trampling--and then by shrill cries of women and of children, apparently
in derision, for there was much laughter. A girl was running away under
the fire of sarcasm, and dodging from one house to another, which she
would again leave, probably from finding more trouble inside. And we
were connected with it. One of our crew had been too much taken with the
charms of one of the _siva_ dancers, or she had felt his eloquence too
deeply. She had run off with him after the dance, and he had made
promises; among others she believed that he would take her with him in
our boat, and there she was on time--ready to go--only to find that it
could not be--and that he must have known it. In fact, the women kept
repeating to her that she must have lost her senses, that she must be an
impertinent fool to think of sitting in a boat with such high chiefs.
Siamau, our man, was slightly downcast, but not too much so--he was
still a conqueror, but the poor girl was--well--she was to be pitied.
Her trial and humiliation lasted all the time that we remained, and I
was glad when we pulled away. The tide served us, and the wind, and we
made a long pull to the place where I am now writing, Satapuala, only
some twenty-five miles from home.
Satapuala was as we had seen it before, on our last malaga; but its
young chief, whose dancing I had hoped to see again, was away--to visit
Tamasese, the former king set up by the Germans--at the other end of the
island--at Lufilufi, which we had passed without calling, in our anxiety
to remain outside of the war of politics.
The guest-house was decorated as before, with palm branches on ceilings
and posts and central pillars, and flowers everywhere--a most beautiful
greenhouse. And the big _taupo_, the sister of the chief, was there, as
amiable and dignified as before. In the evening she danced again, this
time without the support of her brother. She did not seem as good a
dancer. I noticed, however, that more than any one else, she used her
hands and fingers to carry out the motion, and that she finished, as it
were, the movements begun more rudely and vigorously by the men. She had
the same enchanting style and manner, and even at the end, when a
standing dance was given more outrageous than ever, she retained, with
her smile, a look of not knowing what it was all about, that was as good
form as I suppose an official virgin could assume in such a plight.
That was the end. I take it, that as Maua said, this being an European
malaga, things were made more formal and mitigated on our account.
We are waiting for the tide with which we shall row straight to Apia, in
about five hours--over the well-known sea.
Evening.
We rowed back in true Samoan way, our rowers making a show of pulling
and singing a great deal, with an energy that had been better thrown
into the oars. In fact, they danced a _siva_ of return. The worst and
laziest of the lot, an amiable fellow with a persistent smile always on
his face, actually rose and fell on his seat with excitement. The other
boat, our own, with Samau and our own four men, kept up well with our
ten rowers. On boards placed to let them squat Samoan way, under the
awning, sat a chief we had taken with us, who wore a great white turban
and kept fingering his beard, and a young woman, a cousin of Seu’s--so
that they looked Oriental enough. In Seu’s boat, Tamaseu, the
_tulafale_, the strokeoar, alone rowed vigorously, though the oldest and
least strong. He gave out the chant and pulled to it, while Seumanu,
standing in the bow, guided us over the shallow water, and Atamo
steered. As we turned round the last point, in the light of the sunset,
we crossed a large boat manned and paddled by girls, all of them dressed
in red, with green garlands around their heads, and for a figurehead a
little girl sitting upon the bows, her crossed legs hanging over in
front. Two black figures in the stern were the nuns of the convent to
which the girls belonged, and they were all returning from a holiday. It
was a pretty sight--nothing is more beautiful than the united movement
of paddles and of heads thrown back in chanting, for of course some hymn
carried them on, undistinguishable for us from a pagan tune.
December 24th.
Nothing new, except social and political news: the excitement at the
Chief Justice’s coming, and the innumerable Samoan reports thereupon;
and Fanua’s engagement to an Australian business man, and her marriage
for the last of the year. There are many “cancans” thereupon the
question of marriage in due form, or of a Samoan marriage which does not
bind the white man who leaves, being much discussed. It was even
proposed that she should marry first some Samoan--why exactly would be
too complicated to explain.
Meanwhile I am trying to work a little and recover from the dissipation
of the malaga. The days have drifted along, and here we are upon
Christmas, the weather very hot, and not recalling what you have at home
except by contrast.
Yesterday we had a great storm, the wind blowing the tortured branches
of the palm in great gestures against the sky. Few were out except the
boys, who played cricket all day in the rain, and conveniently dropped
their clothes. At night, the rooms were filled near the lamps with small
flies that crusted them, and covered the tables in thousands, so that
we could neither work nor read. Through the crevice of doors and
windows a fine dust was blown, the broken fragments of dead vegetation.
We are only six feet above the sea, and during the night the dash of
rain against our wall sounded in my dreams like the lashing of the surf.
In the morning the flies that had lain in heaps of thousands had
disappeared. I saw the last carried away by the laggards of an army of
ants, which had pounced upon them during the night or early dawn.
I have been watching some three girls and a boy who have been sitting or
playing about near me. Strictly speaking, only one, a grown-up girl, has
been sitting. The others have placed themselves occasionally on the high
bench to which the neighbourhood resort at night for a lazy stretch and
infinite talk. But these children were never quiet, for the two hours I
watched them. Most of the time has been taken up by wrestling. The boy,
who is the smallest, was at first thrown by the girls, but as they
taught him, he managed to keep his own fairly--until the elder girl was
enlisted in the sport, and kept throwing him and the others, according
to rule, for she carefully showed them the proper grip and some first
movements. All this is a type of the manner by which constant exercise
rounds them out, and I could not but appreciate how the little girl (of
eight perhaps), when she was not wrestling herself, danced up and down
continuously, in an involuntary impatience at having nothing to do in
the way of _siva_.
Vaiala, Near Apia.
Upolu, Dec. 25, ’90.
This is Christmas Day. I am seventeen hours, I think, ahead of you in
that fact; so that at this moment you are only running about for the
presents and the Christmas tree, but I cannot wait for you. It is such a
Christmas as they have here; they call it _Kilimasi_, and do not quite
make the joy and fuss over it that we do, having been christianized by
the Wesleyans. And I have not told you the whole truth; when the
missionaries came, they miscalculated the time, so that in many islands
they run a day ahead, not having dared to acknowledge a mistake that
might have imperilled their other teachings, for Christianity was
inextricably entangled with cotton goods, gunpowder, etc.
So you see, these people were like ourselves, and could not separate one
kind of truth from another, a deficiency which must have troubled you in
New York, as it does me both in New York and elsewhere.
But it is legally Christmas to-day, as I began to say, and a holiday,
which I can only distinguish from other days, because there seem to be
fewer people idling and lying about. The convict also is not at work, he
who labours near us, weeding and cutting down twigs, when he is not
sitting and talking to his admirers, who decorate him with flowers and
make wreaths for him.
But even this would not be an infallible guide, for the day before
yesterday the wife of the very chief who had brought this man before the
consuls for punishment (he had stolen the consular flag halyards--why,
no one knows), and who had pined in court for thirty lashes and six
months’ imprisonment--which were not given--the wife of the chief, I
say, came to ask us, as great chiefs ourselves, if we thought that the
consuls would let the prisoner have a few days off for fishing. And we
strongly urged her to ask for it, as a reasonable request--at least, in
the comic opera. The other convict, who is a great fraud, has been
occupied in ferrying people over the main river (the bridge having gone
down in the last storm, and we people who wear trousers and petticoats
not liking to wade over). But he also is variable as an index, for he
usually employs a small boy of his tribe to do the work, while he lies
in a little hut that he has built, and sleeps or eats, crowned with
flowers, like a jubilator. I was telling Mr. Stevenson of these details,
upon his last call, and he interrupted a description of the tyrannical
conduct of the French in Tahiti and the Marquesas, by the story of a
visit he had paid to the prisons there with the inspector. There was no
one in the prison for men:
“Monsieur,” explained the gendarme, “c’est jour de fête, et j’ai cru
bien faire de les envoyer à la campagne.” Visit then to the women’s
prison. “Mais où sont vos bonnes femmes? Monsieur, je ne sais pas au
juste, mais, je crois, qu’elles sont en visite.”
He tells me that though French rule is of course wrong in principle,
therein differing from English or German, the gendarmes are a good lot,
whom it is a privilege to know. I have run on into this because I have
been thinking while writing of my having told you that I intended to go
to the Marquesas and see Typee.
I am slowly drifting that way, but my enthusiasm is dashed somewhat by
what I hear. I am told that there are scarcely any more Typeeans--and
they are clothed to-day, as indeed, I fear, are most islanders who are
handsome, except the good people here, who still preserve the real
decencies to some extent.
And that is why I am lingering here, as I see for the first time, and
probably for the last, a rustic and Bœotian antiquity, and if I live to
paint subjects of the “nude,” and “drapery,” I shall know how they look
in reality. As I write in our Samoan house, which is only raised a few
inches from the ground, I see passing against the background of sea,
figures which at a little distance and in shifting light are nearer to
the little terra cottas that you like than anything one could find
elsewhere. Young men naked to the waist, with large draperies folded
like the Greek orator’s mantle, garlanded, with flowers in their hair,
pass and repass, or lie upon the grass. Young women--and alas! old
women--more covered, though occasionally draped like the men, or with
girdles of leaves, walk about, carrying leaf-made baskets or cocoanut
water-bottles--or they sit and lounge with the young men. An old man,
with his drapery partly over one shoulder has just stalked past, holding
a long staff that he puts out to full arm’s length--for they use their
limbs with a great spread and roundness of action. Four girls of
different ages (from eighteen to eight) have been wrestling under the
trees, practising some grip--and have been teaching a boy how it is
done. A friendly hunch-backed dwarf has called to pay a Christmas visit,
and to get a friendly nap. Like the girls, he wears nothing but a
dark-blue drapery around his waist, and a great garland of fruit and
flowers that hangs about his neck. His hair has been dressed and curled
in Samoan fashion--that is to say, it has been stiffened into shape with
coral lime (which, when washed off, has reddened it) so that he has the
hair of a blonde on his dark head. Japeta, as he is called (Japhet), who
by the by is rather “missionary,” but believes in witches and devils,
and has lived in the woods--and is really very intelligent--is certainly
more handsome in this way of costume than if he were to dress in the
fashion of Sixth Avenue--or even of Fifth Avenue--for he is of a chief’s
family. It is true that he has powerful arms and legs that would look
well anywhere else than here, where their dancing and jumping and their
mode of sitting seems to have influenced the size of the lower limbs,
and to have given a roundness to the entire body, that reminds one again
of the Greek statues and terra cottas. For the girl form passes into the
young man’s and his to the older without break. Their dances do a great
deal for this result. They all dance a little from the very earliest
age. Last night, as I walked home, I found a crowd of little mites
practising the figures of the _sitting_ dance, in which the entire body
is moved, from the ends of the fingers to the tips of the toes. And
beautiful they are, these dances. If only I could paint them--but that
is almost impossible; some of the gestures could be given, but not the
_rhythm_. And they “sit” badly to a painter, and, notwithstanding their
idleness, are rarely quiet. Sketching is formidable. They will jump up
to see what you have been doing and everybody troops all
[Illustration: FAGALO AND SUE, WRESTLING. VAIALA, SAMOA]
around. Still, I have sent and shall send some sketches home.
One of their dancers has just passed--an official dancer--the official
“virgin” of the next “village,” but one whose duty it is to entertain
guests, and see to their comfort, and dance for them, as also in war to
go out dancing with the combatants, as you will see in some of my
sketches. She was crowned with flowers, and had a garland around her
waist, one around her neck, and her waist was stiffened out triumphantly
by the folds of fine thin _mats_, worn as drapery. Behind her (for she
is of rank), at a far, respectful distance, has passed, also her
attendant, an old woman, who is responsible for her, and a tall, big
fellow, also an attendant, with a great drapery, also of yellow mats,
fastened by a narrow girdle of white bark cloth. We know her very well,
and did she not abuse her prerogative of anointment with cocoanut oil, I
should see more of her.
I have wandered away from my intention of wishing you a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year; _our_ Christmas is a hot one (86 to-day), but
yesterday was cold and stormy, and the thermometer went down to 78
degrees for a time. The wind blew the palms into all sorts of distressed
shapes, and sent amid a deluge of rain so much fine dust of broken
foliage through the crevices of our doors as to remind me of Tenth
Street in sultry summer, when they are building.
I wrote to you from the steamer in the first days of October. Since that
I have learned that my letter was long delayed. The letters are given to
the small cutter or schooner, manned by natives, that meets the steamer,
so as to bring letters here. Then she has to beat out for the upgoing
steamer to San Francisco to give letters to her. It so happened (and,
alas, I know all about it, for I was there), that the schooner was three
days at sea, owing to calms, so that she could not return in time, and
my letter which was aboard with me was delayed a whole month. It was a
queer, an uncomfortable, but a startling experience, this being dropped
into the boat--for we landed once and saw things in an, informal way,
tasted the sensations of all this faraway rustic classicality with minds
unprepared. We spent our first day and night with native hospitality in
a little out-of-the-way village, and saw, abbreviated, all the
innumerable pictures that I have had leisure to watch since then: The
dances and the _kava_-drinking and the village life, and the boats; all
preceded by our putting into “the little cove with a queer swell running
on the beach,” just as in the old story books; and twenty-four hours of
calm in a small sailboat under the tropical heat was also a new
experience.
So this is why my last letter was so delayed. I did not know of it until
long after. Should I get as far as the Marquesas, I shall write to you
again, and tell you if anything be left of Typee, but I fear that that
is all over. Still, I hear reports of some private cannibalism to which
the benighted French object, so that there may still be hopes. But I am
told also, as I said before, that they wear European clothing and that
is worse than any immoral diet.
There are no Gérômes here and little French in the figures. Of the
moderns, Millet and Delacroix _alone_ give the look of the nude alive
and out of the studio. Also the Venetians and the older men are not out
of the facts. And, praise be to the Maker of all (art included), I have
not seen any _black_ except at night--and even then, “si peu, si peu.”
Rembrandt would be happy here, especially in the evenings, when the
cocoanut fire--that is so bright as to look bright in the day--makes a
centre of light strong enough to turn the brown skins to silver and to
gold, and then passes by every gradation of the prism into nameless
depths that black paint will never give. My dear old painters, even to
Van Eyck and Memling, how well they “carry” over the globe!
I should write to you about Stevenson, but I suppose that you can hear
more directly through his letters to his friend. We have seen something
of him and have been pleased. He is hard at work, so that visiting him
is not a favour to him, even though he may like it, as reminding him of
that real world of civilization which he thinks he has left for good.
Nor have I written to you about politics, that are really impressive
here, for we have saved these people from a hell of slavery under the
Germans. A little gentleness on their part, and they would have had the
islands--for these people are gentle enough, and desire rule, but, as
they said, “death would be better”--and fortunately we interfered.
I am impressed here, as I have been before, by the force that America
could have for good, and by the careful calculation on the part of those
who know us best, the Germans and English, upon our weakness of action
and irresponsibility, and our not knowing our enormous power.
The Pacific should be ours, and it must be.
Vaiala, Jan. 19th.
This afternoon another little incident of everyday life brings up again
my wish that I could set all this world about me to the music of a comic
opera--a great _siva_. If only I could understand all that they say, and
yet see it as people do who do not understand so that for them the ways
of other races seem perpetually funny to the eye. What a charming
subject I have now for a third act--or perhaps might I bring it into
the first one--or should we perhaps make it an interlude, with the
_siva_ ballet interspersed? Perhaps, after all, it makes a little opera
bouffé for itself.
This afternoon, as I was telling you, I noticed some agitation on and
about the malae, and around Tofae’s house, which is next to mine. This
annoyed me exceedingly. Siva,[12] our first pet from Tutuila, had come
to Apia on a visit, and the little silly darling had stumbled upon Awoki
and claimed him with all the enthusiasm these people have for him, for
his small size, his good nature, and his brown skin.
Our servants and dependents are the only ones who get the truest
affection and good-will; we are too far up and too white, and cannot
play. I have no doubt that notwithstanding the kindly offers we have
had, Atamo especially, from maidens who were looking out for an
establishment--I have no doubt, I say, that in their gentle minds was
some confusion, some wish for rank and position, and that their real
hearts went out to those with us like my little Japanese attendant.
Indeed did not Faauli, the _taupo_ of Sapotulafai, the daughter of the
great _tulafale_, intimate that she wished to keep Awoki with her, and
did she not say that if he tried to run off she would put him in her
father’s jail until we were out of sight and out of reach? Well, Siva
recognized and claimed Awoki, and so we obtained her again. I made her
sit for me, and found, to my great pride and delight, that I had never
been mistaken, and that her rustic movements in the dance were finer far
than those of the girls of the great places. We had seen the best first,
and had known it. Siva was ill at ease here; she knew that she was
considered provincial, or as Charley explains, “the Apia girls think
that these Tutuila girls are fools.” The same little ways, the same
condescension, the same disdainful or inquiring look, that we see used
elsewhere, were given by the maidens of our place to the little
stranger. And this afternoon, when I had got her out of the way to our
house, to try to get a photograph of her with my hawk-eye camera, that
never works, I was disgusted at seeing the surrounding green covered
with people. The younger ones singled out Siva at once, and with the
sincerity of purpose that belongs to youth, said to her what they
thought; that her dress was this or that, that her hair was quite
wrongly cut, like a goat’s, they said, literally, with many such
amenities. All this Siva bore as maidens with us would bear, with a
distant air and an occasional smile of pity. She was a sort of relative
of Tofae’s, being herself a chief’s daughter, and could not, I suppose,
be absolutely extinguished.
But the crowd increased very much between us and Tofae’s house, and
twice I had been obliged to single out some offender and drive him off
with a threatened stick, when something dawned upon me; these people
were really coming to Tofae: no vain curiosity had led them to surround
us and sit about the grave of Tofae’s father, and fill the greensward
between it and the posts of his house. Something was about to take place
there. Tofae was seriously taking counsel with some others, and suddenly
the crowd poured around his house, the privileged ones entering it, and
one little bunch of old women slowly, lingeringly stepping in between
its posts.
So that I asked, relieved from my own trouble, what was it all about.
This was the story: set it to music yourself and Atamo shall write the
libretto. Within the fold of the chief has lately been dwelling a maiden
thought to be frail, or at least of a stuff not so stern as some others.
Perhaps she may have been there in exile for some slight misdemeanour,
and her people may have deemed it good for her to live for a time under
Tofae. For me she had little charm, if I do not mistake the young lady
and confuse her with another young person who has also had refuge there,
having bolted from her unpleasant husband and spending some weeks in
temporary viduity.
One of our young gallants, and I am both proud and ashamed to
acknowledge, one of our own crew, is a great admirer of female beauty,
and fixed upon this maiden as one he should like to win, even if he had
to persuade her to run away with him, for as far as I know he is
married, and had never intended to set up a rival establishment in legal
form. Nothing here in Samoa can be hidden for any length of time, so
that a more moral place in its way it would be hard to find. To pay
court in the evening supposes a certain surrounding of many young
people, and often the presence of many older ones, and our young man’s
wishes were understood by others than this best girl. So that, most
meanly, some of the old women began to prejudice the girl’s mind against
this passionate and handsome youth, and instead of opposing her, which
might have defeated their object, they began to tell little tales about
his past, probably exaggerated, as they went on accumulating. And as he
found the girl still resisting he determined upon a straightforward
course in his manly bosom, and complained to the chief, asking that
these libellers be punished. And the chief listened, as was right, and
summoned the old ladies before his tribunal to make good what they said,
or forever after hold their peace. And here they were, come to be
judged, while friends and witnesses and neighbours circumfused them,
anxious about the outcome.
“Well,” I said to Charley, “and what will happen? You have heard it
all.”