He sent them about their business with a word of warning. Kalakaua hated the missionaries, for they stirred trouble among his subjects and undid most of his own good work with their stupidly mistaken ideas that the natives should live like the residents of Detroit or Kalamazoo.
Then one day they sent a deputation to me and accused me of being an “immoral hussy” or words to that effect, because I had “sunken to the level of the aborigines.” It appears that they felt I was setting a bad example to the natives they were trying to convert by not acting superior to them. In short they asked me … commanded me, rather … to leave the Islands.
But it did not work.
And because I preferred to remain and continue to enjoy myself, they sent glowing, but unfair, accounts of my life and doings to the San Francisco papers, the only effect of which was to distress my perfectly innocent parents and friends, although the scandal stories did make pretty good reading. I almost wish they had been true.
Well, if by refusing to snub and patronize the natives we did them harm, I wonder how these good, commercial men-of-God will answer one day for the land and property they took away from the Kanakas. For instance, they would lend money against the signature or mark of some unsuspecting and completely ignorant Hawaiian who wanted to build a house or something, and when the year or whatever period was up, he quite naturally could not pay, and the representative of Heaven would simply place his own value on the property and take it over for himself. Kanakas are, by nature, improvident. Child-like and happy, they have a carefree disregard of anything that we might call commercial and when their property was taken away from them by “divine right” they were totally bewildered and understood nothing about it at all, but gave in to the superior authority of the white men.
If missionaries only could recognize that there is no poverty until you tell some one he is poor, no sin until you label it, the work of soul-saving would be a better work, and uplifting a thing truly noble. All the Kanakas were and still are born good. They are loving, natural, animal … what you like, but good and generous. They had their own codes, their own tabus and laws. Crimes such as are all too frequent in our Western civilization were unknown, save for the natural instances where a death paid for a death, and very little of that. There was no immorality because there was no moral code. It was, for instance, perfectly natural for the Hawaiian to take to himself the woman he wanted … under the provision of his own laws and customs.
Came the missionaries. They set up standards which may be all very well to govern the lives of citizens of Ohio, but have nothing whatever to do with the inhabitants of an island in the middle of the Pacific. Under the guise of decency and sanitation they taught that nakedness was indecent and unsanitary. The national dance, the hula-hula, they called carnal and filthy. I understand that it has now been forbidden by the American administrators.
Result of this? Natives have become sex-conscious, body-conscious, law-conscious, and conscious of everything that makes life in industrialized European and American cities so tawdry, so rotten underneath.
Missionaries! Rubbish! If there is a God … a personal God such as those Christian meddlers and busybodies teach about … it is fairly sure that the simple goodness of the Hawaiians must have been very pleasing to Him. Are we not a little cocksure, a little conceited, in thinking that we only, who have specialized our lives to be in tune with automobiles, radios, cinemas … (and our drunkenness and organized crimes and white-slavery, by the way) … are the only ones upon whom the Divine Eye looks with favor?
But King David Kalakaua had his revenge on the missionaries, and it was rather amusing.
He gave an official ball. He commanded … commanded, mind you, as a king and absolute ruler the missionaries of both sexes to attend. They came, for it would have been impolite to refuse. Kalakaua and I led the dance under their very noses, I clad in native costume (rather, more or less unclad, according to their ways of thinking) and danced with the Palace dancing-girls to the applause of the King and Queen Kapiolani.
Now to understand this you should know that an official dance in Hawaii in those days got to be something of an orgy. The music, the rustle of the “grass” skirts, the rhythm of the drums … and the drinking of ava (a sort of intoxicating drink made from a root and extracted by chewing, spitting and distilling, which I never had the stomach to try) … not to mention gin which the Americans themselves imported … had a definitely sensual effect both upon the men and the women. The result must have been pretty shocking to the American missionaries who believe (or so pretend) that sex is a fundamental sin instead of a pleasant and perfectly natural instinct.
At all events, there they sat, all through it. I remember the look on their faces, the hypocrites. I will wager that that group never forgot that night, for one reason or another.
The island of Molokai, Land Office Map, 1897.
✥
In some ways I would like to go on with a lot of description about Hawaii and include many little stories and anecdotes which might be readable but which really have nothing to do with the general plan of this book. But I am afraid I will have to leave that for the geographers and travel-writers while I go on to other things.
Nevertheless I want to mention the revolution. I ought to write “Revolution.” And I must not forget Molokai, the island of lepers, and at least one adventure there.
David Kalakaua, king of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, was a good man but perhaps a bad monarch. That is to say that he was out of touch with his time. He had feudalistic rather than republican leanings.
That little note of history which stamps Hawaii as one of the first kingdoms on record to adopt the constitutional form of government is scarcely remembered by the world, but it is a fact. David Kalakaua was chosen by popular vote to be king of his people. These people were good people, as I have said. Even their national motto, “Ua Man Ke ea o ka aina i ka pono,” reflects it. It means “The life of the land is made longer through goodness.” Long savage, those people have tried to become modern. And when their king, their chosen ruler, tried to force upon them a government which would give him a less limited authority than their constitution granted, they rebelled.
It was a revolution. Not a revolution such as the war for American independence or the blood-stained days of Robespierre and Danton in France. There was no bloodshed, no great upheaval. There was merely a demonstration during which the people stated their intentions … whilst the King was swimming at Waikiki Beach.
I remember it very well, for I was in the bathing party. A large crowd of natives had gathered on the beach, and the king came up onto the deck of his boathouse and said gravely:
“It appears there is a revolution. There will be a new constitution tomorrow.” And then he plunged in again.
There was, in fact, a new constitution which limited his power even more than was expected, but I know very little about those or any other politics. One thing I do remember, however, and that was something that the King was very proud of. It seems that he was responsible for a free-trade treaty with the United States, and as such he is written down in Hawaiian history as one of the great rulers of the Islands.
David Kalakaua died in 1891. He was visiting in San Francisco at the time, and he had attended a dinner in his honor at my home, only a few days before his death. A good man and a good friend.
The story of Molokai and the leper colony takes me back to before that time, however. There are really two stories, one of which happened some time later when I visited Hawaii again.
To begin with, I had been given an island near Molokai and I became princess and ruler of the three hundred people who lived on it … not lepers, thank you. This was all through the kindness of King David, and it included a ceremony in which I was given a Hawaiian name, Palaikalani, which means “Bliss of Heaven.” I did no actual ruling, of course, but I made frequent visits to “my” island, and “my” people were very sweet and amusing.
It was on one of those
visits that King Kalakaua proposed a visit to the leper colony at Molokai, for it seems he made an official call there every year. I went with him and the royal party, and, while I do not want to be depressing nor describe in detail the horrors of that place, I do want to say, for the glory of the old Hawaiian government in the pre-American days, that the colony was a clean, immaculately maintained, up-to-date institution.
My visit to Molokai had a curious aspect. Far less was known of leprosy in those days, and in the twentieth century science seems to have proven that it is not the horror legends and ignorance have painted it. But in the 1880s it was considered so virulent and contagious that danger was supposed to exist even in passing near to anyone afflicted.
Consequently we went to all possible lengths to avoid contagion, even to the point of putting on special clothes of rubber that covered us from head to foot, and completed the outfit with rubber gloves and heavy veils. Today doctors tell me this was absurd, but all these precautions impressed me, as you can imagine, and I still have the feeling that it was better so.
The lepers, and especially the women, fascinated me, not only in a morbid way, but really. In the first place they were very beautiful. In the early stages of the disease the skin becomes gloriously silky and smooth and rich and white and it is truly wonderful to see. Then there was the strange psychology of the victims. They had a peculiar self-consciousness: it seemed to have taken possession of them in a way almost brutal. They were obsessed with a desire to touch with their hands anyone who was “clean,” who was not afflicted as they were. It was because of this that the yearly visits the King made to Molokai were considered so very dangerous. Nowadays we know, or so we are told by science, that the touch is not contagious, but I, for one, would not feel pleasant even now to shake hands with one of those I saw there.
Many of the leper colony were not at all diseased, and that was a strange thing. I remember that there was one American man there who was married to a leper woman, a native, and suffered no consequences at all. I had a chance to speak with him, and asked him how he could possibly live there, let alone marry such a woman. He seemed a little bewildered at my question, and it was apparent that he saw nothing at all out of the way in either his life or his marriage. King David told me afterwards that this was the third leprous wife the American had had, and that his children … there were four of them … were as clean and untouched as any other children anywhere. It seemed pretty incongruous to me, but in the light of modern study I suppose it was not phenomenal at all.
Depressing as Molokai certainly was, the inhabitants were so resigned to their fate that they, apparently, did not notice that side of it. At least they spent no time in mourning or in sadness. I personally witnessed a dance … called a ball, naturally … in the great common-room of the main hospital, at which not only all the dancers but all the musicians were lepers. The King’s party stood behind glass partitions and we watched for some time, fascinated. If there was any difference between these sick people and the rest of the world it seemed that they enjoyed themselves more simply.
At any rate it was a far cry from the lepers of the Bible or the Crusades with their clack-dishes and their mournful cry of “Unclean, unclean!”
But I have another story to tell about lepers which is more dramatic and less descriptive. It did not happen during my first visit to Hawaii but several years later when I came again with my third husband. However I will tell it here because in this book I shall not mention the Islands again.
To begin with there was a very strange man in Honolulu who had come, nobody knew why, and had taken residence there. His name was Washington Irving Bishop.
Picture him as the ugliest, most misshapen, most repulsive, and at the same time most attractive man in the world. There are, as you know, some people who are so repulsive that they fascinate you. That was his type.
Bishop was a hypnotist, both by preference and by profession. He had earned for himself a considerable reputation in America and had made a great deal of money on the vaudeville stage. For obscure, and probably not very tellable reasons, he had come to Hawaii, and was held there by the lazy, beautiful, enervating life, a hypnotic more powerful than his own.
One day, when we had gone to the hotel in Honolulu to see Bishop give a “seance” demonstrating his powers, I made his acquaintance … to my later regret. My first sight of the man sickened me. He was scarcely more than a dwarf, had a large cadaverous face that was pitted with pock-marks and yellow as old parchment. His hands were too large, his arms too long, and even in his evening clothes he gave the impression of something inhuman and horrid. His eyes especially were extraordinary, and from them seemed to radiate … a force, a presence.
Well, his public “seance” was not only interesting but convincing. It was very evident that he was, at least, no fake, and the most skeptical people in the audience were entirely satisfied. He was able to dominate the wills of his subjects by placing them in a state of catalepsy, and in that state he made them do anything he wished.
Now things like that are and always have been my weakness. And when Bishop asked for volunteers from the audience, I responded almost without knowing it, and went up to the platform. I do not know why I did it. It seemed perfectly natural for me. Some of my friends laughed at me and some were shocked.
I can still remember the little grotesque man standing in front of me, peering from under his bushy eyebrows. I can remember how he lifted his hand and leered at me. I remember also that he was speaking to me quietly with his soft, rich voice … the only thing about him that could be called beautiful.
After that I remember nothing at all. What I write now was told me later. Apparently I sang and did silly things, much to the amusement of the spectators and to the complete disgust of my friends. But the important thing is that when I went down from the platform, this man-monster, this ugly, out-of-shape man who had so thoroughly disgusted me, had become, in my changed mind, the most fascinating creature in the world.
I talked with Washington Irving Bishop after the performance for several hours. He promised to teach me something of hypnotism, assuring me that I had a definite tendency towards his powers. He promised to do this privately … for a consideration.
The upshot was that I began to study with this curious man, and this resulted in an infatuation which was to go on for several weeks. I am not, I may say, very proud of it.
As a matter of fact, Bishop was a clever, brilliant man who might have been really great, but managed to be just a swine. The use he made of his power and his knowledge of human psychology, aside from the financial consideration, was cowardly and caddish. We will not go into that other than to say that he managed, fantastically enough, to make himself absolutely irresistible to women.
When I say that there was not a woman in the world whom, if he had desired her, he could not have had, it is nothing but the truth. The best example of this happened right in the hotel in Honolulu when the wife of a young naval officer, a very fastidious and rather snobbish sort of woman, commented on his leering, disgustingly conceited manner, quite loudly enough for him to hear.
“Well,” she said, “I think the Americans on this Island have pretty bad taste to tolerate this ape-man and to stand for his insolent manners.”
That remark was her doom.
Bishop turned to the man who happened to be standing beside him, unabashed and not the least bit troubled by this insult, and said:
“So? Well this is where Beauty gets carried off by the Beast. Wait and see what our finicky lady thinks of the ‘ape’ in about ten minutes.”
Then he fixed his eyes on her for five minutes or so.
She did not look at him, but she grew fidgety and nervous. Finally she turned around and looked squarely at him, curiously and a little frightened. Then she drew herself up and looked coldly away from him. But it was only to turn around again in a little while. Then suddenly she left the people she was talking with and came over to Bishop. They talked for a short ti
me, and then he turned to the company and said in his leering way:
“Gentlemen, good night.”
They left together.
In three days there was a nasty scandal. He caused it purposely, although he could have protected her if he had wanted to. Four days later she killed herself with veronal.
Now all this seems quite a long way from leprosy, which was the excuse for this story, but right here is about where it comes in.
My acquaintance … I was about to say, my friendship … with Bishop, grew rapidly. The pure idea of hypnotism fascinated me. The fact that I could be brought out of myself and could drift, through his influence, into another sort of existence, was like the realization of a dream. And even the man himself bewildered me and fascinated me beyond my control.
Husband Number Three did not share my enthusiasm for Washington Irving Bishop, as you may have already divined, and he asked me to drop him before I should involve myself in the same sort of scandal that had already fastened itself on the names of other women. Like a silly girl with a new toy, I did not want to, but when I found that my husband was so very much in earnest I gave in and grew rather cold towards my gallant hypnotist.
Result: unpleasant scenes and quarrels with Bishop.
Finally he became so annoying that I was perfectly glad on my own behalf to drop him, and I told him so. His reply is no matter, but when the storm was over he asked me very sweetly, almost tearfully, for a rendezvous in a beautiful grove near the old Royal Hawaiian Hotel. I agreed, believing it would be the easiest way out, and I told him it would be the last time I would see him.
And I'd Do It Again Page 4
