Know Your Butterflies

Book Reviews

Last Word On RLS

CHE book that J. C. Furnas gave us a few years ago, and which was entitled, with singular lack F imagination, Anatomy of Para ise, has become something of a assic on the subject of the Pacific lands. His latest book also comes Ithin the class of a major work, nd whether he intended it so, r not, seems to have said all that eed be said on the subject of obert Louis Stevenson —a topic lat has been nibbled at, and de ated since RLS died in Samoa i December 3, 1894.

This book has been called Voyage i Windward, which is a happier mice than the naming of the natomy, and is apt in that much i Louis’ short life was indeed, a ?ad beat into the wind.

Furnas spent 15 years, many )llars and travelled 30,000 miles in •der to gather the material for the )ok. The finished product shows ie result of this meticulous care, id that it was a task much to the riter’s taste: written for the love it rather than it should find >pular favour.

To the layman of no literary pre nsions, whose world does not hang i the interpretation of what RLS eant by some obscure poem ritten in his youth concerning me real or imaginary parlourmaid, uch of the book will have no in rest whatsoever. The first section, bich deals with Louis’ youth, will ake hard reading, but after this )stacle is surmounted even the m-literary will probably find in rest in the human story of Louis id his varied house-hold. The Kent fact that emerges from the ory is that Louis was a very iman person, although not a :reat man,” in the real sense of ie term. He wrote well, he ruggled valiantly against tuber ilosis, but apart from that there as no great purpose behind his e. One sympathises with his ill ;sses but gains the impression that, the modern idiom, he could be considerable pain in the neck to lose who lived on the lower plane here the world is not well lost for ■t.

Louis’ was an era when the ;erary took themselves even more riously than is normal. In the rcles into which he gravitated, the irn of a phrase meant infinitely ore than a credit balance in the ink, or a steady profession which •ought in a monthly pay cheque, nd in this regard one has a fellow ieling with father Thomas bevenson, civil engineer, designer

of lighthouses, who for many years stood between Louis and bank ruptcy; and, later with his wife, Fanny, whom most of Louis’ literary friends disliked, but who can be said to have stood between him and an even earlier grave.

Throughout the book, Furnas strives hard to be impartially fair to Fanny, the American divorcee who shared Louis’ penury and his haemorrhages for the 14 years of their married life. Fanny’s main mission in life after her marriage to Louis was to keep him alive and to defend him from his literary friends who were agreed about only one thing—their dislike of her. For her part, Fanny was a good hater and, according to RLS, no mean opponent in a row. and if she did not wean Louis entirely from those she considered his most undesirable friends, she did her best.

She had her fair share of human failings, but her life was no bed of roses. The cloud of Louis’ ill ness hung over them perpetually.

Money was never plentiful. There were perpetual journeyings, often in uncomfortable conditions, from one place to another in search of health, but throughout her devo tion remained constant, although circumstances were such as to bring out the vixen in most women.

The story of Louis cannot be con sidered except in relation to his tuberculosis. ’ Without the disease his life doubtless would have been shaped very differently. Still a genius, perhaps; perhaps a plain civil engineer, or an unknown law yer of Edinburgh.

What began as a “weak chest” sent him early to France from dank Scotland; to Switzerland; to America and to the South Seas. The modern reader, who had only a superficial knowledge of his life, is amazed at the hold the disease had upon him; the extraordinary treat ment that he gave it; and the fact that, with the possible exception of Samoa, every one of his stopping places on his wide travels seems to have been marked by a haemorr hage of large or small degree. Yet in the end he did not die from TB, but of cerebral haemorrhage.

Apia, with its rain and its humi dity, would not be considered ideal for the TB patient to-day. Yet here, and while at sea in Island schooners, Louis appears to have been comparatively well. At Vaili ma, Fanny and he carved a hole in the jungle and built their home.

Here he gathered around him his family, seemed to show signs of patriarchal contentment and a new maturity, dabbled, probably un

wisely, in local politics and appar ently was happy. Then suddenly— finish.

The Vailima phase is the best known of Louis’ life —the South Seas sojourn captured the imagina tion of his generation. Had it con tinued longer, the whole RLS tradition would probably have been consolidated and not left a border line case between imperishable greatness and obscurity.

Who reads Robert Louis Steven son to-day? If it were not for the movie script-writers, who have given doubtful patronage to this writer who died over a half-century ago, his name would be forgotten by the present generation—and even so. you will probably find his name in the smallest type among the list of Movie Credits.

Journey to Windward is not everyone’s meat. But it should be come the final word on the subject for collectors of Stevensoniana. (Our copy from William Sloane Associates, New York.)

Know Your Butterflies

A BEAUTIFULLY illustrated book on “Butterflies of Aus tralia and New Guinea” comes to us from Charles Barrett and A.

N. -Burns (published by N. H.

Seward of Bourke St. Melbourne, at £2/15/- Australian). It should be of great value to amateur and pro fessional naturalists in New Guinea, which is plentifully endowed with some of the world’s more spectacu lar butterflies.

Few residents of the Territory escape the butterfly phase and even those who do not go in for active bug-hunting will be interested in identifying and reading something of the history of their local butter flies.

There are eight full plates in colour, which make indentification easy, and numerous other illus trations. The text, while being scientific enough for the entomolo gist, is easily understood by the amateur.

This book is long overdue. Dur ing the war there was a great de mand from Allied troops for books on P-NG’s birds, butterflies and other natural life but remarkably little has as yet been published on these subjects.

The Pacific —Again

IF you can forget, or ignore, or agree with Dr. Oliver’s conten tion that no European who has gone to the Pacific in the last 400 years, had any right to be there, and was up to no good, anyhow, you will probably find that his The

(Continued on page 74.)

Pacific Islands is as comprehens: a story of the area as you will fi anywhere.

The Pacific, of course, has be “done” so frequently that it 1 become tedious. Nonetheless, ] Oliver's book is very readable a has been well received by Ai tralian reviewers.

Douglas Oliver is Associate P] fessor of Anthropology at Harv£ University, He spent a number years in New Guinea and BSI doi field work and had some spec job in the Pacific area duri World War 11.

If my memory serves me correc that job was somehow concerr with boosting copra or rubber p] duction in the producing areas tb left to us, which seems to show tl the Professor, no less than the rest us, was willing to hitch Pacific islai production and Pacific islanders that business we once felt to be important—the Allied war effoi One somehow feels that he shoi have sustained the atmosphere his book, and viewed World II objectively, simply as a proc of evolution, and not been cc cerned at all in the business raising copra production.

However, Dr. Oliver is no star: eyed dreamer, He looks upon 1 whole European history of 1 Pacific, and colonisation genera more in sorrow than in ang realising that with the huir ahimal as well as the les varieties, the strong will alwi prey on the weak.

Looking back over 400 years fr the pinnacle of enlightenment tl we have now reached we can ag that we Europeans in our dealii with native peoples, have been pretty nasty lot.' But if our adventurous ancest had not exterminated the aborigii in Australia, overwhelmed Maoris of New Zealand, had 1 the Red Indians in charge America, the Hottentots and wh not in Africa; or not pushed aror the Islanders of the Pacific for tb own purpose; if they had all sta: home in their own little villages Europe, attending to the affairs the parish—well, what?

One sure result would be tl anthropologists like Dr. Oli would not have much to wi about. Sixty pages of this b( cover the pre-European history the Pacific. The rest of the 3 odd pages are devoted to wl came after. J- (The Pacific Islands, published by Oxl University Press, 346 Little Collins Str Melbourne. Price, 52/6 Australian.)