1 Tahiti, the enduring image 1767-1920

2 Tahiti and South Seas craze after WW1

3 Writers and Artists in 1920s Tahiti

4 Rober Keable, utterly immoral WW1 chaplain and writer?

 

Simon currently offers four one-hour lectures on Tahiti

Tahiti, the enduring image 1767-1920

Excellent. The audience liked the humour imparted at times throughout and the images were great. Salisbury Arts Society

Thank you so much for the lecture last night – I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It did, for me, what I think an Art Society Lecture's should do – take the subject and lead us down a different path and open other doors of thought. Wonderful! South west London Arts Society

The first Europeans writers and artists, travelling with James Cook and Louis Bougainville, who visited Tahiti in the 1760s, came back talking about an island paradise. Neoclassical paintings by William Hodges, John Webber and Joshua Reynolds, and etchings based on their work, presented the island as a garden of Eden. Over the next 150 years writers such as Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stephenson, Pierre Loti and Somerset Maugham; and artists such as Charles Giraud, John La Farge and Paul Gauguin kept this image going. What was it about Tahiti, the time it was 'discovered' and the popularity of certain writers and artists and the work that they produced that made Tahiti so unique? 

 

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Tahiti and the South Seas craze after WW1

Many thanks for your lecture yesterday evening. I was intrigued to learn how Tahiti became such a craze in the 1920s, especially the number of films and books being centred there. After the misery of the Great War it was seen as heaven on earth. Programme secretary, Harpenden Arts Society

Straight after WW1 there was a South Seas craze, centred on Tahiti. Tourist particularly from America, Australia and New Zealand began to visit. Books by the likes of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson were republished and many new books were written, led by the two most influential - Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence and Frederick O'Brien's White Shadows in the South Seas. Magazine and newspaper articles proclaimed Tahiti the island to visit and photographs and postcards proliferated. South Sea island movies became hugely popular with over 150 produeced betwen 1914 and 1929 many, like Aloma of the South Seas and The Lotus Eaters, becoming box office hits.

Writers and artists 1920's Tahiti 

‘your talk was absolutely fascinating. It was well researched, with great photos and images that included some well-known names and book titles' Chair, Thame and District U3A

Why did a group of English-speaking writers and artists follow in the footsteps of Paul Gauguin, and decide to visit or settle on the remote island of Tahiti in the 1920s? In his talk Simon tells the amazing stories of many of these writers and artists who decided to escape western civilisation and become forerunners to today's digital nomads. Famous novelists like Zane Grey, and the co-writers of the Mutiny of Bounty tseries James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff. Men like Viscount Hastings, the runaway aristocrat; Robert Keable, the utterly immoral WW1 chaplain and novelist; Asterisk, the annoymous scandalous letter writer and writer; William Alister Macdonald the pensioner water-colourist and George Biddle, author and illustator of the wonderful Tahitian Journal. And women like Caroline Guild, the champion fisherwoman and Eleanor Mordaunt, the irrepressible travle writer. 

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Description of my talks on Tahiti

Robert Keable, Utterly immoral WW1 chaplain and writer

Thank you so much for your wonderful talk last night.  It was a fascinating story and I couldn’t believe the time went so fast.  From the feedback I’ve got, the members loved it and were amazed that such a famous author of the early 20th century should be unknown these days. Richmond Arts Society

Robert Keable’s first, semi-autobiographical, novel Simon Called Peter, about a WW1 chaplain's affair with a nurse, shocked many, was name checked in The Great Gatsby, and became a huge international best seller. Keable led an extraordinary life as a Cambridge educated priest who served as a missionary in Africa, before becoming chaplain to ill-treated black labourers in France. After the war he left the church, and his wife, and ran away to Tahiti with his mistress to live for a year in Paul Gauguin’s house. He stayed in Tahiti, built his own house, continued writing and married a Tahitian princess. 

You can see my descrition of this talk at: Talk on Robert Keable

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Simon Keable-Elliott has been researching the writers living in Tahiti in the 1920s for a number of years. In July 2021 he took early retirement following 25 years as a secondary school politics teacher, and now works as a writer and lecturer. In his first book Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel, published in November 2022, he covered - among other topics - Robert Keable’s time in Tahiti In his latest book Guys like Gauguin, he looks at the influence of the writers and artists who visited Tahiti from the 1760s onwards and the lives and work of those who visited and settled on the island in the 1920s.

To see a list of upcoming talks and lectures by Simon please visit his events page: https://simonkeableelliott.com/events/

If you require any further information, please do email Simon on [email protected] or use the contact page to send a message.

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