A PORTRAIT AND A STORY
I have had occasion several times to name the late bishop, Father
Dordillon, "Monseigneur," as he is still almost universally called,
Vicar-Apostolic of the Marquesas and Bishop of Cambysopolis _in
partibus_. Everywhere in the islands, among all classes and races, this
fine, old, kindly, cheerful fellow is remembered with affection and
respect. His influence with the natives was paramount. They reckoned him
the highest of men--higher than an admiral; brought him their money to
keep; took his advice upon their purchases; nor would they plant trees
upon their own land till they had the approval of the father of the
islands. During the time of the French exodus he singly represented
Europe, living in the Residency, and ruling by the hand of Temoana. The
first roads were made under his auspices and by his persuasion. The old
road between Hatiheu and Anaho was got under way from either side on the
ground that it would be pleasant for an evening promenade, and brought
to completion by working on the rivalry of the two villages. The priest
would boast in Hatiheu of the progress made in Anaho, and he would tell
the folk of Anaho, "If you don't take care, your neighbours will be over
the hill before you are at the top." It could not be so done to-day; it
could then; death, opium, and depopulation had not gone so far; and the
people of Hatiheu, I was told, still vied with each other in fine
attire, and used to go out by families, in the cool of the evening,
boat-sailing and racing in the bay. There seems some truth at least in
the common view, that this joint reign of Temoana and the bishop was
the last and brief golden age of the Marquesas. But the civil power
returned, the mission was packed out of the Residency at twenty-four
hours' notice, new methods supervened, and the golden age (whatever it
quite was) came to an end. It is the strongest proof of Father
Dordillon's prestige that it survived, seemingly without loss, this
hasty deposition.
His method with the natives was extremely mild. Among these barbarous
children he still played the part of the smiling father; and he was
careful to observe, in all indifferent matters, the Marquesan etiquette.
Thus, in the singular system of artificial kinship, the bishop had been
adopted by Vaekehu as a grandson; Miss Fisher, of Hatiheu, as a
daughter. From that day, Monseigneur never addressed the young lady
except as his mother, and closed his letters with the formalities of a
dutiful son. With Europeans he could be strict, even to the extent of
harshness. He made no distinction against heretics, with whom he was on
friendly terms; but the rules of his own Church he would see observed;
and once at least he had a white man clapped in gaol for the desecration
of a saint's day. But even this rigour, so intolerable to laymen, so
irritating to Protestants, could not shake his popularity. We shall best
conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all have known some divine
of the old school in Scotland, a literal Sabbatarian, a stickler for the
letter of the law, who was yet in private modest, innocent, genial, and
mirthful. Much such a man, it seems, was Father Dordillon. And his
popularity bore a test yet stronger. He had the name, and probably
deserved it, of a shrewd man in business and one that made the mission
pay. Nothing so much stirs up resentment as the inmixture in commerce of
religious bodies; but even rival traders spoke well of Monseigneur.
His character is best portrayed in the story of the days of his decline.
A time came when, from the failure of sight, he must desist from his
literary labours: his Marquesan hymns, grammars, and dictionaries; his
scientific papers, lives of saints, and devotional poetry. He cast about
for a new interest: pitched on gardening, and was to be seen all day,
with spade and water-pot, in his childlike eagerness, actually running
between the borders. Another step of decay and he must leave his garden
also. Instantly a new occupation was devised, and he sat in the mission
cutting paper flowers and wreaths. His diocese was not great enough for
his activity; the churches of the Marquesas were papered with his
handiwork, and still he must be making more. "Ah," said he, smiling,
"when I am dead what a fine time you will have clearing out my trash!"
He had been dead about six months; but I was pleased to see some of his
trophies still exposed, and looked upon them with a smile: the tribute
(if I have read this cheerful character aright) which he would have
preferred to any useless tears. Disease continued progressively to
disable him; he who had clambered so stalwartly over the rude rocks of
the Marquesas, bringing peace to warfaring clans, was for some time
carried in a chair between the mission and the church, and at last
confined to bed, impotent with dropsy, and tormented with bed-sores and
sciatica. Here he lay two months without complaint; and on the 11th
January 1888, in the seventy-ninth year of his life, and the
thirty-fourth of his labours in the Marquesas, passed away.
Those who have a taste for hearing missions, Protestant or Catholic,
decried, must seek their pleasure elsewhere than in my pages. Whether
Catholic or Protestant, with all their gross blots, with all their
deficiency of candour, of humour, and of common sense, the missionaries
are the best and the most useful whites in the Pacific. This is a
subject which will follow us throughout; but there is one part of it
that may conveniently be treated here. The married and the celibate
missionary, each has his particular advantage and defect. The married
missionary, taking him at the best, may offer to the native what he is
much in want of--a higher picture of domestic life; but the woman at
his elbow tends to keep him in touch with Europe and out of touch with
Polynesia, and to perpetuate, and even to ingrain, parochial decencies
far best forgotten. The mind of the female missionary tends, for
instance, to be continually busied about dress. She can be taught with
extreme difficulty to think any costume decent but that to which she
grew accustomed on Clapham Common; and to gratify this prejudice, the
native is put to useless expense, his mind is tainted with the
morbidities of Europe, and his health is set in danger. The celibate
missionary, on the other hand, and whether at best or worst, falls
readily into native ways of life; to which he adds too commonly what is
either a mark of celibate man at large, or an inheritance from mediaeval
saints--I mean slovenly habits and an unclean person. There are, of
course, degrees in this; and the sister (of course, and all honour to
her) is as fresh as a lady at a ball. For the diet there is nothing to
be said--it must amaze and shock the Polynesian--but for the adoption of
native habits there is much. "_Chaque pays a ses coutumes_," said
Stanislao; these it is the missionary's delicate task to modify; and the
more he can do so from within, and from a native standpoint, the better
he will do his work; and here I think the Catholics have sometimes the
advantage; in the Vicariate of Dordillon, I am sure they had it. I have
heard the bishop blamed for his indulgence to the natives, and above all
because he did not rage with sufficient energy against cannibalism. It
was a part of his policy to live among the natives like an elder
brother; to follow where he could; to lead where it was necessary; never
to drive; and to encourage the growth of new habits, instead of
violently rooting up the old. And it might be better, in the long-run,
if this policy were always followed.
It might be supposed that native missionaries would prove more
indulgent, but the reverse is found to be the case. The new broom sweeps
clean; and the white missionary of to-day is often embarrassed by the
bigotry of his native coadjutor. What else should we expect? On some
islands, sorcery, polygamy, human sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have
been prohibited, the dress of the native has been modified, and himself
warned in strong terms against rival sects of Christianity; all by the
same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. By
what criterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from the
unessential? He swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no play of
mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in the
prohibitions, no advance. To call things by their proper names, this is
teaching superstition. It is unfortunate to use the word; so few people
have read history, and so many have dipped into little atheistic
manuals, that the majority will rush to a conclusion, and suppose the
labour lost. And far from that: These semi-spontaneous superstitions,
varying with the sect of the original evangelist and the customs of the
island, are found in practice to be highly fructifying; and in
particular those who have learned and who go forth again to teach them
offer an example to the world. The best specimen of the Christian hero
that I ever met was one of these native missionaries. He had saved two
lives at the risk of his own; like Nathan, he had bearded a tyrant in
his hour of blood; when a whole white population fled, he alone stood to
his duty; and his behaviour under domestic sorrow with which the public
has no concern filled the beholder with sympathy and admiration. A poor
little smiling laborious man he looked; and you would have thought he
had nothing in him but that of which indeed he had too much--facile
good-nature.[3]
It chances that the only rivals of Monseigneur and his mission in the
Marquesas were certain of these brown-skinned evangelists, natives from
Hawaii. I know not what they thought of Father Dordillon: they are the
only class I did not question; but I suspect the prelate to have
regarded them askance, for he was eminently human. During my stay at
Tai-o-hae, the time of the yearly holiday came round at the girls'
school; and a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu to take the
daughters of that island home. On board of these was Kauwealoha, one of
the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so
common in Hawaii. He paid me a visit in the _Casco_, and there
entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, Kekela, a
missionary in the great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa. It appears that
shortly after a kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver, the boats of an
American whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made
their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Whalon, in the
hands of the natives. The captive, with his arms bound behind his back,
was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to Kekela.
And here I begin to follow the version of Kauwealoha; it is a good
specimen of Kanaka English; and the reader is to conceive it delivered
with violent emphasis and speaking pantomime.
"'I got 'Melican mate,' the chief he say. 'What you go do 'Melican
mate?' Kekela he say.' I go make fire, I go kill, I go eat him,' he say;
'you come to-mollow eat piece.' 'I no _want_ eat 'Melican mate!' Kekela
he say; 'why you want?' 'This bad shippee, this slave shippee,' the
chief he say. 'One time a shippee he come from Pelu, he take away plenty
Kanaka, he take away my son. 'Melican mate he bad man. I go eat him; you
eat piece.' 'I no _want_ eat 'Melican mate!' Kekela he say; and he
_cly_--all night he cly! To-mollow Kekela he get up, he put on blackee
coat, he go see chief; he see Missa Whela, him hand tie' like this.
(_Pantomime_). Kekela he cly. He say chief:--'Chief, you like things of
mine? you like whaleboat?' 'Yes,' he say. 'You like file-a'm?'
(fire-arms). 'Yes,' he say. 'You like blackee coat?' 'Yes,' he say.
Kekela he take Missa Whela by he shoul'a' (shoulder), he take him light
out house; he give chief he whaleboat, he file-a'm, he blackee coat. He
take Missa Whela he house, make him sit down with he wife and chil'en.
Missa Whela all-the-same pelison (prison); he wife, he chil'en in
America; he cly--O, he cly. Kekela he solly. One day Kekela he see ship.
(_Pantomime._) He say Missa Whela, 'Ma' Whala?' Missa Whela he say,
'Yes.' Kanaka they begin go down beach. Kekela he get eleven Kanaka, get
oa' (oars), get evely thing. He say Missa Whela, 'Now, you go quick.'
They jump in whale-boat. 'Now you low!' Kekela he say: 'you low quick,
quick!' (_Violent pantomime, and a change indicating that the narrator
has left the boat and returned to the beach._) All the Kanaka they say,
'How! 'Melican mate he go away?'--jump in boat; low afta. (_Violent
pantomime and change again to boat._) Kekela he say, 'Low quick!'"
Here I think Kauwealoha's pantomime had confused me; I have no more of
his _ipsissima verba_; and can but add, in my own less spirited manner,
that the ship was reached, Mr. Whalon taken aboard, and Kekela returned
to his charge among the cannibals. But how unjust it is to repeat the
stumblings of a foreigner in a language only partly acquired! A
thoughtless reader might conceive Kauwealoha and his colleague to be a
species of amicable baboon; but I have here the antidote. In return for
his act of gallant charity, Kekela was presented by the American
Government with a sum of money, and by President Lincoln personally with
a gold watch. From his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue, I
give the following extract. I do not envy the man who can read it
without emotion.
"When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation,
ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I ran
to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these
benighted people. I gave my boat for the stranger's life This boat
came from James Hunnewell, a gift of friendship. It became the ransom
of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages
who knew not Jehovah. This was Mr. Whalon, and the date, Jan. 14,
1864.
"As to this friendly deed of mine in saving Mr. Whalon, its seed came
from your great land, and was brought by certain of your countrymen,
who had received the love of God. It was planted in Hawaii, and I
brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they
might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is _love_.
"1. Love to Jehovah.
"2. Love to self.
"3. Love to our neighbour.
"If a man have a sufficiency of these three, he is good and holy, like
his God, Jehovah, in His triune character (Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost), one-three, three-one. If he have two and wants one, it is not
well; and if he have one and wants two, this, indeed, is not well; but
if he cherishes all three, then is he holy, indeed, after the manner
of the Bible.
"This is a great thing for your great nation to boast of before all
the nations of the earth. From your great land a most precious seed
was brought to the land of darkness. It was planted here, not by means
of guns and men-of-war and threatenings. It was planted by means of
the ignorant, the neglected, the despised. Such was the introduction
of the word of the Almighty God into this group of Nuuhiwa. Great is
my debt to Americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this
life and to that which is to come.
"How shall I repay your great kindness to me? Thus David asked of
Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States.
This is my only payment--that which I have received of the Lord,
love--(aloha)."
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The reference is to Maka, the Hawaiian missionary, at Butaritari,
in the Gilberts.