"Igivt thefe Books
for the founding of a College in this Colony"

MBTTY*

Bought with the Income of the
Edward Wells Sonthworth.
Fund 190*

FATHER DAMIEN

No golden dome shines over Damien's sleep :
A leper's grave upon a leprous strand,
Where hope is dead, and hand must shrink from hand,
Where cataracts wail toward a moaning deep,
And frowning purple cliffs in mercy keep
All wholesome life at distance, hath God planned
For him who led the saint's heroic band,
And died a shepherd of Christ's exiled sheep.
O'er Damien's dust the broad skies bend for dome,
Stars burn for golden letters, and the sea
Shall roll perpetual anthem round his rest :
For Damicn made the charnel-house life's home,
Matched love with death ; and Damien's name shall be
A glorious benediction, world-possest. H. D. RAWNSLEY.

«^- ,

FATHER°DAMIEN

An Open Letter to the
Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu
[With Extracts from Three Private Letters]

By
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
And an Introduction by
EDWIN OSGOOD GROVER

ALFRED BARTLETT
THE CORNHILL BOOKLET BOSTON

"Z-P\?

INTRODUCTION
I OSEPH Damien de Veuster, a little Bel
gian boy, was born near the village of
Louvaine on January third, 1 841. At
I nineteen he began his preparation for the
I priesthood, but before his education was
(completed he had offered himself as a
missionary in the South Seas. Several years were spent
among the scattered islands of the Pacific, till one day in
May, 1873, he renounced even the small comforts of
such a life for an exile and certain death among the neg
lected lepers of the island of Molokai. For seventeen
years Father Damien dwelt in the midst of all the horror
and uncleanness that surround this island grave ; for
seventeen years he was a spiritual leader and bodily
physician for more than a thousand lepers. No human
heart can know the agony which these years brought
him or the horror of the creeping death of the last seven
years after he himself became a leper. This must be
forever the unwritten history of his heroism.
When his death was known, on April 15, 1889, the
world stood in wonder and worship before his mighty
sacrifice. Yet there was one who failed to comprehend
the meaning of it all. The Reverend Doctor Hyde of
Honolulu wrote in a letter to Reverend H. B. Gage
words of depreciation and accusation such as should have
been impossible. His brief note, appearing in the Syd
ney (Australia) Presbyterian for October 26, 1889,

INTRODUCTION

fell in time under the eye of Robert Louis Stevenson, him
of the mighty heart that loved the world and worshiped
Truth. This " Open Letter " is his reply.
It was first printed in a little pamphlet of thirty-two
pages, at Sydney, Australia, on March 27, 1890. It
appeared later in the issues of The Scots Observer for
May 3 and 10, 1890. The second edition was an
issue of thirty copies on Japan vellum, by Constable &
Company, of Edinburgh. The third edition was pub
lished by Chatto & Windus, of London, in brown paper
wrappers, at one shilling. These early issues of the
"Open Letter" are of extreme rarity and much sought
after by collectors.
Stevenson's sincerity in the matter cannot be ques
tioned. The letter is resonant with genuine feeling as
with righteous indignation. He persistently refused to
accept payment for his defense of Damien, and once
wrote a London publisher : " The letter to Dr. Hyde
is yours, or any man's. I will never touch a penny of
remuneration. I do not stick at murder ; I draw the line
at cannibalism. I could not eat a penny roll that piece
of bludgeoning brought me."
The recent death of Reverend Doctor Hyde at his
home in Honolulu has called fresh attention to what is
probably the most powerful apologia in English letters.
Edwin Osgood Grover.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 3
THREE LETTERS1
Extracts
TO MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Kalawao, Molokai [May, 1889]
EAR FANNY, — I had a lovely sail up.
. . . The day was on the peep out of the
low morning bank, and we were wallow
ing along under stupendous cliffs. As the
lights brightened, we could see certain
abutments and buttresses on their front
where wood clustered and grass grew brightly. . . . Pres
ently we came up with the leper promontory : low land,
quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of woo*den
houses, two churches, and a landing-stair, all unsightly,
sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the great
wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south. Our
lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor
child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown
family behind him in Honolulu ; and then into the second
stepped the sisters and myself. I do not know how it would
have been with me had the sisters not been there. My
horror of the horrible is about my weakest point ; but the
moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out ; and when
I found that one of them was crying, poor soul, quietly
under her veil, I cried a little myself; then I felt as right
as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there so uselessly. I
thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel unhappy ;
I turned round to her, and said something like this :
" Ladies, God Himself is here to give you welcome. I'm
sure it is good for me to be beside you ; I hope it will
be blessed to me ; I thank you for myself and the good
you do me." It seemed to cheer her up ; — but indeed
I had scarce said it when we were at the landing-stairs
1From The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Two vols.
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

4 THREE LETTERS
and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!)
pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive
the sisters and the new patients.
Every hand was offered : I had gloves, but I had made
up my mind on the boats' voyage not to give my hand,
that seemed less offensive than the gloves. So the sisters
and I went up among that crew, and presently I got aside
(for I felt I had no business there) and set off on foot across
the promontory, carrying my wrap and the camera. All
horror was quite gone from me : to see these dread creatures
smile and look happy was beautiful. On my way through
Kalaupapa I was exchanging cheerful alohas with the
patients coming galloping over on their horses ; I was stop
ping to gossip at house-doors ; I was happy, only ashamed
of myself that I was here for no good. . . . Beyond Kalau
papa the houses became rare ; dry stone dykes, grassy,
stony land, one sick pandanus ; a dreary country ; from
overhead in the little clinging wood shogs of the pali chir
ruping of birds fell ; the low sun was right in my face ;
the trade blew pure and cool and delicious ; I felt as right
as nine pence, and stopped and chatted with the patients
whom I still met on their horses, with not the least disgust.
About half way over, I met the superintendent (a leper)
with a horse for me, — and O, wasn't I glad! ... I got
to the guest house, an empty house with several rooms,
kitchen, bath, etc. There was no one there, and I let the
horse go loose in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell
asleep. . . . This is a strange place to be in. A bell hae
been sounded at intervals while I write, now all is still but
a musical humming of the sea, not unlike the sound of tele
graph wires : the night is quite cool and pitch dark, with a
small, fine rain ; one light over in the leper settlement, one
cricket whistling in the garden, my lamp here by my bed
side, and my pen cheeping between my inky fingers. Louis.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 5
II. TO SIDNEY COLVIN
Honolulu [May, i88p~\
My Dear Colvin, — I am just home after twelve days'
journey to Molokai, seven of them at the leper settlement,
where I can only say that the sight of so much courage,
cheerfulness, and devotion strung me too high to mind the
infinite pity and horror of the sights.
I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories
that cannot be repeated ; yet I never admired my poor race
so much, nor (strange as it may seem) loved life more than
in the settlement. A horror of moral beauty broods over
the place : that's like bad Victor Hugo, but it is the «nly
way I can express the sense that lived with me all these
days. And this even though it was in great part Catholic,
and my sympathies flew never with so much difficulty as
toward Catholic virtues. The pass-book kept with heaven
stirs me to anger and laughter. One of the sisters calls
the place "the ticket-office to heaven." Well, what is
the odds ? They do their darg, and do it with kindness
and efficiency incredible ; and we must take folk's virtues
as we find them, and love the better part. Of old Damien,
whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I think
only the more. It was a European peasant : dirty, bigotted,
untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity,
residual candour, and fundamental good-humour : convince
him he had done wrong (it might take hours of insult) and
he would undo what he had done and like his corrector
better. A man, with all the grime and paltriness of man
kind, but a saint and a hero all the more for that. . . .
Yours ever, R. L. S.

O THREE LETTERS
III. TO JAMES PAYN.
Honolulu, H. I., June 13, 1889.
My Dear James Payn, — I am fresh just now from
the leper settlement of Molokai, playing croquet with seven
leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, blind, leper beach
combers in the hospital, sickened with the spectacle of
abhorrent suffering and deformities amongst the patients,
touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and effective
virtues in their helpers : no stranger time have I ever had,
nor any so moving. I do not think it a little thing to be
deaf, God knows, and God defend me from the same ! —
but to be a leper, or one of the self-condemned, how much
more awful ! and yet there is a way there also. " There
are Molokais everywhere," said Mr. Dutton, Father
Damien's dresser ; you are but new landed in yours ; and
my dear and kind adviser, I wish you, with all my soul,
that patience and courage which you will require. . . .
Robert Louis Stevenson.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

FATHER DAMIEN
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND DR. HYDE OF HONOLULU
FROM ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Sydney, February 25, l8pO
|IR, — It may probably occur to you that we
have met, and visited, and conversed ; on
my side, with interest. You may remember
that you have done me several courtesies
for which I was prepared to be gratSul.
But there are duties which come before
gratitude, and offences which justly divide friends, far more
acquaintances. Your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage is
a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with
bread when I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my
father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from
the bonds of gratitude. You know enough, doubtless, of
the process of canonisation to be aware that, a hundred
years after the death of Damien, there will appear a man
charged with the painful office of the devil' s advocate.
After that noble brother of mine, and of all frail clay,
shall have lain a century at rest, one shall accuse, one de
fend him. The circumstance is unusual that the devil's
advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a
sect immediately rival, and should make haste to take upon
himself his ugly office ere the bones are cold; unusual, and
of a taste which I shall leave my readers free to qualify;
unusual, and to me inspiring. If I have at all learned the
trade of using words to convey truth and to arouse emo
tion, you have at last furnished me with a subject. For
it is in the interest of all mankind and the cause of public
decency in every quarter of the world, not only that Da-

8 FATHER DAMIEN
mien should be righted, but that you and your letter
should be displayed at length, in their true colours, to the
public eye.
To do this properly, I must begin by quoting you at
large: I shall then proceed to criticise your utterance from
several points of view, divine and human, in the course of
which I shall attempt to draw again and with more speci
fication the character of the dead saint whom it has so
pleased you to vilify: so much being done, I shall say
farewell to you for ever. " Honolulu, Aug. 2, 1880.
"Rev. H. B. Gace.
" Dear Brother, — In answer to your inquiries about
Father Damien, I can only reply that we who' know the man
are surprised at the extravagant newspaper laudations, as if
he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is,
he was a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted. He
was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders;
did not stay at the leper settlement (before he became one
himself), but circulated freely over the whole island (less
than half the island is devoted to the lepers), and he came
often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and
improvements inaugurated, which were the work of our
Board of Health, as occasion required and means were
provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with
women, and the leprosy of which he died should be
attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done
much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government
physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic
idea of meriting eternal life.
Yours, etc.,
"C. M. Hyde.""

1 From the Sydney Presbyterian, October 26, 18

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON g
To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must
draw at the outset on my private knowledge of the signa
tory and his sect. It may offend others; scarcely you,
who have been so busy to collect, so bold to publish, gos
sip on your rivals. And this is perhaps the moment
when I may best explain to you the character of what you
are to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and
below the reticences of civility: with what measure you
mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you,
at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to
plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should
offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and re
member with affection, I can but offer them my regrtft; I
am not free, I am inspired by the consideration of interests
far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by any
thing from me must be indeed trifling when compared
with the pain with which they read your letter. It is not
the hangman, but the criminal, that brings dishonour on the
house. You belong, sir, to a sect — I believe my sect, and
that in which my ancestors laboured — which has en
joyed, and partly failed to utilise, an exceptional advan
tage in the islands of Hawaii. The first missionaries
came; they found the land already self-purged of its old
and bloody faith; they were embraced, almost on their
arrival, with enthusiasm; what troubles they supported came
far more from whites than from Hawaiians; and to these
last they stood (in a rough figure) in the shoes of God.
This is not the place to enter into the degree or causes of
their failure, such as it is. One element alone is per
tinent, and must here be plainly dealt with. In the course
of their evangelical calling, they — or too many of them
— grew rich. It may be news to you that the houses of
missionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of Hono
lulu. It will at least be news to you that, when I re-

FATHER DAMIEN

turned your civil visit, the driver of my caD commented on
the size, the taste, and the comfort of your home. It
would have been news certainly to myself had any one
told me that afternoon that I should live to drag such mat
ter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade better
men to your own level; and it is needful that those who
are to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damien and the
devil's advocate, should understand your letter to have
been penned in a house which could raise, and that very
jusdy, the envy and the comments of the passers-by. I
think (to employ a phrase of yours which I admire) it
"should be attributed" to you that you have never vis
ited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had,
and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms,
even your pen perhaps would have been stayed.
Your sect (and, remember, as far as any sect avows me,
it is mine) has not done ill in a worldly sense in the
Hawaiian Kingdom. When calamity befell their inno
cent parishioners, when leprosy descended and took root
in the Eight Islands, a quid pro quo was to be looked for.
To that prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its
adornments, God had sent at last an opportunity. I know
I am touching here upon a nerve acutely sensitive. I
know that others of your colleagues look back on the in
ertia of your church, and the intrusive and decisive heroism
of Damien, with something almost to be called remorse. I
am sure it is so with yourself; I am persuaded your letter
was inspired by a certain envy, not essentially ignoble, and
the one human trait to be espied in that performance.
You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day; of
that which should have been conceived and was not; of
the service due and not rendered. Time was, said the
voice in your ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging
and writing; and if the words written were base be
yond parallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat — it is

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON I 1
the only compliment I shall pay you — the rage was
almost virtuous. But, sir, when we have failed, and
another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and an
other has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our
charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into
the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the af
flicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in
his turn, and dies upon the field of honour — the battle
cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has sug
gested. It is a lost batde, and lost forever. One thing
remained to you in your defeat — some rags of common
honour; and these you have made haste to cast away.
Common honour; not the honour of having done any
thing right, but the honour of not having done aught con
spicuously foul; the honour of the inert : that was what
remained to you. We are not all expected to be Da-
miens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he
may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at
him for that. But will a gendemen of your reverend pro
fession allow me an example from the fields of gallantry ?
When two gentlemen compete for the favour of a lady,
and the one succeeds and the other is rejected, and (as
will sometimes happen) matter damaging to the success
ful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated, it is held
by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the
circumstances, almost necessarily closed. Your Church
and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well:
to help, to edify, to set divine examples. You having
(in one huge instance) failed, and Damien succeeded, I
marvel it should not have occurred to you that you were
doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in
that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your
well-being, in your pleasant room — and Damien, crowned
with glories and horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigstye
of his under the cliffs of Kalawao — you, the elect, who

FATHER DAMIEN

would not, were the last man on earth to collect and
propagate gossip on the volunteer who would and did.
I think I see you — for I try to see you in the flesh as
I write these sentences — I think I see you leap at the
word pigstye, a hyperbolical expression at the best. " He
had no hand in the reforms," he was "a coarse, dirty
man "; these were your own words; and you may think
it possible that I am come to support you with fresh evi
dence. In a sense, it is even so. Damien has been too
much depicted with a conventional halo and conventional
features; so drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to
remark or the pen to express the individual; or who per
haps were only blinded and silenced by generous admira
tion, such as I partly envy for myself — such as you, if
your soul were enlightened, would envy on your bended
knees. It is the least defect of such a method of portrai
ture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate,
and leaves for the misuse of the slanderer a considerable
field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends
is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world, in your
despite, may perhaps owe you something, if your letter be
the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness for
a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember
you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named
Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the
Reverend H. B. Gage.
You may ask on what authority I speak. It was my
inclement destiny to become acquainted, not with Damien,
but with Dr. Hyde. When I visited the lazaretto, Da
mien was already in his resting grave. But such informa
tion as I have, I gathered on the spot in conversation with
those who knew him well and long: some indeed who
revered his memory; but others who had sparred and
wrangled with him, who beheld him with no halo, who
perhaps regarded him with small respect, and through

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON I 5
whose unprepared and scarcely partial communications the
plain, human features of the man shone on me convinc
ingly. These gave me what knowledge I possess; and I
learnt it in that scene where it could be most completely
and sensitively understood — Kalawao, which you have
never visited, about which you have never so much as
endeavoured to inform yourself: for, brief as your letter is,
you have found the means to stumble into that confession.
" Less than one-half 'of the island," you say, "is devoted
to the lepers." Molokai — "Molokai ahina," the
"grey," lofty, and most desolate island — along all its
northern side plunges a front of precipice into a sea of un
usual profundity. This range of cliff is, from east to
west, the true end and frontier of the island. Only in one
spot there projects into the ocean a certain triangular and
rugged down, grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the
midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole bearing to
the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation as a
bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able
to pick out the leper station on a map; you will be able to
judge how much of Molokai is thus cut off between the
surf and precipice, whether less than a half, or less than a
quarter, or a fifth, or a tenth — or, say, a twentieth; and
(he next time you burst into print you will be in a position
to share with us the issue of your calculations.
I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk
with cheerfulness of that place which oxen and wainropes
could not drag you to behold. You, who do not even
know its situation on the map, probably denounce sensa
tional descriptions, stretching your limbs the while in your
pleasant parlour on Beretania Street. When I was pulled
ashore there one early morning, there sat with me in the
boat two sisters, bidding farewell (in humble imitation of
Damien) to the lights and joys of human life. One of
these wept silendy ; could not withhold myself from join-

14 FATHER DAMIEN
ing her. Had you been there, it is my belief that nature
would have triumphed even in you; and as the boat drew
but a little nearer, and you beheld the stairs crowded with
abominable deformations of our common manhood, and
saw yourself landing in the midst of such a population as
only now and then surrounds us in the horror of a night
mare — what a haggard eye you would have rolled over your
reluctant shoulder towards the house on Beretania Street!
Had you gone on; had you found every fourth face a blot
upon the landscape; had you visited the hospital and seen
the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost unrecog
nizable but still breathing, still thinking, still remembering;
you would have understood that life in the lazaretto is an
ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit shrink,
even as his eye quails under the brightness of the sun; you
would have felt it was (even to-day) a pitiful place to
visit and a hell to dwell in. It is not the fear of possible.
infection. That seems a little thing when compared with
the pain, the pity, and the disgust of the visitor's surround
ings, and the atmosphere of affliction, disease, and physical
disgrace in which he breathes. I do not think I am a
man more than usually timid; but I never recall the days
and nights I spent upon that island promontory (eight
days and seven nights), without heartfelt thankfulness that
I am somewhere else. I find in my diary that I speak of
my stay as a "grinding experience "; I have once jotted
in the margin, " Harrowingis the word "; and when the
Mokolii bore me at last towards the outer world, I kept
repeating to myself, with a new conception of their preg
nancy, those simple words of the song —
"'Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen."
And observe: that which I saw and suffered from was a
settlement purged, bettered, beautified; the new village
built, the hospital and the Bishop -Home excellently ar-

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON I 5
ranged; the sisters, the doctor, and the missionaries all
indefatigable in their noble tasks. It was a different place
when Damien came there, and made his great renunciation, ¦
and slept that first night under a tree amidst his rotting
brethren: alone with pestilence; and looking forward (with
what courage, with what pitiful sinkings of dread, God
only knows) to a lifetime of dressing sores and stumps.
You will say, perhaps, I am too sensitive, that sights as
painful abound in cancer hospitals and are confronted daily
by doctors and nurses. I have long learned to admire and
envy the doctors and the nurses. But there is no cancer
hospital so large and populous as Kalawao and Kalaupapa;
and in such a matter every fresh case, like every inch of
length in the pipe of an organ, deepens the note of the
impression; for what daunts the onlooker is that monstrous
sum of human suffering by which he stands surrounded.
Lastly, no doctor or nurse is called upon to enter once for
all the doors of that gehenna; they do not say farewell,
they need not abandon hope, on its sad threshold; they but
go for a time to their high calling, and can look forward as
they go to relief, to recreation, and to rest. But Damien
shut to with his own hand the doors of his own sepulchre.
I shall now extract three passages from my diary at
Kalawao. A. "Damien is dead and already somewhat ungrate
fully remembered in the field of his labours and suffer
ings. 'He was a good man, but very officious,' says
one. Another tells me he had fallen (as other priests
so easily do) into something of the ways and habits of
thought of a Kanaka ; but he had the wit to recognize
the fact, and the good sense to laugh at" [over] "it.
A plain man it seems he was ; I cannot find he was a
popular." B. "After Ragsdale's death" [Ragsdale was a famous
Luna, or overseer, of the unruly settlement] "there fol-

1 6 FATHER DAMIEN
lowed a brief term of office by Father Damien which
served only to publish the weakness of that noble man.
He was rough in his ways, and he had no controJ.
Authority was relaxed; Damien's life was threatened,
and he was soon eager to resign."
C. "Of Damien I begin to have an idea. He seems
to have been a man of the peasant class, certainly of the
peasant type : shrewd ; ignorant and bigoted, yet with
an open mind, and capable of receiving and digesting a
reproof if it were bluntly aciministered ; superbly generous
in the least thing as well as in the greatest, and as ready
to give his last shirt (although not without human
grumbling) as he had been to sacrifice his life ; essentially
indiscreet and officious, which made him a troublesome
colleague ; domineering in all his ways, which made him
incurably unpopular with the Kanakas, but yet destitute
of real authority, so that his boys laughed at him and he
must carry out his wishes by the means of bribes. He
learned to have a mania for doctoring ; and set up the
Kanakas against the remedies of his regular rivals ; per
haps (if anything matter at all in the treatment of such a
disease) the worst thing that he did, and certainly the
easiest. The best and worst of the man appear very
plainly in his dealings with Mr. Chapman's money; he
had originally laid it out " [intended to lay it out] "en- ¦
tirely for the benefit of Catholics, and even so not wisely;
but after a long, plain talk, he admitted his error fully and
revised the list. The sad state of the boys' home is in
part the result of his lack of control; in part, of his own
slovenly ways and false ideas of hygiene. Brother officials
used to call it 'Damien's Chinatown.' 'Well,' they
would say, ' your Chinatown keeps growing. ' And he
would laugh with perfect good-nature, and adhere to his
errors with perfect obstinacy. So much I have gathered
of truth about this plain, noble human brother and father

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

of ours; his imperfections are the traits of his face, by
which we know him for our fellow; his martyrdom and
his example nothing can lessen or annul; and only a person
here on the spot can properly appreciate their greatness."
I have set down these private passages, as you perceive,
without correction; thanks to you, the public has them in
their blunrness. They are almost a list of the man's faults,
for it is rather these that I was seeking: with his virtues,
with the heroic profile of his life, I and the world were
already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a little sus
picious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely
because Damien's admirers and disciples were the least
likely to be critical. I know you will be more suspicious
still; and the facts set down above were one and all col
lected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed the
father in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they
build up the image of a man, with all his weaknesses,
essentially heroic, and alive with rugged honesty, gener
osity, and mirth.
Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst
side of Damien's character, collected from the lips of those
who had laboured with and (in your own phrase) " knew
the man"; — though I question whether Damien would
have said that he knew you. Take it, and observe with
wonder how well you were served by your gossips,
how ill by your intelligence and sympathy; in how many
points of fact we are at one, and how widely our appre
ciations vary. There is something wrong here; either
with you or me. It is possible, for instance, that you,
who seem to have so many ears in Kalawao, had heard
of the affair of Mr. Chapman's money, and were singly
struck by Damien's intended wrong-doing. I was struck
with that also, and set it fairly down; but I was struck
much more by the fact that he had the honesty of mind to
be convinced. I may here tell you that it was a long

i8

FATHER DAMIEN

business; that one of his colleagues sat with him late into
the night, multiplying arguments and accusations: that the
father listened as usual with " perfect good-nature and per
fect obstinacy "; but at the last, when he was persuaded
— "Yes," said he, "I am very much obliged to you;
you have done me a service; it would have been a theft."
There are many (not Catholics merely) who require their
heroes and saints to be infallible; to these the story will be
painful; not to the true lovers, patrons, and servants of
mankind. And I take it, this is a type of our division : that you are
one of those who have an eye for faults and failures; that
you take a pleasure to find and publish them; and that,
having found them, you make haste to forget the overvail-
ing virtues and the real success which had alone introduced
them to your knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of
mind. That you may understand how dangerous, and
into what a situation it has already brought you, we will
(if you please) go hand-in-hand through the different
phrases of your letter, and candidly examine each from the
point of view of its truth, its appositeness, and its charity.
Damien was coarse.
It is very possible. You make us sorry for the lepers,
who had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and
father. But you, who were so refined, why were you
not there to cheer them with the lights of culture? Or
may I remind you that we have some reason to doubt if
John the Baptist were genteel; and, in the case of Peter, on
whose career you doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit,
no doubt at all he was a "coarse, headstrong" fisherman!
Yet even in our Protestant Bibles Peter is called Saint.
Damien was dirty.
He was. Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this
dirty comrade! But the clean Dr. Hyde was at his food
in a fine house.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 1 9
Damien was headstrong.
I believe you are right again; and I thank God for his
strong head and heart.
Damien was bigoted.
I am not fond of bigots myself, because they are not
fond of me. But what is meant by bigotry, that we
should regard it as a blemish in a priest ? Damien be
lieved his own religion with the simplicity of a peasant or
a child; as I would I could suppose that you do. For
this I wonder at him some way off; and had that been his
only character, should have avoided him in life. But the
point of interest in Damien, which has caused him to be so
much talked about and made him at last the subject of^our
pen and mine, was that, in him, his bigotry, his intense
and narrow faith, wrought potently for good, and
strengthened him to be one of the world's heroes and
exemplars. Damien was not sent to Molokai, but went there with
out orders.
Is this a misreading ? or do you really mean the words
for blame ? I have heard Christ, in the pulpits of our
Church, held up for imitation on the ground that His sac
rifice was voluntary. Does Dr. Hyde think otherwise ?
Damien did not stay at the settlement, etc.
It is true he was allowed many indulgences. Am I to
understand that you blame the father for profiting by these,
or the officers for granting them ? In either case, it is a
mighty Spartan standard to issue from the house on Bere-
tania Street; and I am convinced you will find yourself
with few supporters.
Damien had no hand in the reforms, etc.
I think even you will admit that I have already been
frank in my description of the man I am defending; but
before I take you up upon this head, I will be franker
still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere in the world can a

20 FATHER DAMIEN
man taste a more pleasurable sense of contrast than when he
passes from Damien's "Chinatown" at Kalawao to the
beautiful Bishop-Home at Kalaupapa. At this point, in
my desire to make all fair for you, I will break my rule
and adduce Catholic testimony. Here is a passage from
my diary about my visit to the Chinatown, from which
you will see how it is (even now) regarded by its own
officials: "We went round all the dormitories, refectories,
etc. — dark and dingy enough, with a superficial cleanli
ness, which he" [Mr. Dutton, the lay brother] "did
not seek to defend. ' It is almost decent,' said he; ' the
sisters will make that all right when we get them here.' "
And yet I gathered it was already better since Damien was
dead, and far better than when he was there alone and had
his own (not always excellent) way. I have now come
far enough to meet you on a common ground of fact; and
I tell you that, to a mind not prejudiced by jealousy, all the
reforms of the lazaretto, and even those which he most vig
orously opposed, are properly the work of Damien. They
are the evidence of his success; they are what his heroism
provoked from the reluctant and the careless. Many were
before him in the field; Mr. Meyer, for instance, of
whose faithful work we hear too little: there have been
many since; and some had more worldly wisdom, though
none had more devotion, than our saint. Before his day,
even you will confess, they had effected little. It was his
part, by one striking act of martyrdom, to direct all men's
eyes on that distressful country. At a blow, and with
the price of his life, he made the place illustrious and pub
lic. And that, if you will consider largely, was the one
reform needful; pregnant of all that should succeed. It
brought money; it brought (best individual addition of
them all) the sisters; it brought supervision, for public
opinion and public interest landed with the man at Kala
wao. If ever any man brought reforms, and died to

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 21
bring them, it was he. There is not a clean cup or
towel in the Bishop-Home but dirty Damien washed it.
Damien was not a pure man in his relations with
women, etc.
How do you know that ? Is this the nature of the con
versation in that house on Beretania Street which the cab
man envied, driving past ? — racy details of the misconduct
of the poor peasant priest, toiling under the cliffs of Mo
lokai ?
Many have visited the station before me; they seem not
to have heard the rumour. When I was there I heard
many shocking tales, for my informants were men speak
ing with the plainness of the laity; and I heard plenty of
complaints of Damien. Why was this never mentioned ?
and how came it to you in the retirement of your clerical
parlour ?
But I must not even seem to deceive you. This scan
dal, when I read it in your letter, was not new to me. I
had heard it once before; and I must tell you how. There
came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he, in a public-
house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien
had " contracted the disease from having connection with
the female lepers ' ' ; and I find a joy in telling you how the
report was welcomed in a public-house. A man sprang to
his feet; I am not at liberty to give his name, but from
what I heard I doubt if you would care to have him to din
ner in Beretania Street. "You miserable little  "
(here is a word I dare not print, it would so shock your
ears). "You miserable little  ," he cried, "if the
story were a thousand times true, can't you see you are a
millions times a lower  for daring to repeat it? " I
wish it could be told of you that when the report reached
you in your house, perhaps after family worship, you had
found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it with
the same expressions : ay, even with that one which I dare

/2 VATHER DAMIEN
not print; it would not need to have been blotted away,
like Uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the recording
angel; it would have been counted to you for your bright
est righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the
part of the man from Honolulu, and you have played it
with improvements of your own. The man from Hono
lulu — miserable, leering creature — communicated the tale
to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house,
where (I will so far agree with your temperance opinions)
man is not always at his noblest; and the man from Hono
lulu had himself been drinking — drinking, we may
charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your " Dear
Brother, the Reverend H. B. Gage," that you chose to
communicate the sickening story; and the blue ribbon
which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you
the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was
done. Your "dear brother" — a brother indeed —
made haste to deliver up your letter (as a means of grace,
perhaps) to the religious papers; where, after many
months, I found and read and wondered at it; and whence
I have now reproduced it for the wonder of others. And
you and your dear brother have, by this cycle of oper
ations, built up a contrast very edifying to examine in
detail. The man whom you would not care to have to din
ner, on the one side; on the other, the Reverend Dr.
Hyde and the Reverend H. B. Gage; the Apia bar-room,
the Honolulu manse.
But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to
your fellow-men; and to bring it home to you, I will sup
pose your story to be true. I will suppose — and God
forgive me for supposing it — that Damien faltered and
stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that,
in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of in
cipient disease, he, who was doing so much more than he
had sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath — he,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 2 3
who was so much a better man than you or me, who did
what we have never dreamed of daring — he too tasted
of our common frailty. " O, lago, the pity of it ! " The
least tender should be moved to tears; the most incredulous
to prayer. And all that you could do was to pen your
letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage !
Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you
have drawn of your own heart ? I will try yet once again
to make it clearer. You had a father: suppose this tale
were about him, and some informant brought it to you,
proof in hand: I am not making too high an estimate of
your emotional nature when I suppose you would regret
the circumstance ? that you would feel the tale of frai]fy the
more keenly since it shamed the author of your days ? and
that the last thing you would do would be to publish it in
the religious press ? Well, the man who tried to do what
Damien did is my father, and the father of the man in the
Apia bar, and the father of all who love goodness; and he
was your father, too, if God had given you grace to
see it. t

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08954 9951
 1

P^^vh.'.;.^:!':'^'.^

;':;i|s|ij'

!!