. Raoul then explains to Ghita's the Vice-Governor's defense of the idea that they cruise imaginary seas in imaginary ships.

      (c) Later Raoul and Ithuel, back aboard the Feu-Follet, capture a British rowboat carrying Clinch, the very man whose message to Nelson had spared Raoul's life. At a time when Clinch is severely depressed, Raoul cheers him up and frees both him and his boat crew. Evoking Wordsworth, the narrator says, in effect, that Clinch, thanks to Raoul, comes in touch with the "clouds of glory" that came streaming after him when he was born into this miserable, perhaps imaginary, material world.

      (d) Vice-Governor and Podesta re-appear in the novel's last chapter. Superior in numbers, the British have overwhelmed privateer resistance on the Isle of Sirens. Bodies are strewn everywhere. Vice-Governor Andrea says that many, many men

"have this day departed for the world of spirits." "'Leaving behind them only a world of shadows,' muttered Vito Viti, even that melancholy spectacle failing to draw his thoughts altogether from a discussion that had now lasted near four and twenty hours."

Heroine Ghita and her philosopher uncle might have agreed that the souls of the fallen just had passed out from something like the Cave of Plato's shadow-watchers to the pure heaven of ideas beyond the visible stars so fascinating to Raoul Yvard.

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