CHAPTER X--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 jail 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 his 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.
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
whale-boat?" "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 whale-boat, 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 Amelica; 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 anti-dote. 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, 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 threatening. 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).'
