Honolulu—King Lunalilo—Chinese Leprosy—Kooma’s Reminiscences of Father
Damien—Molokai—The Leper-Hunters—Father Damien at Molokai—Robert
Stevenson’s Open Letter to Dr C. M. Hyde
AFTER Samoa I think the Sandwich Isles are the most attractive islands
in the Pacific. They are mountainous and the summits of
Hawaii—pronounced Ha-wy-ee—rise to fourteen or fifteen thousand feet.
All the islands of the group are volcanic, and rich both in live and
extinct craters. I should not be surprised if some day the bowels of the
Sandwich Group suddenly exploded and blew the isles to smithereens!
When, from the sea, you sight the coast, its promontories covered with
coco-palms and gorgeous tropical trees, waving over slopes that lead
down to lazy, shore-curling waves, you think of the Biblical Garden of
Paradise. Native hut homes, conical-shaped, with tiny verandahs, peep
out of the bamboo and clumps of bananas beneath mighty bread-fruit
trees.
I stayed several weeks in the Sandwich Group. The natives are mirthful
and well dressed, far in advance of the Marquesan and Solomon islanders.
They are all Christians, but decidedly immoral according to European
codes. Honolulu is a well-shaded city, with the spires of advanced
civilisation rising. Missionaries are there in plenty, and possibly they
feel thankful that barbarian ideas of virtue have given them a
profession on islands of tropical beauty, whereon they can live in
extreme comfort while they work among, and are kind to, the natives.
While there I saw the palace of the Hawaiian queen, who I think was the
widow of King Kale-Conalain. She was as polished as a Parisian prima
donna. I also saw the new king, Lunalilo, a fine-looking Hawaiian, six
feet high, full-lipped and very majestic-looking. He was dressed in a
frock-coat and fashionable felt hat. As he appeared before the people
and stood on the palace steps, the crowds waved and cheered as the
British do to their King and Queen.
The Hawaiian climate is healthy; but Chinese leprosy attacks the natives
and the white population, which consists of French, English, Kanakas
negroes, Chinamen and ex-convicts. Swarms of mosquitoes find the
Sandwich Isles a happy hunting ground for their race, and are one of its
drawbacks.
I toured on the island steamer _Kilanea_ to all the various isles, and
then stopped near Honolulu with Kooma, who was a Hawaiian. He was an old
man, yet straight figured, well tattooed and with intelligent eyes. His
high brow denoted intellectual qualities which were usually conspicuous
through their absence from the heads of his race. Hawaiians are like all
the South Sea Islanders, and have a deeply rooted hatred for work. As
they have embraced Christianity, heathen songs have ceased, and now,
like caged birds on the polished perches of civilisation, they sit and
quote, parrot-like, all that the missionaries teach them.
Kooma at that time had no calling. He was aged, and had reared up a
large family, and his athletic sons, who worked on shipping wharves at
Honolulu, repaid Kooma for his past kindness. He had several married
daughters also. I was not very well off at the time and gladly accepted
the old Hawaiian’s offer to let me occupy rooms in his home at a charge
that nicely suited the state of my exchequer.
Kooma had known Father Damien[4] intimately, that heroic leper priest
who had devoted his life to combating heathenism and nursing the lepers
on the Isle of Molokai, and had, a year or so before, died of the
dreaded disease. So I was fortunately able to hear, directly from him,
details of deep interest to me concerning the life and character of the
celebrated priest, who had emigrated from Louvain as a missionary to
Honolulu, and after a strenuous life of self-sacrifice lay in his grave
near his stricken children on the lonely lazaretto isle, Molokai.
Footnote 4:
Joseph Damien de Veuster was born at Tremeloo, a small peasant village
near Louvain, in 1840; and in peaceful scenes that are now ravaged by
the relentless tramp of materialistic battalions he, as a boy, dreamed
and fed his imagination and intense genius for helping humanity. He
died on 15th April 1889.
It appeared that my friend had known Damien many years before he went to
Molokai; had officiated as his servant, and helped the missionary build
some of the extemporised churches and homes at Kohala and elsewhere.
Sitting by his side, by the window of his humble homestead, while native
children romped under the palms out in the hot sunlight, I talked to
Kooma of many things, and hearing that he had known Father Damien I at
once plied him with questions. “Was Damien a kind and good man, Kooma?”
I asked, and then, with much pride that he was able to give me
information concerning such a popular white man, he blew whiffs of
tobacco through his thin, wrinkled lips and answered: “I have cut wood
and dug hundreds of post-holes for the great white priest, and he no pay
me.”
“Did not pay you?” I said, astonished.
“No,” he answered. “I knew that he was poor and had no money, and so I
work for no wages.” After many questions and replies which dealt chiefly
with the Hawaiian’s own character and importance, I gathered that Kooma
had collected firewood for the lonely priest, and had done many services
for him, both as a friend and a servant, out of a good heart, for it
appeared that Damien was not by any means an austere man or master, but
one who worked with those around him in a spirit of good comradeship.
If anyone imposed upon the natives and Damien heard of it, he would
hotly resent the imposition, and with flashing eyes shout and fight for
their rights as though they were his own children.
Years before Damien went to Molokai a handsome Hawaiian girl, who lived
at Kahalo, loved a Society Island youth who had, with his parents,
emigrated to the Sandwich Islands. The father of the maid disliked the
youth, who was an idle, good-for-nothing fellow, and so would not
encourage the lad’s attentions to his daughter. For some time the lovers
met in secret, for love laughs at locksmiths in Hawaii as well as
elsewhere. One night, as Damien sat by his fireside in his lonely hut
having his humble meal, the love-sick maid appeared at his door.
Crossing her hands on her breast, she bowed, half frightened, and after
much hesitation pleaded to the Catholic Father on the youth’s behalf,
begging him to help her, for she was in great distress; and knowing that
Damien was a great missionary and priest of the white God, she suddenly
fell on her knees and confessed all. She was in trouble through the lad,
and, telling Damien this, she laid her head on his knee and cried
bitterly; for the kindness of his eyes soothed her and made her feel
like a little child. Gently bidding her to rise, the Father told her to
cease from troubling, and said: “Go, my child, home; tell thy father
all; also that thou hast told this thing to me, and I will come and see
him.”
The priest did all that he promised; and the next evening the sinful
youth who had brought sorrow to Ramao, for that was her name, appeared
before the hut door wherein lived Father Damien and, shamefaced, hung
his head for a long while. Kooma, who sat telling me all this, added:
“And the great white Father put the spirit of Christ in Juno’s (the
lad’s) heart; for he became good, and worked hard, and was forgiven for
that which he did, and they were happy and had many children; and I
learnt to love Juno in his manhood, for he was a good father and kind to
the maid who was my daughter!” And, saying all this, he pushed the
window higher up and pointed to a tall maid who, in her ridi robe, came
singing down the track by the jungle ferns. On her bare shoulders she
humped baskets of live fish which had been just caught below in the sea.
“She,” Kooma said, “is my granddaughter, and was the unborn child of the
fallen maid whom Father Damien was kind to”; and there she stood in the
doorway and gazed on us both with laughing, sparkling eyes, bare from
the waist upwards, excepting for a thread of beads hanging at her breast
and a Catholic cross, with a tiny figure of the Virgin Mary, swinging
below. I looked at her with deep interest, and thought of the kindness
of the missionary priest, dead in his grave at Molokai.
Kooma showed me a Bible which had been given him by Father Damien. It
was well thumb-marked, torn, and pencilled by the priest at those pages
where he had made my friend memorise different passages. On the front
leaf was Damien’s signature. On my handing the sacred gift back to the
Hawaiian he carefully placed it at the bottom of his chest; and I knew
that it would be no use my attempting to get it from him, however much I
might want the book. Many interesting things did I learn from my stay at
this native’s house, for night after night I would get him in a
reminiscent mood. It appeared that as time wore on the young priest, who
was a handsome, healthy-looking man, became somewhat subdued and
saddened, and aged considerably in the space of three or four years. At
times he was morose and unapproachable, though afterwards he would gaze
with kindly eyes on those whom he might have spoken to in anger.
“Did he ever go away?” I asked Kooma, and he answered: “Sometimes he
would go for one or two days, and often at night-time go off wandering
alone in the forestlands about his house; and night after night at
sunset he would sit with his chin on his hands and gaze toward the
seaward sunset, with eyes that saw far away.” And then Kooma added: “And
I would say, ‘Master, shall I get thee more firewood?’ and he would not
answer, but would steadily gaze on, and I could see the tears in his
eyes, and I knew that he sorrowed over that which I knew not of.” So
earnest was Kooma’s manner that, as he told me these things, I saw the
past, the lonely hut home and the exiled priest gazing into the sunset,
sick at heart as he dreamed of his childhood’s home across the world. I
wondered somewhat, and thought over the stories Raeltoa of Samoa had
told me, which I have written about in my earlier book of reminiscences.
For Raeltoa the Samoan had also known Father Damien, as, of course,
hundreds of natives did, and had told me, unasked, of his kindness and
heart-felt sorrow for those who hid from the leper captors as they
searched for the stricken people.
For leprosy had wiped out thousands of the natives of the Sandwich
Islands and elsewhere. When once the victims revealed the
purplish-yellow patch on their bodies they were doomed, for no cure was,
or is, known for the scourge of leprosy.
In Kooma’s house dwelt a chief who lived in Oahu. He had elephantiasis,
which had swelled his legs to three times their normal size. He used to
sit under the pandanus-trees reading his Bible as I talked with Kooma,
and I was extremely pleased to hear, on inquiring, that his complaint
was not contagious; for when he squatted with his knees up in front of
him, so swollen were his limbs that his body and head were hidden from
view.
But to go back to Kooma’s reminiscences. “What happened before Father
Damien went away to the Leper Isle of Molokai?” I asked, and Kooma
answered: “He became most sad, and then wished many of my people who had
the leper patch good-bye, and promised to go one day and see them, and
made them happier with smiles and promises; and often he would go a long
way off to comfort those whose relatives had been taken to the dreaded
lazaretto.”
“Did you see Father Damien after he had gone to the lazaretto?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied; “and he looked most sad and very, very much older:
and I asked him of my sister, whom he had seen at Molokai, for she was
stricken with the plague, and he said, ‘Kooma, your sister is happy; the
spirit is well, though the flesh, which is nothing, is ill.’”
Then Kooma told me much of the doings of the Flemish priest: how he had
toiled incessantly for the welfare of his native children, ministering
to their souls; and how his influence had soothed their hearts, hearts
that still half nursed the old traditions; for the Hawaiians were
originally a wild race, and still their songs told of heathen mythology,
of mighty warriors, of love and ravishment, and of cannibalistic times,
so Damien’s task of reforming them was no easy one.
For many years the dreadful scourge had crept, with its fatal grip, over
the whole of the Sandwich Group, and as time went on it became so
prevalent that the Hawaiian Government decided that the best step to
take to stay the horror of fetid rot which was annihilating the race was
to isolate all those afflicted with the disease and send them to
Molokai.
Molokai was a lonely, half-barren isle surrounded by rough, beaten
shores of crag and fortress reef that for ever withstood the charges of
the seas as eternally they clashed, broke and moaned through the caves
of the death-stricken isle, echoing and mingling with the moan of
memories and deathly cries that faded on the dying lips of the
plague-stricken men, women and children who rotted till they became
lipless skeletons, still alive in their tomb—the grey, gloomy lazaretto
of the Leper Isle. Terrible was the grief of the natives as those
employed to separate the lepers sought out all those who were spotted
with the livid leper patch. Father Damien’s heart was sick within him as
he heard the lamentations of forced farewells, as, standing by their
captors, helpless men and women, gazing over their shoulders, looked
into the eyes of those they loved and went away for ever!
Father Damien, who had devotedly administered comfort to the stricken
ones who were scattered over the isle, saw and felt deeply the grief of
those around him; but he was powerless to help the unhappy people; he
knew the enforced separation was decreed by the authorities, and was for
the best.
It was well known that many of the unfortunate victims were hidden away
in the forest-lands, or in caves by the shores: maidens secreting their
lovers, and lovers hiding the pleading maids, husbands their wives, and
wives their children. Often in the night, as the dread inquisition
discovered some trembling, hidden victim, a scream would break the
silence of the jungle as the victim was muffled, gagged and taken away;
for the leper-hunters were not the tenderest and most poetical of men.
Money was their reward for all the lepers they captured, and the men
hired for the job were chosen for their evil reputations and the
expression of brutality on their dark faces. Father Damien’s heart was
indeed wretched over the fate of his children.
As Kooma the Hawaiian sat telling me all this, and the shadows fell and
the island nightingale sang up in the pandanus-trees, I watched his
earnest face and listened attentively, for I knew that I was hearing the
truth of much that was hidden from the world. I learnt that the sad
priest would sit at night for hours under the coco-palms, deep in
thought, and have no sleep, so troubled was he over the fate of the
flock that he loved; and many times did he help the afflicted ones, and
long and deeply did he hesitate ere he told the authorities that which
he had to tell, and which his tender heart stayed him from telling. As
Kooma told me this I saw that his memories of the priest were sincere
and loving enough. Then he called out “Pooline! Pooline!” and a native
girl came and poked her head in at the doorway; it was his
granddaughter, whom Father Damien had christened. They had called her
after Damien’s sister Pauline (which they pronounced Pooline); for the
priest often spoke of his sister in Flanders, and told Kooma that some
day she would come out to him to share his work and help him in it, and
several times he wrote home and asked her to think the matter over.
Few were surprised when at length Father Damien volunteered to go to
Molokai and administer faith and comfort to his lost children in exile.
He taught them to be patient as he walked amongst them and crept by the
lazaretto huts of death, knitting their shrouds and gazing with kind
eyes on their faces till they ceased to see and feel, and he buried
them. Lonely indeed those nights must have been as, alone with grief and
silence, his bent form hammered and hammered, beating out the muffled
notes that drove in coffin nails: for he made the last beds of his dead
children, digging their graves and burying with his own hands many
scores of the stricken dead, until he at last succumbed to the scourge
himself. He lies buried with those he died for, and has, let us hope,
found a reward for his self-sacrifice in heaven.
From Kooma I heard much of Damien’s true character, his love of justice
and his impulsiveness in hastening to help the weak, regardless of all
consequences. Once, while Father Damien was eating his supper, a
Hawaiian appeared at the door and said, “Master, trouble has befallen me
and my home”; and then told the priest of a tragedy that had occurred. A
native girl through jealousy had stabbed another who had sought her
lover, and was either hiding in the forest or shore caves or had killed
herself. All night the native and Father Damien searched, and at length
the girl was found almost lifeless, covered in blood, on the shore reefs
seaward from Kilanea, her body lying half on the sands and half in the
waves. She had slashed herself and had nearly bled to death. Damien
carried the girl for miles in his arms, bandaged her and saved her life;
also the life of the girl she had stabbed so viciously in her jealousy.
When they were both well again he brought them together, made them
embrace each other and swear to forget all, with the result that they
became greater friends through being erstwhile enemies. Each secured a
lover to her liking, and ever blessed the great Father who had
befriended them instead of handing them over to the authorities at
Honolulu—authorities whom Damien hated, for they moved on material lines
and looked upon cruel force as the best means of discouraging crime, and
on kindness as insanity more dangerous than the crime it forgave.
In a corner of Father Damien’s lonely little homestead he kept the
cherished letters that arrived from his homeland across the sea. Night
after night he would take those letters out and read them through again,
and then tenderly place them in a small pot and hide them beneath his
trestle bed. They were letters from his sister Pauline and other
relatives in Flanders.
One night he sought them and they were missing. Great was Father
Damien’s grief, and even rage flushed his face as he demanded of Kooma
if he knew of their whereabouts. For hours he searched, “and never was
the Master in so great a temper; he look much fierce and his eyes fire
and then cry,” said Kooma, as I listened. “What did he do then?” I
asked. “Did he find the letters?” “Yes,” said Kooma, “he did find
letters: a dog that Father Damien had been kind to had smelt and pawed
them up and run off with the pot, which we found in the scrub. The great
Father was then good to us and did ask me to forgive him for that which
he said; which I did do; and the dog too he forgave; and Father Damien
once more smiled, stroked the shaggy thief, and it sat up, looked at the
Father’s eyes, wagged its tail and was happy.”
I often heard a lot of discussion about Father Damien’s life and work,
sometimes between rough island traders, and sometimes between men of the
conventional middle class. A few of the former had met Father Damien, or
knew those who were acquainted with him, but most of them expressed
opinions from hearsay and the low or high order of their own instincts.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s celebrated open letter to Dr Hyde had much to
do with the popular nature of the controversy and the growing enthusiasm
for the self-sacrifice of the dead priest.
For those who may not know the exact facts I relate them here.
After Father Damien’s death Robert Louis Stevenson, whilst cruising in
the South Seas, happened to read a paper that contained a letter written
by Dr Hyde, of Honolulu, to the Rev. Mr Gage, of Sydney, who in turn
sent it to _The Sydney Presbyterian_ for publication. Here is the
letter:
_To The Rev._ H. B. GAGE.
HONOLULU, _2nd August 1889_.
DEAR BROTHER,—In answer to your inquiries about Father Damien, I
can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the
extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly
philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man,
headstrong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went
there without orders; did not stay at the leper settlement
before he became one himself, but circulated freely over the
whole island (less than half the island is devoted to lepers),
and he came often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and
improvements inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of
Health, as occasion required and means were provided. The
leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and
carelessness.
Others having done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the
Government physicians and so forth, but never with the Catholic
idea of meriting eternal life. Yours, etc.,
C. M. HYDE.
(Published in _The Sydney Presbyterian_, 26th October 1889.)
When Robert Louis Stevenson read the above letter, and the comments upon
it, he was deeply incensed, and wrote a defence of the priest about
which the world knows.
Mr Melville, whom I met at Apia, told me an interesting story about
Robert Louis Stevenson and his championship of Father Damien. While Mr
Melville was a passenger on a ship, the _Lubeck_, I think, he sat near
Stevenson, who was dining in the saloon. The conversation touched on
Father Damien and Dr Hyde’s letter, and when a passenger revealed by his
remarks that he was half willing to believe Hyde, Stevenson almost
shouted and insulted him. The passenger, irritated, persevered with his
opinions and said something further, whereupon Stevenson said: “Some of
you men still make one think of the danger of Christ’s mission and His
risks on earth,” or something to that effect. On this the passenger
answered: “Mr Stevenson, you forget yourself,” and Stevenson immediately
replied: “I would to God that some of you fellows would forget
yourselves and remember the virtues of others.”
When Mr Melville told me this I smiled, for from my own personal
recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson I knew that he did not need a
battalion of supporters to help him maintain his own opinion when he
felt that he upheld a noble purpose: for Stevenson was a fearless,
though gentle soul, even apart from his literary life and work. Indeed
Damien found in him a kindred and worthy champion. Not always are men
able so well to express outwardly that which they beautifully write and
feel.
As I have said, much rumour and discussion followed both Dr Hyde’s
letter and Stevenson’s powerful retaliation, and it was not uncommon for
Catholic and Protestant divines engaged in arguments on the matter to
come even to blows. Now all men admit that Dr Hyde’s letter of
denunciation was indirectly one incentive that drew the attention and
praise of the world at large to the heroism of the martyr priest, and
was responsible for Robert Louis Stevenson’s reply and vindication of
him. Personally I do not think Dr Hyde was as deliberately hypocritical
as Rumour has painted him. Of course this does not imply that Robert
Louis Stevenson’s counter-denunciation of Hyde’s epistle was unjust or
too fierce; he wrote as the first champion voice, and wrote from the
white-hot intensity of indignation over what he felt was a deadly wrong
done to the memory of a great man. This can, too, in the consciousness
of man’s fallibility, be applied to motive on the other side, for Dr
Hyde, of Honolulu, also wrote to his friend, the Rev. Mr Gage, from a
firm belief in his heart that rumour was truth and Father Damien’s
memory was not deserving of “extravagant laudation.” Many others of his
own denomination had devoted their lives to the lepers, both on the
islands and at the lazaretto at Molokai, and so Dr Hyde’s great sin was
in believing that which he was told and remembering the self-sacrifice
of his own brethren who had also toiled on behalf of the lepers.
The voice of Rumour has many forked tongues of envy and the carelessness
of thoughtless scandal. Our religion is founded on the sorrow and
disastrous result of its tongue, for did not Christ suffer crucifixion
through this weakness in mankind? Through doubt and envy to this day
some nations believe one side, and others the other; and are there not
millions now who do not believe in that which our religion is founded
on? Was Dr Hyde so wicked? I for one do not think so. Do we know what he
thought after he had written that mighty atom of a letter? What were his
reflections, misgivings and regrets over his first belief and hasty
conclusions, and over that celebrated blazing challenge of Stevenson’s
to the world, revealing in words of fire the complete vindication of
Damien’s life, work and Christ-like heroic virtue? We can imagine what
he felt like, for we all make mistakes, but not with such drastic
results.
The stern note of intense application to a set purpose reveals in
Stevenson’s letter the fact that he felt that Damien needed an immediate
champion. Stevenson was at heart a Christian man, in the full, true
sense of the word, and I have not the slightest doubt that after his
open letter had fulfilled the purpose which he intended it to fulfil,
and the first heat of his just indignation had cooled down, he himself
would have withdrawn it from publication, if he could have done so, and
let the whole matter slumber; for he of all men would not have wished
vindictive roots to spread and twine about the hearts of men who thus
would strangely nourish the very thoughts that their creed specially
preaches against.
Stevenson well knew man’s weakness, and the bigotry of men who differ on
religious subjects and are opposed to each other by the difference of
creed. Certainly the imputations of undeserved praise which were
suddenly hurled at the self-exiled priest’s reputation only served one
end: to bring out, if possible in brighter relief, the splendid heroism
of Father Damien’s life, both before and after his going back to
Molokai. Even had it been bitterly proved that the Flemish missionary
was not a spiritual saint, but fallible flesh and blood flowing through
earthly channels, which resisted, but did not always overthrow,
temptation, still he would stand before us a beautiful man (and he was a
man); and to do all that he did, and still have the weaknesses of
mankind, makes the martyr stand out greater to our eyes than if he did
his wonderful life’s work through some effortless, inborn virtue of
heavenly inheritance.
The sad peasant priest of Louvain has been dead these many years; he
lived and died without ambition, and only in heaven may know the earthly
fame he achieved. Well may we believe how beautifully he would smile,
forgive and touch with his lips the brows of his erring detractors, with
the same spirit that made him live and die for his fellow-men with the
certainty of one final reward—a stricken leper’s grave in far away
Kalawao, on Molokai Isle.
Out of grey crags by warder-seas they creep
With wailing voices as the stars steal by;
Dead men—fast rotting on dark shores of sleep,
Their earthly eyes still shape the shadowed sky!
Poor skeletons, they moan, laugh, grin and weep;
In loathsome amorous arms some still lie.
Entombed, they curse the sun—Time’s cruel dial
Above that vault—the South Sea Leper Isle.
Hark to the midnight scream! Then silence after
Of desolation voiced by waves that leap
By sepulchres—damp huts of sheltered rafter,
Where dreaming dead men shout thro’ shroudless sleep!
As windy trees wail dreams of long-dead laughter;
As o’er each wattle hut the night winds sweep,
And dying eyes watch ships out o’er the night,
Pass shores of death with port-holes gleaming bright!
’Twas on that Charnel-isle, with watching eyes
He toiled for dead men who still heard the waves
Beat shoreward: saw the South Sea white moonrise
Bathe their-to-be forgotten flowerless graves!
Exiled pale hero-priest! Full oft their cries
Smote his sad listening ears; like unto caves
That voice the mournful tone of ocean’s roll,
Infinity entombed sang in his soul.
Lonely as God, he sat: enthroned o’er pain
Brave music made of desolation’s sorrow,
Christ-like gazed on the deathless, crying slain!
His eyes breathed light—foretelling some bright morrow
Till from their tombs they rose—the dead again!
Dark skeletons of woe, they rose to borrow
Life from Molokai’s hero:—men denied
That leper-priest—like Christ—when Damien died.
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