An Old Time Marquesan Queen—Forced Teetotalism and the Result—With R.L.S. watching Native Dance—A German Missionary—A Medley of Incidents

There was an old Marquesan Queen who lived near Samoa. Years ago in the zenith of her beauty and fame she sang and danced at the cannibalistic feasts, was the belle of the Isles and a kind of Helen of Troy of the South Seas. She was taken prisoner by various tribes, bought by the big tattooed chiefs and, when they sickened of her, sold again and again until at last she emerged from the door of a South Sea Divorce Court, and fell into the arms of one of the Island Kings and, becoming a Queen, became virtuous, in so far as she possibly could be after being reformed to the Christian religion. Hornecastle called at her lonely Isle once, while we were cruising around in a sloop. He, of course, knew her well, and after introducing me to her as his son, I brought the fiddle out at “Castle’s” request, and played to her, as she sat old and wrinkled by her hut door. She was a most extraordinary-looking old woman; when she smiled her face puckered up into a map of wrinkles and her small shrunken black eyes twinkled as though through the dark came back old memories of those lusty stalwart chiefs of long ago. Then she readjusted her pince-nez and I saw the tears in her eyes as her black fingers nervously turned over leaf after leaf of the big English Bible which she had on her bony knees. She had grown very pious and sedate and no one on earth would have guessed her past history as she sat there, with nothing on except an old bustle skirt, which only reached to her knees, and stuck on her head a large Parisian hat of the fashion about the time of the French Revolution.

I suppose she’s dead now and gone to the land of her fathers. I often think of her and the way she gazed at my white face as I dropped on one knee, with all the respect due to a Queen, and kissed that shrivelled hand. I can still see the faint, majestic smile flickering on those aged lips that had received in the bloom of maidenhood how many kisses on their soft amorous curves—and the lithe brown body’s outline of breathing beauty, how often had it been folded in the arms of brief paradise? There she sat, a wrinkled-up bit of humanity, jealous and fretful of those who had not seen their day, for all the world like some old ladies of my own country, as she surveyed with approval, the decorum of the future race romping about her, tumbling head over heels on the plantation slopes, partially clothed in palm-leaf hats, and lava-lava, extending from the waist to the knees.

Hornecastle could speak the “Island lingo” like a native and many were the modest blushes she gave as the old chap went over reminiscences of the glorious past, telling her of her past beauty and swearing that she had but slightly changed, and that for the better, giving me a vigorous side wink as he told that thundering lie with its inner meaning. Poor old Castle, he may be still alive. I never met a more knowing and yet sentimental old shell-back and he grafted into my mind more than any other man the knowledge of South Sea Island life and the inefficacy of white men of religious aspirations. I would not even be surprised to hear that he was now pious and sobered down. I never met a man like Castle for strength. I’ve seen him pick up a tree trunk that weighed three hundredweight and handle it as though it were a one-seater canoe. He once told me that he had only had two illnesses in his life and they, he said, were “Bronshitus and Pew-Monja.” He was born in the early days of old England when they did not teach the boys and girls Latin, French, German and Euclid, long before children looked upon their parents as fools, and held the candle while their old mother fetched up a ton of coal.

There was one other eccentric old man whom I have forgotten to mention; his name was Bodey, he’d travelled the world over and had spent ten years of peace and rest in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney. I never saw him sober, so that I cannot tell you anything of his real character, excepting that he was extremely devoted to his Samoan wife, who likewise struck me as very fond of him. She was a tall, fine-looking woman of about forty years of age. Her original beauty had long since departed; her front teeth also had gone; her plump, full lips were much shrunken, but her eyes still remained cheerful-looking and moved quickly and intelligently as she spoke. Bodey gave her a terrible shock once. He broke his ankle and, being utterly helpless, could not get down to the beach drinking shanty, and so got quite sober. For two days running, his manner was so different that his wife gazed upon him as a stranger, and he too gazed upon her, as she nursed him and bathed his foot, with suspicion, quizzing her with astonishment, but I took mercy on him, went and got a bottle of Samoan whisky and the couple in half-an-hour were once more united and happy. Three weeks after that he died of shock.

Hornecastle and I went to his grave, to place a large cross on it, which we had made ourselves. When we got there Hornecastle cried like a child, and I gave a Samoan who was lying asleep near by a large silk handkerchief and one “mark” to dig a hole after we had gone, and place that cross over our dead friend. I remember well how Hornecastle in his drunken grief stuck the cross in and kept poking down and down, as though he was searching for his old comrade, and when I pulled him away he staggered back, fell on his knees and kissed the earth with his lips, crying out, “Bodey, old mate, can yer hear me?”

It upset me terribly at the time; I did not know Castle had such deep feeling in his nature. I pulled him off and told the Samoan to make the grave neat and he bowed his brown face fourteen times reverently to show me that he understood my wishes. As soon as we had gone he bolted off with the tombstone; what he wanted it for only heaven knows.

It was about that time that the Islanders had some great festive ball and I and Hornecastle went inland and had a fine spree. Hornecastle got fearfully drunk, and I played the violin as the Samoan men, boys and girls, dressed up in a very picturesque way, flowers in their hair, and grasses and leaves clinging to their brown bodies, went through their ancient dances, in the shade of the banyans and mangroves. It was a great meeting; the old fighting chiefs were all there, dethroned kings and discarded queens, claimants to fallen dynasties of the Islands around. Robert Louis Stevenson was there. Hornecastle smacked him on the back to let me see that he was in with the best society. Stevenson took it all in good part and laughed heartily as the half-naked Island women danced and whirled around and threw up their legs while Hornecastle kept shouting “Hen-core! Hen-core!” He was a low old scoundrel, but I couldn’t help liking him; he was most sincere in all his likes and dislikes and never put on any side. Stevenson liked him too, for while he was gazing interestedly on the weird moonlit forest scene of that primeval ballroom I noticed he often gazed sideways with intense amusement at Hornecastle, who kept getting enthusiastic about the various nude figures of the Samoan women, and made critical remarks about their limbs and beauty, slapping me on the shoulder every now and again, and poking me in the ribs as he noticed some especial point about them that interested him. The presence of Robert Louis Stevenson standing close by made me feel a bit uncomfortable in my association with Hornecastle, especially as the old reprobate would appeal to me at every incident, as though he thought I was as bad as himself. It was almost dawn before the Tribes finished their grand war dances. All the little children, tired out, lay huddled in groups under the scattered palms and coco-nut trees fast asleep, their tiny dark faces revealed by the moonbeams which crept over their pretty eyelids and tiny parted sleeping lips, as the night wind blew aside the long-fingered palm-leaves just above them.

The few whites, Robert Louis Stevenson and his friends, went off home some time before the grand finale, which consisted of the banging of drums and the kicking of legs and movement of bodies in a manner something resembling the modern “cakewalk,” except that it was a deal more rhythmical and fascinating to gaze upon. Hornecastle fell madly in love with a fat old dark woman of about sixty years of age; round and round the two of them went together, and the old chap, I’ll swear, cocked his legs quite as high as the South Sea maid of sixty summers. In the morning he looked pretty bad and kept sticking his head in a tub of cold seawater to keep it cool, and till he got a few more drinks down him he looked a bit ashamed of himself, and well he ought to, considering I have only told you half the truth with regard to his behaviour.

I must tell you, before I go on, about the German missionary “Von Sour-Craut.” One night he was caught out with one of the high caste chieftain’s daughters; what he had been really doing I don’t know, but there was a terrible rumpus. One of the old Inland tribes who were staying on for some feast at Satufa and were on the warpath (for at that time there was always some trouble about over-chief jealousy) got hold of him and took him off into the forest. The whites, English and American missionaries, got wind of his predicament and off we all went and succeeded in finding him trussed up like a fowl. Hornecastle swore that they were an emigrant tribe of Solomon Islanders and that their intention was to roast him on a cannibalistic spit; he even told me afterwards that he saw the oil basting pot; anyway, true or not true, we all had a terrible fighting scramble to rescue Sour-Craut. Hornecastle knocked six of them over with a log. I got in a blow on one of them and had my knuckle dislocated as I put my hand up to protect my head as a warrior lifted his club and brought it down with a crash! We won the day though and released the trussed-up victim, and the whole tribe of outraged mothers and fathers, who had attempted to get their own back, scampered off into the moonlit forest like a pack of mammoth rats. We tried to get the truth out of Sour-Craut the missionary as to what he had done to cause such wrath among the natives, but he insisted that divine prayer was his only object in seeking out the dusky maid, but we all had our suspicions and Sour-Craut got the sack by the authorities and left those parts. Hornecastle had a nasty wound in the back and one of his ears was partly chewed off. He had good blood though and it soon healed. The way he swore over that wound was something terrible, in fact I really think he used worse language than he did when we went to Nuka-Hiva and slept side by side in a hut that had previously been inhabited by a half-caste Chinaman. We were just going off to sleep when out they came from their hungry vigil and running in all directions started to taste the two of us—for they were bugs as big as hornets! We did smash them up too, and I’ll swear that they were more tenacious in their death struggles than the New York species that came down the walls in vast regiments and nearly ate my eyelids away, but I will tell you of all that terrible time later on.

One night soon after the first-mentioned event, a German sailor gave me a copy of A. Lindsay Gordon’s poems. I read the “Sick Stockrider” and felt like leaving the Islands for a pilgrimage to the author’s grave. I at once came under the influence of the unfortunate Omar Khayyam of the Australian Bush and wrote off yards of quatrains. I think if they had been published they would have made me famous as the author of the world’s worst poems; anyway I liked them, and when I read them to Hornecastle and he smacked me on the back and said I was a genius I almost put them in an envelope to send to the Poet Laureate of England. I dedicated the poems to Hornecastle, and that’s the only part of it that I wish to remember.

Mr Castle introduced me to a real poet; he wore long shaggy hair, unfortunately he was a Dane and wrote in his own language, but I knew that he was a real poet by the way he gazed at the pretty brown Samoan girls as they passed by us on the beach, their arms round each other’s naked shoulders, crimson flowers in their rough hair, and their ridis adorned with leaves and blossoms that dangled to their bare knees. The poet came under the influence of Castle’s loose ways and one night while half intoxicated fell on his knees and attempted to embrace a beautiful Samoan wife of about twenty-five years of age. I knew the husband intimately and quickly explained matters to him, told him that he was only a poet, otherwise there would, I am sure, have been another rumpus. The Dane and I became very friendly after that episode and, to my delight, I found that he could play the violin, and had a lot of fine duets for two fiddles. We went to the native hut villages and borrowed a disused hut, and sat there together playing for all we were worth. The native children, men and women stood by their small doors and huddled round us delighted and astonished as we scraped away in the twilight by the border of the forest. Old Hornecastle got quite jealous of my friendship with that Danish poet, but I soon stroked him down the right way, and took him down to a grog shanty and gave him several “splashes.” A touring party came across the Bay one day, four of them altogether; they were English and had come across from New South Wales. One of them was a retired judge; he had a head without much front to it, and the back stuck up like a large walnut with a few hairs gummed on it. His son spent the whole day in taking photos; he took snap-shots of everything for miles, also of Hornecastle in all positions, and the old chap was delighted.

“Castle” and I persuaded that judge’s son to sail across to the Isle where that old Marquesan Queen lived with the sole purpose of taking her photo. I was an innocent party to the whole business, but they took several hundreds of photographs of Castle’s friends, etc., and the old judge discovered them among his son’s belongings and there was a row! I never saw such wrath, such virtuous indignation as that man was capable of. I don’t know what became of the son, but I have a suspicion that he is on the Bench in England to-day, a good and prosperous man, and if he ever reads these memoirs of mine he need not be frightened as I have not the slightest intention of giving him away over that photo business. How sad is life when you think of things, but the best thing to do is not to think too much. I have seen men become prematurely old through worrying over the inevitable things of civilised life. Why try and improve things or make them worse? “Socialism,” “Trade Unionism” and all the other thousand “isms” if they are for the betterment of the race will come, or, if not, fall away. Universal approval will guide the laws of mankind as well as the laws of nature, and so things fall into their places or fall from their assumed places as sure as the stars of heaven roll and fall to the universal laws of gravitation. And so I jog along doing my best for my immediate circle and do not get excited over the awful event that will never happen.

I must tell you of a gentleman I met one night who came across the Pacific from the Island of Pitcairn where the mutinous crew of the Bounty landed years ago. They are all dead now, but their children are still living there; in fact, the whole race are now partly descendants of the sailors of that long-ago ship. I have met in my later musical rambles many of the blue-blooded folk of different lands and I think if God makes Peers and Knights of dead men in heaven, very few of them will be able to go on with their title, but if that son of the old mutineer of the Bounty does not get a title when he’s dead it will be a shame. He was a splendid fellow, brave, sincere in his conversation. He tolerated Hornecastle’s numerous repetitions of past loyal deeds, etc., like a hero, and gave me my first lesson in astronomy. With a quick soulful ear he heard the note of pathos as I played some old folk songs to him; he gave me a long and wonderful account of the beauty of life and the sadness of death, and when he told me who he was I could have fallen over with astonishment. I had thought he was at least the head of some English University on tour. I was of course young then, and the astonishment would be, now I am more in with the world, more on the side of finding a University man who had some really original information to impart. Some men think too much learning kills originality and makes men become automatic penny-in-the-slot machines. Ask the question of them and their memory reverts back to the fourteenth chapter of the Odyssey or Plato’s Ethics to seek for the reply and so their faculties through long disuse slowly fade away and they die from the head downwards. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I have heard that some great theoretical men always when just dead cool off at the head first, their feet being warm long after stiffness has set in, but this is a gloomy topic and quite out of my province, so I will ask my reader’s forgiveness and change the subject at once.