And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

  He met me, and he had a horse and buggy there. We drove out through the country towards the south of Honolulu city. About three miles away there was a bleak hospital building surrounded with an iron fence. At the gate he stopped the horse and said something to the attendant, who let us in. I do not recall exactly what explanation he gave me for coming there, but it was something to do with his experiments in psychology, I think. At any rate, I was quite used to queer things from Bishop, and thought very little of it. I let him lead me, especially as I felt I had really hurt him that morning. But in a few minutes I was to learn just how devilish a human being can be.

  Walking down the ash-covered road that led to the hospital, I noticed some men running towards us. As one approached I saw, to my horror, that his ears were swollen and distorted and hung down as far as his shoulders. He was a leper in the advanced stages. There was a strange quality … scarcely to be described as a look … a mad sort of quality, which I can still hardly describe without emotion. His hands were reaching out at us … at me. His lips, all moldy, were distended. His mouth, scarred and withered and blanched with disease, was crying out … and although I did not understand, I knew that it was to me he was calling.

  Now I am not timid, not easily frightened, but the terror I knew at that moment is more than I can write. As for my “friend” Bishop, his true character, the depth of his fiendishness, became apparent then.

  Instead of standing between me and the mad leper, as a gentleman might have done, he held me in front of him, tightly in his arms, as though purposely to let me be contaminated with the foulest disease in the world. And there were still more inhabitants of the hospital running behind the first comer.

  I guess I was pretty maniacal. I hardly remember what I said or did, but apparently I kicked wildly and caught Bishop in the sensitive shin bone so that he let go his hold for an instant. It was enough for me to wrench myself free, and I flew towards the gate and through, as fast as I could, and climbed into the buggy and whipped the horse.

  Bishop ran after me, calling out that it was only a joke. But I had lost my sense of humor. I thought it was so “funny” that I laid the whiplash across his face and left him there to walk back while I drove the poor old hag at her best speed into town.

  There ended, or almost ended, the account of my hypnotist flirt. Naturally I did not see him again, but the story of his death deserves telling, and I can think of no better place for it than right here.

  It happened in New York, about two years after the incidents I have just described. My husband and I had come back to America after a trip to Japan and China, going over the ground I had played over all by myself … which is another part of this book. We ended in New York ourselves, and we came in “at the mort,” so to speak.

  Bishop, it was reported in the papers, had been found dead. He had died in the Old Lambs Club after a dinner at which he had given some exhibition of his powers. They had come upon him apparently sleeping peacefully in an armchair. For some time he was not disturbed but finally a physician who had attended the dinner was called and he pronounced him dead. The police were notified and an autopsy performed.

  At the coroner’s inquest there were wild scenes and Bishop’s mother, who had some of her son’s talents, as well as being an opera singer, grew hysterical and shrieked that her son had been murdered. At Malta it seems that he had once been pronounced dead by several doctors when he was only insensible. The medical opinion was that he had died of a rare and peculiar disease, Hystero-Catalepsy. The coroner chided the doctors for their haste in performing the autopsy but the charge of murder was not pressed. All this commanded considerable space in the papers in the month of May 1889, particularly in The New York Herald.

  Now Bishop was partly famous and certainly notorious, and was considered one of the most curious characters of his day. No provision for his burial had been provided for in his will, nor was his estate (some hundreds of thousands of ill-gained dollars) left to any heir. It was not, therefore, a difficult matter for the head surgeon of a certain hospital to obtain his body for experimental purposes. He … that is, his body … was taken to the laboratory and dissected. It was immediately discovered that he had been no more dead than you or I, but that he had been taken in a sort of trance, a cataleptic fit or suspended animation.

  I happen to know that Bishop had practiced upon himself very often. His one great desire had always been to have his subconscious self develop a power great enough and controlled enough to bring himself out of such a trance. Well, that one time, at least, he failed and I suppose that is the only case on record of a human being having been cut to pieces on a dissecting table while he was alive. His end turned out to be as curious as his life.

  If I were a vindictive woman I might say that it served him right.

  Diadem mountain at sunset, Tahiti by John La Farge. Brooklyn Museum.

  ✥

  The death of Bishop provides me with a good place to leave my overlong description of Hawaii and my memories of it, and to take you away from the Island with me in my good schooner, Tropic Star. My crew was more or less unchanged, save for Sully and the unfortunate Mr. Dow who was replaced by a stranded American named Coddy. Mr. Coddy was so thin that a self-respecting shark would never have bothered him except in a case of sea-famine.

  We set sail in early June with Tahiti as our destination. The voyage was relatively uneventful, and before I relate the only incident that made our run a little less monotonous than most long sailing voyages, I wish to say that I will not go into a catalogue of the South Sea Island nor of Samoa, which we visited a little later, for fear of having too little interesting material or of seeming to compete with the many travel books one can read on the subject.

  But there was one event on that voyage which is amusing.

  It happened soon after our departure from Hawaii; about three days off, if I remember rightly.

  Captain Judd and I were sitting aft over a friendly glass, and the good old sailor was telling me some of his earlier adventures as a whaler.

  Suddenly I saw a strange look come over his face. He was staring past me, down the ship, and it seemed as though he saw something incredible there. I followed his eyes, and saw one of the funniest, and at the same time one of the most pathetic things. It was a girl. She was nearly naked, brown as Hawaiian girls are, and making weird gestures with her hand, her face, and her entire body. She was more on her stomach than on her knees, and it was plain that she was terribly afraid of something which we could not see.

  Now in the first place there should not have been another woman besides myself on the ship, and certainly not an Hawaiian girl. Her presence was as much of a mystery as her actions. Captain Judd called out to her in English, not knowing her island language, but she only gesticulated more and more, and seemed to be even more frightened, cowering at the foot of the rope ladder that led up to us.

  Suddenly, and before the Captain could get to his feet or go to investigate, there was a sharp cry behind her, and one of the Kanaka sailors who had appeared from nowhere sprang at her with a knife gleaming in his hand.

  It was at this instant that the Captain gave a demonstration of real rapid thinking. The girl was quicker than her assailant, ducked under the ladder, and scurried across the deck to momentary safety. I screamed. But just as the sailor was in the act of springing at the terror-stricken child again, Captain Judd pulled his revolver from his pocket and fired into the air.

  That was enough.

  The Kanaka dropped the knife and stood there cowering. The girl held her ground, almost as much afraid as the man. We went down to investigate.

  The matter was not really as serious as it seemed on the face of it. A little questioning from Mr. Coddy, who knew enough Hawaiian to justify his berth, revealed that the girl had become the “wife” of the sailor and had stowed away on the Tropic Star the night before we sailed, just in order not to be separated from him. Three days and three nights she had gone without food and water, hi
ding in a barrel, until she could not stand it any longer. Then she came out and looked for white people, in whom she had more confidence than in those of her race, and because she was uncertain (apparently with reason) as to the reception her lover would give her.

  Well, it turned out to be rather funny than otherwise. The Captain was all for punishing the girl and putting her in irons, but I saw no particular advantage in that, and I determined to take her on as a servant and finally got my way with the skipper. I made her promise that she would not try to join her Kanaka lover, but that she would take care of me during the journey. I must say that she kept her word.

  I had Nakai, as I called her (her real name was something like that, or at least started with those sounds) for over six months. She learned English fairly well, too, and turned out to be very sweet and eager to please me. But one day she ran away with an American sailor in Pagopago Harbor, Samoa, and that was the last I knew of her.

  The picture of the steam locomotive railway at Yokohama seaside, drawn by Utagawa Hiroshige III, 1874.

  ✥

  So much for my early cruising. My experiences in the Polynesian Islands, the Tahitian and Samoan group, are chiefly descriptive, and we will pass over them here in order to get more quickly into my life in the true Orient. My lonely voyaging ended, I could not long resist the beckoning of that spiritual finger, and, despite another marriage and other thwarting circumstances, I set out once more.

  I think my true life began in Japan, and I almost wish it would end there. My honeymoon for a second cruise in the sea of matrimony with Harry Gillig, was really a double one, for I became equally the spouse and the mistress of an ancient and glorious spirit that reigns supreme over those sweet, civilized countries where even the least peasants are philosophers and where Man is closer to the elements of life.

  When you think of Japan you must recognize the presence of a miracle. I do not pretend to know much about the history of that peach and poppy country, but every schoolgirl knows what Commodore Perry did in 1854, and everybody who reads the newspapers knows about the efficiency and progress of the Japan of today. From a state of feudalism to a modern civilization in less than one hundred years! That is the miracle, and a fairly good key to the agile mind of the Japanese race.

  Before launching upon my putterings around in that country I am going to open a history book (knowing nothing very accurate by myself) and sketch a little picture of what happened there before I came, so that you can understand what had previously occurred and also what was then going on.

  For centuries, it appears, there had been no real ruler in Japan. The military rule under the Shoguns or feudal lords had kept the race in a condition of beautiful out-of-touch-ness with the West and Western progress. Beautiful, but impractical. Then, in 1868, the Shogun rule was overthrown. The “Open Door” policy of Perry became a reality. One year later the first telegraph appeared. Two years more, and there were lighthouses and charted waters for ships. Still another year, and there were postage stamps, post offices and railways springing into existence. A university was built. A commission was sent to America and to Europe to study this thing called “modern progress.” In 1873 the Christian calendar was adopted. In four years more a postal treaty with foreign nations was signed. Soon after came a constitution, a new penal code, and the gold standard for money was adopted.

  And in 1899, the extra-territorial rights which had been granted to foreign nations there to protect their citizens against “barbaric laws” were abolished as being unnecessary. Japan, in that year, was recognized by the rest of the world as a civilized power, worthy of confidence from the Western point of view, and began to be taken note of as a possible clever rival in world affairs.

  Only thirty years were needed to bring about a complete metamorphosis of principle and civilization. That was a miracle if ever one occurred.

  Such are the wonderful Japanese.

  Now when I first went to Japan these things were happening. Many had already happened. The land of poppies and cherries was bursting out of its cocoon.

  But enough of history and schoolbooks. What fascinated me was the people. It has always been the people, the little native people of any country in the world, who have been interesting to me.

  And it is strange, in a way, that the human beings of Borneo or Hottentot Land or China or Tibet are very much indeed like the human beings of Milwaukee or Beverly Hills. Believe it or not.

  I sailed into the bay of Yokohama in April. Smells of spices reached me several miles before the lofty head of Fujiyama lifted up and nodded its welcome to me. I always think of that brilliant and mystery-covered mountain as an incarnation of Buddha, of Confucius, of all the entire East which the West can never understand. Kipling’s rhyme on the subject is much more right than we know until we have been there to learn.

  Spices and strange oriental smells greeted me, and the soul of Japan, like a little white bird, fluttered down and hid somewhere in my heart. Funny and picturesque little boats swarmed the waters. Little men, gleaming and naked, with poles or paddles, worked vigorously in them. Every kind of ship known to man, I guess, lay crowded along the docks or was pushing its way in or out of the harbor.

  I had always read that Yokohama was a sort of fusing-pot for the world, and the truth of the threadbare old expression became clear to me on that day at the close of the 19th century.

  Color, color, color. Greens and reds and beautiful dirty shades and hues of every description fluttered or moved about the shore-line as we were warped in. I was sorry that I had left my schooner in Samoa. It would have been magnificent to have formed part of that tapestry. But the sounds, new sounds of new voices, rose above the steamer’s mechanical noises. New birds, new kinds of gulls and other seabirds, soared or flapped over the ship and the docks ahead. Everything was pungently Eastern, pungently Japanese.

  And, as though a magician had produced it out of his kimono sleeve or out of a little box with a wooden wand, there lay the Bund of Yokohama, bristling and stretched out for me to walk on and to play with and to love.

  Imagine an immigration pier in Oriental Japan! It was real, nevertheless, and the quiet, firm professional manner of the officials, excessively polite and speaking English so over-perfectly as to be funny, was one of the preliminary shocks of my journey. But these new-civilized little men handled us in a way which could give pointers to the present-day gentlemen of Ellis Island. If this be treason, let us profit by it.

  Yokohama! ’Rikishas, scuffling of padded feet. Swishing of kimonos. Scurrying of little boys. Cries and calls and barks of ’rikisha boys and the calls of the blind shampooers. Distinctly Oriental. The world and the sun had shifted and I was in the land I had dreamed about.

  We went to a hotel. It was supposedly English, but the supposition ended there, for the owner and entire personnel were native, and a quaint structure it was too. However, there was real courtesy, forced but perfected. The Japanese are, as everybody knows, the most polite people in the world and the most perfectly poised. There was also comfort such as Europeans desire, although the Japanese themselves do not sleep in a bed but are willing to supply such “silly devices” to the barbaric Westerners who come to visit them.

  But when I desired a bath I got my first glimpse of the unsettled state of fusion between the West and the East that was going on.

  The bath existed all right. It consisted of a little wooden box right next to the stove that heated the water. It was all in readiness for me and I was pleased at the prospect. However I found no soap, and upon inquiry, I learned that it was considered the height of discourtesy to utilize the cake I had brought with me, because the tradition was that soap in the water would make it dirty and unpleasant for the next person. I will not emphasize the itchy and questionable feeling that my first bath there gave me when I realized that I was not the first to use that tubful.

  How can I describe the country without being wordy and wearily descriptive? The sheer pleasure of being pulled about in a �
�rikisha, or kuruma, as the natives called them, was more than a novelty: it was a voluptuous, personal thrill. The runners, or Kurumaya, powerful little men in short blue cotton tights and shirts, their straw sandals and huge mushroom hats, are high in the list of picturesque things in Japan. And this brings me abruptly to a story which, while it is not my own, concerns some one I knew very well.

  Her name we will conceal under the similar one of Daphne Stebbins. She came from Bellows Falls, Vermont. She had come on the same steamer as my husband and I. She was very good-looking and about 35 years old. She was eminently virginal and she suffered from it. I say suffered, although it is very doubtful if she knew either that she was suffering or from what.

  Miss Stebbins came to Japan as a tutoress to two of the nastiest, most horribly spoiled little children I have ever had the misfortune to know. All during the trip from San Francisco they had made miserable the life of every person on the ship, and there was not a corner of any deck where one could find peace from their rowdiness and interference. Apparently they had never been subjected to discipline, and poor Miss Stebbins was having a fairly bad time of it.

  The children, in fact, were the reason we got into conversation, and it was not long before both my husband and I liked Miss Stebbins immensely and were quite sorry for her. For she was really a romantic soul … an unusual thing for the typical New Englander of her origin and upbringing … and had taken the chance of escorting these two incorrigibles to the East to visit their family (a tea-merchant father and an ex-chorus-girl mother, I learned later) as a sort of escape from a life which was drying her and stifling her.

  As we talked with her every day, I learned after a while that she had once had a sort of love affair with a young professor in Tufts, but that he had jilted her for some younger and wealthier Boston girl. She suffered terribly from the memory. It was all very banal, but the effect upon her was not to be denied. I shall be bold enough to say that Miss Stebbins was suffering from sexual starvation. It was evident from the way she acted with all the men on the ship … even with my husband …. Not that I cared. It was likewise probable that she had never known physical love and that its mysteries both offended and attracted her at the same time. Puritan training in constant struggle with the simple, strong human emotions and desires. In short, Miss Stebbins was a little bit mad, and the events which ensued are proof of it.