Sea Captains, Stealth and Seduction
Review of the Namaskar Books Kindle eBook (October 1, 2021) of the George H. Doran Company (US) and Heinemann (UK) hardcover originals (1921).

"L'extrême félicité à peine séparée par une feuille tremblante de l'extrême désespoir, n'est-ce pas la vie?" ("Extreme happiness, hardly separated by a trembling leaf from extreme despair: is that not life?") from Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, used as the epigraph for The Trembling of a Leaf.

[33/40 Average = 4.125/5 rounded down for a GR 4]
As with The Casuarina Tree, I wanted to read The Trembling of a Leaf after finishing the 2023 Booker longlisted The House of Doors by Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng. Both books make cameo appearances in Eng’s historical fiction novel which follows author Maugham when he was in Malaya with his partner/secretary Gerald Haskin in 1921.

I enjoyed all of these stories which often involved surprising revelations of colonial administrators and other ex-pats and their affairs on various south sea islands in the Pacific Ocean.

See cover at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
The cover of the 1921 original Heinemann (UK) edition. Image sourced from Goodreads.

The story synopses below include only set-ups and do not reveal endings, so I have not spoiler blocked them:

1. The Pacific *** A vignette which describes the Pacific Ocean and sets the scene for the stories to follow.

The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man. Sometimes it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell, and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. It is not so often that it is calm and blue. ... You see never a tramp, with its friendly smoke, no stately bark or trim schooner, not a fishing boat even: it is an empty desert; and presently the emptiness fills you with a vague foreboding.

2. MacKintosh ***** MacKintosh is the assistant to Walker, an administrator on one of the Samoan Islands. Walker humiliates one of the local villages and its leaders with dramatic results.

3. The Fall of Edward Barnard ***** Edward Barnard goes off to Tahiti to make his career before a planned return to Chicago USA to marry Isabel Longstaffe. After a while he stops writing to her and their friend Bateman Hunter travels to Tahiti to discover what has happened.

4. Red ***** Neilsen, a Swedish ex-pat, now living on a Pacific Island, is host to an aging schooner captain. He tells him the story of a young man nicknamed Red who once lived on the island with a native girl named Sally before he was shanghaied to sea.

5. The Pool *** The narrator tells the story of Lawson who married Ethel, a native girl, after falling in love with her when seeing her swimming at a forest pool. Lawson moves to Scotland with his bank job but Ethel is unhappy there and longs to return to her island home.

6. Honolulu **** Captain Butler and his first mate Bananas both love the same native girl. Captain Butler sickens and it is suspected that he has fallen under a curse.

7. Rain ***** While quarantined on the island of Pago Pago (where it is raining constantly), a missionary tries to undermine the life of a prostitute named Sadie Thompson in an effort to “save" her, but ends up falling under her spell. Rain (originally titled Miss Thompson) became the best known work of this collection and it was adapted later for film, theatre and opera. You can read about the various adaptations at its Wikipedia entry here.

8. Envoi *** A brief vignette describing a departure from Honolulu in Hawaii.

Trivia and Link
The Trembling of a Leaf is in the Public Domain and can be read in various formats at ProjectGutenberg.org. ( )

Sus viajes a los mares del Sur sustentaron muchas narraciones que casi siempre presentan rasgos autobiográficos. Influido por la novelística francesa, su obra muestra rasgos naturalistas y psicológicos. En los mares del Sur incluye los siguientes relatos:

W. Somerset Maugham is unsurpassed as a chronicler of broken and wasted lives. He only flounders when he tries to redeem someone, such as the unbearable Larry Darrell in The Razor's Edge. Nothing of the sort is at work in this collection of short stories, which includes one of Maugham's most famous and influential works, "Rain," the story of an on the run prostitute, Sadie Thompson, who is vehicle for revealing the base corruption in men's souls. Although set mostly in the Samoan Islands, Hawaii, and Tahiti, the locale is not all that important, here. Yes, Maugham's reputation for depicting exotic places is in play, but as with most of his best work, it's the psychological portraits and the examination of human interplay that dominates. These stories could take place anywhere and still beguile the reader with their intensity. Locale actually has little to do with things, which are mostly viewed in close-up. Aside from "Rain," perhaps the most memorable of the bunch is "Mackintosh," where two rival colonial administrators plot to damage each other, only to find themselves in a mutual death grip. Meanwhile, the stories are full of Maugham's usual skewering of human vanity, pride, sloth, and capacity for self deception. ( )

The Trembling of a Leaf by W. Somerset Maugham is a collection of stories set in the South Seas. The first and longest, The Trembling of a Leaf was too soapy for me. And I am a devotee of Maugham and this is his only work that I didn't like. Try Rain or Macintosh, both of which are fantastic stories. Maugham at his best.

This collection of short stories, mainly set in Samoa, was my introduction to the works of W. Somerset Maugham. If this is representative of the quality of his writing, I have much to look forward to. Although the stories are almost a century old, the issues and emotions they explore are timeless. They explore clashes of culture, social conventions, religion, and race. Maugham's descriptive prose is refreshingly original, as a couple of my favorite passages illustrate:

Self-sacrifice appealed so keenly to his imagination that the inability to exercise it gave him a sense of disillusion. He was like the philanthropist who with altruistic motives builds model dwellings for the poor and finds that he has made a lucrative investment. He cannot prevent the satisfaction he feels in the ten per cent which rewards the bread he had cast upon the waters, but he has an awkward feeling that it detracts somewhat from the savour of his virtue. (From “The Fall of Edward Barnard”)

The place seemed to belong not to the modern, bustling world that I had left in the bright street outside, but to one that was dying. It had the savour of the day before yesterday. Dingy and dimly lit, it had a vaguely mysterious air and you could imagine that it would be a fit scene for shady transactions. It suggested a more lurid time, when ruthless men carried their lives in their hands, and violent deeds diapered the monotony of life. (From “Honolulu”)

Highly recommended. ( )