Read Hawaii Online

Authors: James A. Michener,Steve Berry

Tags: #Fiction, #General

Hawaii (127 page)

BOOK: Hawaii
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As long as he had stayed at Punahou, this renegade had done well, but this was not unusual, for the family expected its sons to prosper there. Take the case of Hoxworth Whipple, who gained international honors for his work on Polynesian history. He started his scholarly investigation while still at Punahou, although later he took his B.A. at Yale, his M.A. at Harvard, his Ph.D. from Oxford and his D.Litt. from the Sorbonne. He received honorary degrees from eleven major universities, but when he died in 1914 the Honolulu Mail announced simply: "The great scholar was educated at Punahou." None of the rest really mattered.

In the year that the great scholar died, crowded with honors, the young member of the family who was to become the radical was graduating from Punahou. He was Hoxworth Hale, in all outward respects a typical sixteen-year-old boy. He was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. His hair was not black nor was it blond, and his eyes displayed no single prominent color. He was not at the top of his class nor yet at the bottom, and he was outstanding in no one scholastic accomplishment. He had played games moderately well but had never won fist fights against boys larger than himself.

Young Hoxworth Hale, named after the noted scholar, was most noted for the fact that he had uncommonly pretty sisters, Henrietta and Jerusha, and they lent him a spurious popularity which he would not otherwise have enjoyed. There was a good deal of chivvying to see which of his friends would win the favors of the charming sisters, and of course in later years his younger sister became engaged to one' of her calabash cousins, a Whipple, whereupon Hoxworth's father told the family, "I think it's high time somebody married a stranger. Get some new blood into this tired old tree." His words were not taken in good grace, because he had married his cousin, a Hoxworth girl, and it was felt that he was casting aspersions upon her; nevertheless, when his oldest daughter began displaying outward tendencies and actually became engaged to a man named Gage from Philadelphia, he expressed his pleasure. But later Henrietta met 3 boy from New Hampshire named Bromley and the two discovered that way, way back her great-great-great-great-grandfather Charles Bromley and his great-great-great . . . well, anyway, she felt a lot more congenial with Bromley than she ever had with her fianc6 Gage, so she married

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the former because, as she pointed out, "he seems more like one of the family."

When young Hoxworth Hale left Punahou it was understood that he would go on to Yale, and in New Haven this undistinguished youth was to explode into a prominence no one had anticipated. Not having wasted his limited intellectual reserves in preparatory school, he was ready to blossom in college and gradually became both a scholar and a polished gentleman. In his grades he did markedly better than boys who had surpassed him at Punahou, while in sports he captained the polo team and served as assistant manager of the basketball team. He acquired the lesser amenities and in politics ran successfully for president of his class.

It was this unlikely youth who became the radical. His commitment began one day in his junior year when a Professor Albers from Leipzig was ending a lecture on the theory of imperialism with this shrewd observation: "The Congreg^rional-Ohurch-cuni-Boston-merchant invasion and capture of Hawaii is the exact counterpart of the Cathodic-Church-cuin-Paris-entreipreneur rape of Tahiti. The proof of this analogy lies, I think, in the demonstrated manner whereby the missionaries who went to Hawaii, though they did not call in the American gunboats as did their French cousins in Tahiti, nevertheless, by revolutionary means, stole the land from the Hawaiians and wound up possessors of the islands."

Professor Albers' class contained, in addition to young Hoxworth Hale, his calabash cousin Hewlett Janders, two Whipples and a Hewlett, but these other descendants of the missionaries were content to stare in embarrassment at their arm rests. Not so Hoxworth; he coughed once, coughed twice, then boldly interrupted: "Professor Albers, I'm sorry but I'm afraid you have your facts wrong."

"I beg your pardon," the German professor spluttered.

"I mean that whereas your facts on Tahiti may be correct, those on Hawaii are definitely in error."

"Don't you stand when you address remarks to your professor?" the Leipzig-trained scholar demanded, growing red. When Hoxworth got to his feet, Albers referred to his notes and began quoting an impressive list of sources: "The journals of Ellis, Jarves, Bird, the researches of Amsterfield, de Golier, Whipple. They all tell the same story."

"If they do," Hoxworth said, "they're all wrong."

Professor Albers flushed and asked, "What is your name, young man?"

"Hoxworth Hale, sir."

"Welll" Albers laughed. 'Tour testimony on this matter is hardly unimpeachable."

This contempt goaded Hale into making a reply that infuriated the professor: "You cited Jarves. Have you ever read Jarves?"

"I do not cite sources I have not read," Albers fumed.

"Jarves happened to be a friend of some of my ancestors, and they held him in keen regard because he was the first impartial

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observer to defend the missionaries, and I've read what he wrote, in the original papers in which he wrote it, and what he wrote, sir, simply doesn't support your thesis."

The class broke up in something of a scandal and for some weeks the word missionary had a curious force of its own at Yale. Professor Albers, goaded by his young tormentor, marshaled an impressive battery of anti-clerical critics whose gibes at all churches and their nefarious skill in capturing the land of backward countries pleased the young iconoclasts of that day, and for several biting weeks the professor carried the day, and the dormitories rang with the famous gibes against the Hawaiian missionaries: "They came to the island to do good, and they did right well." "No wonder the islands were lighter when they left; they stole everything in sight." "They taught the natives to wear dresses and sign leases." And most cutting of all: "Before the missionaries came to Hawaii, there were four hundred thousand happy, naked natives in the mountains killing each other, practicing incest, and eating well. After the missionaries had been there awhile, there were thirty thousand fully clothed, miserable natives, huddled along the shore, paying lip service to Christianity and owning nothing." In Professor Albers' classes such lines of reasoning became increasingly popular, and for the first time Yale, the source of missionaries, took a serious look at what they had really accomplished. In those exciting days it was downright unpleasant to be a Whipple or a Hewlett, for the fact was often cited that Dr. John Whipple had abandoned the church to become a millionaire, and that Hewlett had left to steal land from the defenseless natives.

In the fifth week of the intellectual investigation, Hoxworth Hale, then a junior, nineteen years old, asked for time to read to the class the results of some work he had been doing on his account, and in cold, dispassionate phrases he developed this thesis: "In the third decade of the kst century a series of little ships brought missionaries to Hawaii. There were twelve ships in all, bearing a total of fifty-two ordained missionaries, brought to the islands at a cost of $1,220,000. At the end of nearly thirty years of religious and social service in the islands, the missionaries controlled practically no land, except in the case of one Abraham Hewlett who had married a Hawaiian lady and whose family lands have always been kept in her name for the welfare of her people. The Whipples owned no land whatever. Nor did the Hales except, in later days, a few building lots on which their homes have been built. In fact, in 1854 the Hawaiian government took cognizance of the unfortunate position of the mission families and passed a special law allowing those who had served the islands well to buy small parcels of land at favorable prices. And the government did this, Professor Albers, because they were afraid not that the missionaries would take over the islands, but that they would go back to America and take their children with them. The minutes of the government on this matter are explicit: 'June> 1851, the missionaries who have received and applied for lands have neither received nor applied for them without offering what they considered a

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fair compensation for them. So far as their applications have been granted, your Majesty's government have dealt with them precisely as they have dealt with other applications for land. It will not be contended that missionaries, because they are missionaries, have not the same right to buy land in the same quantities and at the same prices as those who are not missionaries. But, besides what is strictly due to them, in justice and in gratitude for large benefits conferred by them on your people, every considerationi of sound policy, under the rapid decrease of the native population, is in favor of holding out inducements for them not to withdraw their children from these islands. We propose a formal resolution declaring the gratitude of this nation t6 the missionaries for the services they have performed, and making some provision to insure that their children remain in these islands.'"

At this point Hoxworth looked directly at his professor and continued: "Dr. Albers, the provisions of this resolution were carried out, and the investigating committee found that the missionaries who had worked so long in Hawaii had acquired so little that the community as a whole applauded when the government provided that any missionary who had served in the islands for eight years be allowed to buy 560 acres of government lands at a price of fifty cents an acre lower than what the average white newcomer would have to pay. Since the average price at that time was $1.45 an acre, this represents a reduction of exactly 34.5 per cent, or one per cent per year for arduous and faithful service. So far as I can find, the missionaries acquired land in absolutely no other way, and even so, most of them were then too poor to take advantage of the government's offer.

"Hawaii desperately wanted the mission families to stay in the islands, and it has been justly said that the most significant crop grown by the missionaries was not sugar, but their sons. Now, if you want to argue that the brilliant young mission sons who left Hawaii, studied here at Yale and then returned to the islands, usurped a disproportionate number of important jobs in medicine, law, government and management, you would be on good grounds, but if you do so argue, don't blame the missionaries. Blame Yale.

"I conclude that it is neither fair nor accurate to accuse these families of stealing land which they never came into possession of. It was the non-mission families, the New England sea rovers, who got the land. Then, the land having been obtained by these men, it is true that mission sons managed it, for a fee, but would you have it lie fallow? The facts you cite apply to Tahiti. They simply do not apply to Hawaii."

He sat down, flushed with excitement, and expected the applause of his classmates for having dared argue with the arrogant professor, but what Hoxworth had said was not popular. It ran against the grain of the age and was not believed. Jokes about missionaries continued, and Hale saw that whereas he had gained nothing with his contemporaries he had placed himself at a serious disadvantage with

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the faculty. But what grieved him most was that his Punahou associates, Hewlett Janders and the others, felt rather ashamed that a subject which would have died with only momentary embarrassment had now been so thoroughly ventilated as to force all members of the class to be either anti-missionary or pro, and nearly everyone fell into the first category, and the Punahou men were infuriated that one of their own number had stirred up the mess.

So Hoxworth Kale's first venture into public argument backfired rather badly, but his studies had disclosed to him his ancestors, so that no matter how witty the gibes against missionaries became, he knew what the facts were, and this knowledge, in the subtle way that knowledge has, fortified him in many ways and made him a stronger man.

His preoccupation with researches into Hawaiian history developed an accidental concomitant which outraged all of Yale and led to his temporary withdrawal from the university. He was in the library one day, reading files of an early Honolulu newspaper, the Polynesian, for he wished to refresh his mind as to what that journal's excitable editor, James Jackson Jarves, had actually said about missionaries, and for a while he got bogged down in the story of how Jarves had protested when a French warship roared into Honolulu, insisting that French wines be imported in unlimited amounts, and of how the French authorities threatened to lash him through the streets with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Next he turned the yellowed pages to read of the time when the British consul actually did horsewhip poor Jarves for defending Hawaii against British intrusions into local affairs, and he began to laugh to himself: "Jarves must have been a wild-eyed young man . . . like me." And the conceit pleased him, and he felt sympathy for the strange, will-o'-the-wisp editor who had so befriended Hawaii and the missionaries, until he suddenly looked at the name again: James Jackson Jarves! Hadn't he heard that name in another context?

He hurried from the library and went to the exhibition hall where one of the glories of Yale University stood: the collection of early Italian masterpieces gathered together by a curious man named James Jackson Jarves, who had lived in Florence in the 1850's. Hoxworth hurried into the gallery and walked among the strange, faraway, gold and blue painting of an age he could not even begin to comprehend. He was unprepared to like the art he saw in the Jarves collection, and 'he did not try to do so, for it was in no way similar to the work of Raphael and Rembrandt, which he had been taught was true art; but as he gazed at the affectionate little paintings�more than a hundred of them�he sensed that they had been, collected by someone who had loved them, and he asked an attendant, "Who was this man Jarves?" The man didn't know, so Hale sought out another, and finally the curator: "Who was

BOOK: Hawaii
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