Canevin, Gerald

   In “The Trap,” a teacher at an academy in Connecticut whose pupil, Robert Grandison, becomes trapped in a magic mirror that Canevin had brought back with him from the Virgin Islands. Canevin is a frequently recurring character in Henry S.Whitehead’s tales, especially those set in the Virgin Islands. In his introduction to Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales(1944), R.H.

   Barlow notes: “The character ‘Gerald Canevin’ is Whitehead himself, a harking back to Caer n’-Avon. ‘I use the form “Canevin” because it is easily pronounced and is made up of “cane” and “vin,” that is, cane-wine—RUM, the typical product of the West Indies….’”