surfresearch.com.au  stoddard : surfriding, maui 1874

Twenty five illustrations by Wallis Mackay were prepared for the English edition only, none appeared in the US editions until the Gay Sunshine Press edition in 1987.
It includes one surfriding illustrations (page 94), originally  the frontpiece of 1874 English edition.

In the late 20th century,Stoddard's work was noted for its homoerotic themes, some elements of which are in evidence in this extract.
These themes are fully discussed in Roger Austin's introduction to the 1987 edition. (1)

''To the beach, by all means!'' cried I; and to the beach we hastened, where, indeed, we found heaps of cast-off raiment, and a hundred footprints in the sand.
What would Mr. Robinson Crusoe have said to that, I wonder!
Across the level water, heads, hands, and shoulders, and sometimes halfbodies, were floating about, like the amphibia.
We were at once greeted with a shout of welcome, which came faintly to ...

Page 93
... us above the roar of the surf, as it broke heavily on the reef, a half-mile out from shore.
It was drawing toward the hour when the fishers came to land, and we had not long to wait before, one after another, they came out of the sea like so many mermen and mermaids.
They were refreshingly innocent of etiquette -at least, of our translation of it; and, with a freedom that was amusing as well as a little embarrassing, I was deliberately fingered, fondled, and fussed with by nearly every dusky soul in turn.
''At last;'' thought I, ''fate has led me beyond the pale of civilization; for this begins to look like the genuine article.''

With uncommon slowness, the mermaids donned more or less of their apparel, a few preferring to carry their robes over their arms; for the air was delicious, and ropes of seaweed are accounted full dress in that delectable latitude.
Down on the sand the mermen heaped their scaly spoils- fish of all shapes and sizes, fish of every color; some of them throwing somersaults in the sand, like young athletes; some of them making wry faces, in their last agony; some of them lying still and clammy, with big, round eyes like smoked-pearl vest-buttons set in the middle of their cheeks; all of them smelling fish-like, and none of them looking very tempting.
Small boys laid hold on small fry, bit their heads off, and held the silver-coated morsels between their teeth, like animated sticks of candy.
There was a Fridayish and Lent-like atmosphere hovering over the spot, and I turned away to watch some youths who were riding surf-boards not far distant - agile, narrow-hipped youths, with tremendous bi-ceps and proud, impudent heads set on broad shoulders, like young gods.
These were the flower and chivalry of the Meha blood, and they swam like young porpoises, every one of them.

There was a break in the reef before us; the sea knew it, and seemed to take special delight in rushing upon the shore as though it were about to devour sand, savages, and every- thing.
Kahele and I watched the surf-swimmers for some ...

Page 94
Wallis Mackay's surfriding illustration, titled:.
" Kahele and I watched the surf-swimmers for some time, charmed with the spectacle."

Page 95.
... time, charmed with the spectacle.
Such buoyancy of material matter I had never dreamed of.
Kahele, though much in the flesh, could not long resist the temptation to exhibit his prowess, and having been offered a surf-board that would have made a good lid to his coffin, and was itself as light as cork and as smooth as glass, suddenly threw off his last claim to respectability, seized his sea-sled, and dived with it under the first roller which was then about to break above his head, not three feet from him.
Beyond it, a second roller reared its awful front, but he swam under that with ease; at the sound of his "open sesame;'' its emerald gates parted and closed after him.
He seemed some triton playing with the elements, and dreadfully "at home" in that very wet place.
The third and mightiest of the waves was gathering its strength for a charge upon the shore.
Having reached its outer ripple, again Kahele dived and reappeared on the other side of the watery hill, balanced for a moment in the glassy hollow, turned suddenly, and, mounting the towering monster, he lay at full length upon his fragile raft, using his arms as a bird its pinions-in fact, soaring for a moment with the wave under him.
As it rose, he climbed to the top of it, and there, in the midst of foam seething like champagne, on the crest of a rushing sea-avalanche about to crumble and dissolve beneath him, his surf-board hidden in spume, on the very top bubble of all, Kahele danced like a shadow.
He leaped to his feet and swam in the air, another Mercury, tiptoeing a heaven-kissing hill, buoyant as vapor, and with a suggestion of invisible wings about him -Kahele transformed for a moment, and for a moment only; the next second my daring sea-skater leaped ashore, with a howling breaker swashing at his heels.
It was something glorious and almost incredible; but I saw it with my own eyes, and I wanted to double his salary on the spot.

In the introductoy notes to Kahele, Leyland writes:
" 'Who was the gayest of the gay, and the most lawless of the un-lawful?
My boy, Kahele, in whom I had placed my trust'
So says Stoddard of the adolescent boy from Lahaina with whom he traveled in Maui in the 1860s."

In September 1869, Stoddard's story 'South Sea Idyl' was published in San Francisco in The Overland Monthly, edited by Bret Harte (reprinted in the present volume as 'Chumming with a Savage: Kana-ana').
In 1873 this story, along with others, was reprinted in the United States in a volume titled South-Sea Idyls (English edition: Summer Cruising in the South Seas.)
That same year Stoddard went to Europe as a traveling correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, serving for a short time in London as secretary to Mark Twain, whom he had known in California.

Stoddard lived in England and Italy for three years, toured Egypt and Palestine in 1876-77, then returned to San Francisco.
After two years he moved to Hawaii, living there from 1881 to 1884."

Leyland, Winston: Editor's Note
Stoddard, Charles Warren: Summer Cruising in the South Seas.
Gay Sunshine Press Inc. PO Box 40397 San Francisco CA 94140. 1987. Page 5.

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Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library
2006