O Le Langi’s Influence—Heathen Magic—Poetic
Aspirations—Ramao and Essimao-Samoan Types—Robert Louis
Stevenson and the “Beautiful White Woman”—O Le Langi
becomes a Part of the Forest—“Here Lies O Le Langi”—A
Great Truth.
Here, by a tiny pagan hut,
A kid, star-eyed and brown,
Chews off the milky coco-nut
That grew just up the town!
As I, my back turned t’wards the sun,
Stare out across the seas
Wherefrom strange melodies come in and run
Across the Island’s trees.
AH, sublime poet O Le Langi! It was your elemental poetic genius, more
than the inspirations of the poets of my own land, that first turned my
thoughts to the magic of the seas, skies, travelling stars, and the
strange look in men’s eyes. ’Twas you who made me hear the ineffable
sounds of music, the visionary sights and the wonders of night and
moonlight in the forest. Yours was the mercy that lent me the ear to
hear the pleading voice of the unfledged song in the red-splashed bird’s
egg, till I carefully climbed back and laid it once more in the mossy
nest high in the banyans. It was you who inspired me to stand on the
palm-clad slopes, by the sapphire-hued Pacific waters, and see the
glorious mist of God’s breath pervade the circumambient life of this
mirror of a universe that shadows forth His infinite dreams. ’Twas you
who led me into the magic parlour of infinite splendour where birds,
goddesses, and gods sang and lifted their goblets of nectar, toasting in
song their joy and thanksgiving to the laughing, flying hours—hours that
peeped through the magic door of the sunrise. I too stood by that
wondrous shanty door, where the palms sang, and stretched my shadow-arm
to the skyline, while with goblet in hand I dipped and filled it to the
brim with the sparkling foam from the golden sunsets of the wine-dark
seas! Yes, Langi, I also drank the intoxicating ecstasy of those foaming
hours of crimson and golden light. Yet, Langi, I, sceptic that I was,
once doubted you when you stood by the moonlit waterfalls of the forest
and swore that you saw the silvery flowing beards and big jagged knees
of the gods. In the blindness of my worldly vision I swore that it was
nothing more than the foaming moonlit waters falling down the fern-clad
crags of the mountain’s side: no knees, no gigantic rugged faces of gods
at all! I even doubted that the dark, Old-Man-Frog’s hind-legs, as he
swam deep in the still depths of the star-mirroring water of the lagoon,
touched with his webbed feet and scattered the constellation of stars
that were the proud eyes of your mighty ancestors who ever watched over
you from the skies out to the north-west. Ah, how blind I was! But I
became a true pagan after that. It was I who taught you to sing the
songs of Cathay and the melodies of mediæval romance of Long Ago. Who
will believe that we heard the winds tolling the bells of Time, faintly,
far away in some infinite belfry of the stars, as the violin wailed and
your aged, cracked voice chanted? Yes, long ago, when strange, blue-eyed
Danes and Homeric sailormen from the semi-fabled seas threw silver coins
into our old collecting-calabash! I thank you and Heaven, O Le Langi,
that once I was rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Notwithstanding the
beauty and truth of the Christian apostles, it was you, old heathen, who
invested me with a glamour, threw over the shoulders of this dilapidated
catastrophe Me, a magical cloak, the texture whereof I am unable to
explain. That old cloak of many colours and glorious illusions has long
since been torn to a thousand shreds. But out of each old heap, the
_débris_ of shattered illusions, have blossomed, from the seeds of old
enchantments, other flowers. Beautiful too are the flowers of
disenchantment! But away with such rhapsodizing, for I must return as
gracefully as possible to my immediate memoirs.
About this time I had a recurrence of yellow jaundice. My liver was a
healthy one; but on my first visit to Samoa, a year before, I had
foolishly eaten of some red-berry fruit that turned out to be most
poisonous. I had, in consequence, suffered a serious illness. Indeed, I
had turned a yellowish-green, and finally had taken a voyage to Honolulu
to seek special medical advice. Whilst in Honolulu my visage became so
distressingly yellow and my aspect so melancholy that the chief
undertaker, Rami Sarhab, gave me fifteen dollars a week to act as chief
mute and mourner at the royal burial ceremonies. But even in this
capacity my services failed lugubriously; for I felt such pain in the
abdomen, was so intensely sad, that the envy expressed in my eyes and on
my bilious-green physiognomy for the deep, painless slumber of the
defunct was conspicuous to all eyes, as I walked ahead of the hearse,
endeavouring my best to mourn over the dreamless sleep of the departed.
Thank Heaven, my second attack of jaundice left me in a few days. A
local native physician, Rimoloo, recommended me to drink deeply of the
water from boiled yams and breadfruits flavoured with Holland gin; and
my delight on changing colour at the fourth gallon can be better
imagined than described to those who have drunk of the aforesaid
mixture.
While enjoying the congenial companionship of O Le Langi I deserted my
study of instrumental music and harmony and turned my thoughts to
poetry. A trader at Matautu, Savaii Isle, had presented me with a volume
of A. L. Gordon’s poems and Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_. The perusal of
these volumes amidst romantic surroundings intensified the ardent love I
have ever felt for Nature in all her wildest moods. Indeed, I have often
stood before an aged, dying forest-tree and felt some affectionate
kinship with its sensate sorrow over its approaching dissolution.
Strange as it may seem to some, I must confess that old wooden ships,
deserted huts, stuffed birds, and the like have appealed to me far more
than the tender melodies of beautiful songs and the thrills of romantic
books. Even the thick mahogany wood of my arm-chair calls up vistas of
some mammoth tree of the southern forest. What song-birds settled on its
boughs to stay and sing awhile on their flight! And what wild men,
women, and weary children on the strange, long tribal march camped
beneath their shelter—the shelter of boughs that now encircle my
recumbent, dreaming form in this inn’s carven arm-chair!
I remember that, after reading Whitman’s poems, I began to write words
to the many melodies that I was continually composing. I was surprised
at the ease with which poetical ideas seemed to come to me. My brain
teemed with suitable poetic similes. But my workmanship was execrable.
Many of my lyrics were inspired by home-sickness. I recall that I wrote
about thirty songs. Probably three of them were good. I know that I set
a high value on those sentimental lyrics and that I placed them in my
tin box with my prized volume of E. Prout’s _Harmony and Counterpoint_,
so that they might be safe until that day when I could submit them to a
publisher. But no publisher’s musical editor ever had them inflicted
upon him. My ship, a year later, was wrecked off the Solomon Isles; and
I stood under the shore palms, with all my beloved inspirations at the
bottom of the ocean, and passed in review, so I grimly imagined, by the
tuneful mermaids of the coral seas. Many of the stranded sailors’
effects were washed ashore the next day, but were immediately snatched
up by the thieving natives, who bolted off with them into the mountain
villages. Perhaps those wild tattooed men got hold of my sacred tin box.
And if any talented cannibal sings my old songs, and is well up in the
mysteries of harmony and counterpoint, he has undoubtedly made greater
headway in that difficult art than I had in those days. But still, it is
something that I should be able to claim to be the first who introduced
E. Prout’s volume of _Harmony and Counterpoint_ into the cannibal
Solomon Isles.
I remember that O Le Langi asked me to translate the words of many of
his legendary poems into my own language. My heathen poet’s face lit up
with pride when I sang some of his songs in my own tongue, and with
equal pride made a forcible accent on the rhymes so that he could hear
how the lines went. O Le Langi at once enticed me to go with him round
the coast to Mootua, so that I might let his rival scribes hear how nice
his poems sounded when translated into the great Papalagi’s language. He
was so delighted with the obvious jealousy that was expressed on the
wrinkled faces of his rivals that he struck his chest thrice and flung
one hand behind his back. I discovered that this act of Langi’s was a
direct challenge to them to compose the words of a song as well as he.
One of the older scribes, at once accepting the challenge, stepped
forward and, swelling the magnificent hieroglyphic tattoo of his chest,
chanted an impromptu legend. Though I could not understand all the words
of this legendary improvization, I remember that the melody was so
effective that I extemporized with ease an accompaniment on my violin.
This brought forth a volley of applause from the whole tribe, who had
rushed from their huts to listen to the wonderful magic wood-scraping of
the white _Tusitala_ (maker of songs). For a while I quite expected
there would be a fight between the rivals. But things smoothed down. I
was finally awarded a calabash of kava, which I courteously placed to my
lips, and then, whilst the chiefs were talking, poured the contents into
the fern grass at my feet. At this moment the high chief’s daughter, a
sea-blue-eyed maid with a veritable forest of bronze-hued hair, fell on
one knee before me and started to sing a weird melody. For a moment I
was considerably embarrassed. I soon, however, recovered my wits, and
then I took her hand and bade her rise. My imagination clothed me with a
majesty which I had gathered from my old novels. And I distinctly recall
the admiration in the eyes of the onlookers as I slightly lifted my
helmet hat and then bowed as though I were some mighty king paying court
to a princess of a neighbouring dynasty. She handed me a beautifully
carved tortoise-shell comb from her hair, and the glance that
accompanied the gift cannot be divulged in mere words. I responded by
diving my hand into my breast pocket, and then handed her a really
valuable silver match-box. She blushed deeply, for the munificence of my
return gift was obvious. That same night O Le Langi and myself were the
chief guests at the festival board of the _fale fapule_ (chief house).
And as I sat at the head of the long low table and the steam rose from
the mighty dishes of roast pig and many indigenous fruit dishes, Essao’s
eyes, for that was her name, gave me swift, bright glances that told all
that a romantic Samoan maid’s eyes can tell when her heart warms to a
stranger. But, notwithstanding my ardent nature and the lure of her
bright eyes, I was saved from early matrimony, for when the head chief
caught me bowing gallant acknowledgments to his daughter’s eyes, his
brow wrinkled up into a tortuous map of disapproval.
Nevertheless, when O Le Langi and I left the village that night, Essao
gave me her tenderest secret glance and managed to present me with a
flower from her hair. Though I did not see her again, I wrote many
verses about her beauty.
I think that it was about this period that I wrote several of the poems
that were later on published in my little booklet of _Australian and
South Sea Lyrics_. This little booklet of verse, to my surprise and
pleasure, was highly praised in the literary journals in England, and
also brought me letters of encouragement from such men as Henry Newbolt,
William Michael Rossetti, and Robert Bridges.
But to proceed with those adventurous happy days when the light of the
great poet O Le Langi’s eyes shone upon me. Whilst stopping with Langi I
was down with severe fever. I was staying at the time in a native
homestead quite near to the aged scribe’s residence. Langi was very kind
to me, and secured the services of a native woman to attend to my wants.
This Samoan lady had a child who was about four years old. He was an
intelligent little fellow and had ocean-blue eyes and curly hair. When I
sat up on my bed-mat, tinkling melodies on my violin, Ramao, for that
was his name, would somersault with delight; then once again peep inside
the _F_ holes of my instrument to see where the music came from. Every
day he would run off into the forest to pluck flowers for me, and would
make my bed with soft moss, attending to my wants with the unremitting
solicitude of a lovable, innocent child. Heaven knows where he learnt
the weird songs that he sang to me as he sat by my bedside, swaying to
and fro like some elfin-child. Lying there stricken with fever, I would
stare into his beautiful, original eyes till the whole world seemed to
be singing in its happy childhood. I realized that the age of four was
the golden age of mortal existence, the age that understands the
grandest philosophy of life, the age when all the infinite possibilities
are as near consummation as they can well be in this world. Much that
had puzzled my wretched civilized brain as I listened to O Le Langi’s
long discourses became clear to me. Langi was not such a fool after all;
it was I who was the heathen! The iron laws of my country had sent me to
school so that my God-given wisdom should be strangled by dogmatic
heathenish teachers. I recalled how the great and splendidly religious
Langi had crashed his club down on his threshold, and in magnificent
declamatory style had said:
“Pah! Foolish white-skinned man, he come here with his mouldy skull full
of worms so that he may teach us also to grow old, scraggy, and full of
wretched wisdom. He hears not the voices of the gods murmuring in the
children’s babblings.” Then that aged scribe had laid his wrinkled hand
on my head, and in sonorous, melancholy tones had said: “O Papalagi, I
say, your people looker beyond the mountains at the stars for the wisdom
of the great waters when ’tis only to be heard in the sweet-toned shells
that are scattered on the sunny shores of childhood.”
So spake Langi. And I, who knew that we are born in fullest possession
of the divine faculties only that we may grow old and sad, had at once
become a true disciple of that glorious old heathen. Indeed, I almost
succeeded in realizing that the peoples of the civilized world were my
humble attendants, and that O Le Langi, crammed with mythology and
strange tales about sad old crabs, was a heathen Solomon arrayed in the
splendour of the stars. Langi could stand on the mountain peaks of
supreme “ignorance,” whisper into the ear of the universe, and,
listening, hear those Truths that only murmur in some great speech of
silence to the soul.
I know that the light of little Ramao’s eyes also filled my soul with
some strange, intuitive wisdom. When the little fellow opened his eyes
wide and said:
“Oh, listen, Papalagi, to the _O le mao_ bird as it sings to the light
of the mountain stars,” I did not hear a night-bird singing to its mate
in the banyan trees, but I heard a soft-feathered transmutation of a
blue day of ages ago singing tenderly, sadly, to some memory of its
birth in the rosy eternity of the east. Ramao’s presence in that hut,
where I lay sick with fever, cast a poetic glamour over my existence.
One evening he rushed into the hut, and, stooping down by my bed-mat,
swiftly covered my shoulders with the tappa-rug. Then he turned to the
doorway and gave a whistle, and softly called out:
“Essimao, come in and see wonderful white boy who play on magic wood.”
He had brought his sister to see me. There she stood, a charming little
maid of about seven years, peeping curiously at me through the half-open
doorway. I called her; and, as though she had been born for the purpose
of waiting on men in sickness, she straightway squatted by me and
commenced to sing. Her voice rippled from her lips like the
deep-stealing music of a forest stream. Rising to her feet she swayed
softly, and it seemed that the rhythm of music rose and fell in tiny
billows along the graceful movements of her limbs. Her laughter was
sweetest balm to my fevered soul. She was a perfect little gipsy of the
sea-nursed south. I know that if the delightful George Borrow, that true
lover of the Romany Chile, had reached the South Seas and had seen
Essimao place a seashell to her ear and swear that she could hear the
big _moani ali_ (ocean) beating on the shores of God’s mountain
footstools, he would, I am sure, have devoted pages to the beauty of
Essimao and the religious influence her presence inspired. I know that
she impressed me more than all the Psalms could do. The sayings of the
Apostles and the teachings of Confucius, down to those of Kant and
Strindberg, etc., are as nothing to me when compared with the wisdom and
charm of little Essimao and Ramao’s four infinite years. Those little
philosophers made me realize, long ago, the cursed irony of the fates in
decreeing that man should be born the wrong way up, so that we grow old
instead of young. But my memory does not betray me when I assert here
that O Le Langi was an exception, a phenomenon who had outwitted the
fates, had never grown out of his wise, resplendent infancy. Like the
child of four years, he was still a mighty philosopher, a true
socialist, romanticist, individualist, poet, humorist, spritualist,
realist, optimist, pessimist, mystic, maniac, prophet, and one who had
the transcendentalist’s belief in a Supreme Being; and lo, all this
encased in one skull crammed with the divine light that we are all
gifted with when we are four years old. Ah, the wondrous book that an
imaginative child of four years could give us could it write down its
impressions, its own outlook on life and all that it imagines about this
world! What marvellous truths would its great unworldliness spring upon
us! Once, when I lay near to death, Ramao lay on one side of me and
Essimao on the other, placing their fingers in sympathy through my hair.
I felt that I had travelled so far that I had stumbled on the edge of
the earth that is nearest the heavens. Perhaps I digress unduly in my
reflections over Ramao and Essimao, when it is only children in the
hey-day of life’s philosophical prime who can understand the truth of
that which I say. Few may believe the virtues that I claim for my old
friend Langi and these children. Langi, who had read many of the
abridged editions of the standard works, cursed the outrageous vanity of
white men. His nervous, sensitive nostrils would dilate, his sonorous,
eloquently violent voice ringing out like the mellow poetry of old bells
as he declaimed:
“Pah! What am this white Papalagi more than a pale-skinned thief of the
night? Am he not the dark misbeliever who slay our mighty gods and doubt
their virtues—and us?”
“True! true! O mighty O Le Langi!” I’d say, as I listened in
incorrigible delight, while with chin and hand raised to the sky he
spoke on:
“The white Papalagi am one great hypocrite, who loveth the earth, money,
and old clothes—neither doth he smell over-sweet! Where? Where is this
God who had power to fashion this white man, yet, lo, made some First
Great Mistake—since I am brown?” And saying this, O Le Langi dashed his
coco-nut-shell goblet to the ground, and exclaimed: “Think you ’tis wise
His faults to change?” And still he would rave on in this wise: “I say,
O Papalagi, had the first white man discovered my people living in one
great town that had a leaning tower, and one rotunda and nicer
cathedrals with great stained-glass windows, they would have said: ‘O
great Samoan Peoples! God’s eyelight doth shine in thy sight; your
women, too, are beautiful as the stars and flowers. O wondrous brown
men, I greet you, Allelujah!’” Then, wiping the tears of tense emotion
from his eyes, he wailed forth: “Alas, my people lived in huts,
therefore were severely belaboured with rods and their daughters sold
into slavery and worshipped only for their bodies’ beauty.”
Even as I write I can hear O Le Langi sigh: “Alas! Alas! Papalagi the
faithful,” as his ghost peers over my shoulder to-night as I pen these
memoirs. Yes, O Le Langi could see “Heaven in a wild flower and Eternity
in a grain of sand.” Little Ramao, too, felt quite equal to the white
men, and honestly claimed everything from the stars down to my boots and
my violin. He even claimed my parents’ photographs which I kept in my
tin box, for he placed them carefully in the folds of his lava-lava when
I was not looking—true little socialist that he was. And, when he fell
from the palm tree, whilst seeking coco-nuts, and broke his back, he
died with a smile on his lips that had God’s philosophy in it.
The tears fell fast from O Le Langi’s eyes when he said:
“O Papalagi, the seas do roll on for ever, but man go back to his
fathers.”
Then the winds sighed mournfully in the coco-palms, and O Le Langi
softly dug his fingers into the heap of soft-scented mould, and dropped
the first lump of earth down on to Ramao’s dead, smiling face.
“Aue! Aue!” wailed the stricken mother, as we turned away from the
graveside. And three or four little children who had stood watching the
burial procession from the shades of the flamboyant trees, cried: “Wa
noo! Wa noo!” and then disappeared in some fright down the forest
tracks. Such was the end of Ramao as the sunset fired the far-off sea
horizon. The cicalas were chrruping in the belts of mangroves as we
arrived once more at Langi’s homestead.
For a long time after that sad incident I fancied I could hear some wail
of sorrow in the mournful monotones of the waves that incessantly beat
against the barrier reefs. But the splendid reality of the hot sunlight
again came over the world. Again Time turned the withered pages of each
blue tropic day, pages that faded into the yellowing of each sunset.
Flowers on the slopes grew musical with bees. Fierce happiness reigned
in the tribal villages along the coast as the old chiefs chanted their
savage memories of olden time and the children thumped toy drums.
Bright-eyed maidens and amorous youths laughed and sang. Then O Le Langi
enticed me to go off troubadouring with him.
“We maker lot moneys, O Tusitala!” said he.
And so I went, and O Le Langi carried my violin as we tramped miles and
miles visiting the coast villages. Sometimes we hired a canoe and
paddled to the many islets of the Samoan group. With his tappa robe
wrapped about him, the tasselled end flung cavalier-wise over one
shoulder, O Le Langi would stand with chin raised as he stood in the old
tribal forums of many a lonely native village, chanting melodiously as I
played on my violin. Even the white men, traders and sailors in the
grog-bars near Matautu, down by the beach on Savaii Isle, left their rum
mugs, strode to the bar doorway, listened and stared, as Langi told
wonderful things about his old gods, pointing magnificently to the
trees, the distant mountains and seas, calling them mighty witnesses of
all which he would claim for the beauty of his legendary world. The old
shellbacks opened their eyes in astonishment, tugged their beards, spat
seaward, and stared again, as the earnest note in his voice gained even
their ragged respect. It must have been a strange sight as my pagan
brother-artist stood before them, clothed in the majesty of a past
tribal chiefdom and the glory of a proud imagination that they could not
understand. But what cared I, as with fiddle to my chin I played on, my
helmet hat tilted back on my head, till O Le Langi’s wheezy voice gave
the final chant ere he snatched that dilapidated shelter from the tropic
sun off my head, and held it under the eyes of those sunburnt men from
the seas!
Ah, memory of Langi and true romance! Great, unlaurelled poet of the
South Seas, how satisfied you were with your earthly existence! How
satisfied with the poetic fame you achieved as your kind critics cast
coins of approval into my shabby helmet hat—that old hat that held the
joy and romance of my youth and all that was wealth inexhaustible to
you—and me! Often in my deeper dreams I see you standing beneath your
beloved palms near Apia as you watch the gold of the setting sun sinking
into the western seas. Ah, kind old heathen, again I see your grim
glance when you look at the woebegone faces of the missionaries as they
pass you by; and, as you watch them, I see your aged lips smile and
quiver into that poetic grin that seems to say:
“There, but for God’s mercy, goes O Le Langi!”
* * * * *
As some may think I have overestimated the comeliness and mentality of
the majority of the old-time Samoans, I would like to give other
opinions than my own on the subject before finishing this chapter. First
of all, I would mention that all observant, able authorities who have
travelled, and written about the South Seas, have remarked upon the fine
physique and general attractiveness of the Polynesian races. In my
profession, and I was bandmaster of the king’s bodyguard band in Hawaii,
in Tahiti, and again in Mexico, etc., I had many opportunities of
hearing the opinions of the various representatives of the Missionary
Societies, and they were very often men of refined tastes, and so
competent to judge. These men all seemed to share my opinion with
respect to the manliness and refinement of the Samoans. Of course, a
difference of opinion is bound to exist, for, to be sure, there is a
class of men who, by an inherent obliquity of mental vision, see all the
coloured races as something semi-bestial and unworthy of a white man’s
interest and sympathy.
I once had the pleasure of arriving in Apia with Monsieur Bassaire, a
well-known French artist. I vividly recall his astonishment and
admiration when he first saw the Samoans who came on deck to welcome us
when we arrived off Mulinuu. Nor was Bassaire’s surprise to be wondered
at, for the handsome, sun-bronzed, herculean figures of the Samoan men
were shown off to tremendous advantage as they stood on deck amongst the
slop-shouldered, thick-necked German crew. Bassaire, who had travelled
in New Guinea in 1879 with James Chalmers, the God-fearing, adventurous
missionary,[7] was touring the world, and was taking sketches of the
various races of mankind. I know that he was pleased with his artistic
work in Samoa. Bassaire was introduced to Robert Louis Stevenson, and it
was whilst they were in each other’s company that I heard R. L. S.
comment on the clear complexions of the Samoans. We were in the
photographer’s studio in Apia, and Stevenson was examining some of the
photographs. The photographer told us that, though hundreds of native
girls and youths presented themselves at his studio in hopes that they
would make photographs of commercial value for book illustrations and
for selling to tourists, he was invariably able to choose only two, or
three at most, who possessed the thick lips and sensual features that
coincided with the stock European idea of the South Sea type. Indeed,
when Stevenson glanced through the albums, he actually mistook some of
the photographs of the Samoans, which were toned in a light shade, for
Europeans. R. L. S. remarked that he considered that in some ways the
Samoans were amongst the handsomest races to be found in the world.
However, they become slightly broad in the nose as they get older and
the lips become sensual-looking; the skin, which in youth is of a golden
hue, deepens to a tawny hue with age, the complexion becoming swarthy,
something akin to that of the Spanish, Italian, Southern French, and the
darker types of British. Of course, these remarks refer to the
true-blooded types of over twenty years ago. Through intermarriage with
Mongolians, Negroes, Malays, Papuans, and low-caste British, the
herculean Samoan is becoming a very rare individual indeed. The
statue-like figure is becoming bent and dwarfed, the full, clear eyes
crafty-looking. I know that the surviving children of the old race, who
now roam those palm-clad slopes, struck me, on a later day, as a kind of
human rainbow, some aftermath that sadly reflected the tropic suns, the
light and laughter of other brighter days. For now one meets all kinds
of complexion—yellowish, brownish, white-blotched, mauve, greenish,
tawny, and black, and eyes as multitudinous in colour as their own
tropic flowers. At times it is hard to tell the half-caste from the
pure-blooded white man or woman.
Footnote 7:
The author met James Chalmers in Apia and again at Port Moresby, New
Guinea. Chalmers was a splendid type of the earnest missionary—manly,
sincere, and brave, and a true Bohemian. He was murdered by New Guinea
cannibals a few years ago.
The last remark recalls to my mind a little incident that it may not be
out of place to mention here. Robert Louis Stevenson heard that a white
woman was residing near Matautu, Savaii Isle. He at once made up his
mind to go and see this lady—a natural enough wish in those remote
isles, “where white men will tramp miles to catch a glimpse of a white
woman.” Well, R. L. S. hired a boat from a half-caste who was a
store-keeper, and with whom I was staying at that time. And so it
happened that I and the mate of a schooner had the pleasure of
accompanying R. L. S. in the boat. After a long, very wearying row from
Manono, for it was a terrifically hot day, we arrived off the coast of
Savaii. Even then we had to go ashore and tramp over two miles before we
could reach the bungalow where the white lady resided. When we did
arrive, Stevenson was nearly “dead-beat,” and struck me as irritated and
fatigued. It was with much relief that the three of us at length passed
under the shade of the mango-trees that sheltered the approach to the
bungalow.
“Where’s the white lady?” said Stevenson, speaking in rather a sharp
manner to a tawny-looking female who wore a small dark moustache and
happened to be looking out of the bungalow’s doorway. To our
astonishment the woman screwed her mouth up and shrieked out:
“What white lady?—damn yer eyes!”
Stevenson’s consternation and my own can be better imagined than
described, when I say that the sun-tanned, brown-skinned, vulgar-looking
woman who addressed us was the beautiful white lady herself! And, if I
may say so, she was a good specimen of the white lady to be found in the
South Seas in those days.
“’ave a beer, old party?” she said to R. L. S., who had astutely
apologized and cursed the hot sunlight that, shining in his eyes, had
made him so colour-blind.
Stevenson’s tact, after that grievous mistake, had a magical effect on
the manners of our countrywoman. She fastened a flower on R. L. S.’s
coat.
“Say when!” she said to the mate, as she clutched the gin bottle,
holding it high as she filled the glass.
Then she smacked me on the back, and filled with beer a huge receptacle
that looked like one of those fancy glasses wherein one keeps goldfish.
I think Stevenson had whisky. I know he enjoyed the situation. The lady
made eyes at R. L. S. and the mate too. She swore and behaved with the
convivial vulgarity that is the sole prerogative of the low-caste
British woman. I know that the Samoan servant-maid blushed as her
mistress complained of the “’orrible ’eat,” and pulled her dress down
below her Camberwell-South-East bosom. Who she was, why she was there
alone in that bungalow, only God knows. I recall that she nudged
Stevenson in the ribs and said she came from “Camberwool Sarth-East.”
She swore at everything in Samoa, and said that she never went “art of a
night because she knew the blasted natives were cannyballs!” Stevenson’s
face during all this was a perfect study in self-control and amused
politeness; and nothing off the stage could possibly outrival his
simulated interest and his convivial ejaculation of “Well now!” as she
finished each breezy yarn and ribald joke.
The mate was a London man.
“Do you remember the ‘Pig and Whistle’?” she screamed, as she plunged
into reminiscent talk about the “old homeland,” smacked the mate on the
shoulder, and pinched my leg! She insisted on fillng our glasses again
and again. She commenced to sing. Her wild, silvery laughter rippled
about our ears, mesmerized us all, and made the roosting parakeets in
the orange-trees outside rise, flutter and shriek with fright. Stevenson
was the first to attempt to withdraw from that little realistic drama of
life in a South Sea bungalow. His æsthetic, intellectual-looking face
became shadowed with a fierce determination as the wild familiarities of
the woman asserted themselves. He bowed with urbane politeness as he
rose from the table.
“Git the gentleman’s ’at, yer little brown-skinned slut!” she yelled.
In a moment the trembling Polynesian maid made a dive for Stevenson’s
old peaked cap. Stevenson was still expressing in his politest terms the
pleasure he felt at meeting the lady in the island.
“Stow it, yer son of a gun! No politeness ’ere! You know where to find
me, and _don’t_ forget me when yer comes this way!” she said, as we
passed through the doorway.
Stevenson nearly fell down her bungalow’s five steps as she yelled forth
a volley of ribald farewells. The relief of that parting was very
evident on Stevenson’s face. He chuckled like a schoolboy when we had
embarked and were all rowing our hardest, far away, safe out at sea.
But to return to O Le Langi. Many of the old-time chiefs of Langi’s type
were faithful to their old creeds in many ways, and lived just as they
had done in the heathen days. Indeed, Langi lived as though white men
had never trod on his isles. He was deeply imbued with the old
commercial spirit. Like the mediæval merchants of Cathay who travelled
far with their scented merchandise, Langi would go wandering from
village to village and isle to isle. True enough, he did not travel with
a camel across mighty deserts, but was his own caravan; for he carried,
by the aid of a large calabash slung over his own hump, not sandalwood,
topazes, diamonds, and opals for mummies’ eyes, but set off with pink
shells, corals, tappa-cloth, and magic charms that had been warmed by
the soft bosoms of mighty queens on their wedding-nights. These charms
were small precious stones that he ran through his fingers whilst
mumbling his pagan prayers.
“What may they be, those little shining stones, O mighty O Le Langi?”
said I one night, as he trickled the gems through his fingers and gazed
in a most mysterious way on the stars. He then informed me that they
were the old magic jewels of the ancient Samoan dynasty, and their value
was beyond all price. It turned out that they had once been threaded on
the skeins of a maiden’s hair so that they might be warmed on the virgin
bosom of her whom a king was about to take to wife. It appeared that on
the eve of the wedding the royal bride slept with the stones warm on her
bosom, and that the warmth imparted to them was the sapphire and ruby
light which shone in their depths as Langi ran them through his fingers.
One may wonder how O Le Langi obtained possession of the magic Crown
jewels of the old Samoan dynasty; but he was a true scribe and,
possibly, knew the ropes. Even in my time, kings and queens were not too
severe in Court etiquette. Here I will simply say that, through
possessing a bottle of the best Holland gin, I have received the highest
Court honours from South Sea Royalty. Indeed, I was once offered a
princess’s hand in marriage, as well as being presented with the
“freedom of the pagan city,” because the half-blind old king (in the
Paumotou group) had been told by his head chief that I had a flask of
the best Jamaica rum in my coat pocket. I seldom visited South Sea
Royalty without a bottle of gin on my person.
Langi never tired of expatiating on the beauty of the Samoan and
Marquesan maidens of his youth. He would lift his chin to the sky, and
curse the day when the maids were forced by the missionaries to wear the
Europeans’ cast-off clothing.
“Ugh! O Papalagi of the spirit-finger, we no do cover the flowers with
stink-cloth and so hide the loveliness of their leaves; then why, I say,
should new-time fool-men cover nicer girls, women, and mans down to
feets?”
So raved O Le Langi, as I sympathetically muttered: “True! true, O
mighty Langi!”
But it must be admitted that the long pink and blue-striped
night-gown-like attire of the maids suited them admirably. It was a
pretty sight to see a flock of native girls running along the shore
sands, delighting in the windy dishevelment, as they stooped and
clutched the gowns that were lifted from their ankles as the warm,
seductive winds blew in. And it must be confessed that many maids who
delighted in brown stockings would sit out on the shore reefs purposely
to court the flirtatious of the winds as the handsome native youths
passed by.
Though I have recorded the aforesaid incidents, they appear trivial
enough when I think of the wonders of pagan life and the poetic mystery
of a South Sea forest that flashes on the inward eye. I myself have more
than once completely lost my civilized individuality and become part of
the South Sea forest scene. I remember that O Le Langi once took me away
to a secret witch-hut in the forest near Mootua. Sunset had already
thrown the silent wooded depths into deep shadow when Langi, who was
creeping along just ahead of me, heard a suspicious noise, and suddenly
stood perfectly still: his tattooed wrinkled form had become a part of
the forest! his arms instinctively bent, twisted at the elbows,
represented two short, broken branch stumps. Lo! he was no longer O Le
Langi, but was a gnarled spotted tree-trunk with blinkless eyes and
carved to resemble man, apparently lifeless, as he stood with ears alert
among the aged banyan stems! Well, just as Langi’s primitive instincts
came to his assistance and made him unrecognizable, I too have become a
part of the forest. I do not say that I have turned into a human
tree-stump; but I have stood alone in the silent depths and felt my
inner life become one with the old trees around me. It was as though my
conscious life was splashed in spiritual colours over the leaves. I felt
some old sense exude from my being, like warm blood, and dye the forest
depth with the sunset’s golden glory and poetic mystery that lay hushed
on the branched luxuriant tropical growth about me.
Of O Le Langi’s musical ability I can say but little. It would require a
genius to describe the universal music of his gifts. He was a true
primitive literary man and, therefore, like most true literary men, was
a musician in the deeper meaning of that word. Langi could hear the
grandeur of Creation’s harmony and that still, small voice of humanity
that cannot possibly express itself by fiddling on catgut or blowing on
brass. I can only say that Langi wrote a great symphony that my memory
has vainly striven to play in these after years. The memory of his face
and deep-set, poetic eyes seems to me as of some weird, conscious
embodiment of all the sublimity of the rugged mountains and sunlit
palms, the unheard harmonies of the moon-ridden seas and lagoons from
Samoa to the Solomons, and again from Fiji to Tahiti and the far-off
Poutomous. Those old forests are, to me, O Le Langi’s now dead whitening
bones, where through the warm sea-winds whistle wonderful legends that
his tongue once uttered forth.
It was years after that I went to Apia again and stood by his grave. It
is situated by Safata village. I noticed that they had placed a wooden
cross over the spot, and on it was written:
“Here lies O Le Langi.
Died Feb. 14, 1908.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
He had undoubtedly been buried by the residential ecclesiastics; and the
spiritual text chosen by them for his memorial cross showed, to me at
least, that missionaries often speak great truths about dead men.
* * * * *
I had it in my mind to finish this chapter with a critical discourse on
native and European styles of music; but I feel that I am not able to do
the subject justice. I am too liable to be influenced by the maze of
melodies that are always playing in the great invincible orchestral
world of my memory. There are some, too, who would consider my taste for
music decidedly vulgar. Indeed, one night, whilst stopping at an old inn
on my north-west travels, I heard a barrel-organ being played outside on
the main country road. Looking out of the window, I saw a
melancholy-visaged, white-whiskered, weird-looking foreigner turning the
handle of a derelict barrel-organ that stood on one leg. It was an old
melody that it played, a ballad that I had been familiar with in my
childhood. Its dismal groan thrilled my soul. It took me across the
years! I heard the laughter of my brothers and sisters and the forgotten
strummings of the old piano. The old inn was transmuted—it stood on the
grey night-hills of another age. I peeped through the window-blind and
saw that weird old organ-grinder, just visible by the mingy gleam of the
one lamp-post’s flickering light. He had a strange look about him. He
wore a most suitable slouched hat, too! He seemed to me some ambassador
of Fate who had been sent out of the night to appeal to my soul. I
fancied that the stars and the moon went round as he turned that handle.
“Play on! Play on!” I gasped mentally; and so the vision of sight and
sound continued, yes, as I listened to the grand opera of my existence.
The semi-sad, half-gay ballad that he played touched my heart-strings;
the stars waved bright hands, dead laughter and beautiful,
half-forgotten voices of long ago murmured to the wailing accompaniment
of the poplar-trees that surely sighed over old memories just across the
road. I even saw the ghost of the little, curly-headed Italian
troubadour girl creep into our old front garden again, and once more
commence to play “Santa Lucia” on her accordion. What _maestro_ ever
played as soulfully as she played for my ears?—Her voice? Oh, music
inexpressibly beautiful! Ah, the cleverness of that surreptitious
special smile for me, as she peered sideways through her thrush-brown
tresses up at our castle window! I thought of my passion for her, of my
betrothal to that pretty, red-rose-lipped vagabondess of the south when
I was ten years old; of my austere father’s wrath when our plans for the
elopement were discovered, of my mother’s horror—and of my shame! Alas!
Let men and women go to the grand opera, let the mighty cathedral organs
of the world thunder and moan till their hearts are touched; but oh,
give me a one-legged barrel-organ under the poplar trees outside the
window of some old inn—playing “Santa Lucia” after dark!
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