Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  The fourth book was a calf-bound Martial, and bore the name Daniel O’Malley on its fly-leaf. It was not, obviously, among those of the doctor’s books which Miss Smith had thought it her duty to destroy, or to seclude from the public eye, as its improprieties (which she had doubtless suspected) wore the decent screen of a tongue which she had resolutely refused to allow the doctor to teach to his children or to the orphans. No; Miss Smith had taken Martial and redeemed it to good uses, by using its blank pages, its wide margins, and the spaces between its epigrams for her pencilled journal, the first entry of which was dated January the first, 1856.

  “We are come, by the mercy of heaven, to the beginning of another year. Through what perils, what trials, have we been preserved! How strange it seems to reflect on the peaceful tenour of my life this time a year ago! I have indeed been led along strange paths, and can only say, Marvellous are Thy ways, O Lord! Here we are, myself, Jean Fraser, Dr. O’Malley, and thirty-eight helpless orphan children (for two, alas, have perished of colic, having eaten poisonous berries. What loud calls are these, O Lord!) cast up on this abandoned reef, which yet has bounteously supplied us with the necessities of life, and here, it seems, we are for the present to make our home. The coming in of another year has occasioned in me much solemn thought. I could wish that the doctor had more sense of, and awe of, his Creator. He saw the New Year in in a condition I scarcely like to mention on paper. And Jean, alas, saying that it was Hogmanay, also partook too deeply of what the doctor had brewed. For my part, I refused even to sip the stuff, but retired early to rest, after solemn prayer.

  “The doctor gives no time to prayer, but, when he is not employing himself in practical labours (besides fishing and killing birds for food, he is building shelters, or houses, for us to live in, also a boat), when not thus employed he eats, drinks, and amuses himself, and experiments with the fermentation of liquor from the palm trunks and the juice of various fruits. I fear he is a sad atheist. When sober he mocks at Catholicism as much as at Protestantism. And yet at any moment he, or any of us, may be called to our last account!”

  There followed from time to time throughout January and February entries recording details of the island life; new foods discovered, different ways of cooking turtle meat, the making of cocoa-nut cloth (“so strangely and mercifully provided for us”) into garments for the children, the use of the candle-nut for lighting (it was not until some years later that they began to make candles and soap of cocoa-nut grease) expeditions about the lagoon in the boat which the doctor had made, the sight of sharks. (“Dear God, with what dangers hast Thou thought meet to surround us!”) The use of beaten-out bark for fabric was mentioned in March. Dr. O’Malley, Mr. Thinkwell observed, had obviously been a man of ingenuity and resource.

  Miss Smith also recorded the instructions which she and Jean imparted to the children, who were being taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, and the Scriptures, with the help of the sand as a blackboard and the pliant switches of the mahogany tree as correctives.

  Then, in April, came the entry. “The Doctor has asked me for my hand. I do not feel that I can consider such a proposition from such a man. I cannot believe that God intends that our lives, so different in Purpose and Outlook, should be thus united. He cares for none of the things I hold sacred, and, indeed, makes mock of them. I have told him that it can never be.”

  A little later. “The Doctor still persists in begging for my Hand and Heart. He has shaken me by saying, and, indeed, making me see, that our life together on this island, unsanctioned by Matrimony, is compromising to the last degree. Heavens! if, when we shall be rescued, the world speaks against my reputation! How could I bear that! Consulted Jean in the matter. Jean says I am bound to do it in the end, so the sooner the better. I know not what to do. I can but earnestly seek guidance from Above. If only my dear papa were here to advise me! I know only too well what would be his opinion of the doctor, but what would he think of my position here as the doctor’s unmarried companion? And would he, perhaps, say that it was my duty to become this unfortunate man’s wife, in order that I may both preserve my reputation and redeem him from drink?”

  A week later. “Have consented to marry the Doctor. Hope our Union may be blest. We shall be married in the Scottish way, before two witnesses and without a Clergyman, which seems very odd and sad, but there is no other way. We have fixed the day for June the first.”

  The record for June 1st was brief. “Married the Doctor.”

  In the course of that year the journal began to make more mention of the various beverages prepared by the doctor, and their recipes were noted. Miss Smith, as Mrs. O’Malley, was not becoming any less religious, but she seemed to be growing more earthly.

  “This drink is excellent, and most stimulating,” she noted sometimes, after a recipe.

  Then began the births of the children. The first was Caroline, who had a strong look of her father—(“I pray it may be only in face”). Almost from the first it was apparent that Miss Smith’s children were carefully kept apart from the Orphans, trained, as it were, for a different station in life. She had been, obviously, a zealous and devoted mother, though severe in reprimand and chastisement. Spare the rod and spoil the child was her motto with her own offspring as well as with the Orphans, but, together with the rod and with much moral teaching as to humility and obedience, she had administered to her children precepts as to their superiority in station over the children about them. They were ladies and gentlemen, and must never demean themselves. They were not allowed to mix with the poor little riff-raff from East London. Very early, they were presented with little plots of land, and taught to cultivate them, for, wrote Miss Smith, the Almighty has given us the earth in order that we may produce the fruits thereof. But gradually the system seemed to change, and it appeared that the actual cultivation of the land was all done by the Orphans, though it belonged to the Smiths. “I think it very important,” wrote Miss Smith, “that my children should be instructed young in their duties as employers of labour, and learn to exercise authority over, and kindness towards, those beneath them.

  There were some painful entries.

  “Discovered the Doctor, quite drunk, teaching Latin verses out of this very book (which he calls epigrams) and phrases out of the Roman prayer-book, to Carrie and William. Remonstrated with him, but it was of little use in his state of intoxication. Whipped the children, and told them they were never to listen to their papa when he said things in Latin to them, and were to forget all they had learnt. They cried heartily, and I do not think will forget the lesson.”

  There were also reprimands recorded for undue familiarity with the Orphans, and punishments to the Orphans for impertinence to their little betters.

  Occasionally, and with increasing frequency, there was scrawled an almost illegible entry, which Mr. Thinkwell imagined to have been inscribed with a hand unsteady through excess.

  By the time the journal had reached the Liber de Spectaculis the pencil had given out, and a dark brown liquid was used, apparently with a fine quill. Miss Smith had the sloping, flowing hand of the ladies of her period, and often crossed and recrossed, working her entries in between the epigrams, sometimes even between two lines of one epigram, which had the effect of contrasting, occasionally very curiously, the remarks of Miss Smith and those of Martial.

  Mr. Thinkwell observed with interest the record of the birth of Albert Edward, in 1863—“a fine Boy, whom I shall name after our dear Prince.”

  A few years later, marriages began among the elder orphans, which were duly recorded.

  On the 25th of March, 1870, in a hand much disturbed, came the entry, “What a day has this been! I can scarcely write of it. A day of the most fearful Revelations—revelations to me so shocking that I cannot, nay I will not, set them down. They were followed by a terrible judgment on that unhappy man who has wronged me so deeply, and who has now been called, all unfit, to face his Creator. O Lord, what Judgments are Thine! A sh
ark—I can Scarcely pen the horrid words—has ate the Doctor. He has been called away suddenly, without preparation, in strong liquor, insults to his wife” (“his wife” was erased, and “me” written over it) “hot upon his lips. What these insults were I can never repeat. I can only say that my duty is now plain—to forget the Doctor as soon as may be. The Orphans shall again call me Miss smith, and my children shall bear that name, and I will obliterate these shocking years from my life. When I reflect that my unhappy children are ——” Here a word was thickly blotted out, and the sentence left unfinished. “Of Jean, who knew all the time, I can never think the same again,” the day’s entry concluded, leaving Mr. Thinkwell somewhat puzzled. What, he wondered, had occurred to upset the good lady so much—beyond, of course, the untimely death of her husband?

  It was from this time on that Mr. Thinkwell thought he observed in the journal (which now, having finished Martial, began on large, thin, smooth pieces of bark) the beginnings of that megalomania which had grown, through Miss Smith’s latter years, to such strange proportions. The didactic and domineering tone always observable became more marked.

  In September, 1870, she wrote, “ It is more than time that we had a Minister of God’s Word among us. Began to give more particular instruction in Church Doctrine to some of the elder lads. The Scottish, I find, are the readiest to apprehend these matters. In particular, Donald Maclean, a very intelligent young man now turned two-and-twenty, shows a great aptness. Have had to prohibit Jean afresh from speaking to the Orphans of Theology, as I learn that she has been imparting Calvinist Doctrine.”

  There followed, in the entries throughout the next two months, references to the progress of Donald Maclean in theological studies, till, in November, “To-day I ordained Donald Maclean a Deacon. I hope Almighty God, knowing that we have, nor can have, no Bishop among us, will extend His mercies to this Ordination and cause this young man to be a Clergyman indeed. I cannot be mistaken in feeling that He has endowed me with special powers to this end. For it cannot be the Almighty’s Will that we should continue without the Rites of the Church, and with all these unblest Marriages, which monthly become more frequent as the Orphans reach adult years, and which have had hitherto to be solemnised in the Scottish manner, before two witnesses. From henceforth we shall not lack a Pastor. He will, of course, lead in future our Sunday Worship, and preach a sermon on Sunday morning. I shall supply him with the text and matter myself. This will save my voice, which I find gets strained with so much teaching and speaking.”

  By Christmas of the same year, which struck Mr. Thinkwell, though indeed he knew little of such matters, as surely a little soon, “Ordained Donald a Priest.”

  Meanwhile there were references to another youth who, it seemed, had received medical instruction from Dr. O’Malley, and was now the island doctor.

  So the record went on. Babies were born and baptized; Miss Smith’s ten children fell ill, recovered, behaved ill, were chastised, uttered remarks deemed noteworthy by a maternal heart. Particularly prone to this was Albert Edward, a lad of great promise, sagacity, and virtue.

  As each of her brood turned fifteen, Miss Smith had apparently presented him or her with a large piece of land (subject to her own proprietorship) so that by the year 1885 the whole island was partitioned out among the Smith family, but worked by Orphans, who gathered its fruits and preserved its birds for the benefit of the owner.

  “The rise of a landed class,” Mr. Thinkwell commented. “Very interesting indeed.”

  Strict property laws were obviously made early, and repressive measures instituted against those who broke them. The “rights of picking” might be rented by the landowner to any one they chose, and these included the rights of selling, provided that a heavy commission of fruits, cocoa-nuts, cocoa-nut cloth, fish, and game, was paid to the landlord. During the first years, the system of direct exchange in kind appeared to have exclusively prevailed, but as time went on a shell, coral, and pearl currency took its place. But, to tell the truth, Miss Smith’s references to the commercial system of the islanders were so casual and incidental that its development was not at all clear to Mr. Thinkwell. She seemed to take it for granted, and woman-like, was more interested in the personal lives of her flock, and in the various phases of mental development through which they passed. She deplored certain lawless tendencies among them. Discontent with the land laws cropped up from time to time, and this she described as “very shocking and Jacobinical.” Occasionally there was a riot, which had to be dealt with severely by the police, a body early called into being.

  “This amazing disregard of the Laws of God and Man,” Miss Smith wrote, “must be very firmly dealt with, or who knows where it may end? The Court has sentenced the rioters to a month’s confinement with compulsory labour, after which they are to be let loose on probation.”

  “The Court” had been, apparently, instituted some time earlier, to try to judge offenders. For Miss Smith, with all her natural autocracy, had been still, in her middle years, a devout upholder of the constitution.

  “I am endeavouring, with God’s help,” she wrote, “to model my Island on British lines, keeping in mind the great Charter of our Liberties. I think it of the utmost importance to give the male Orphans a sense of civic Responsibility, and I have therefore created a House of Parliament, which shall consist of twenty-one of the most steady and virtuous Orphans, as well, of course, as my own four Sons, who will be their natural Leaders. Caroline says, why should not she, the eldest of the Family, be there, and I had to discourse to her at some length on the different functions of Man and Woman in the scheme of Creation, and how it would not be fitting that the gentler and frailer Sex should take an active part in the male arts of Government. She replied, ‘But you do, Mamma!’ and I had to explain to her the peculiar Position to which God had called me. I fear she gets no more docile as time goes by, and her desire for marriage with Conrad Rimski does not abate.”

  But, a month later, “Have given my consent to Carrie’s engagement to Conrad Rimski. It grieves me, but, after all, my Children must marry some one, if the Family is not to die out, and an unhappy fate has made it impossible that they should wed within their own Class. Rimski is a respectable enough young man, in spite of his origins (he is the son of a Polish street singer) and, in accepting him as my Son-in-law, I must also accept him as a Gentleman, and endeavour to teach him the manners of Superior Society. A refined and correct pronunciation I have always endeavoured to impart to these poor children, without, however, entire success, for many of them were thoroughly practised in the vulgar speech of their infancy before they came under my care. One thing I shall insist on: my Daughters must all retain their Family Name, and Carrie will be Mrs. Smith-Rimski, so that their children may never forget that they are of the Smith Caste. Conrad will now, of course, become in a sense a Land-owner, but he must not be allowed to forget that he is only, so to speak, a Consort, and that the land is really Caroline’s. I believe that the young people truly love one another, and I pray that I am making a wise decision in allowing the match.”

  That was in 1880, and from then on the alliances of the Smith sons and daughters occurred with frequency. Miss Smith became a grandmother, and had much to record of that. She was not altogether satisfied with the wife selected by Albert Edward, who became affianced in 1888 to the handsome young daughter of a Spanish orphan—the first to have married on the island. This young woman, Anna Gomez, Miss Smith thought un-English, and suspected her father, who had been nine years old on coming to the island, and who had been bred in Soho, of having taught her Popery. However, she was placid and sweet-tempered, and Miss Smith made the best of it, merely recording a resolve to keep a particularly careful watch over the children of the match.

  Not long after this time, the diarist had sadly to record a shocking wave of religious unrest among the younger generation of Orphans, those born about 1870 and later.

  “It is hardly credible,” she wrote, “that, surrounded as we
are by every mark of the Almighty’s beneficent Care, Atheism should show its horrid head. But so, alas, it is. I find that only too many of the young people just grown up are questioning the very Existence of their Creator, and refusing to attend Divine Service. I have instituted, with the approval of the Court of Justice, a system of heavy fines, which will, I trust, soon cure this Disease. In extreme cases, sterner measures will be taken.”

  There were complaints, too, of fashions in dress, which, on the part of the younger females, were becoming immodest and suggestive.…

  “Dear me!” Mr. Thinkwell commented. “Dear me! They have actually got hold of that foolish use of ‘suggestive’ for too scanty, here too. I had not known it was used in that sense so early as 1855. Or perhaps it was not; possibly Miss Smith evolved it for herself. Very interesting parallels there are, to be sure.”

  He detected parallels even to the European æsthetic movement, in “There is a mincing habit I do not care for arising among the younger people—a loss of true Manliness and true Womanliness, a kind of Affectation, which affects me very disagreeably. Some of the young men waste a great deal of their time drawing pictures in the sand, and even writing verses! Though, as they are acquainted with so little Poetry, they have no idea of how to do this. The same young men affect a kind of personal elegance which is far from manly, oiling themselves all over continually, and some even wearing flowers behind their ears. This species of ’adornment’ I have found it necessary to forbid. I am distressed to find that Hindley, Caroline’s eldest boy, is one of the leaders in this foolishness.”