Cumner’s Son and Other South Sea Folk Volume 02 Interesting But Greatly Flawed – Richard A. Goodman – Oakland, CA
Being a fan of the South Pacific and having been there about 50 times I looked forward to reading Gilbert Parker’s collection of short stories entitled “Cumner’s Son.”
I have rated it as “three stars,” and then I really have to ask myself if it is worth this high an evaluation. Perhaps 2 1/2 would be more appropriate.
These stories are primarily about the white settlers in various parts of the South Pacific, especially the Australian Outback. I am a lot more interested in the interaction between the white settlers, traders, etc. and the local people, the Polynesians and Melanesians and the Australian Aborigines, than I am in stories about interactions between white folks who might well have been in London but here inhabit a more exotic setting.
However, I am glad I read the book.
So here are the negatives.
Gilbert Parker’s ponderous writing style leaves a lot to be hoped for. It is usually stilted,filled with the kind of circumlocutions typical of Victorian times and lacking in directness. You’re not reading anything halfway as good as Conrad, Stevenson, Twain, London or Maugham here. In addition, the stories are generally presented in such an overly melodramatic fashion that were the dialogue to be expressed on stage these days it would often be regarded as parody and set the audience to laughing.
The title story is written in a peculiar style intended to be terribly serious if not even mythic. The tale might make a good movie, somewhat as Conrad’s Lord Jim did, but as a written work it suffers enormously from pretentiousness.
Volume 4’s story “How Pango Wango was Annexed” is sheer nonsense. Take this from someone who used to live in Samoa (myself) and who speaks Samoan.
My favorite of them all is in the same volume, and is called “An Amiable Revenge.” This short tale is set in Tonga, on Tongatabu, which I have visited a number of times. It rings true to me. I found an essential element of what the author would have called “civilization” in the behavior of the main Tongan character, something at odds with the peculiar racist idea of the “natives” that lurks below the surface of many of these stories, and that certainly is typical of the attitudes of whites in Australia and elsewhere in the Pacific during the late 19th century.
The positive: These stories offer an interesting window on white attitudes in the South Pacific in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
My summary: Pacific fans, eventually you might wish to read this, but it shouldn’t be your first or even your second priority. As for the rest of you readers, move on to Stevenson, Maugham, Conrad, Twain or London.
: We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper,
Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water
boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the
grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was
gathering twigs and bark for the fire. That is the order of merit–
Barlas, Drysdale, myself, the horses and Bimbi. Then comes the Cadi all
by himself. He is given an isolated and indolent position, because he
was our guest and also because, in a way, he represented the Government.
And though bushmen do not believe much in a far-off Government–even
though they say when protesting against a bad Land Law, “And your
Petitioners will ever Pray,” and all that kind of yabber-yabber–they
give its representative the lazy side of the fire and a fig of the best
tobacco when he bails up a camp as the Cadi did ours. Stewart Ruttan,
the Cadi, was the new magistrate at Windowie and Gilgan, which stand for
a huge section of the Carpentaria country. He was now on his way to
Gilgan to try some cases there. He was a new chum, though he had lived
in Australia for years. As Barlas said, he’d been kept in a cultivation-
paddock in Sydney and Brisbane; and he was now going to take the business
of justice out of the hands of Heaven and its trusted agents the bushmen,
and reduce the land to the peace of the Beatitudes by the imposing reign
of law and summary judgments. Barlas had just said as much, though in
different language.
I knew by the way that Barlas dropped the damper on the hot ashes and
swung round on his heel that he was in a bad temper. “And so you think,
Cadi,” said he, “that we squatters and bushmen are a strong, murderous
lot; that we hunt down the Myalls–[Aborigines]–like kangaroos or
dingoes, and unrighteously take justice in our own hands instead of
handing it over to you?”
“I think,” said the Cadi, “that individual and private revenge should
not take the place of the Courts of Law. If the blacks commit
depredations–”
“Depredations!” interjected Drysdale with sharp scorn.
“If they commit depredations and crimes,” the Cadi continued, “they
should be captured as criminals are captured elsewhere and be brought in
and tried. In that way respect would be shown to British law and–”
here he hesitated slightly, for Barlas’s face was not pleasant to see–
“and the statutes.”
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Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen : Very few of the twenty fairy tales included in this volume have been presented before in an English dress; this will doubtless enhance their value in the eyes of the young folk, for whom, principally, they are intended. It is hoped that older readers will find some additional interest in tracing throughout the many evidences of kinship between these stories and those of more pronounced Eastern origin.
