Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (32 page)

Another important royal heiress to marry white was Elizabeth La‘anui, the great-granddaughter of the Conqueror’s older brother. She wed Franklin S. Pratt of Boston in 1864, who spent years on the periphery of power without taking any key role: staff colonel to Kamehameha V and privy councillor; in later years his longest tenure was as registrar of public accounts before serving briefly as Hawaiian consul in San Francisco.

Americans were not the only practitioners of the mercenary marriage. From whaling in the Antarctic to cattle ranching in Texas, Scots were seldom second in line to banking a profit. Lydia’s biological younger sister, Miriam Likelike, wed Archibald Scott Cleghorn in September 1870. He was from Edinburgh, the son of immigrant parents, and had been responsible for running the family store in Honolulu since he was seventeen. He already had three
hapa haole
daughters from a previous relationship, but once he graduated to the royal circle he served for eighteen years on the privy council and succeeded Dominis as royal governor of O‘ahu. His marriage to Likelike, however, dissolved into bitter vituperation, which made things awkward in raising their child, when they finally had one fifteen years into the marriage. That was Princess Victoria Ka‘iulani, heiress presumptive during and after Lili‘uokalani’s reign.

And those were just the most important marriages. Throughout the kingdom white, usually American, businessmen won the hands of chiefesses and acquired instant stakes toward future wealth. Both sides, at least, could play at this game, as land-rich
ali‘i
women secured fortunes for themselves in exchange for their lands, as when Abigail Kuaihelani married the Scot James Campbell the year he sold the Pioneer Mill for half a million dollars. Some mixed-race families were already rolling into a second generation, as with John Adams Kuakini Cummins, born as early as 1835 to an American father and a high-chiefess mother. He became known for his lavish entertainments, and for friendships and service to Kamehameha V, Princess Ruth, and Queen Emma, among others. Between the marriages and the
Mahele
, much of the wealth of the islands passed out of purely native control.

*   *   *

Exhausted by losing baby and husband within fifteen months of each other, Emma gathered a suite for a European progress: her escort John Synge of the British Foreign Office; William Hoapili Kaauwai (the first native Episcopal deacon) as her chaplain and his wife as lady-in-waiting; her Canadian footman, John Welsh; Sister Catherine Chambers for companionship, and two chiefs’ daughters to deposit in England for schooling. They sailed on May 5, 1865; Emma meant to rest and recover herself, and almost from the start the voyage had its effect. She enjoyed Acapulco and Panama, crossed the Isthmus and boarded the RMS
Tasmanian
. They were feted by the governor of the Danish West Indies, arrived at Southampton in mid-July, and were conveyed by carriage to London. In between rounds of sightseeing and a surfeit of Anglican church services, Emma was diligent to promote the cause of the Episcopal Church in Hawai‘i, but highest on her agenda was to meet Queen Victoria, with whom she had been corresponding with all the fervent affection of the era.
12
They met on September 9 at Windsor Castle; Victoria had been a widow for almost four years, Emma almost two, and both wore mourning.

“She is dark,” wrote Victoria in her journal, “but not more so than an Indian, with fine features & splendid soft eyes. She was dressed in just the same widow’s weeds as I wear. I took her into the White Drawingroom [
sic
], where I asked her to sit down next to me on the sofa. She was much moved when I spoke of her great misfortune in losing her husband and only child.”

“The Queen received me most affectionately,” Emma wrote home to the king, “most sisterly.”

When Victoria returned from her habitual summer sojourn at Balmoral she invited Emma to spend the night of November 18 at Windsor, a mark of singular favor, and the visit cemented their friendship. Emma “is not looking well,” Victoria recorded, “and coughs poor thing, for which reason she is ordered to go to the south of France.” At dinner Emma was seated between the queen and her visiting eldest daughter, Vicky, now the crown princess of Prussia. Emma “was amiable, clever, & nice in all she said, in speaking of her own country.… The people now were always dressed as Europeans, & were all nominally Christians, but not very fervently so.”

“Directly after breakfast,” Victoria wrote of the following morning, “we went to wish good Queen Emma goodbye & I gave her a bracelet with my miniature and hair. She thanked me much for my kindness, & for consenting to be godmother to her poor little child.”
13

The group had a long vacation on the Riviera, during which Hoapili succumbed to the atmosphere and took a French mistress, for which he and his wife (who had not been a diligent lady-in-waiting) were sent home early. A letter from Emma’s brother-in-law the king reminded her of the importance of going to Paris and presenting herself to the emperor. She did so, relaying to Lot that Napoleon III had no memory of meeting him fifteen years before, but they had a hearty laugh when Empress Eugénie asked if the king of Hawai‘i spoke French, to which Emma answered, of course, and he had learned it in Paris. Emma’s greatest surprise was the sight of an exotic Pacific plant growing in a vase of Sèvres porcelain. Emma explained to them that it was a
ti
plant, considered a nuisance in the islands, fed to cattle and used to wrap fish.

The party returned home by way of the United States, and Kamehameha V drew on his American experience to advise her: “They are a very sensitive people, your visiting them will disarm all the lies and insinuations directed against our family.”
14
The dowager queen received a thirteen-gun salute in New York Harbor, and President Andrew Johnson received her in the Red Room of the White House—the first queen to visit the executive mansion.

Emma returned home on October 22, 1866—having missed some important events. R. C. Wyllie had died almost exactly a year before; Emma had deeply mourned the news, and she came home to find him interred in the royal cemetery at Mauna ‘Ala, a high honor for his more than twenty years of service. More troubling, Victoria Kamamalu, the heiress presumptive, had died the previous May, throwing the succession into confusion. As the highest-ranking chiefess in the country, she had undertaken charitable activities such as founding the Ka‘ahumanu Society for the relief of elderly and sick natives, which was widely subscribed and generously supported.
15
She was only twenty-seven, and yet unmarried, an unhappy hostage to her brothers’ determination to preserve their status as the highest in the land.

Her passing might have been only a minor story in the American press, but it became known to large numbers through the pen of a remarkable author. In March 1866 the American steamer
Ajax
dropped anchor in Honolulu, disgorging cargo and passengers, except for one California journalist who stayed swapping stories so late that he spent another night on board. In the morning Samuel Clemens, lately famous for a short story about a jumping frog under the pen name Mark Twain, sauntered ashore. To all appearances he had come to dispatch home amusing anecdotes of the islands and people, yet there was a more serious intent as well. Twain’s employer, the Sacramento
Union
, was one of those newspapers that was alive to the possibilities of Pacific empire, or at the very least trade, and the stories that he filed, while inimitably Twain, also convey much accurate and relevant information on the government, economy, and commercial potential.
16
The very ship that Twain arrived on, the
Ajax
, was intended to inaugurate regular steamship service between the islands and California, and he was supposed to generate tourist traffic. (She was a year ahead of her time, however. Service on the
Ajax
was suspended after two unprofitable voyages, but a similar service the next year on the SS
Idaho
did make money, boosted with a $75,000 per year mail contract with the United States.)
17

Mark Twain arrived in time to witness the entire month of Kamamalu’s funeral observations. And his senses were filled, for the king accorded her the traditional rites of their people. “A multitude of common natives,” wrote Twain, “howl and wail, and weep and chant the dreary funeral songs of ancient Hawaii, and dance the strange dance of the dead.” Indeed the king closed the palace grounds to all but the
maka‘ainana
so they could mourn in their own way, annoyed that the funeral obsequies for his brother had been “criticized and commented on too freely.”
18

This stern but benevolent demeanor, whether seen in his insistence on a crown-empowered constitution, or in his use of that power, as when he quashed legislation that would have permitted the sale of liquor to natives (“I will never sign the death warrant of my people”), or in his judicious embrace of the ancient culture, earned Kamehameha V wide respect. His motto was
Onipa‘a
, “immovable,” and the
kanakas
considered him “the last great chief of the olden type.”
19
“He dressed plainly,” Twain wrote of him, “poked about Honolulu, night or day, on his old horse, unattended. He was popular, greatly respected, even beloved.”
20

In trying to relate an engaging story, Twain may not have understood the significance of the funeral’s reversion to native traditions, but his journalist’s eye certainly noted the decline of the Hawaiian people, and held the business and missionary interests equally to blame in accomplishing it: “The traders brought labor and fancy diseases … in other words, long, deliberate, infallible destruction, and the missionaries brought the means of grace and got them ready. So the two forces are working harmoniously, and anybody who knows anything about figures can tell you exactly when the last Kanaka will be in Abraham’s bosom and his islands in the hands of the whites.”
21

The native indulgence of Victoria Kamamalu’s funeral was only a temporary revival of native custom, however. More representative was the king’s laying the cornerstone of Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral on March 5, 1867, an act that could not help but showcase the royals’ continuing disdain for their Calvinist upbringing. The cathedral had been a favorite project of Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, who selected the stonework when she was in England. It was designed by the London firm of Slater & Carpenter, which dispatched to Hawai‘i the prefabricated stonework and their master builder Benjamin Ingelow.

*   *   *

During 1869 events occurred that seemed to reinforce British relations with Hawai‘i and left the American community in further doubt of their future. During her sojourn in England, Emma had not met Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh. He had undertaken a naval career, a duty at which he excelled, and rose to command the frigate HMS
Galatea
. He was twenty-five and third in line to the throne after the Prince of Wales and his son, the infant Duke of Clarence. He proved to be a popular representative of the royal family wherever he called—notwithstanding an assassination attempt in Australia the preceding year.

In a stark contrast to the scowling missionaries, Alfred in Hawai‘i asked to see a representation of authentic native culture, and the king assigned the task to his fellow graduate of the Royal School, Lydia Kamaka‘eha. At thirty-one she was only six years older than the prince, and she was known as an enthusiastic promoter of preserving the native arts. At her Waikiki estate, Lydia assembled a sumptuous luau for Prince Alfred that included a progression of Hawaiian dishes and exhibitions of native sports, chants, and dances, including the hula. It lasted for six hours, from eleven in the morning until the guests were driven to shelter by a violent thunderstorm at five.
22
One display of native Hawaiiana all her own was the presence of the monumental Princess Ruth Ke‘elikolani, the king’s half sister, all 440 pounds of her, with her voice that people said sounded like distant thunder. The Americans were not pleased. “We regret to have to chronicle,” clucked the
Hawaiian Gazette
, “that the disgraceful Hula-dance was a part of the programme, and trust for the sake of common decency that it may be the last time that this relic of heathenism may be performed.” This American mouthpiece also took a dim view of the fact a number of Hawaiian women had been invited to the feast, but not their
haole
husbands.

Prince Alfred took advantage of the opportunity to steal a march on the Americans, presenting precious tokens to all the royals—gold studs to the king, a bracelet to Emma, and pearl ring to Kalakaua. Recognizing Lydia’s musical accomplishments, Alfred gifted her with copies of two of his own compositions, in addition to a gold chain with an anchor clasp. When
Galatea
sailed, the Hawaiians responded to Alfred’s kindness and interest by loading his ship to the gunwales with native bounty, even as they would have done in the old days—souvenirs of tapa cloth, and generous provisions of taro, pineapples, and pork. It was the Americans, however, who were left stewing.

Before Alfred left, Kamehameha V hosted a grand ball at the palace for him, and it was Emma who partnered him for most of the evening. She seemed recovered from her multiple bereavements. She and the king were confederates in promoting the English church in Hawai‘i. “You and I perfectly feel the same,” he once wrote her, “why the Mission from England should have had the support of all people who really loved their Country.”
23
In 1872 Kamehameha V laid the cornerstone for a new royal palace just south and east of the wood-frame complex, this one to be built of coral blocks and named to honor his brother
—
‘Iolani.” (This was the Ali‘iolani Hale, which was later converted to house the legislature.) Emma received from her uncle’s widow the beautiful 4,500-acre
ahupua‘a
of Lawa‘i on Kaua‘i. She sailed up to put the estate in order, and in directing the digging of a water ditch from the spring to the cottage, she encouraged the workers to finish it promptly—by providing them with beer.
24
Such sensible good nature kept Emma as popular as ever. When the king heard that she intended to visit Ni‘ihau to add to her famous collection of native handicrafts, he sent word solicitously that the season of storms was almost upon them and she should not risk it.