“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. Then, indeed, the blue is arrogant.”
“The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky. The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown.”
“(Honolulu) is the meeting place of East and West. The very new rubs shoulders with the immeasurably old. And if you have not found the romance you expected you have come upon something singularly intriguing.”
“All these strange people live close to each other, with different languages and different thoughts; they believe in different gods and they have different values; two passions alone they share, love and hunger.”
“And somehow as you watch them you have an impression of extraordinary vitality. Though the air is so soft and the sky so blue, you have, I know not why, a feeling of something hotly passionate that beats like a throbbing pulse through the crowds.”
“Though the native policeman at the corner, standing on a platform, with a white club to direct the traffic, gives the scene an air of respectability, you cannot but feel that it is a respectability only of the surface; a little below there is darkness and mystery.”
“It gives you just that thrill, with a little catch at the heart, that you have when at night in the forest the silence trembles on a sudden with the low, insistent beating of a drum. You are all expectant of I know not what.”
“If I have dwelt on the incongruity of Honolulu, it is because just this, to my mind, gives its point to the story I want to tell. It is a story of primitive superstition, and it startles me that anything of the sort should survive in a civilisation which, if not very distinguished, is certainly very elaborate.”
“I cannot get over the fact that such incredible things should happen, or at least be thought to happen, right in the middle, so to speak, of telephones, tram cars, and daily papers. …”
“The place seemed to belong not to the modern, hustling 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.”
“When I went in the saloon was fairly full. A group of business men stood together at the bar, discussing affairs, and in a corner two Kanakas were drinking. Two or three men who might have been store-keepers were shaking dice. The rest of the company plainly followed the sea; they were captains of tramps, first mates, and engineers.”
“Behind the bar, busily making the Honolulu cocktail for which the place was famous, served two large half castes, in white, fat, clean-shaven and dark skinned, with thick, curly hair and large bright eyes. …”
“‘What’s Iwelei?” …
“‘The plague spot of Honolulu. The Red Light district. It was a blot on our civilisation.’”
“Iwelei was on the edge of the city. You went down side streets by the harbour, in the darkness, across a rickety bridge, till you came to a deserted road, all ruts and holes, and then suddenly you came out into the light.”
“There was parking room for motors on each side of the road, and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its mechanical piano, and there were barbers` shops and tobacconists.”
“There was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety.”
“You turned down a narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district.”
“There were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly painted in green, and the pathway between them was broad and straight. It was laid out like a garden-city.”
“In its respectable regularity, its order and spruceness, it gave an impression of sardonic horror; for never can the search for love have been so systematised and ordered.”
“The pathways were lit by a rare lamp, but they would have been dark except for the lights that came from the open windows of the bungalows.”
“Men wandered about, looking at the women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all nationalities.”
“There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port, enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes, and Filipinos in preposterous hats. They were silent and as it were oppressed. Desire is sad.”
“‘It was the most crying scandal of the Pacific,’ exclaimed Davidson vehemently. ‘The missionaries had been agitating against it for years, and at last the local press took it up.’”
“‘The police refused to stir. You know their argument. They say that vice is inevitable and consequently the best thing is to localise and control it.’”
“‘The truth is, they were paid. Paid. They were paid by the saloon-keepers, paid by the bullies, paid by the women themselves. At last they were forced to move.’”
“Iwelei, with its sin and shame, ceased to exist on the very day we arrived. The whole population was brought before the justices.” (W Somerset Maugham, 1921)
William Somerset Maugham (born Jan. 25, 1874, Paris, France – died Dec. 16, 1965, Nice) was an English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. He wrote about the Islands in ‘The Trembling of the Leaf’ in 1921.
