CHAPTER VII--HUSBAND AND WIFE
The trader accustomed to the manners of Eastern Polynesia has a
lesson to learn among the Gilberts. The ridi is but a spare
attire; as late as thirty years back the women went naked until
marriage; within ten years the custom lingered; and these facts,
above all when heard in description, conveyed a very false idea of
the manners of the group. A very intelligent missionary described
it (in its former state) as a 'Paradise of naked women' for the
resident whites. It was at least a platonic Paradise, where
Lothario ventured at his peril. Since 1860, fourteen whites have
perished on a single island, all for the same cause, all found
where they had no business, and speared by some indignant father of
a family; the figure was given me by one of their contemporaries
who had been more prudent and survived. The strange persistence of
these fourteen martyrs might seem to point to monomania or a series
of romantic passions; gin is the more likely key. The poor
buzzards sat alone in their houses by an open case; they drank;
their brain was fired; they stumbled towards the nearest houses on
chance; and the dart went through their liver. In place of a
Paradise the trader found an archipelago of fierce husbands and of
virtuous women. 'Of course if you wish to make love to them, it's
the same as anywhere else,' observed a trader innocently; but he
and his companions rarely so choose.
The trader must be credited with a virtue: he often makes a kind
and loyal husband. Some of the worst beachcombers in the Pacific,
some of the last of the old school, have fallen in my path, and
some of them were admirable to their native wives, and one made a
despairing widower. The position of a trader's wife in the
Gilberts is, besides, unusually enviable. She shares the
immunities of her husband. Curfew in Butaritari sounds for her in
vain. Long after the bell is rung and the great island ladies are
confined for the night to their own roof, this chartered libertine
may scamper and giggle through the deserted streets or go down to
bathe in the dark. The resources of the store are at her hand; she
goes arrayed like a queen, and feasts delicately everyday upon
tinned meats. And she who was perhaps of no regard or station
among natives sits with captains, and is entertained on board of
schooners. Five of these privileged dames were some time our
neighbours. Four were handsome skittish lasses, gamesome like
children, and like children liable to fits of pouting. They wore
dresses by day, but there was a tendency after dark to strip these
lendings and to career and squall about the compound in the
aboriginal ridi. Games of cards were continually played, with
shells for counters; their course was much marred by cheating; and
the end of a round (above all if a man was of the party) resolved
itself into a scrimmage for the counters. The fifth was a matron.
It was a picture to see her sail to church on a Sunday, a parasol
in hand, a nursemaid following, and the baby buried in a trade hat
and armed with a patent feeding-bottle. The service was enlivened
by her continual supervision and correction of the maid. It was
impossible not to fancy the baby was a doll, and the church some
European playroom. All these women were legitimately married. It
is true that the certificate of one, when she proudly showed it,
proved to run thus, that she was 'married for one night,' and her
gracious partner was at liberty to 'send her to hell' the next
morning; but she was none the wiser or the worse for the dastardly
trick. Another, I heard, was married on a work of mine in a
pirated edition; it answered the purpose as well as a Hall Bible.
Notwithstanding all these allurements of social distinction, rare
food and raiment, a comparative vacation from toil, and legitimate
marriage contracted on a pirated edition, the trader must sometimes
seek long before he can be mated. While I was in the group one had
been eight months on the quest, and he was still a bachelor.
Within strictly native society the old laws and practices were
harsh, but not without a certain stamp of high-mindedness.
Stealthy adultery was punished with death; open elopement was
properly considered virtue in comparison, and compounded for a fine
in land. The male adulterer alone seems to have been punished. It
is correct manners for a jealous man to hang himself; a jealous
woman has a different remedy--she bites her rival. Ten or twenty
years ago it was a capital offence to raise a woman's ridi; to this
day it is still punished with a heavy fine; and the garment itself
is still symbolically sacred. Suppose a piece of land to be
disputed in Butaritari, the claimant who shall first hang a ridi on
the tapu-post has gained his cause, since no one can remove or
touch it but himself.
The ridi was the badge not of the woman but the wife, the mark not
of her sex but of her station. It was the collar on the slave's
neck, the brand on merchandise. The adulterous woman seems to have
been spared; were the husband offended, it would be a poor
consolation to send his draught cattle to the shambles. Karaiti,
to this day, calls his eight wives 'his horses,' some trader having
explained to him the employment of these animals on farms; and
Nanteitei hired out his wives to do mason-work. Husbands, at least
when of high rank, had the power of life and death; even whites
seem to have possessed it; and their wives, when they had
transgressed beyond forgiveness, made haste to pronounce the
formula of deprecation--I KANA KIM. This form of words had so much
virtue that a condemned criminal repeating it on a particular day
to the king who had condemned him, must be instantly released. It
is an offer of abasement, and, strangely enough, the reverse--the
imitation--is a common vulgar insult in Great Britain to this day.
I give a scene between a trader and his Gilbert Island wife, as it
was told me by the husband, now one of the oldest residents, but
then a freshman in the group.
'Go and light a fire,' said the trader, 'and when I have brought
this oil I will cook some fish.' The woman grunted at him, island
fashion. 'I am not a pig that you should grunt at me,' said he.
'I know you are not a pig,' said the woman, 'neither am I your
slave.'
'To be sure you are not my slave, and if you do not care to stop
with me, you had better go home to your people,' said he. 'But in
the mean time go and light the fire; and when I have brought this
oil I will cook some fish.'
She went as if to obey; and presently when the trader looked she
had built a fire so big that the cook-house was catching in flames.
'I Kana Kim!' she cried, as she saw him coming; but he recked not,
and hit her with a cooking-pot. The leg pierced her skull, blood
spouted, it was thought she was a dead woman, and the natives
surrounded the house in a menacing expectation. Another white was
present, a man of older experience. 'You will have us both killed
if you go on like this,' he cried. 'She had said I Kana Kim!' If
she had not said I Kana Kim he might have struck her with a
caldron. It was not the blow that made the crime, but the
disregard of an accepted formula.
Polygamy, the particular sacredness of wives, their semi-servile
state, their seclusion in kings' harems, even their privilege of
biting, all would seem to indicate a Mohammedan society and the
opinion of the soullessness of woman. And not so in the least. It
is a mere appearance. After you have studied these extremes in one
house, you may go to the next and find all reversed, the woman the
mistress, the man only the first of her thralls. The authority is
not with the husband as such, nor the wife as such. It resides in
the chief or the chief-woman; in him or her who has inherited the
lands of the clan, and stands to the clansman in the place of
parent, exacting their service, answerable for their fines. There
is but the one source of power and the one ground of dignity--rank.
The king married a chief-woman; she became his menial, and must
work with her hands on Messrs. Wightman's pier. The king divorced
her; she regained at once her former state and power. She married
the Hawaiian sailor, and behold the man is her flunkey and can be
shown the door at pleasure. Nay, and such low-born lords are even
corrected physically, and, like grown but dutiful children, must
endure the discipline.
We were intimate in one such household, that of Nei Takauti and Nan
Tok'; I put the lady first of necessity. During one week of fool's
paradise, Mrs. Stevenson had gone alone to the sea-side of the
island after shells. I am very sure the proceeding was unsafe; and
she soon perceived a man and woman watching her. Do what she
would, her guardians held her steadily in view; and when the
afternoon began to fall, and they thought she had stayed long
enough, took her in charge, and by signs and broken English ordered
her home. On the way the lady drew from her earring-hole a clay
pipe, the husband lighted it, and it was handed to my unfortunate
wife, who knew not how to refuse the incommodious favour; and when
they were all come to our house, the pair sat down beside her on
the floor, and improved the occasion with prayer. From that day
they were our family friends; bringing thrice a day the beautiful
island garlands of white flowers, visiting us any evening, and
frequently carrying us down to their own maniap' in return, the
woman leading Mrs. Stevenson by the hand like one child with
another.
Nan Tok', the husband, was young, extremely handsome, of the most
approved good humour, and suffering in his precarious station from
suppressed high spirits. Nei Takauti, the wife, was getting old;
her grown son by a former marriage had just hanged himself before
his mother's eyes in despair at a well-merited rebuke. Perhaps she
had never been beautiful, but her face was full of character, her
eye of sombre fire. She was a high chief-woman, but by a strange
exception for a person of her rank, was small, spare, and sinewy,
with lean small hands and corded neck. Her full dress of an
evening was invariably a white chemise--and for adornment, green
leaves (or sometimes white blossoms) stuck in her hair and thrust
through her huge earring-holes. The husband on the contrary
changed to view like a kaleidoscope. Whatever pretty thing my wife
might have given to Nei Takauti--a string of beads, a ribbon, a
piece of bright fabric--appeared the next evening on the person of
Nan Tok'. It was plain he was a clothes-horse; that he wore
livery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. They reversed the
parts indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband who
showed himself the ministering angel in the hour of pain, while the
wife displayed the apathy and heartlessness of the proverbial man.
When Nei Takauti had a headache Nan Tok' was full of attention and
concern. When the husband had a cold and a racking toothache the
wife heeded not, except to jeer. It is always the woman's part to
fill and light the pipe; Nei Takauti handed hers in silence to the
wedded page; but she carried it herself, as though the page were
not entirely trusted. Thus she kept the money, but it was he who
ran the errands, anxiously sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed
instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my
wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him,
a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked
themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too
often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly
Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an
ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from
the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her
brow, there must be something ticklish in the second. The husband
pronounced it; a well-directed cocoa-nut from the hand of his wife
caught him on the side of the head, and the voices and the mirth of
these indiscreet young gentlemen ceased for the day.
The people of Eastern Polynesia are never at a loss; their
etiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells
them what to do and how to do it. The Gilbertines are seemingly
more free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequent
perplexity. This was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple.
We had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco;
and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they found
themselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leave
what remained of the tobacco? The piece of plug was taken up, it
was laid down again, it was handed back and forth, and argued over,
till the wife began to look haggard and the husband elderly. They
ended by taking it, and I wager were not yet clear of the compound
before they were sure they had decided wrong. Another time they
had been given each a liberal cup of coffee, and Nan Tok' with
difficulty and disaffection made an end of his. Nei Takauti had
taken some, she had no mind for more, plainly conceived it would be
a breach of manners to set down the cup unfinished, and ordered her
wedded retainer to dispose of what was left. 'I have swallowed all
I can, I cannot swallow more, it is a physical impossibility,' he
seemed to say; and his stern officer reiterated her commands with
secret imperative signals. Luckless dog! but in mere humanity we
came to the rescue and removed the cup.
I cannot but smile over this funny household; yet I remember the
good souls with affection and respect. Their attention to
ourselves was surprising. The garlands are much esteemed, the
blossoms must be sought far and wide; and though they had many
retainers to call to their aid, we often saw themselves passing
afield after the blossoms, and the wife engaged with her own in
putting them together. It was no want of only that disregard so
incident to husbands, that made Nei Takauti despise the sufferings
of Nan Tok'. When my wife was unwell she proved a diligent and
kindly nurse; and the pair, to the extreme embarrassment of the
sufferer, became fixtures in the sick-room. This rugged, capable,
imperious old dame, with the wild eyes, had deep and tender
qualities: her pride in her young husband it seemed that she
dissembled, fearing possibly to spoil him; and when she spoke of
her dead son there came something tragic in her face. But I seemed
to trace in the Gilbertines a virility of sense and sentiment which
distinguishes them (like their harsh and uncouth language) from
their brother islanders in the east.
