Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (36 page)

His constant angling for the throne, though, and his possible manipulation of the palace troops’ mutiny, only heightened Emma’s disgust with his grasping. But she also realized that his ability to dedicate himself to a goal was a lesson by which she could profit. As she wrote her cousin Peter Ka‘eo, “With Taffy’s faults we must give him credit … he has exerted himself … he has not faltered, but keeps on trying for the end. This is a good point in him which we must copy.” Copy, she wrote, using honorable means, not the crooked subterfuges that Kalakaua was all too ready to resort to.
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In her memoirs, Kalakaua’s sister Lydia Kamaka‘eha relentlessly takes his part, depicting Emma as the one grasping for power, shamelessly importuning both the dying Kamehameha V and the dying Lunalilo to name her, even within Lydia’s hearing. It is this last element, if nothing else, that falls too far outside the parameters of Emma’s discretion to be credible.
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Perhaps as a measure of his desire to be king, Kalakaua paid up his back dues to the Masons, membership in which he had dropped in 1868, and began attending meetings again.
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This time there would be no plebiscite, which Emma would have won going away; the entire contest would be waged within the legislature, behind the paired Ionic columns of the Ali‘iolani Hale. As the campaign progressed, Emma left the city for her house in the Nu‘uanu Valley. Stories began to circulate about her that had something of Kalakaua’s sound about them: she had promised to abolish all taxes, she had promised to free convicts from the jail, she had promised to take no salary. Some of it may have been true; Emma’s advisers were pressing on her that she could not win in the legislature, and she must compete with Kalakaua on his own ground. If she did make or consent to these pronouncements, it was out of her character and not well done. And it all happened with astonishing suddenness. Lunalilo had died on February 3, and the legislature met to make its choice on February 12.

American political interests could never have come to dominate Hawai‘i without first capturing the culture, and Kalakaua’s lobbying in the legislature gives some vivid examples of how complete the transformation had become. One of Kalakaua’s backers there was the
hapa haole
John Adams Kuakini Cummins, the “Lord of Waimanalo,” who previous to casting his vote against Emma offered that “I believe in beautiful women and fine horses, but no petticoat shall rule me.”
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Cummins was the offspring of another one of those useful marriages, this one between Massachusetts businessman Thomas Jefferson Cummins and a high chiefess of O‘ahu five years his senior. Himself raised as a high chief,
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there was a time when a man like Kuakini Cummins would have fallen on his belly at the approach of a figure like Keopuolani; for a decade and a half after the Conqueror’s death, the important policy decisions of the kingdom were made by Ka‘ahumanu and then by her niece Kina‘u. For Kuakini to have entered the legislature as a knee-jerk mysogynist, and to refer to such a decidedly Western concept as “petticoat rule,” demonstrates the sea change in the Americanization of cultural values—which certainly smoothed Kalakaua’s path to the throne. To say that the seat on the privy council that Kalakaua then awarded to Cummins was a payoff for his vote might not be fair, for Cummins’s wealth, social prominence, and favors rendered to previous monarchs recommended him for such a station, but over the next two decades Cummins proved himself an effective servant of the house of Kalakaua.

A large throng gathered before the Ali‘iolani Hale, most of them the queen’s supporters—“Emmaites,” their enemies called them. When the vote was taken there were 39 votes for Kalakaua, 6 for Emma, and it was apparent that Kalakaua had managed to do what observers feared he might do the year before—get himself elected monarch against the prevailing will of the people, by ingratiating himself with a majority of the legislators. Lunalilo had had the fact of a landslide referendum to prevent that; Emma had none. When the result was announced, a deputation of five legislators left the building for a waiting carriage to take the news to the new king.

But then “a hoarse, indignant roar, mingled with cheers from the crowd without was heard within the Assembly.”
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The crowd became a mob as shock gave way to utter outrage. They rocked and then tore apart the carriage as the deputation fled back inside. Wheel spokes became clubs; windows shattered as they surged inside. Most of the eighty policemen whom the marshal of the kingdom, William C. Parke, had assigned to crowd control, joined in. Inside, Parke stationed himself just outside his own office with a pistol, and the crowd avoided him, but the legislature was sacked. One legislator who was known to have supported Kalakaua was defenestrated and killed where he landed.

There was no help. Hawai‘i’s showy little army had never been reconstituted after the mutiny the previous year; the policemen were now part of the mob. Charles Reed Bishop, now foreign minister, Governor Dominis, and the king-elect called on the British and American consuls for marines from their warships—of which there were only three in the harbor—to restore order. About 75 marines landed from HM screw corvette
Tenedos
, and about 150 from the sloops-of-war USS
Portsmouth
and USS
Tuscarora
. The Americans cleared the courthouse and square; the British marched up the Nu‘uanu Valley to Emma’s summer house, Hanaiakamalama, and dispersed her people gathered there.
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It was the most violent rioting that Honolulu had ever seen. At one point Kalakaua sent a message to the queen dowager, asking her to request her partisans to disband, but she refused. The tension was slow to dissipate; that night was punctuated by breaking glass and gunshots. That Kalakaua opened his reign by placing himself in further debt to the Americans played a suitable overture; that was a central theme of his seventeen-year tenure.

*   *   *

In arranging the royal household of his new dynasty, and himself being childless with Kapi‘olani, he declared his younger brother, William Pitt Leleiohoku II, twenty, his heir apparent, followed by his younger sister Lydia Kamaka‘eha, and next their youngest sister, Miriam Likelike. All were, by his prerogative, made royal highnesses, and he bestowed a new name on Lydia. When she was born in 1838 the
kuhina nui
, Elizabeth Kina‘u, who had only seven months to live, was enduring a painful eye condition. She was close friends with the new mother, Keohokalole, with whom she shared a descent from Keoua, and she named the infant Kamaka‘eha, “Sore Eyes,” preceded by Lili‘u Loloku Walania, “Painful Tearful Burning,” with Lydia being her first name, and her oft-used surname, Paki, that of her
hanai
father. At his accession Kalakaua contracted her names to Lili‘uokalani, “Smarting of the Royal Ones,” which her close friends shortened to the nickname “Lili‘u.”

Soon after his election, Kalakaua undertook a royal progress to the different islands, which helped his popularity. And there were other ways in which he figured out how to help himself. One of his first accomplishments was composing the lyrics of a national anthem, “Hawai‘i Pono‘i” (“Righteous Hawai‘i,” more liberally translated as “Hawai‘i’s Own True Sons”), partnering with his bandmaster, Capt. Henry Berger, who wrote the music. “Hawai‘i’s own true sons,” it began. “Be loyal to your king, Your country’s liege and lord, the chief.” After each verse came the refrain, “Father above us all, Kamehameha, Who guarded in wars, With his spear.” The song was a clever, clever fusion of patriotism, designed to promote an upwelling of national pride that the people would find in having a national anthem, and his own ingratiation with the people by tying himself to Kamehameha I, to whom he was not related, and whose descendents viewed him as something between a civil servant and ambitious grabber.

And the project also began to recast Kamehameha from Conqueror to Unifier. Many Hawaiians on Kaua‘i still viewed him as the king who failed to subdue their island and had to negotiate for it; many on O‘ahu reviled him for the massacre at Nu‘uanu Pali, where hundreds of their own men had plunged to their deaths and had their severed heads offered in sacrifice. It would have been impossible for Kamehameha to have killed tens of thousands during the conquest and been kindly remembered everywhere. Kalakaua, in league with a controversial legislator—Walter Murray Gibson the ex-Mormon, who had wheeled and dealt and rehabilitated himself back into public employment—undertook a project to commission a heroic statue of Kamehameha to commemorate the centennial of Captain Cook’s landing. A worldwide search for an artist led them to Thomas Ridgeway Gould, a Bostonian working in Florence, who had recently produced portrait busts of Junius Booth and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gibson and the king raised ten thousand dollars, and commissioned Gould to execute a heroic standing figure of the Conqueror, to depict him at the age of about forty-five, which gave Gould some creative license since the only portraits of Kamehameha showed him in his old age.

The plaster model that Gould created was sent to Paris for casting in brass, the gilded finished statue was dispatched in August 1880, but the ship burned and sank near the Falkland Islands. The Hawaiian government used the insurance proceeds to pay for a second casting, unaware that Falklands fishermen had salvaged the original, although it was damaged. Painted in lifelike colors to conceal damage to the gilt brass, this original was later erected before the courthouse in Kapa‘au, near Kamehameha’s birthplace in North Kohala. The second casting was placed before the legislative building, the Ali‘iolani Hale in Honolulu, and it too was eventually painted in natural colors. And Kalakaua was proved correct, as the statues were quickly accepted as iconic symbols of the Hawaiian nation; the more traditional natives accorded them the status of spiritual objects, and receptacles of
mana
, despite their being Western-created objects of heroic art. For those who could not see the statues in person, the image was widely disseminated on a twenty-five-cent postage stamp. Kalakaua was probably the first head of state to realize the propaganda value of the humble stamps. During his tenure as postmaster, issues of Hawaiian stamps—perforated, gummed, and beautifully engraved in Boston—became some of the most advanced in the world and were avidly sought by collectors.

Kalakaua was fascinated by science and inventions, and he keenly followed the doings of a British scientific expedition that arrived in June 1874, to record a transit of Venus across the sun—the first such event since the one that brought Captain Cook to the islands ninety-six years before. It also, happily for his purposes, put him in connection with the somewhat outcast Princess Ruth on a matter not related to the succession. The seven astronomers wished to be lodged as close as possible to where their instruments were set up. The site selected was in the Apua District on Honolulu,
mauka
of the business center. Ruth rented them a house that she owned, and the station was located next door on land that Kalakaua owned. The king proved to be rather an overgrown schoolboy, and wore his welcome thin, but he had facilitated their business by waiving customs inspections and in other ways, and the astronomers tolerated him with smiles—unlike the incessant heat, rain, mosquitoes, and a throng of curious locals.
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The actual Venusian transit was not to occur until December 8; on November 15 Kalakaua imposed on them with several ladies of the court; it was as close to the transit as he would get, for he had to leave the country two days later.

He had gotten himself elected king on promises of relief for the sugar planters, and had to leave for America to make good on the pledge. Times for the industry had turned hard, but there was nothing in the American political landscape to indicate that landing a deal for sugar would be any easier than it ever had been. It was a risk, but Kalakaua concluded that he must go to the United States to dispense some royal charm—no reigning king from anywhere had ever visited America.

He sailed on the USS
Benicia
in company with his brother-in-law Governor Dominis—who left his wife and mother to coldly endure each other at Washington Place—and Henry Peirce the American minister, and aides. Kalakaua, who all his life had had to elbow his way to a place of prominence, actually proved himself good at being a king. While his negotiators thrashed out the details of a treaty that the United States did not particularly want, but which, recognizing its special relationship with Hawai‘i, they were willing to entertain, the king addressed a joint session of Congress, visited P. T. Barnum’s circus in New York (although it was uncertain at times whether he was a tourist or an attraction), and attended a glittering state dinner hosted by President U. S. Grant—a first for the nation.

By the opening of 1875, certain elements became clear. Pearl Harbor was off the table, but Hawai‘i had to agree that no other reciprocity treaty would be sought with other countries. Hawaiian rice, which had been growing in importance, would also be admitted to the United States free of duty, but not wool. Unrefined sugar destined for the San Francisco refineries would be included. It had been surprisingly easy; Secretary of State Fish agreed to present the treaty to the cabinet. Kalakaua returned home on February 15 and the wait began, hopeful at first, but as the months dragged on, all were reminded of the many obstacles that could arise in the United States. But the Senate approved the treaty on March 18, and Kalakaua ratified it a month later; but then the U.S. House of Representatives had to pass on it, and the next session would not be until December.

In the meantime the California refiners got cold feet. What if Hawaiian sugar flooded the market? Some of the Honolulu factors then moved intelligently, visiting San Francisco to say they would withhold their sugar from refiners who could not support them. Then there was the usual Louisiana objection. In fact the House did not vote until May 8, and it passed, but then the Senate had to approve that version. Acting in blind faith, the Hawaiian legislature passed the necessary enabling legislation to set the treaty in motion, and waited for news from the American Senate. And that did not come until August. But, he had done it. Kalakaua had made reciprocity happen, and Honolulu was delirious.
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