The Blue Lagoon: A Romance | Page 5

about poison from Paddy Button. "The Poetry of Learning" chapter
echoes Alice's dialogue with the caterpillar. Like the wily creature smoking a hookah,
Paddy smokes a pipe and shouts "Hurroo!" as the children teach him to write his name in
the sand. The children lose "all count of time," just as the Mad Hatter does. Whereas
Alice grows nine feet taller, Dick sprouts "two inches taller" and Emmeline "twice as
plump." Like the baby in the "Pig and Pepper," Hannah sneezes at the first sight of Dicky.
The novel is artfully littered with references to wonder, curiosity, and strangeness--all
evidence of Stacpoole's conscious effort to invoke and honor his Victorian predecessor.
Stacpoole presented The Blue Lagoon to Publisher T. Fisher Unwin in September 1907
and went to Cumberland to assist another ailing doctor in his practice. Every day from
Eden Vue in Langwathby, Stacpoole wrote to his fiancee, Margaret Robson (or Maggie,
as he called her), and waited anxiously for their wedding day. On December 17, 1907, the
couple were married and spent their honeymoon at Stebbing Park, a friend's country
house in Essex, about three miles from the village of Stebbing. It was there that they
stumbled upon Rose Cottage, where Stacpoole lived for several years before he moved to
Cliff Dene on the Isle of Wight in the 1920s.
Published in January 1908, The Blue Lagoon was an immediate success, both with
reviewers and the public. "[This] tale of the discovery of love, and innocent mating, is as
fresh as the ozone that made them strong," declared one reviewer. Another claimed that
"for once the title of `romance,' found in so many modern stories, is really justified." The
novel was reprinted more than twenty times in the next twelve years and remained
popular in other forms for more than eighty years. Norman MacOwen and Charlton Mann
adapted the story as a play, which ran for 263 performances in London from August 28,
1920, to April 16, 1921. Film versions of the novel were made in 1923, 1949, and 1980.
Stacpoole also wrote two successful sequels: The Garden of God (1923) and The Gates of
Morning (1925). These three books and two others were combined to form The Blue
Lagoon Omnibus in 1933. The Garden of God was filmed as Return to the Blue Lagoon
in 1992.
This Gutenberg etext of The Blue Lagoon: A Romance is based on the 1908 first
American edition published by J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia.
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The Blue lagoon: A Romance
by H. de Vere Stacpoole

CONTENTS
BOOK I

PART I
I. WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS II. UNDER THE STARS III. THE SHADOW
AND THE FIRE IV. AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED V. VOICES HEARD IN
THE MIST VI. DAWN ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA VII. STORY OF THE PIG AND THE
BILLY-GOAT VIII. "S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H" IX. SHADOWS IN THE MOONLIGHT
X. THE TRAGEDY OF THE BOATS

PART II
XI. THE ISLAND XII. THE LAKE OF AZURE XIII. DEATH VEILED WITH
LICHEN XIV. ECHOES OF FAIRY-LAND XV. FAIR PICTURES IN THE BLUE

PART III
XVI. THE POETRY OF LEARNING XVII. THE DEVIL'S CASK XVIII. THE RAT
HUNT XIX. STARLIGHT ON THE FOAM XX. THE DREAMER ON THE REEF XXI.
THE GARLAND OF FLOWERS XXII. ALONE XXIII. THEY MOVE AWAY
BOOK II

PART I
I. UNDER THE ARTU TREE II. HALF CHILD_HALF SAVAGE III. THE DEMON
OF THE REEF IV. WHAT BEAUTY CONCEALED V. THE SOUND OF A DRUM VI.
SAILS UPON THE SEA VII. THE SCHOONER VIII. LOVE STEPS IN IX. THE
SLEEP OF PARADISE

PART II
X. AN ISLAND HONEYMOON XI. THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE XII. THE
VANISHING OF EMMELINE (CONTINUED) XIII. THE NEWCOMER XIV.
HANNAH XV. THE LAGOON OF FIRE XVI. THE CYCLONE XVII. THE
STRICKEN WOODS XVIII. A FALLEN IDOL XIX. THE EXPEDITION XX. THE
KEEPER OF THE LAGOON XXI. THE HAND OF THE SEA XXII. TOGETHER
BOOK III
I. MAD LESTRANGE II. THE SECRET OF THE AZURE III. CAPTAIN FOUNTAIN
IV. DUE SOUTH

THE BLUE LAGOON
BOOK I

PART I

CHAPTER I
WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS
Mr Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear. He was playing the
"Shan van vaught," and accompanying the tune, punctuating it, with blows of his left heel
on the fo'cs'le deck.
"O the Frinch are in the bay, Says the Shan van vaught."
He was dressed in dungaree trousers, a striped shirt, and a jacket baize--green in parts
from the influence of sun and salt. A typical old shell-back, round-shouldered, hooked of
finger; a figure with strong hints of a crab about it.
His face was like a moon, seen red through tropical mists; and as he played it wore an
expression of strained attention as though the fiddle