Louis Becke

“ Certainly there is a wide gulf separating life on a Pacific island from the accumulated culture of centuries of civilisation in the midst of which such as Mrs. Meynell move and have their being. And if there can be nothing good in literature that does not spring from that culture, these stories must stand condemned. ”

“ A novelist of that modern school that fills its volumes, often fascinatingly enough, by refining upon the shadowy refinements of civilised thought and feeling, would find it hard to ply his trade in South Sea Island society. ”

“ Much as I admire that lady’s writings, I never can think of a world from which everything was eliminated that did not commend itself to the dainty taste of herself and her friends, without a feeling of impatience and suffocation. It takes a huge variety of men and things to make a good world. ”

“ But in those happy days there were no prisons in Samoa, so that his confinement was not irksome, and his only hard labour was picnics, of which he was the life and soul. All went pleasantly until Mr. Pease—a degenerate sort of pirate who made his living by half bullying, half swindling lonely white men on small islands out of their cocoanut oil, and unarmed merchantmen out of their stores—came to Apia in an armed ship with a Malay crew. From that moment Hayes’s life became less idyllic. Hayes and Pease conceived a most violent hatred of each other, and poor old Mr. ”

“ He is still in the prime of life, and whether he will now remain within the bounds of civilisation, or whether some day he will return to his wanderings as Odysseus is fabled to have done in his old age, I fancy that he hardly knows himself. ”

“ Out of her complement of fifty people, thirty were dead. They gave them provisions and water, and left them to make Strong’s Island (Kusaie) , which was in sight. Becke and the chief swore Marshall Island Bruderschaft with each other. Years afterwards, when he came to live in the Marshall Group, the chief proved his friendship in a signal manner.
The cruise proved a profitable one, and from that time Mr. Becke determined to become a trader, and to learn to know the people of every group of the Pacific; and returning to California, he made for Samoa, and from thence to Sydney. ”

“ Meeting with the managing partner of a Liverpool firm he took service with him as a trader in the Ellice and Tokelau Groups; finally settling down as a residential trader. Then he took passage once more for the Carolines and was wrecked on Peru, one of the savage Gilbert Islands (lately annexed) , losing every dollar that he possessed. He returned to Samoa and engaged as a “recruiter” in the labour trade. He got badly hurt in an encounter with some natives, and went to New Zealand to recover. ”

“ And truth to nature is—pace. Mr. Oscar Wilde—a great merit in a story, not only because of that thrill of pleasure hard to analyse, but largely made up of associations, memories, and suggestions, that faithfulness of representation in picture or book gives to the natural man; but because of the fact that nature is almost infinitely rich, and the unassisted imagination of man but a poor and sterile thing, tending constantly towards some ossified convention. “Treasure Island” is a much better story than “The Wreckers,” yet I, for one, shall never cease to regret that Mr. ”