James Norman Hall,
The Man
1887-1951

James Norman Hall (1887-1951) - adventurer, soldier, pursuit pilot, author, essayist and poet.  James A. Michener wrote of Hall "the most beloved American who ever came to the tropics.  He had a gentle humor and abiding concern for people and a ready franc for anyone in need."

Hall was born in the Iowa town of Culfax on April 22nd, 1887.  As a young man in Colfax, he did virtually everything that "Huckleberry Finn" did along with a few added adventures.  Following graduation from Colfax High School, he worked in a haberdashery store; with this money and working his way as well, Hall went to Grinnell College, graduating in 1910.  He considered these years the best in his life and remained close friends with his professors for the rest of their lives.  Literature and music were his main sources of pleasure.  Even then, he was producing many poems and essays.

Hall moved to Boston to develop his writing skills, papering his room in Louisbnrg Square with rejection slips. While in Boston1 he continued taking courses at Harvard for a Master's Degree (in case he failed as a writer, he could teach).  To pay for his schooling, James Norman Hall worked for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  In the summer of 1914, he took a vacation in England.  As he had little money, he bicycled to Scotland to try to meet his favorite author, Joseph Conrad.  Upon reaching his house, he almost knocked on the door, but lost his nerve and headed back to London.  A few days later in that fateful August of 1914, World War I exploded.  The over adventurous Hall immediately joined the first 100,000 at Lord Kitchener's Volunteers with the 9th Royal Fusiliers as a Canadian (Americans were not allowed).  As a lance corporal machine gunner, he was thrown into the worst of the early trench warfare and, in particular, the Battle of Loos.  He was one of the few survivors of his company.  Hall received word that his father was dying in Colfax and asked for leave.  It was discovered that he was an American and not a Canadian, the result being that he was given an honorable discharge instead of leave, though Hail planned to return and reenlist.
Following a short time in Iowa, Hall returned to Boston.  There, he wrote his first book Kitchener's Mob.  It was a most successful pro-Allied book.  From that moment on, publishers began to take an interest in Hall.  He wrote various articles for his friend, Jack Winship, editor of the Boston Globe, as well as his mentor, Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

A short time later, Hall's editor heard about the formation of an American Pursuit Squadron in the French Air Service.  As a result, Hall was sent to France to write about the event.  Instead of just writing about the formation, Hall joined the Escadrille Lafayette N-124 and found himself in the air only a few months later.  James Norman Hall was to become a true hero of France gaining the Croix de Guerre with five palms and many citations as well as the Médaille Militaire.  Hall was shot down and badly wounded, but he returned to the Lafayette Escadrille on his recovery.  Later, when he was an American officer, he received the Légion d’Honneur.  Hall started another book which was to become another popular story High Adventure.

When the United States entered World War I, Hall was made a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, was transferred to the 103 Aero Squadron and, shortly afterwards, to the 94th (Hat in the Ring Squadron) as a wing commander.  He was Lt. Eddie Rickenbacker's commander at that time; Rickenbacker's first kill was a joint one with Captain Hall.  Captain James Norman Hall was later shot down and captured in Germany, though he escaped in the last days of the War.  From General Pershing, he received the Distinguished Service Cross.

In 1919, Hall was assigned to work with his future friend and collaborator, Charles Nordhoff, to write the History of the Escadrille Lafayette and the Lafayette Flying Corps. In 1920, Nordhoff and Hall went to Tahiti and started what was to become the most famous collaboration in modern literature.

In 1922, James Norman Hall was able to get back to Grinnell to sit for his Master's Degree (along with his Phi Beta Kappa key, which he had gotten with his work at Harvard).  Hall was still not sure whether be could succeed as a writer.  Just before he died, Hall received a Ph.D. from Grinnell.

From 1920 until his death in 1951, James Norman Hall lived in Arue, Tahiti where he wrote in his beloved library at home.  There he married Sarah Winchester Hall and had two children.  Many of the most famous works like Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hurricane were written there in collaboration with his friend and partner, Charles Nordhoff.  For Hall, his heart was in Tahiti, but his feet were still stuck in the clay of Iowa.  Hall felt he needed the peace of  Tahiti to write.  His devoted wife provided all he needed.  Hall died in Arue in 1951, and it was not until then that Tahiti learned Hall was a real hero.  James Norman Hall was one of the most humble and self-effacing men to tread the earth. On arriving in Tahiti in 1920, Hall stored away his military papers and decorations in a trunk.  He loathed publicity, had few interviews and never went to a book signing event.

James Norman Hall died in his home in Arue and was buried on a hill above his house and library on July 5th, 1951.  His house and library are now a French-Tahitian Historical Home.  On his grave is the following:

Look to the Northward stranger
Just over the hillside there
Have you in your travels seen
A land more passing fair.

This grave site looks over Matavai Bay, where Captain Bligh first dropped anchor on the BOUNTY.  However, it must be said that the small poem was written by Hall at age 11 and that it originally said “just over the 'barnyard there” (in Iowa). Thus ended the life of a man who will live for ever in the annals of South Pacific Literature, yet remain a man of Iowa.
 

James Norman Hall with Harrison Smith  Founder of Tahiti's Botanical Garden

Hall’s friends in Tahiti were numerous.  First and foremost was his lifelong friend and literary collaborator, Charles Bernard Nordhoff.  Harrison Smith, the physicist turned botanist, was James Norman Hall’s very unique friend, personal mentor, and secret financial guarantor.  He advised and encouraged Hall until his death.  Others included Viggo Rasmussen,  one of the schooner captains’ to whom The Bounty Trilogy was dedicated, Alister Mac Donald, the famous and talented English painter, Mr. and Mrs. Wilde,  the world authorities on breadfruit for the Bishop Museum, and Robert Dean Frisbie , to whom Hall gave moral support and encouraged his writings.

Other life long friends include editors Ellery Sedgewick and Edward Weeks of the Atlantic Monthly and Little Brown & Company, who guided and encouraged the writer until the end,  as well as the alumni from his Alma Mater, Grinnell College which awarded him in June 1950 an honorary doctorate degree in literature.

James Norman “Papa Hall”, died on July 6th, 1951 and was buried on the family hill overlooking Matavai Bay.  The epitaph on his tomb was taken from a childhood verse he had written many years earlier,

" Look to the Northward stranger, just over the hillside there,
Have you in your travels seen,  a land more passing fair? "

His wife Sarah, "Mama Lala" died on November 1, 1985 and was buried beside him.

---

A Starry Night at Arué.

These are my beliefs, in eight and twenty lines:
That men are nobler than their actions show;
That " Beauty is Truth" defined and still defines
As much of ultimate truth as we shall know;
That ever-questing Science yet may bare
Much that is strange and new, and after all
Her farthest flights, that Man will stand and stare,
Awed and humbled, at the self-same wall
That hemmed him round when once he lived in trees;
That littleness makes still the happiest nation;
That states do wrong to emulate the bees
In industry, the ants in population;
That of men's crimes against themselves, the latest,
Distance conquered, is among the greatest;

That reason is a rock no more than Feeling
( Institution is a safer guide);
That those who make a god of Reason, kneeling
Devout, are not the wholly sane, clear-eyed
Beings they fondly think; that cocks will crow
At dawn, as now, in twice ten thousand years,
Changelessness a changing world to show;
That men will still shed blood and women tears
As long as there are tears and blood to shed;
That joy has lunar months as well as grief.
When everything is said that can be said,
This is my sure, and very firm belief:
That life, to one born whole, is worth the living,
Well worth the taking, having, and the giving.

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