CHAPTER IX--THE HOUSE OF TEMOANA
The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused by
the coming and going of the French. At least twice they have
seized the archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in the
meanwhile the natives pursued almost without interruption their
desultory cannibal wars. Through these events and changing
dynasties, a single considerable figure may be seen to move: that
of the high chief, a king, Temoana. Odds and ends of his history
came to my ears: how he was at first a convert to the Protestant
mission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from his native land,
served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for small charge, in
English seaports; how he returned at last to the Marquesas, fell
under the strong and benign influence of the late bishop, extended
his influence in the group, was for a while joint ruler with the
prelate, and died at last the chief supporter of Catholicism and
the French. His widow remains in receipt of two pounds a month
from the French Government. Queen she is usually called, but in
the official almanac she figures as 'Madame Vaekehu, Grande
Chefesse.' His son (natural or adoptive, I know not which),
Stanislao Moanatini, chief of Akaui, serves in Tai-o-hae as a kind
of Minister of Public Works; and the daughter of Stanislao is High
Chiefess of the southern island of Tauata. These, then, are the
greatest folk of the archipelago; we thought them also the most
estimable. This is the rule in Polynesia, with few exceptions; the
higher the family, the better the man--better in sense, better in
manners, and usually taller and stronger in body. A stranger
advances blindfold. He scrapes acquaintance as he can. Save the
tattoo in the Marquesas, nothing indicates the difference of rank;
and yet almost invariably we found, after we had made them, that
our friends were persons of station. I have said 'usually taller
and stronger.' I might have been more absolute,--over all
Polynesia, and a part of Micronesia, the rule holds good; the great
ones of the isle, and even of the village, are greater of bone and
muscle, and often heavier of flesh, than any commoner. The usual
explanation--that the high-born child is more industriously
shampooed, is probably the true one. In New Caledonia, at least,
where the difference does not exist, has never been remarked, the
practice of shampooing seems to be itself unknown. Doctors would
be well employed in a study of the point.
Vaekehu lives at the other end of the town from the Residency,
beyond the buildings of the mission. Her house is on the European
plan: a table in the midst of the chief room; photographs and
religious pictures on the wall. It commands to either hand a
charming vista: through the front door, a peep of green lawn,
scurrying pigs, the pendent fans of the coco-palm and splendour of
the bursting surf: through the back, mounting forest glades and
coronals of precipice. Here, in the strong thorough-draught, Her
Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of
royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, the
elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all
the highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above all
others) delight to sing their language. An adopted daughter
interpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed by name our
friends of Anaho. As we talked, we could see, through the landward
door, another lady of the household at her toilet under the green
trees; who presently, when her hair was arranged, and her hat
wreathed with flowers, appeared upon the back verandah with
gracious salutations.
Vaekehu is very deaf; 'merci' is her only word of French; and I do
not know that she seemed clever. An exquisite, kind refinement,
with a shade of quietism, gathered perhaps from the nuns, was what
chiefly struck us. Or rather, upon that first occasion, we were
conscious of a sense as of district-visiting on our part, and
reduced evangelical gentility on the part of our hostess. The
other impression followed after she was more at ease, and came with
Stanislao and his little girl to dine on board the Casco. She had
dressed for the occasion: wore white, which very well became her
strong brown face; and sat among us, eating or smoking her
cigarette, quite cut off from all society, or only now and then
included through the intermediary of her son. It was a position
that might have been ridiculous, and she made it ornamental; making
believe to hear and to be entertained; her face, whenever she met
our eyes, lighting with the smile of good society; her
contributions to the talk, when she made any, and that was seldom,
always complimentary and pleasing. No attention was paid to the
child, for instance, but what she remarked and thanked us for. Her
parting with each, when she came to leave, was gracious and pretty,
as had been every step of her behaviour. When Mrs. Stevenson held
out her hand to say good-bye, Vaekehu took it, held it, and a
moment smiled upon her; dropped it, and then, as upon a kindly
after-thought, and with a sort of warmth of condescension, held out
both hands and kissed my wife upon both cheeks. Given the same
relation of years and of rank, the thing would have been so done on
the boards of the Comedie Francaise; just so might Madame Brohan
have warmed and condescended to Madame Broisat in the Marquis de
Villemer. It was my part to accompany our guests ashore: when I
kissed the little girl good-bye at the pier steps, Vaekehu gave a
cry of gratification, reached down her hand into the boat, took
mine, and pressed it with that flattering softness which seems the
coquetry of the old lady in every quarter of the earth. The next
moment she had taken Stanislao's arm, and they moved off along the
pier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered. This was a queen of
cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the
greatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago,
before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o-
hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought
for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat
on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while
the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried up the
blood-stained baskets of long-pig. And now behold her, out of that
past of violence and sickening feasts, step forth, in her age, a
quiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you might find at home
(mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a score of
country houses. Only Vaekehu's mittens were of dye, not of silk;
and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh of
men. It came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of it
herself, and whether at heart, perhaps, she might not regret and
aspire after the barbarous and stirring past. But when I asked
Stanislao--'Ah!' said he, 'she is content; she is religious, she
passes all her days with the sisters.'
Stanislao (Stanislaos, with the final consonant evaded after the
Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America,
and there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talk
sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he
is of excellent service to the French. With the prestige of his
name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the
natives working and the roads passable. Without Stanislao and the
convicts, I am in doubt what would become of the present regimen in
Nuka-hiva; whether the highways might not be suffered to close up,
the pier to wash away, and the Residency to fall piecemeal about
the ears of impotent officials. And yet though the hereditary
favourer, and one of the chief props of French authority, he has
always an eye upon the past. He showed me where the old public
place had stood, still to be traced by random piles of stone; told
me how great and fine it was, and surrounded on all sides by
populous houses, whence, at the beating of the drums, the folk
crowded to make holiday. The drum-beat of the Polynesian has a
strange and gloomy stimulation for the nerves of all. White
persons feel it--at these precipitate sounds their hearts beat
faster; and, according to old residents, its effect on the natives
was extreme. Bishop Dordillon might entreat; Temoana himself
command and threaten; at the note of the drum wild instincts
triumphed. And now it might beat upon these ruins, and who should
assemble? The houses are down, the people dead, their lineage
extinct; and the sweepings and fugitives of distant bays and
islands encamp upon their graves. The decline of the dance
Stanislao especially laments. 'Chaque pays a ses coutumes,' said
he; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to
increase the number of delits and the instruments of his own power,
custom after custom is placed on the expurgatorial index. 'Tenez,
une danse qui n'est pas permise,' said Stanislao: 'je ne sais pas
pourquoi, elle est tres jolie, elle va comme ca,' and sticking his
umbrella upright in the road, he sketched the steps and gestures.
All his criticisms of the present, all his regrets for the past,
struck me as temperate and sensible. The short term of office of
the Resident he thought the chief defect of the administration;
that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he was
recalled. I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with some
fear the coming change from a naval to a civil governor. I am sure
at least that I regard it so myself; for the civil servants of
France have never appeared to any foreigner as at all the flower of
their country, while her naval officers may challenge competition
with the world. In all his talk, Stanislao was particular to speak
of his own country as a land of savages; and when he stated an
opinion of his own, it was with some apologetic preface, alleging
that he was 'a savage who had travelled.' There was a deal, in
this elaborate modesty, of honest pride. Yet there was something
in the precaution that saddened me; and I could not but fear he was
only forestalling a taunt that he had heard too often.
I recall with interest two interviews with Stanislao. The first
was a certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together in
the verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voices
as the showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into the
billiard-room, to consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map of
the world which forms its chief adornment. He was naturally
ignorant of English history, so that I had much of news to
communicate. The story of Gordon I told him in full, and many
episodes of the Indian Mutiny, Lucknow, the second battle of Cawn-
pore, the relief of Arrah, the death of poor Spottis-woode, and Sir
Hugh Rose's hotspur, midland campaign. He was intent to hear; his
brown face, strongly marked with small-pox, kindled and changed
with each vicissitude. His eyes glowed with the reflected light of
battle; his questions were many and intelligent, and it was chiefly
these that sent us so often to the map. But it is of our parting
that I keep the strongest sense. We were to sail on the morrow,
and the night had fallen, dark, gusty, and rainy, when we stumbled
up the hill to bid farewell to Stanislao. He had already loaded us
with gifts; but more were waiting. We sat about the table over
cigars and green cocoa-nuts; claps of wind blew through the house
and extinguished the lamp, which was always instantly relighted
with a single match; and these recurrent intervals of darkness were
felt as a relief. For there was something painful and embarrassing
in the kindness of that separation. 'Ah, vous devriez rester ici,
mon cher ami!' cried Stanislao. 'Vous etes les gens qu'il faut
pour les Kanaques; vous etes doux, vous et votre famille; vous
seriez obeis dans toutes les iles.' We had been civil; not always
that, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond; and all
this to-do is a measure, not of our considerateness, but of the
want of it in others. The rest of the evening, on to Vaekehu's and
back as far as to the pier, Stanislao walked with my arm and
sheltered me with his umbrella; and after the boat had put off, we
could still distinguish, in the murky darkness, his gestures of
farewell. His words, if there were any, were drowned by the rain
and the loud surf.
I have mentioned presents, a vexed question in the South Seas; and
one which well illustrates the common, ignorant habit of regarding
races in a lump. In many quarters the Polynesian gives only to
receive. I have visited islands where the population mobbed me for
all the world like dogs after the waggon of cat's-meat; and where
the frequent proposition, 'You my pleni (friend),' or (with more of
pathos) 'You all 'e same my father,' must be received with hearty
laughter and a shout. And perhaps everywhere, among the greedy and
rapacious, a gift is regarded as a sprat to catch a whale. It is
the habit to give gifts and to receive returns, and such
characters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly that
they do not lose. But for persons of a different stamp the
statement must be reversed. The shabby Polynesian is anxious till
he has received the return gift; the generous is uneasy until he
has made it. The first is disappointed if you have not given more
than he; the second is miserable if he thinks he has given less
than you. This is my experience; if it clash with that of others,
I pity their fortune, and praise mine: the circumstances cannot
change what I have seen, nor lessen what I have received. And
indeed I find that those who oppose me often argue from a ground of
singular presumptions; comparing Polynesians with an ideal person,
compact of generosity and gratitude, whom I never had the pleasure
of encountering; and forgetting that what is almost poverty to us
is wealth almost unthinkable to them. I will give one instance: I
chanced to speak with consideration of these gifts of Stanislao's
with a certain clever man, a great hater and contemner of Kanakas.
'Well! what were they?' he cried. 'A pack of old men's beards.
Trash!' And the same gentleman, some half an hour later, being
upon a different train of thought, dwelt at length on the esteem in
which the Marquesans held that sort of property, how they preferred
it to all others except land, and what fancy prices it would fetch.
Using his own figures, I computed that, in this commodity alone,
the gifts of Vaekehu and Stanislao represented between two and
three hundred dollars; and the queen's official salary is of two
hundred and forty in the year.
But generosity on the one hand, and conspicuous meanness on the
other, are in the South Seas, as at home, the exception. It is
neither with any hope of gain, nor with any lively wish to please,
that the ordinary Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts. A
plain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly, but
without the least enthusiasm. And we shall best understand his
attitude of mind, if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity of
marriage presents. There we give without any special thought of a
return; yet if the circumstance arise, and the return be withheld,
we shall judge ourselves insulted. We give them usually without
affection, and almost never with a genuine desire to please; and
our gift is rather a mark of our own status than a measure of our
love to the recipients. So in a great measure and with the common
run of the Polynesians; their gifts are formal; they imply no more
than social recognition; and they are made and reciprocated, as we
pay and return our morning visits. And the practice of marking and
measuring events and sentiments by presents is universal in the
island world. A gift plays with them the part of stamp and seal;
and has entered profoundly into the mind of islanders. Peace and
war, marriage, adoption and naturalisation, are celebrated or
declared by the acceptance or the refusal of gifts; and it is as
natural for the islander to bring a gift as for us to carry a card-
case.
