Translator's Introduction

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION Quatorze Am auxlles Sandwich was published by Hachette and Company, 79 Boulevard Saint-Germain, just a little over a century ago. To most people the name of the author, a certain C. de Varigny, was unknown. His best and indeed his only claim to biographical distinction and to the notice of France's expanding reading public was that he had lived for a number of years in the Hawaiian Kingdom and there, in Hawaii's capital city of Hono- lulu on the island of Oahu, had held high political office. In 1863 King Kamehameha V had appointed Varigny to be his minister of finance. Two years later the same king elevated him to the post of minister of foreign affairs, at that time a key executive office, whereby the young Frenchman automatically became head of the cabinet. Moreover, through an under- standing with the Hawaiian government amounting to dual citizenship, very readily endorsed by the French foreign office in Paris, Varigny was able to accept both appointments without jeopardizing his or his family's rights and privileges as citizens of France. During this same period, two honors in succession confirmed Varigny in his dual role as French patriot and servant of the Hawaiian crown. As early as 1864, after Kamehameha V had appointed him finance minister, he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III. Three years later Kamehameha V commissioned him as Knight Commander of the Order of Kamehameha—an award named for the king's grandfather and founder of the dynasty. Thus by 1867 and at the notably early age of thirty-eight, Charles-Victor Crosnier de Varigny had reason to feel that he had achieved the summit of his political ambition in Hawaii. Fourteen Years in the Sandwich Islands is, in essence, the story of that ambition. To understand his book more fully and follow it to the end the reader needs to know how and why he came to write it. One purpose of this x TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION introduction accordingly is to call attention to the special biographical interest of what were probably the most difficult years of Charles de Varigny's entire life. These were the six years between his return to France in 1868 on a long-promised leave of absence and the publication in 1874 of his Sandwich Islands memoir. Urgent reasons had compelled him to request the leave. For one thing, as he explains in chapter nineteen, his health was deteriorating. He needed also to take care of certain unspecified "family matters." The king granted him his wish with the proviso that Varigny's ministerial leave should be combined with a special diplomatic mission, all other "important policy matters" having been settled. Only the revision of our commercial treaties required my attention. Kameha- meha V told me of his wish to shift the scene of negotiations to Paris, and en- trusted to me their direction. I should be leaving the kingdom in my capacity as minister of foreign affairs, charged with a special mission requiring me to consult with officials of several European governments. The length of my absence was limited to one year. During this critical time between Varigny's arrival in France late in 1868 as Hawaii's minister plenipotentiary and the publication of his book by Hachette in 1874, Varigny underwent three disturbing experiences. In each of these his personal and family concerns became deeply involved with the turn of political events both in the Hawaiian Islands and in Europe. The first of these troubling experiences was the ignominious failure of the treaty negotiations he had undertaken to conduct with a number of European na- tions, including France, Great Britain, and the new North German Confed- eration. The second was the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870- 1871, ending in the defeat of Napoleon Ill's forces by Bismarck's armies, followed by the months of France's bloody civil war. The third reversal in Varigny's personal and official fortunes was the sudden death in November of 1872 of his patron, Kamehameha V, an event that ruled out any likeli- hood of Varigny's further employment in a diplomatic capacity by the Ha- waiian government. The immediate and inward impact of this series of un- fortunate circumstances upon Varigny's spirits cannot easily be documented in detail, but their shadow nevertheless can be said to hang over certain pages in Varigny's writing, especially in the somber and uncharacteristically self-deprecating sentences of his important preface. I do not know whether the history of a small kingdom of Oceania will attract the interest of a public so much concerned at this moment with so many and TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi such very difficult questions. I sometimes begin to doubt it. The more we feel depressed by the world around us, the more we resort to the charms of fiction; and fiction has been scrupulously banished from these pages. Writing them I have tried above all to tell the truth. I hope I have succeeded. At the end of his year's leave of absence, Varigny in November 1869 sub- mitted to Kamehameha V in Honolulu his resignation as foreign minister. However, the king deferred acting on the request until November 1870, after the defeat of Napoleon Ill's armies at Sedan and the fall of the Second Empire. Varigny's reasons for resigning were the same as those he had earlier cited in requesting the leave: ' 'Family matters and concern for my health required a protracted European sojourn." In his memoir he refrains from stat- ing that major trade treaties he had attempted to negotiate with France and Great Britain had brought no substantial advantages to any of the parties concerned. Neither does he fully disclose the fact that his fellow cabinet members in Honolulu were unanimously relieved to see him step aside: "My absence, as it became prolonged, imposed added burdens of work and responsibility upon my colleagues in Hawaii." The king informed him nevertheless that "he hoped I would decide to return to Hawaii, and assured me in most friendly terms of his desire that I might keep my ministerial portfolio." It is Louise de Varigny in her own memoirs who explains that "family matters" as much as reasons of health (including young Henry's asthma) weighed heavily in the minds of herself and her husband in deciding to re- main in France. Indeed, at the same time that Charles de Varigny was engaged in drafting his letter of resignation, the couple were seeking a per- manent home base in the heart of Paris, after having lived a migratory ex- istence for an entire year in France and Switzerland. Thus it was with a glad sense of relief that parents and children together, early in January of 1870, moved into a leased apartment on the Left Bank in Paris at 82 Boulevard Saint-Germain. As it happened, the new address at number 82 proved to be but a few minutes distant from Hachette's recently expanded Paris headquarters, main editorial offices and handsome modern salesrooms, at number 79- But there is no solid evidence suggesting that as early as 1870 Varigny had defi- nitely resolved to turn to full-time authorship and free-lance journalism as a means of support. Indeed, Mme de Varigny's journal explains that the over- ruling desire of the parents at this critical juncture in their situation was to make certain that each of the children would receive a suitable French edu- cation. Above all, the thought of the elders was to keep the family close together and intact, and for this purpose their location in the old university xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION quarter promised to meet their combined as well as individual needs. Very probably the greatest single asset of their new address was that it was close to the lycée where Henry was enrolled, the Collège Saint Louis, and it was fur- thermore conveniently near the École de Médecine to which the boy had long aspired. Not the least advantage of the neighborhood, especially from Louise de Varigny's point of view, was that the cost of managing a house- hold of five on the Left Bank would not exceed the family's precariously cur- tailed means. For many months after July 19, 1870, during the course of the Franco- Prussian War and its aftermath in France's civil struggle, the apartment at 82 Boulevard Saint-Germain stood vacant. In early September, only a day or two after the fall of the Second Empire and the proclamation by the Provi- sional Government of the Third Republic, Charles de Varigny, as his wife re- cords, hastened from Paris to Tours "to place himself at the disposal of the government." After the loss of Metz, he was among the entourage of Mar- shall Bazaine's retreat into Normandy. Shortly thereafter on his leave to Switzerland, where Louise de Varigny and the children had fled from Paris for safety, "Charles wrote his 'Notes on a Journey to Tours,' since then suc- cessfully published," but in which periodical or newspaper and on what date Mme de Varigny failed to record. Varigny's later wartime experiences as a participant-observer, while the French capital was at Bordeaux and Paris was held by the Commune, are never once alluded to in Fourteen Years in the Sandwich Islands, not even in its swiftly panoramic epilogue. Yet his in- tense awareness of contemporary France, quite as much as his memories of a bygone Hawaii, appears mysteriously to have turned him to the profession of writing as his true vocation and destiny.

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