[begin page 457]
CHAPTER 67
I still quote from my journal:Ⓐ
I found the nationalⒶ Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and some thirty or forty natives.
It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and
Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of the hall,
with David
Kalakaua (the King’s Chamberlain)Ⓔ and Prince
WilliamⒺ at the head. The President of the Assembly,
hisⒶ Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa,*Ⓐ and the Vice President (the latter a white man,Ⓐ)Ⓔ sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it.
The President is the King’s fatherⒺ. He
is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired, tawnyⒶ old gentleman of eightyⒶ years of age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat
and white vest, and white pantaloons, without
spot, dust or blemish upon them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and
is a man of noble presence. He was a young man and
a distinguished warrior under that terrific fighterⒶ, Kamehameha I, more than half a century ago. A knowledge of his career suggested some such
thought as this:Ⓐ “This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged
at the head of a horde of savages
against other hordes of savages more than a generation and a half agoⒶ, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshippedⒶ wooden images on his devoutⒶ knees; has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices
to woodenⒶ idols, at a time when no missionary’s foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had
never heard of the white man’s
God; has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in
his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by
death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon
the King—and now look at him: an educated
Christian;
*Since dead.Ⓐ
[begin page 458] neatly and handsomely dressed; a
high-minded
Ⓐ, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been
the honored guest of
royalty in Europe
Ⓔ; a man practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government,
and well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical information.
Look at him, sitting there presiding over the
deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified,
statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly
natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had never been out
of it in his lifetime.
How
Ⓐ the experiences of this old man’s
eventful life
Ⓐ shame the cheap inventions of romance!”
Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the GreatⒺ. Under other
monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing genealogies, but
here the opposite is the case—the female
line takes precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I recommend
it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is
easy to know who a man’s mother was, but, etc., etc.Ⓔ
Ⓐ
The christianizing of the natives has hardly
even weakened some of their barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have
just referred to one of these. It is still
a popular belief that if your enemy can get hold of any article belonging to you he
can get down on
his knees over it and pray you to death
Ⓔ. Therefore many a
native gives up and dies merely because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of damaging
prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough at a first glance,
but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit
efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.
In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was customary,
but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women of noble rank had as many as six husbands. A [begin page 459] woman thus supplied did not reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several
months with each in turn. An
understood sign hung at her door during these months. When the sign was taken down,
it meant “Next.”
In those days woman was rigidly taught to “know her place.” Her place was to do
all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and content herself with what
was left after her lord had finished his dinner.
She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of death, to eat with
her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred,
under the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other choice
fruits at any time or in any place. She had to
confine herself pretty strictly to “poi” and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen
seem to have had a sort of groping
idea of what came of woman eating fruit in the GardenⒶ of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances. But the missionaries broke
up this satisfactory arrangement of
things. They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.
The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children alive when the
family
became larger than necessary. The missionaries interfered in this matter too, and
stopped it.
To this day the natives are able to lie
down and die whenever they want to
Ⓔ, whether there is anything the matter with
them or not. If a Kanaka takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can
persuade him to hold on; all the doctors in the
world could not save him.
A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral. If a person
wants to get
rid of a troublesome native, it is only necessary to promise him a fine funeral and
name the hour and he will be on hand to the
minute—at least his remains will.
All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the Great Shark GodⒺ for temporary succor in time of trouble. An
eruptionⒶ of the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of latent
loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface.
It is common report that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian gentleman
as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols
of his fathers for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one
of his christianized natives testified his
emancipation from the thrall of ancient superstition by assisting [begin page 460] to dissect the shark after a fashion
forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture him. He grew
moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin,
refused food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned against
the Great Shark God and could never know peace
any more. He was proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day
or two took to his bed and died, although he showed
no symptom of disease. His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate
within the week. Superstition is ingrained in the
native blood and bone and it is only natural that it should crop out in time of distress.
Wherever one goes in the Islands, he will
find small piles of stones by the wayside, covered with leafy offerings, placed there
by the natives to appease evil spirits or honor
local deities belonging to the mythology of former days.
In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes upon parties
of dusky
maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea without any clothing on and exhibiting
no very intemperate zeal in the matter of hiding
their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up their residence in Honolulu,
the native women would pay their families frequent
friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. It was found a hard matter
to convince them that this was rather
indelicate. Finally the missionaries [begin page 461] provided them with long, loose calico robes, and that ended the
difficulty—for the women would troop through the town, stark naked, with their robes
folded under their arms, march to the
missionary houses and then proceed to dress!Ⓐ The natives soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortly
apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur.
The missionaries imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing
apparel, instituted a general distribution,
and begged the people not to come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they
did not; but the national spirit of unselfishness
led them to divide up with neighbors who were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath
the poor preachers could hardly keep
countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of the reading of a hymn
a brown, stately
dame would sweep up the aisle with a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but
a “stove-pipeⒶ” hat and a pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man’s
shirt, and nothing else;
another one would enter with a flourish, with simply the sleeves of a bright calico
dress tied around her waist and the rest of the
garment dragging behind like a peacock’s tail off duty; a stately “buck” Kanaka would
stalk in with a
woman’s bonnet on, wrong side before—only this, and nothing more; after him would
stride his fellow, with the legs of a
pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of his person untrammeled; in his
rear would come another gentleman simply gotten up
in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vestⒺ. The poor creatures were beaming with
complacency and wholly unconscious of any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed
at each other with happy admiration, and it was
plain to see that the young girls were taking note of what each other had on, as naturally
as if they had always lived in a land of
Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here was the evidence of a dawning civilization.
The spectacle which the congregation
presented was so extraordinary and withal so moving, that the missionaries found it
difficult to keep to the text and go on with the
services; and by and by when the simple children of the sun began a general swapping
of garments in open meeting and produced some
irresistibly grotesque effects in the course of redressing, there was nothing for
it but to cut the thing short with the benediction
and dismiss the fantastic assemblage.
[begin page 462]
In our country, children play “keep house;” and in the same high-sounding but
miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of slender territory
and meagre population, play
“empire.” There is his royal Majesty the KingⒺ, with a New York detective’s income of thirty or thirty-five thousand
dollars a year from the “royal civil list” and the “royal domain.”Ⓔ He lives in a two-story frame “palace.”Ⓔ
And there is the “royal family”—the customary hive of royal brothers, sisters, cousins
and other noble
drones and vagrants usual to monarchy,—all with a spoon in the national pap-dish,
and all bearing such titles as his or her
Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of them can carry their royal
splendors far enough to ride
[begin page 463] in carriages, however; they sport the economical Kanaka horse or “hoof it”* with the
plebeians.
Then there is his Excellency the “royal
Chamberlain”—a sinecure, for his MajestyⒶ dresses himself with his own hands, except when he is ruralizing at Waikiki and then
he requires no dressing.
Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the Household Troops, whose
forces consist
of about the number of soldiers usually placed under a corporal in other landsⒺ.
Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in
Waiting—high dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do.
Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamberⒺ—an office as easy as it is magnificent.
Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade
American from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of “shyster”
calibre, a fraud by nature, a
humble worshipperⒶ of the sceptre above him, a reptile never tired of sneering
*Missionary phrase.
[begin page 464] at the land of his birth or glorifying
the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him—salary,
four thousand dollars
Ⓐ a year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.
Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual “budget” with great
ceremony, talks
prodigiously of “finance,” suggests imposing schemes for paying off the “national
debt” (of a hundred and fifty thousand dollarsⒶ,)Ⓔ and does it all for four thousand
dollarsⒶ a year and unimaginable gloryⒺ.
Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds
sway over the royal armiesⒺ—they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed
Kanakas, mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with
a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I
knew an American whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend: “Lieutenant-Colonel
in the Royal Infantry.”Ⓐ To say that he was proud of this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister
of War has also in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl HillⒺ wherewith royal
salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.
Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy—a
nabob who rules the “royal fleet,” (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)Ⓔ
And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the
chief dignitary of the “Established Church”—for when the American Presbyterian missionaries
had completed the
reduction of the nation to a compact condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped
in and erected the grand dignity of an
“Established (Episcopal) Church” over it, and imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from
England to take chargeⒺ. The chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to this
day,
profanity not being admissible.
Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public
InstructionⒺ.
Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii,
etc.Ⓔ, and after them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for
computation.
Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her British
Majesty’s Minister; the Minister
Resident, of the United StatesⒺ; and some six or eight representatives of other [begin page 465] foreign nations, all with sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical
state.
Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house “kingdom” whose population falls absolutely short of sixty thousand soulsⒺ!
The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates that a foreign
prince
makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a westernⒶ Congressman does in New York.
And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined “court costume” of so
“stunning” a nature that it would make the clown in a circus look tame and commonplace
by comparison; and each Hawaiian
official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniform peculiar to his
office—no two of them are alike, and it is
hard to tell which one is the “loudest.” The King
hasⒶ
Ⓐ a “drawing-room” at stated intervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied
uniforms congregate there
weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smoked glass. Is there
not a gratifying contrast between this latter-day
exhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates afforded the missionaries
the Sunday after the old-time distribution of
clothing? Behold what religion and civilization have wrought!
Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 67
Ⓐ
CHAPTER 67 . . . journal: (C) •
CHAPTER LXVII. . . . journal: (A)
indented from right
Honolulu,
May 23, 1866.
centered
Hawaiian Legislature.
[¶] I have been reporting the Hawaiian Legislature all day. This is my first visit
to the Capitol. I expected to be present on
the 25th of April and see the King open his Parliament in state and hear his speech,
but I was in Maui then and Legislatures had no
charms for me. [¶] The Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom is composed of three estates,
viz: The King, the Nobles and the Commons
or Representatives. The Nobles are members of the Legislature by right of their nobility—by
blood, if you please—and
hold the position for life. They hold the right to sit, at any rate, though that right
is not complete until they are formally
commissioned as Legislators by the King. Prince William, who is thirty-one years of
age, was only so commissioned two years ago, and
is now occupying a seat in the Parliament for the first time. The King’s Ministers
belong to the Legislature by virtue of their
office. Formerly the Legislative Assembly consisted of a House of Nobles and a House
of Representatives, and worked separately, but
now both estates sit and vote together. The object of the change was to strengthen
the hands of the Nobles by giving them a chance to
overawe the Commons (the latter being able to outvote the former by about three to
one), and it works well. The handful of Nobles and
Ministers, being backed by the King and acting as his mouthpieces, outweigh the common
multitude on the other side of the House, and
carry things pretty much their own way. It is well enough, for even if the Representatives
were to assert their strength and override
the Nobles and pass a law which did not suit the King, his Majesty would veto the
measure and that would be the end of it, for there
is no passing a bill over
his veto. [¶] Once, when the legislative bodies were separate and the
Representatives did not act to suit the late King (Kamehameha IV), he took Cromwell’s
course—prorogued the Parliament
instanter and sent the members about their business. When the present King called
a Convention, a year or two ago, to frame a new
Constitution, he wanted a property qualification to vote incorporated (universal suffrage
was the rule before) and desired other
amendments, which the Convention refused to sanction. He dismissed them at once, and
fixed the Constitution up to suit himself,
ratified it, and it is now the fundamental law of the land, although it has never
been formally ratified and accepted by the people or
the Legislature. He took back a good deal of power which his predecessors had surrendered
to the people, abolished the universal
suffrage clause and denied the privilege of voting to all save such as were possessed
of a hundred dollars worth of real estate or had
an income of seventy-five dollars a year. And, if my opinion were asked, I would say
he did a wise thing in this last named matter.
[¶] The King is invested with very great power. But he is a man of good sense and
excellent education, and has an extended
knowledge of business, which he acquired through long and arduous training as Minister
of the Interior under the late King, and
therefore he uses his vast authority wisely and well.
centered
The Capitol—An American Sovereign Snubbed. [¶] The Legislature meets in the Supreme Court-
| room, an
apartment which is larger, lighter and better fitted and furnished than any Court-room
in San Francisco. A railing across the center
separates the legislators from the visitors. [¶] When I got to the main entrance of
the building, and was about to march boldly
in, I found myself confronted by a large placard, upon which was printed:
centered “
No Admittance by this Entrance Except to Members | of the Legislature and Foreign
Officials.” [¶] It shocked my republican notions somewhat, but I pocketed the insinuation that
I was not high-toned
enough to go in at the front door, and went around and entered meekly at the back
one. If ever I come to these islands again I will
come as the Duke of San Jose, and put on as many frills as the best of them.
centered
The King’s Father.
(SU)
Ⓐ
national (A) •
not in
(SU)
Ⓐ
Kekuanaoa,* (A) •
Kekuanaoa, (SU)
Ⓐ
the latter a white man, (A) •
Rhodes (SU)
Ⓐ
tawny (A) •
swarthy (SU)
Ⓐ
fighter (A) •
old fighter (SU)
Ⓐ
ago . . . this: (A) •
ago, and I could not help saying to myself, (SU)
Ⓐ
more . . . ago (A) •
far back in the past (SU)
Ⓐ
worshipped (A) •
worshiped (SU)
Ⓐ
devout (A) •
bended (SU)
Ⓐ
wooden (A) •
hideous (SU)
Ⓐ
Since dead. (A) •
not in
(SU)
Ⓐ
high-minded (C) •
high-
| minded (SU)
Ⓐ
How (A) •
Lord! how (SU)
Ⓐ
eventful life (A) •
strange, eventful life must (SU)
Ⓐ
etc. (A) •
etc.
centered
A Comprehensive Slur.
[¶] The mental caliber of the Legislative Assembly is up to the average of such bodies
the world over—and I wish it were a
compliment to say it, but it is hardly so. I have seen a number of Legislatures, and
there was a comfortable majority in each of them
that knew just about enough to come in when it rained, and that was all. Few men of
first class ability can afford to let their
affairs go to ruin while they fool away their time in Legislatures for months on a
stretch. Few such men care a straw for the
small-beer distinction one is able to achieve in such a place. But your chattering,
one-horse village lawyer likes it, and your solemn
ass from the cow counties, who don’t know the Constitution from the Lord’s Prayer,
enjoys it, and these you will always
find in the Assembly; the one gabble, gabble, gabbling threadbare platitudes and “give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death”
buncombe from morning till night, and the other asleep, with his slab-soled brogans
set up like a couple of grave-stones on the top of
his desk. [¶] Among the Commons in this Legislature are a number of Kanakas, with
shrewd, intelligent faces, and a “gift
of gab” that is appalling. The Nobles are able, educated, fine-looking men, who do
not talk often, but when they do they
generally say something—a remark which will not apply to all their white associates
in the same house. If I were not ashamed to
digress so often I would like to expatiate a little upon the noticeable fact that
the nobility of this land, as a general thing, are
distinguishable from the common herd by their large stature and commanding presence,
and also set forth the theories in vogue for
accounting for it, but for the present I will pass the subject by.
centered
In Session—Bill Ragsdale. [¶] At 11
a. m. His Royal
Highness the President called the House to order. The roll-call was dispensed with
for some reason or other, and the Chaplain, a
venerable looking white man, offered up a prayer in the native tongue; and I must
say that this curious language, with its numerous
vowels and its entire absence of hissing sounds, fell very softly and musically from
his lips. A white Chief Clerk read the Journal of
the preceding day’s proceedings in English, and then handed the document to Bill Ragsdale,
a “half white” (half
white and half Kanaka), who translated and clattered it off in Kanaka with a volubility
that was calculated to make a slow-spoken man
like me distressingly nervous. [¶] Bill Ragsdale stands up in front of the Speaker’s
pulpit, with his back against it, and
fastens his quick black eye upon any member who rises, lets him say half a dozen sentences
and then interrupts him, and repeats his
speech in a loud, rapid voice, turning every Kanaka speech into English and every
English speech into Kanaka, with a readiness and
felicity of language that are remarkable—waits for another installment of talk from
the member’s lips and goes on with
his translation as before. His tongue is in constant motion from 11 in the forenoon
till four in the afternoon, and why it does not
wear out is the affair of Providence, not mine. There is a spice of deviltry in the
fellow’s nature, and it crops out every now
and then when he is translating the speeches of slow old Kanakas who do not understand
English. Without departing from the spirit of a
member’s remarks, he will, with apparent unconsciousness, drop in a little voluntary
contribution occasionally in the way of a
word or two that will make the gravest speech utterly ridiculous. He is careful not
to venture upon such experiments, though, with the
remarks of persons able to detect him. I noticed when he translated for His Excellency
David Kalakaua, who is an accomplished English
scholar, he asked, “Did I translate you correctly, your Excellency?” or something
to that effect. The rascal.
centered
Familiar Characteristics. [¶] This
Legislature is like all other Legislatures. A wooden-head gets up and proposes an
utterly absurd something or other, and he and half a
dozen other wooden-heads discuss it with windy vehemence for an hour, the remainder
of the house sitting in silent patience the while,
and then a sensible man—a man of weight—a big gun—gets up and shows the foolishness
of the matter in five
sentences; a vote is taken and the thing is tabled. Now, on one occasion, a Kanaka
member, who paddled over here from some barren rock
or other out yonder in the ocean—some scalliwag who wears nothing but a pair of socks
and a plug hat when he is at home, or
possibly is even more scantily arrayed in the popular
malo—got up and gravely gave notice of a bill to
authorize the construction of a suspension bridge from Oahu to Hawaii, a matter of
a hundred and fifty miles! He said the natives
would prefer it to the inter-island schooners, and they wouldn’t suffer from sea-
| sickness on it. Up came Honorables Ku
and Kulaui, and Kowkow and Kiwawhoo and a lot of other clacking geese, and harried
and worried this notable internal improvement until
some sensible person rose and choked them off by moving the previous question. Do
not do an unjust thing now, and imagine Kanaka
Legislatures do stupider things than other similar bodies. Rather blush to remember
that once, when a Wisconsin Legislature had the
affixing of a penalty for the crime of arson under consideration, a member got up
and seriously suggested that when a man committed
the damning crime of arson they ought either to hang him or make him marry the girl!
To my mind the suspension bridge man was a
Solomon compared to this idiot. [¶] [I shall have to stop at this point and finish
this subject to-morrow. There is a villain
over the way, yonder, who has been playing “Get out of the Wilderness” on a flute
ever since I sat down here
to-night—sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and always skipping the first note in the
second bar—skipping it so uniformly
that I have got to waiting and painfully looking out for it latterly. Human nature
cannot stand this sort of torture. I wish his
funeral was to come off at half-past eleven o’-clock to-morrow and I had nothing to
do. I would attend it.]
centered
Explanatory. [¶] It has been six weeks
since I touched a pen. In explanation and excuse I offer the fact that I spent that
time (with the exception of one week) on the
island of Maui. I only got back yesterday. I never spent so pleasant a month before,
or bade any place good-bye so regretfully. I
doubt if there is a mean person there, from the homeliest man on the island (Lewers)
down to the oldest (Tallant). I went to Maui to
stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any
of it writing letters under any consideration
whatever. It will be five or six weeks before I write again. I sail for the island
of Hawaii to-morrow, and my Maui notes will not be
written up until I come back.
indented from right
Mark Twain. (SU)
Ⓐ
Garden (C) •
garden (A)
Ⓐ
eruption (C) •
irruption (A)
Ⓐ
dress! (C) •
dress!— (A)
Ⓐ
stove-pipe (C) •
stovepipe (A)
Ⓐ
Majesty (C) •
majesty (A)
Ⓐ
worshipper (C) •
worshiper (A)
Ⓐ
four thousand dollars (C) •
$4,000 (A)
Ⓐ
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars (C) •
$150,000 (A)
Ⓐ
four thousand dollars (C) •
$4,000 (A)
Ⓐ
Infantry.” (C) •
Infantry.
⁁
(A)
Ⓐ
western (C) •
Western (A)
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 67
Ⓔ I
still quote from my journal . . . etc., etc.] Mark Twain based this portion of the text
on
his letter in the Sacramento
Union of 20 June 1866, revising it for inclusion in
Roughing
It.
This material is not found in either of Clemens’s extant Hawaiian notebooks, but it
may derive from a missing notebook that he used from mid-April to mid-June 1866 (
SLC
1866v;
N&J1
, 100–101).
Ⓔ
David Kalakaua (the
King’s Chamberlain)] Kalakaua (1836–91) held the office of chamberlain and secretary
to Kamehameha V at a salary
of $2,500 per year. Clemens met Kalakaua early in his stay in the islands, when, on 3 April,
he was among Kalakaua’s guests at a dinner in honor of James McBride, the American
minister. Kalakaua was also [begin page 715] scheduled to accompany Clemens on a visit to Iolani Palace on 4 April (see the note
at 462.4). Mark Twain described
Kalakaua in a Union letter:
[He] is a man of fine
presence, is an educated gentleman and a man of good abilities. He is approaching
forty, I should judge—is thirty-five, at any
rate. He is conservative, politic and calculating, makes little display, and does
not talk much in the Legislature. He is a quiet,
dignified, sensible man, and would do no discredit to the kingly office. (SLC
1866x)
Kalakaua, a descendant of ancient Hawaiian chiefs, became king in February 1874 after
an
abortive attempt to secure the throne in 1873. He reigned until his death in January
1891 in San Francisco (Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “The Budget,” 5 May 66, 1; “Audience at the Palace,” 28 July 66, 3;
MTH
, 31;
L1
, 334; Withington, 229–34, 249, 275).
Ⓔ
Prince William] As
Kamehameha V’s cousin and the grandson of a half-brother of Kamehameha I, the popular
William Charles Lunalilo (1835–74)
was widely recognized as the likely successor to the throne. Mark Twain noted in a
Union letter that Lunalilo
was
of the highest blood in the
kingdom—higher than the King himself, it is said. . . . Prince William is a man of
fine, large build; is
thirty-one years of age; is affable, gentlemanly, open, frank, manly; is as independent
as a lord and has a spirit and a will like the
old Conqueror himself. He is intelligent, shrewd, sensible—is a man of first rate
abilities, in
fact. . . . I like this man, and I like his bold independence, and his friendship
for and appreciation of the
American residents. (SLC 1866x)
In two articles entitled
“The Sandwich Islands,” published in the New York Tribune on 6 and 9 January 1873, Mark Twain,
although acknowledging Lunalilo’s excessive fondness for whiskey, urged that he be
chosen as the next king. Lunalilo was
elected—by popular and legislative vote—to succeed Kamehameha V in January 1873, but
he reigned only briefly, until his
death in February 1874 (SLC 1873b—c;
N&J1
, 124; Kuykendall 1953, 240, 242–44; Withington, 229–39).
Ⓔ The President of the
Assembly, his Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa,* . . . the King’s father] Mataio Kekuanaoa
(1794–1868) and his wife, the high chiefess Kinau (see the note at 458.13), were the
parents of Kamehameha IV, Kamehameha V,
and Princess Victoria.
Kekuanaoa served as governor of Oahu from his wife’s death in 1839
until 1864. In the administration of Kamehameha V, Kekuanaoa served as president of
the legislature and of the Board of Education, and
as
kuhina nui (preeminent adviser and chief administrator) to the king, until the abolition of
that office in
1864. Mark Twain may not have learned of Kekuanaoa’s death until the fall of 1871,
after this chapter had already been set in
type and it was too late to insert the words “Since dead” (457n.1) into the body of
the text (“Death of His
Highness Mataio Kekuanaoa,” Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 28 Nov 68, 2;
Bailey, 225–26;
[begin page 716]
Kuykendall 1938, 64;
Kuykendall 1953, 107, 126;
Varigny, 138, 168;
W. D. Alexander, 289).
Ⓔ the Vice President (the
latter a white man,)] The vice-president of the legislature was Honolulu merchant
Godfrey Rhodes (1815–97), an
Englishman resident in the islands since the 1840s who was known for his anti-American
sentiments (
Varigny, 252;
Kuykendall 1953, 255; “Opening of the
Legislature,” Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 28 Apr 66, 2).
Ⓔ the honored guest of
royalty in Europe] Kekuanaoa had been one of the party that accompanied Kamehameha
II on an ill-fated voyage to England in
1823–24. Both Kamehameha and his favorite queen, Kamamalu, died of the measles before
they could be received by King George IV,
but others of the party, including Kekuanaoa, met with him in September 1824 (
Kuykendall
1938, 76–79).
Ⓔ his wife, who was a daughter of
Kamehameha the Great] Kinau (d. 1839), whom Kekuanaoa married in October 1827, was
a daughter of Kamehameha I. From June 1832
until her death she served as
kuhina nui to Kamehameha III (
Kuykendall
1938, 133–36;
Bennett, 68–69).
Ⓔ a popular belief that
. . . your enemy can . . .
pray you to death] This phenomenon—and the
related ability to “
die whenever they want to” (459.21–22)—was frequently reported
by early visitors to the islands (
Archibald Campbell, 172–73;
Charles Samuel Stewart, 202–3;
Dibble
1839, 61–62, 77–78;
Jarves 1847, 24–25, 99;
Bates, 396–97).
Clemens’s interest in the
subject is evidenced by an entry in one of his Hawaiian notebooks, as well as references
in his Sandwich Islands lecture and in the
fragments of a Sandwich Islands novel that he began in 1884 (
N&J1
, 117;
SLC 1866kk,
1884a).
Ⓔ the natives are able
to
lie down and die whenever they want to] Clemens witnessed what he thought was an instance of this
phenomenon while staying with Samuel G. Wilder and his family on Oahu. When the family’s
nursemaid died, he noted in his
journal: “Her father died last week—nothing matter with the girl—just thought she
was going to die” (
N&J1
, 128).
Ⓔ the Great Shark God] Mark
Twain identified the Great Shark God as “Kauhuhu” in his 1866 piece “A Strange Dream.”
Kauhuhu was one of
many powerful shark gods worshiped by the Hawaiians, a “fierce king shark of Maui
who lives in a cave in Kipahulu and also has
a home . . . on the windward side of Molokai” (
SLC 1866t;
Beckwith, 129).
Ⓔ
a brown, stately
dame . . . with nothing . . . but a “stove-pipe” hat . . . a fiery neck-tie
and a striped vest] A similar description in Bates’s Sandwich Island Notes may have inspired Mark
Twain:
When civilized habits first dawned upon
them, their personal appearance was the most eccentric that can well be imagined.
In coming to church on a Sunday, [begin page 717] one man would come clad in nothing but a coat buttoned up on his back instead of in
front. The entire wardrobe of a
second would be a ragged cravat, and a single strip of native cloth crossed over his
loins, called a malo; that
of a third, the malo, and a pair of high boots; that of a fourth, the malo, and a
tattered palm-leaf hat that might have served some foreigner nearly a score of years;
that of a fifth, a shirt, with a collar reaching
his eyes and half way up the back of his head, and the malo. (Bates, 262)
Ⓔ his royal Majesty the
King] Kamehameha V (1830–72), known as Lot Kamehameha, reigned from 1863 until his
death. Said to resemble his
grandfather Kamehameha I, he was a capable and forceful administrator.
Clemens was impressed with
his abilities; in his 9 January 1873
Tribune article he described him as a “wise sovereign” who
“tried hard to do well by his people, and succeeded. There was no trivial royal nonsense
about him” (
SLC 1873c). Clemens intended to meet Kamehameha V at Iolani Palace on 4 April 1866. Although
he visited the palace, he apparently did not see the king, since he mentioned in 1873
that he only saw him “but once,
. . . attending the funeral of his sister,” Princess Victoria Kamamalu (
SLC 1873c;
Bennett, 7;
Kuykendall
1938, 27–28;
Jarves 1844a, 59;
Kuykendall 1953, 125–26;
L1
, 334–35).
Ⓔ with a New York
detective’s income of thirty . . . thousand dollars a year from the . . . “royal
domain.”] As Clemens correctly states, Kamehameha V had two sources of income for
the period of 1866 through 1868: an
annual salary of $17,500, and income from the Crown Lands amounting to about $20,000
a year (Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “Hawaiian Legislature,” 5 May 66, 3; “Report of the Minister of Finance to
the Legislature of 1866,” 5 May 66, 4).
Ⓔ two-story frame
“palace.”] Iolani Palace, built in 1844–45, was a large square building with wide
verandas on all sides.
It was set in grounds “extensive enough to accommodate a village,” according to Mark
Twain, and afforded a panoramic
view of Honolulu (
SLC 1866s). The original palace was replaced in 1879 by a much grander
structure (
Scott, 113).
Ⓔ his Excellency the
“royal Chamberlain” . . . the Commander-in-chief of the Household Troops, whose forces
. . .
under a corporal in other lands] Both of these titles belonged to the same man. David
Kalakaua, the king’s chamberlain
(see the note at 457.5–6), was also—as Mark Twain mentioned in his 6 January 1873
article in the New York
Tribune—commander-in-chief of the Household Troops.
Kalakaua, who held
the rank of colonel, reportedly “took a special interest in military matters, and
was fond of appearing in elaborate military
uniforms. Being tall and well built, he modeled such uniforms with great distinction”
(
Kuykendall 1967, 13). The Household Troops, comprising one hundred native soldiers, constituted the
standing army and were
charged with guarding the palace, the prison, and the treasury (
SLC 1873c;
Zambucka 1983, 10; Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser:
[begin page 718] “Audience at the Palace,” 28 July 66, 3; “Majority Report of the Military Committee,”
23
May 68, 4; “The Mutiny at the Barracks,” 13 Sept 73, 2).
Ⓔ the royal Steward and
the Grand Equerry in Waiting . . . the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber] These positions
were not listed in the
official government budget, and may have been invented by Mark Twain to add color
to his description of how the “grown folk
. . . play ‘empire’ ” (462.2–4).
Ⓔ his Excellency the
Prime Minister, a renegade American . . . his Excellency the Imperial Minister of
Finance . . . all for
four thousand dollars a year and unimaginable glory] There was at this time no official
position of prime minister in the
Hawaiian government.
The “renegade American from New Hampshire” and the
“Imperial Minister of Finance” were in fact the same person—Charles Coffin Harris
(1821–81), the minister
of finance and Kamehameha V’s closest adviser. Harris was a native of New Hampshire
who settled in the Sandwich Islands in
1850, practiced law, engaged in business, and, in 1862, began an association with
the government that culminated in his becoming chief
justice in 1877. His salary was $4,000 in 1866. As a member of the Hawaiian Reformed
Catholic Church, he was considered an
enemy of the American Protestant mission. Mark Twain first expressed his violent antipathy
toward Harris—after observing him
during a visit to the Hawaiian legislature—in a
Union letter published on 21 June 1866; he continued his
ridicule in several subsequent newspaper letters (
SLC 1866w,
1866z–aa; see also the remark about Harris’s vanity at 469.20–25). In a letter of
20 December 1870 to Albert Francis Judd of Honolulu, Clemens mentioned his plan to
“do up the Islands & Harris”
in some form in “2 or 3” years (
PH in
CtY-BR, in
MTH
, 467). Beyond his scathing
remarks in
Roughing It, however, plus similar comments in his 9 January 1873
Tribune
article, Mark Twain is not known to have written anything further about Harris (“The
Late Justice Harris of Hawaii,” New
York
Times, 27 July 81, 3; Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser:
“ ‘the Budget,’ ” 5 May 66, 1; “Estimated Expenditures for the Two Years Ending March
31, 1870,” 25 Apr 68, 3; “Death of the Chief Justice,” 9 July 81, 2; “Death of the
Late
Chancellor,”
Friend 30 [1 Aug 81]: 69;
Kuykendall
1953, 36, 96–98, 126–28, 218;
MTH
,
27–28;
SLC 1867i,
1873c).
Ⓔ a million dollars of
public money a year . . . the “national debt” (of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,)]
Mark
Twain’s figure is more than double the Sandwich Islands’ actual budget.
The two-year
budget for 1866 to 1868 was $826,823, and for the following two years, $997,680. His
figure for the national debt,
however, is more accurate: in April 1866 it stood at $166,649, and in March 1870 at
$112,000 (Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “ ‘the Budget,’ ” 5 May 66, 1;
[begin page 719] “Report of the Minister of Finance to the Legislature of 1866,” 5 May 66, 4; “Our
National
Finances,” 21 May 70, 2).
Ⓔ his Excellency the
Minister of War, who holds sway over the royal armies] This title was Mark Twain’s
invention: although there was a
Department of War, it had no minister.
Charles de Varigny (1829–99), as minister of foreign
affairs, had overall charge of the Hawaiian military, which consisted of the Household
Troops and various volunteer companies. Varigny
was born at Versailles, settled in the Sandwich Islands in 1855, and received his
first government appointment in 1864. Mark Twain
described him as a “sensible, unpretentious” man, but added: “If Varigny were as hopelessly
bad as his English
pronunciation, nothing but a special intervention of Providence could save him from
perdition hereafter” (
SLC 1866w;
Varigny, 255, 258, 261; Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “ ‘the Budget,’ ” 5 May 66, 1;
“Estimated Expenditures for the Two Years Ending March 31, 1870,” 25 Apr 68, 3).
Ⓔ some venerable swivels
on Punch-Bowl Hill] Puahi, or Punch-Bowl Hill, was an extinct crater half a mile behind
Honolulu. According to Jarves, it
“obtained its soubriquet in times not quite as temperate as the present; its shape
internally is much like a bowl, being a
gradual and uniform hollow” (
Jarves 1844a, 23). Bates described the battery on its
summit as consisting of “eleven guns, pointing different ways, at irregular distances
from each
other. . . . They rest on carriages in a state of rapid decay” (
Bates, 100).
Ⓔ his Excellency the
Minister of the Navy—a nabob who rules the “royal fleet,” (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton
schooner.)] There
was no naval ministry; responsibility for a tugboat in Honolulu harbor, the
Pele, fell to the minister of the
interior—F. W. Hutchinson, an Englishman.
The
Pele, launched in 1856,
was in service at Honolulu for thirty years. In June 1866, during Clemens’s visit,
it was fitted with a “small rifle of
suitable caliber” so that it could be classed as a gunboat (
Mifflin Thomas, 41,
221 n. 30). Nothing is known about the “sixty-ton schooner” (“ ‘the Budget,’ ”
Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 5 May 66, 1;
Varigny, 195;
W. D. Alexander, 329).
Ⓔ his Grace the Lord
Bishop of Honolulu . . . a cheap readymade Bishop from England to take charge] In
1860 Kamehameha IV, motivated
in part by a desire to reinforce the Hawaiian monarchy, petitioned Queen Victoria
to establish a branch of the Anglican (Episcopal)
church in the Sandwich Islands.
Despite protests from the American missionary community, the
“Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church” was created. Thomas Nettleship Staley (1823–98),
a recently consecrated
English bishop, arrived in Honolulu in October 1862 to serve as its head. Within a
few weeks, Staley had confirmed as members
[begin page 720] of his church Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, as well as other high chiefs and government
figures, including
Robert C. Wyllie, then the minister of foreign affairs, and Charles Harris, the attorney
general. Despite some initial success, Staley
and his bishopric proved unpopular, rousing antagonism from the already well-established
Protestant and Roman Catholic missions. He
resigned in 1870. In his
Union letters Mark Twain sided with the American Protestant missionaries against
Staley, condemning his dismissal of the missionary effort and his support of “barbarous”
native rituals. He described
the bishop as “a weak, trivial-minded man,” spiteful, pretentious, and vain (
SLC
1866z,
1866x,
1866aa;
Korn, 333;
N&J1
,
134–35).
Ⓔ his Excellency the Minister of
Public Instruction] There had been no such minister since 1855. At the time of Clemens’s
visit, educational matters were
handled by a five-member Board of Education, whose president was Mataio Kekuanaoa
(see the note at 457.6–9), and an inspector
general of schools, Abraham Fornander (
Kuykendall 1953, 106–8).
Ⓔ their Excellencies the Governors
of Oahu, Hawaii, etc.] The governor of Oahu was John Owen Dominis (1832–91), son of
an American sea captain who had
settled in the Sandwich Islands in 1837. The island of Hawaii had been governed since
1855 by the high chiefess Ruth Keelikolani
(1826–83) (
Gasinski, 23, 26;
Scott,
60;
Korn, 303).
Ⓔ their Excellencies the
Envoy Extraordinary . . . of the French; her British Majesty’s Minister; the Minister
Resident, of the United
States] The French minister was M. Desnoyers. The acting British commissioner was
William L. Green, a prominent Honolulu
businessman.
The American minister, James McBride, was awaiting the arrival of his successor,
General Edward M. McCook, appointed in March 1866. McCook did not arrive in Honolulu
until 22 July, three days after Clemens’s
departure for San Francisco (Honolulu
Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “Programme of the Funeral,”
30 June 66, 2; “Presentation at the Palace” and “British Commissioner,” 8 Sept 66,
3; “H. B. M.
Acting Commissioner,” 6 May 65, 2; “Passengers,” 1 Dec 66, 2;
Kuykendall
1953, 206, 209, 291 n. 40;
L1
, 335 n. 2, 343 n. 4).
Ⓔ whose population falls
absolutely short of sixty thousand souls] The 1866 census reported a population of
62,959, of whom 58,765 were native Hawaiians
(
Bennett, 59; see also the note at 454.11–13).
