Henry De Vere Stacpoole was an Irish author, born in Kingstown. His best known work is the 1908 romance novel The Blue Lagoon, which has been adapted into feature films on three occasions. A ship's doctor for more than forty years, Stacpoole was also an expert on the South Pacific islands.
Excerpt from The Rapin
IN the rooms of my friend Otto Struve there hangs a parrot cage containing a somewhat de jected-looking lark. It was given to him by Gus tave Garnier, the man who took the Prix de Rome last year-or was it the year before? - and whose picture of a girl was bought by the state for I do not know how many thousand francs before it had hung a fortnight in the Salon. A story connects the painter and the picture and the bird - a story whose name ought to have been C lestin but for that eternal unfitness of things which makes the comedy of real life an inverted image of the com edy of romance and demands for the story of C lestin the title of Toto, or, if it please you.