The Man with a Grouch

Name: The Man with a Grouch
Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole

"The Man with a Grouch" by H. De Vere Stacpoole is a short story set in the South Seas that follows Christopher Flexner, an Englishman working as a trade station manager on the island of Levua for the San Francisco firm of Lombard, Drex and Company. Despite the station's favorable conditions, profits are poor, and the firm's senior partner, old Reuben Lombard, travels to Levua to investigate. He concludes that Flexner's fundamental problem is chronic dissatisfaction. Flexner is not dishonest, does not drink excessively, and is not lazy, but he meddles with arrangements that function perfectly well, destabilizes established relationships among the local people, and can never appreciate what is directly before him. Lombard fires him and dispatches a replacement, a young American named George Arrow. Arrow arrives aboard the company schooner Golden Hope on Christmas Eve, and Flexner hands over the station with remarkable composure, showing none of the grousing temperament Lombard described. The two men get along well. That night, a dramatic and violent encounter between a sperm whale and a giant squid erupts in the lagoon waters, drawing them out to the veranda in the small hours of the morning to watch. Where Arrow finds the spectacle disturbing, Flexner observes it with the calm enthusiasm of a natural historian, finding it simply interesting. The following morning, with the schooner preparing to depart and Flexner facing a return to San Francisco with little money and no employment prospects, he rows out alone in the station boat to take a final look at Levua from the sea. Drifting on the current while lost in reflection, he notices a large, strange mass floating on the water. He pulls toward it and discovers it to be an enormous chunk of ambergris, the rare and extraordinarily valuable substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales. The connection to the previous night's drama is immediately clear: the wounded whale, fleeing the lagoon, had expelled the ambergris into the current, which carried it southward directly into Flexner's path. Flexner rigs a tow line and laboriously rows the mass back through the reefs to the schooner. Captain Bartells, an old friend, immediately grasps the situation and, crucially, recognizes that since Flexner's employment with the company ended the previous day and the ambergris was found beyond the three-mile limit, the find belongs entirely to Flexner and has no claim on it from Lombard, Drex and Company. Bartells arranges for the ambergris to be loaded aboard as private cargo at standard freight rates, protecting Flexner's windfall from any corporate interference. By the captain's rough calculation, the mass weighs upward of two hundred pounds, making it worth a very large fortune at twenty-five dollars an ounce. That evening on the veranda, Flexner and Arrow sit together for the last time. The extraordinary reversal of Flexner's circumstances, from near destitution to great wealth in a single morning, ought to make him the most contented man imaginable. Instead, as the conversation settles and the whisky goes down, Flexner grows quiet and morose. When Arrow asks what is wrong, Flexner complains, with undisguised irritation, that all the ambergris in the world cannot get him home to England in time for Christmas Day. Arrow goes inside, kicks a chair out of his way in frustration, and privately concedes that old Lombard had been entirely right about the man all along.

By H. De Vere Stacpoole · First published 1924 · Genre: Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Literary Fiction · 7,176 words

First lines

A Story of the South Seas, and of a Man Who Wanted to Spend Christmas in England

At Levua, even today there are to be found square miles of old forest. The true high woods of the tropics; trees fetched from Heaven knows where to shoulder one another and shudder in the sea wind and thrust at each other in the great storms when the coconuts of the beach palms are flying like cannon balls.

What this Textopian page supports

The Man with a Grouch is listed on Textopian as a short story by H. De Vere Stacpoole, dated 1924 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Work type: Short story
Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole
Date: 1924 CE
Language: English
Genres: Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Literary Fiction, Character Study, Social Commentary
Length: 7,176 words
Structure: 1 section, 126 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Work identity for The Man with a Grouch by H. De Vere Stacpoole
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Discussion starters

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Genres

Fiction — The book is a narrative work of prose fiction telling a story about a character with a difficult disposition.
Psychological Fiction — The title suggests a focus on character psychology and the internal disposition of the protagonist, making psychological exploration central to the work.
Literary Fiction — H. De Vere Stacpoole was known for writing literary works that explore character and human nature with some depth and sophistication.
Character Study — The focus on 'a man with a grouch' indicates the book is centered on examining and developing a single character's personality and perspective.