The Parc de Bougainville--Ivan Stroganoff--He tells me the history
of Tahiti--He berates the Tahitians--Wants me to start a newspaper.
In the parc de Bougainville I sat down on a bench on which was an
old European. He was reading a tattered number of "Simplicissimus,"
and held the paper close to his watery eyes. I said, "Good morning"
and he replied in fluent though accented English.
His appearance was eccentric. He was stout, and with a rough, white
beard all over his face and neck, and even on his chest. He wore a
frock coat and a large cow-boy hat of white felt. His sockless feet
were in old base-ball shoes of "eelskin," which were of the exact
color of his coat, a dull green, like moldy, dried peas. Apparently
the coat was his only garment; but it was capacious, and came almost
to his knobby knees. Missing buttons down its front were replaced by
bits of cord or rope. The pockets were stuffed with papers, mangos,
and a hunk of bread. A stump of lead-pencil was behind his ear. His
hair, a dusty white, met the frayed collar of the coat, and through
the temporary gaps which he made in its length to cool his body,
I saw it like a gnarled and mossy tree. His hands were grimy and
his nails black-edged, but there was intellect in his eye, and a
broken force in his huddled, loosed attitude. He was not decrepit,
or with a trace of humility, but had the ease of the philosopher
and also his detachment. It was plain he did the best he could with
his garb, and was entirely undisturbed, and perhaps even unmindful,
of its ludicrousness. He was as serene as Diogenes must have been
when he crawled naked from his tub into the sun.
We talked first of the horses in the lagoon a dozen yards from us,
their grooms or their owners submerging them, and squatting on the
ground to chat as the horses wallowed willingly in five feet of salt
water. We agreed that the Tahitians were as bad drivers as the Chinese,
and that they were, wittingly or unwittingly, cruel to their beasts of
burden. This led to a discussion of native traits, and he was caustic
in his castigation of the Tahitians. He asked me my name and what
brought me to Tahiti; and when, wanting to be as honest-spoken as he,
I said, "Romance, adventure," he burst out that I was crazy.
"I have been here seventeen years," he said bitterly--"me, Ivan
Stroganoff, who was once happy as secretary to the governor of
Irkutsk! I was better off when I was on the Merrimac fighting the
Monitor, or with Mosby, the guerilla, than I am in this accursed
island. I think a man is mad who can leave Tahiti and stays here. I
wish I could go away. I would like to die elsewhere. I am eighty years
old, I starve here, and I sleep in a chicken-coop in the suburbs."
"You are lodged exactly as was Charlie Stoddard, who wrote 'South
Sea Idylls,'" I interposed.
"They have lied always, those writers about Tahiti," said Ivan
Stroganoff. "Melville, Loti, Moerenhout, Pallander, your Stevenson,--I
don't know that Stoddard,--all are meretricious, with their pomp of
words and no truth. I have comparisons to make with other nations. I
am more than sixty years a traveler, and I am here seventeen years
without cessation, in hell all the time."
"You Russians always like the French. How about their achievements
here?" I questioned, hoping to lift his shade of melancholy.
"The French?" he repeated. "They are brigands and weak governors. They
have been in Tahiti four generations. Do you want to know how they
got hold here? A monarchy, a foolish Louis, sent a marine savant
and soldier named Dumont D'Urville to the South Seas with the casual
orders:
"'D'apprivoiser les hommes, et de rendre les femmes un peu plus
sauvages;' to tame the men and make the women a little more savage. The
French did both, and took all of this part of the world they could
find unseized by Europe, and tamable, at not too great a shedding
of French blood. They said that it was their duty to restore Temoana
his kingdom in the Marquesas Islands, eight hundred miles from here,
northward, Temoana had been a singer of psalms at the Protestant
mission in his valley of Tai-o-hae, in the island of Nukahiva, a
victim of shanghaiers, a cook on a whaler, a tattooed man in English
penny shows, a repatriate, a protege of the Catholic archbishop of the
Marquesans, and finally, through the influence of the Roman church,
a king. He worked damned hard for the French flag and the church,
and the generous colonial bureau of France paid his widow a pension
of ten dollars a month until she died of melancholy among the nuns. I
knew her and I knew men who knew him. He was given a gorgeous uniform
of gold lace by his promoters, which I think killed him, though when
he sweated, he would strip to his handsomely marked skin and sit
naked in the breeze. The queen never wore more than a diaper or a gown.
"With the Marquesas Islands taken, the French warships came to
Tahiti. French Catholic priests had been deported from here because the
Protestants were already in possession, and objected to competition,
saying that the priests were children of Beelzebub, and taught false
doctrines and morals. The Queen of Tahiti, whose dynasty the Protestant
missionaries had created, advised the pope's men to seek a heathen
people not already worshiping the true God. The zealous priests
who had come with explicit commands to found a mission in Tahiti,
launched the curse of Rome upon the king, the Protestant ministers,
and especially upon Mr. Pritchard, the British consul and the queen's
physician and spiritual adviser.
"Pritchard had the interests of England and the Lord at heart, and
his whispers in the queen's ear sent the earnest priests aboard a ship
bound for a distant port. They complained, and the French admiral then
arrived and pointed his guns at the palace and the Protestant mission,
and demanded thirty thousand dollars for the insult to the French flag;
and for the jibe at the pope, the matching of every Protestant church
in the islands, by a Catholic edifice. The queen had a panic and fled
to Moorea in a canoe. The admiral then put Consul Pritchard in jail
for ten days, and after chastening his mood, put him on an English
ship at sea homeward bound. France and England were showing their
teeth at each other over more important differences, which ended in
a revolution in Paris and a change of kings, so that the admiral had
his way. The queen came back, the priests established their mission
and their churches, and the Tahitians with any blood in them went to
war again. The French built forts about the island, and killed off
with their guns all the natives they could get sight of. Then they
took all the other islands around here that England didn't have,
declared Tahiti had to be a protectorate in 1843, and in 1880 gave
King Pomaré Fifth twelve thousand dollars a year to let them annex
his kingdom. You see, after all, his crown was made by the British
puritans, and taken from him by the French or Romish Church."
The aged Russian laughed in his huge whiskers. He fished in the rear
of his frock and produced the stump of a cigar, for which I yielded
a match.
"I found that on the steps of the Roman Catholic bishop's carriage,
which was standing near here an hour ago," he said. "They'll tell
you that you will burn in hell; but they smoke here, and good Havana
tobacco."
"I think it's a pity the Tahitians weren't left alone," I asserted.
He gave me a look such as Diogenes might have given the man who stood
in his sunlight. He lit his cigar-end, puffed it diligently for a
minute, and then said arbitrarily:
"The Tahitian is, first, a coward, afraid to fight the white; but
if he can, in a group or by secret, kill or hurt you, he will. He
is treacherous, and the more he pretends to be your friend, the more
he connives to cheat you. I should have said first of all that he is
lazy, but that is not to be disputed. He was corrupt to begin with,
and religion accentuates every evil passion in him. He is a profound
hypocrite, and yet a puritan for observance of the ceremonies and
interdictions of his faith. He has more guile than a Japanese guide,
and in land deals can skin a Moscow Jew. He will sell you land and
get the money, and later prove that his father or brother is the real
owner, and that relation will do the same, and you will pay several
times for the same land. In the Paumotus, where the missionaries are
like a swarm of gnats, this deception is threefold as bad."
"But the Tahitians are at least generous," I broke in.
Stroganoff combed his whiskers with a twig of the flamboyant tree
under which we sat. He glared at me.
"Generous! If you have money they will overwhelm you with presents,
looking for a double return; but if you are poor, they will treat
you as dirt under their feet. I know, for I am poor, and I live among
them. They are like those mina birds here, which will steal the button
off your coat if you do not guard it."
"Does not Christianity improve them?"
"No. The combats between Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons ended all
hope of that. They are never sincere except when they become fanatics,
and even then they never lose their native superstitions. Beliefs in
the ghosts of Tahiti, the tupapau, ihoiho, and varua ino, are common
to all of them."
"My dear Mr. Stroganoff," I expostulated, "your czars believed
in icons. My grandmother believed in werewolves and banshees, and
we burned blessed candles and sprinkled holy water in our houses
on All Souls' night to keep away demons. I have seen a clergyman,
educated in Paris and Louvain, exorcising devils with bell, book,
and candle in Maryland, in one of the oldest and proudest cities of
the United States. I have seen the American Governor-General of the
Philippines carrying a candle in a procession in honor of a mannikin
from a shrine at Antipolo, near Manila. Why, I could tell you--"
"Please, please, let me talk," Ivan Stroganoff interrupted. "What I
say is true, nevertheless. The Tahitian has not one good quality. He
is not to be compared with the American negro for any desirable trait."
"Do you know the negro?" I asked.
The old man grunted. He relit his cigar, now only an inch long,
and said:
"I was on the Merrimac when she fought the Monitor in two
engagements. I was a sailor on other Confederate men-of-war. I was
one of Colonel Mosby's guerillas, and was wounded with them. I have
lived thirteen years in the United States. I know the coon well. I
fought to keep him a slave."
"You are not an American?"
"I am a Russian, an anarchist once, and now I am for Root and Lodge,
the stand-pats. I lived in Russia in its darkest days, under several
czars, when your life was the forfeit of a wink. I was a lawyer there,
a politician, an intrigant. I knew Bebel and Jaurès and the men before
them. I lived in Germany many years, in France, in England, anywhere,
everywhere. I first came to New York from Siberia. I was broke. The
Civil War was on. There were agents of Lee and Jeff Davis in New York
seeking sailors. They offered lots of money,--thousands,--and I went
along, smuggled into the South by an underground road."
Stroganoff threw away the shreds of tobacco, now a mere fiery wafer
that threatened his mouth's seine of silver strands. He put his hand
in his Prince Albert and scratched his stomach.
"Mr. Stroganoff," I queried, with a moral tide rising, "how could
you join in a life-and-death issue like that of the Civil War, and
kill men without hatred of their cause in your heart?"
He patted my shoulder.
"My dear young American," he replied, "you join anything, even a
sheriff's posse, into which you are dragged, and have a bullet from
the other side slit your ear, or a round shot bang against your deck,
and you'll soon convince yourself that you are in the right, or,
anyway, that your adversary is a scoundrel. I handled a gun on the
Merrimac in Hampton Roads when that cheese-box of a Monitor rattled
her solid shot on our slippery sides. I was two years in that damned
un-Civil War, and as I started on the Southern side, I stayed on
it. I left the navy to go with John Mosby and burn houses. When
the war was over, and I recovered from my wound, I went to 'Frisco
and crossed to Siberia, and thus back to Moscow. No, I never was an
exile in Siberia or in a Russian prison. I knew and worked for the
leaders of the old Nihilists. I was with them till I knew them, and
then I saw they were selfish and fakers. I knew the socialist chiefs
in France and Germany, the fathers of the present movement there. I
was red-hot for the cause until I knew them, and I quit."
He sat meditatively for a few moments.
"I'm all but eighty years old," the raider of the '60's continued
sorrowfully. "I work now for Chinese, preparing their mail, their
custom-house papers, and orders. I scrape along like a watch-dog in a
sausage factory, getting sufficient to eat, but fearful all the time
that the job will kill me. Most of the time I live a few kilometers
from Papeete, toward Fa'a, and come in to town about steamer-time. I
sleep in the chicken-coop or anywhere. I make about forty francs a
month." He stamped upon the grass. "I take it you are a journalist,
and, do you know, what is needed here most is publicity. Graft
permeates the whole scheme. Mind you, there are no secrets. You
could not whisper anything to a cocoanut-tree but that the entire
island would know it to-morrow. But there is no open publicity. Start
a newspaper!"
"In what language?" I demanded, interested.
"Huh? That's it. If in French, only the French would read it; and if
in Tahitian, the French won't touch it; and English is known only
by the Chinese and the few British and Americans here. I hate that
Tahitian. I don't know a word of it after seventeen years. Say what you
will, Roosevelt made them stand around. I liked him for many things;
but, after all, the old order must stand, and Root is the boy for
me. This fellow Wilson is a regular pedagogue."
"But they have newspapers here?" I asked.
"Newspapers? They call them that."
He stood up and searched in the pockets of his voluminous coat,
which he opened. I saw that the lining was of silk, but now worn and
torn. He brought out a roll of papers.
"Here is 'La Tribune de Tahiti,'" he said. "It is edited by
Jean Delpit, the lawyer whose offices are next to the Bellevue
Restaurant. It's a monthly, published in San Francisco, and has a brief
summary of world events, besides articles on the administrative affairs
of Tahiti. It's against the Government. Then there's 'Le Liberal,'
a socialist journal, with Eugène Brunschwig editor, which pours hot
shot into the Government. Look at his announcement! Do you understand
that? He is fierce. He is an anarchist and wants to be bought up. Of
course he is attacking from outside Tahiti.
"There is no newspaper printed here except the 'Journal Officiel'
which, of course, is not a newspaper, but a gazette of governmental
notices, etc. The Government has its own printing-office, but if
these other, the 'Tribune' and the 'Liberal,' had establishments
here, they would be raided and closed, for they would hardly be
allowed to criticize the Government as harshly as they do. The
'Tribune' is in French and Tahitian, the 'Liberal' and the 'Journal
Officiel' in French. One time it was recommended that the official
paper might be more popular if it had some fiction for the natives,
so they printed a translation of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,'
but everybody laughed, so it was dropped.
"The Mormons have the best paper here. It is a monthly, too. There
is plenty need here for a fearless newspaper. The faults, weaknesses,
and venality of the Government call for publicity, but I'm afraid the
journalist might soon find himself in prison. You can do nothing. The
fault is in this damned climate--la fièvre du corail. Paul Deschanel,
senator of France, who wrote a book on this island without ever
leaving his chair in Paris, says:
"In presence of the apparent facts one is forced to ask himself
if there is not in the climate of this enchanted Tahiti, in the
soft air that one breathes, a force sweet but invincible which at
length penetrates the soul, enervates the will and enfeebles all
sense of usefulness or right, or the least energy necessary to make
them triumph.
"It is this spirit, without any harmony, bereft of all real cordiality
between neighbors, of family and family, which one must find in the
ambient air and which is called the coral fever."
"It torments these French, former sailors or petty officials gone into
trade or speculation, with delusions and ambitions of grandeur. There
is no remedy. The King of Apamama said it all when he divided the
whites into three classes, 'First, him cheat a litty; second, him
cheat plenty; and third, him cheat too much.'"
Stroganoff got on his feet, rubbed his knees to limber them, and
began to move off slowly toward Fa'a, his place of abode.
"But, Mr. Stroganoff," I called to him, "you said all that about the
Tahitians, also."
The Russian octogenarian drew an over-ripe mango from his skirt, and
bit into it, with dire results to his whiskers and coat,--it should
be eaten only in a bathtub,--and replied wearily:
"I except nobody here."