The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blue Lagoon, by H. de Vere Stacpoole

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Title: The Blue Lagoon
A Romance

Author: H. de Vere Stacpoole

Release Date: January 19, 2008 [EBook #393]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLUE LAGOON ***

The Blue lagoon: A Romance

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

Introduction to the Project Gutenberg text of H. de Vere Stacpoole's
The Blue Lagoon: A Romance

by Edward A. Malone

University of Missouri-Rolla

Born on April 9, 1863, in Kingstown, Ireland, Henry de Vere Stacpoole
grew up in a household dominated by his mother and three older sisters.
William C. Stacpoole, a doctor of divinity from Trinity College and
headmaster of Kingstown school, died some time before his son's eighth
birthday, leaving the responsibility of supporting the family to his
Canadian-born wife, Charlotte Augusta Mountjoy Stacpoole. At a young
age, Charlotte had been led out of the Canadian backwoods by her
widowed mother and taken to Ireland, where their relatives lived. This
experience had strengthened her character and prepared her for single
parenthood.

Charlotte cared passionately for her children and was perhaps overly
protective of her son. As a child, Henry suffered from severe
respiratory problems, misdiagnosed as chronic bronchitis by his
physician, who in the winter of 1871 advised that the boy be taken to
Southern France for his health. With her entire family in tow,
Charlotte made the long journey from Kingstown to London to Paris,
where signs of the Franco-Prussian War were still evident, settling at
last in Nice at the Hotel des Iles Britannique. Nice was like paradise
to Henry, who marveled at the city's affluence and beauty as he played
in the warm sun.

After several more excursions to the continent, Stacpoole was sent to
Portarlington, a bleak boarding school more than 100 miles from
Kingstown. In contrast to his sisters, the Portarlington boys were
noisy and uncouth. As Stacpoole writes in his autobiograhy Men and
Mice, 1863-1942 (1942), the boys abused him mentally and physically,
making him feel like "a little Arthur in a cage of baboons.