_Honolulu_, _June_ 1889.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I am just home after twelve days journey to Molokai,
seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only say that the
sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion strung me too high
to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights. I used to ride over
from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the
cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my
left), go to the Sisters’ home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a
game of croquet with seven leper girls (90° in the shade), got a little
old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired
enough, but not too tired. The girls have all dolls, and love dressing
them. You who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who know so
many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an acceptable gift to
send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend Sister Maryanne, Bishop
Home, Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.
I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be
repeated: yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor (strange as it
may seem) loved life more than in the settlement. A horror of moral
beauty broods over the place: that’s like bad Victor Hugo, but it is the
only way I can express the sense that lived with me all these days. And
this even though it was in great part Catholic, and my sympathies flew
never with so much difficulty as towards Catholic virtues. The pass-book
kept with heaven stirs me to anger and laughter. One of the sisters
calls the place ‘the ticket office to heaven.’ Well, what is the odds?
They do their darg and do it with kindness and efficiency incredible; and
we must take folk’s virtues as we find them, and love the better part.
Of old Damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I think
only the more. It was a European peasant: dirty, bigoted, untruthful,
unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual candour and
fundamental good-humour: convince him he had done wrong (it might take
hours of insult) and he would undo what he had done and like his
corrector better. A man, with all the grime and paltriness of mankind,
but a saint and hero all the more for that. The place as regards scenery
is grand, gloomy, and bleak. Mighty mountain walls descending sheer
along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front
of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one viridescent
cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory
edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao
and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing
machines upon a beach; and the population—gorgons and chimaeras dire.
All this tear of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day after I got
away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up into the
mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the figures: I should
guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit for what residents allege;
and I was riding again the day after, so I need say no more about health.
Honolulu does not agree with me at all: I am always out of sorts there,
with slight headache, blood to the head, etc. I had a good deal of work
to do and did it with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have
been gaining strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging. By the
time I am done with this cruise I shall have the material for a very
singular book of travels: names of strange stories and characters,
cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian poetry,—never was so
generous a farrago. I am going down now to get the story of a
shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a murderer:
there is a specimen. The Pacific is a strange place; the nineteenth
century only exists there in spots: all round, it is a no man’s land of
the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations,
virtues and crimes.
It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill you
were, I should be now on my way home. I had chartered my schooner and
made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite news. I feel
highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry you a little. Our
address till further notice is to be c/o R. Towns and Co., Sydney. That
is final: I only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may now
publish it abroad.—Yours ever,