The Moon and Sixpence

Chapter XLIX
I 
LIVED
at the Hotel de la Fleur, and Mrs. Johnson,
the proprietress, had a sad story to tell of lost
opportunity. After Strickland’s death certain of
his effects were sold by auction in the market-
place at Papeete, and she went to it herself be-
cause there was among the truck an American
stove she wanted. She paid twenty-seven francs
for it.
“There were a dozen pictures,” she told me,
“but they were unframed, and nobody wanted
them. Some of them sold for as much as ten
francs, but mostly they went for five or six. Just
think, if I had bought them I should be a rich
woman now. ”
But Tiare Johnson would never under any cir-
cumstances have been rich. She could not keep
money. The daughter of a native and an English
sea-captain settled in Tahiti, when I knew her
she was a woman of fifty, who looked older, and
of enormous proportions. Tall and extremely
stout, she would have been of imposing presence
if the great good-nature of her face had not made
it impossible for her to express anything but kind-
liness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her
breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and
fleshy, gave you an impression of almost inde-
cent nakedness, and vast chin succeeded to vast
chin. I do not know how many of them there
were. They fell away voluminously into the ca-
paciousness of her bosom. She was dressed usu-
ally in a pink Mother Hubbard, and she wore all
day long a large straw hat. But when she let down
her hair, which she did now and then, for she
was vain of it, you saw that it was long and dark
and curly; and her eyes had remained young and
vivacious. Her laughter was the most catching I
ever heard; it would begin, a low peal in her
throat, and would grow louder and louder till her
whole vast body shook. She loved three things —
a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man. To

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The Moon and Sixpence
have known her is a privilege.
She was the best cook on the island, and she
adored good food. From morning till night you
saw her sitting on a low chair in the kitchen,
surrounded by a Chinese cook and two or three
native girls, giving her orders, chatting sociably
with all and sundry, and tasting the savoury
messes she devised. When she wished to do
honour to a friend she cooked the dinner with
her own hands. Hospitality was a passion with
her, and there was no one on the island who need
go without a dinner when there was anything to
eat at the Hotel de la Fleur. She never turned
her customers out of her house because they did
not pay their bills. She always hoped they would
pay when they could. There was one man there
who had fallen on adversity, and to him she had
given board and lodging for several months.
When the Chinese laundryman refused to wash
for him without payment she had sent his things
to be washed with hers. She could not allow the
poor fellow to go about in a dirty shirt, she said,
and since he was a man, and men must smoke,
she gave him a franc a day for cigarettes. She
used him with the same affability as those of
her clients who paid their bills once a week.
Age and obesity had made her inapt for love,
but she took a keen interest in the amatory af-
fairs of the young. She looked upon venery as
the natural occupation for men and women, and
was ever ready with precept and example from
her own wide experience.
“I was not fifteen when my father found that I
had a lover,” she said. “He was third mate on
the 
Tropic Bird. A good-looking boy. ”
She sighed a little. They say a woman always
remembers her first lover with affection; but
perhaps she does not always remember him.
“My father was a sensible man.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He thrashed me within an inch of my life, and
then he made me marry Captain Johnson. I did

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195
Somerset Maugham
not mind. He was older, of course, but he was
good-looking too.”
Tiare — her father had called her by the name
of the white, scented flower which, they tell you,
if you have once smelt, will always draw you back
to Tahiti in the end, however far you may have
roamed — Tiare remembered Strickland very well.
“He used to come here sometimes, and I used
to see him walking about Papeete. I was sorry
for him, he was so thin, and he never had any
money. When I heard he was in town, I used to
send a boy to find him and make him come to
dinner with me. I got him a job once or twice,
but he couldn’t stick to anything. After a little
while he wanted to get back to the bush, and
one morning he would be gone.”
Strickland reached Tahiti about six months af-
ter he left Marseilles. He worked his passage on
a sailing vessel that was making the trip from
Auckland to San Francisco, and he arrived with
a box of paints, an easel, and a dozen canvases.
He had a few pounds in his pocket, for he had
found work in Sydney, and he took a small room
in a native house outside the town. I think the
moment he reached Tahiti he felt himself at
home. Tiare told me that he said to her once:
“I’d been scrubbing the deck, and all at once
a chap said to me: `Why, there it is.’ And I looked
up and I saw the outline of the island. I knew
right away that there was the place I’d been
looking for all my life. Then we came near, and I
seemed to recognise it. Sometimes when I walk
about it all seems familiar. I could swear I’ve
lived here before.”
“Sometimes it takes them like that,” said Tiare.
“I’ve known men come on shore for a few hours
while their ship was taking in cargo, and never
go back. And I’ve known men who came here to
be in an office for a year, and they cursed the
place, and when they went away they took their
dying oath they’d hang themselves before they
came back again, and in six months you’d see

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The Moon and Sixpence
them land once more, and they’d tell you they
couldn’t live anywhere else.”