In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii
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In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii Mike Dillon For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.1 As my wife and I gazed down from the highest sea cliffs in the world, reaching 3,000 feet at their peak, I declaimed Robert Louis Stevenson’s words as the signal for our descent. Our love for Stevenson, the man and his books, has led us here to the famous precipice of Molokai. We’re on a quest for his elusive spirit in the Hawaiian Islands. Blue ocean curled and shattered white far below. A votive niche at the trailhead sheltered mementos left by wayfarers— seashells, coins, and religious icons—a reminder this was to be no ordinary day hike. With twenty-six switchbacks, the trail drops 1,700 feet and covers more than three miles. Green, mountainous, cloud-wreathed Molokai lies between Maui and Oahu. From the air the island resembles a shark. Straight below, the isolated peninsula of Kalaupapa National Historical Park is the dorsal. It’s also the site of the infamous, former leper colony established by the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1866, a bare, windswept place consecrated by human suffering and the heroic ministrations of a Roman Volume 6, Number 6 | July 2018, Rhododendron Issue 30 Mike Dillon Catholic priest and nun: Saint Damien Joseph De Veuster of Belgium and Saint Marianne Cope, an American citizen born in Germany. Shortly after Damien’s death in 1889 Stevenson spent seven days in the Lazaretto. Swallowing his fear, the frail author mixed freely with the patients. ‘I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be repeated,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor (strange as it may seem) loved life more than in the settlement.’2 A Life of High Adventure Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850, Stevenson suffered, at times greatly, from what was most likely tuberculosis for the better part of his life. He died in Samoa at age 44. His condition would have shipwrecked most mortals; Stevenson, however, authored more than thirty books, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and lived a life as picaresque as any plot found in his novels. His voluminous correspondence, for sheer aliveness, rivals Byron’s. This stork-like, high-strung, vivid wraith of a man with intense, refulgent brown eyes that people never forgot; this pampered, only child from a family of Scottish lighthouse builders, bet everything on his pen and risked all by taking his extended family to sea. Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures 31 In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii As he wrote a friend in 1889, upon arriving in Honolulu after a difficult sail from Tahiti, ‘Altogether, this foolhardy adventure is achieved, and if I have but nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall have both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury.’3 Here, in a nutshell, is the famous Stevenson charm. Stevenson had sailed in his chartered schooner Casco from San Francisco for the South Seas on June 28, 1888. Before departure, the ship’s owner cast a cold eye on 1the rail-thin author and advised the crew to be ready for a burial at sea. Stevenson, for his part, wasn’t ready. He had six more years. ‘The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island are memories apart and touched a virginity of sense,’ he would write from the Pacific.4 A colorful cast sailed with Stevenson through the Golden Gate that day, including his American-born wife Fanny, a divorcee 10 years his senior, who could butcher a hog and roll her own cigarettes. Stevenson’s friends and admirers in Great Britain blamed Fanny for burgling their beloved boy for parts unknown — she was the Yoko Ono of her day. Stevenson likened her dark stare to the sighting of a pistol. In the Pacific, Stevenson’s South Seas fiction took on a harder, realistic edge, which won the admiration of master stylist Joseph Conrad. Here’s the opening to The Beach at Falesa: ‘I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled like a diamond. The Volume 6, Number 6 | July 2018, Rhododendron Issue 32 Mike Dillon land breezes blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most plain; and the chill of it set me sneezing.’5 Conrad would learn from Stevenson. After landfalls in the Marquesas and Tahiti, the Casco entered Honolulu harbor on Jan. 24, 1889, where Fanny’s daughter Belle and her improvident, artist husband Joe Strong, Honolulu residents and part of the royal set, greeted the new arrivals along with a clutch of newspaper reporters. In those days Honolulu was a city of perhaps 24,000 people. The Casco arrived at a critical time in Hawaiian history, as non-native interests pushed to undermine the monarchy. Stevenson, ever on the side of the underdog, stood with the royals. He quickly befriended King David Kalākaua, ‘The Merrie Monarch,’ an impressive, Falstaffian man of immense learning whose court became the beating heart of Hawaiian culture in the face of the ‘haole’ onslaught. In a letter to a friend, Stevenson noted the King could also hold his liquor: ‘He carries it too like a mountain with a sparrow on its shoulders. We calculated five bottles of champagne in three hours and a half (afternoon), and the sovereign quite presentable, although perceptively more dignified at the end…’6 The Quiet End of Waikiki Stevenson and his family moved from downtown Honolulu to a friend’s cottage at Waikiki (‘spouting water’) three miles Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures 33 In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii away near the foot of Diamond Head. In those days Waikiki was place of mild surf, sacred sites, fresh water springs, taro plantations and royal fishponds. Modern Waikiki represents tourism at its highest pitch, but even now a 10-minute stroll away from the human circus toward Diamond Head brings you to the quiet end of the beach and Stevenson’s old stomping grounds. A favorite swimming spot for locals, Kaimana Beach, a.k.a. Sans Souci (‘without care’) Beach, begins on the east side of the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial. After his initial, five months stay, Stevenson returned to Oahu in 1893 from his Samoan home for five weeks. Once again he made for the quiet end of Waikiki, taking up residence at the Sans Souci Hotel, a rambling beach hostelry among the coconut palms. The Sans Souci condo apartments occupy the approximate spot. Stevenson left his imprint in the hotel register: ‘If anyone desire such old-fashioned things as lovely scenery, quiet, pure air, clear sea water, good food and heavenly sunsets hung out before their eyes over the Pacific and the distant hills of Waiana, I recommend him cordially to the ‘Sans Souci.’7 This is still good advice. Nearby, the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel is the site of a Victorian estate where Stevenson liked to spend leisure time. The hotel’s Hau Tree Lanai restaurant features the railing from the main house’s veranda; the famous hau tree still provides shade for diners, as it did for Stevenson, as an old photograph attests. Volume 6, Number 6 | July 2018, Rhododendron Issue 34 Mike Dillon Stevenson struck up a friendship with fellow Scot Archibald Cleghorn, widower of King David’s sister. His young, teenaged daughter Princess Ka‘iulani, soon to be shipped off to England for her education, became Stevenson’s fast friend. He wrote stories for the princess beneath the banyan tree at Cleghorn’s 10-acre estate ‘Ainahau, in what is now the busy center of Waikiki. The Princess Kaiulani Hotel, across the street from the venerable Moana Hotel, occupies much of the former site. Here’s a stanza from a poem Stevenson dedicated to the princess: Her islands here, in Southern sun, Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone, And I, in her dear banyan shade, Look vainly for my little maid.8 One looks in vain for Stevenson’s spirit anywhere in the heart of modern Waikiki. Tusitala Street (his Samoan nickname meaning ‘teller of tales’), will do nothing to revive his memory — except to invoke an ironic smile he would have appreciated; nor will the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Grass House, on the grounds of the Waioli Tea Room in Manoa, a reconstruction of a hut on Cleghorn’s estate Stevenson likely never sat in. During his first stay in the islands Stevenson also visited the Kona Coast on the Big Island, after finishing his dark novel, The Master of Ballantrae. which had given him fits. Stevenson and his Hawaiian host rode north on horseback to visit the City of Refuge, Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park today. The Great Wall, a barrier of lava blocks Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures 35 In Search of Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii some 12 feet tall and 18 feet wide protects the sacred site, built some 400 years ago. Stevenson wrote: ‘The ruin made a massive figure, rising from the flat lava in ramparts twelve to fifteen feet high, of an equal thickness, and enclosing an area of several acres.