The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 7, 1898, Page 17

S\ 7 27 § AL =) = = - HONOLULU, July 23, 1898, ICTORIA KAIULANI KAWEKIU LUNALI- LO K down th INUIAHILAPALAPA came na Hau. The stairs of Aina Hau are broadand one sees them from the rooms below and I waited in the drawing-room, a big, cool, mod- ern affair, in pale _cotta, its ceilings pan- eled in red and 1s yawning into rooms beyond, 2 r the hospitable Hawai- fan ashion which es the rooms of each floor st suite. The furniture 'is quite conventi 1, the usual jumble from all places and most periods. A superb ta- ble of the coca wood, carved and inlaid with other native woods, has the center of the and two Kabhilis, the exaggerated ' h its ivory or carved | the emblem of the | fully eizhteen feet high, Otherwi ‘ ive touch to distinguish th oom of a daughter of the Ka- stairs of m coming of Kamehameha, Its vista of the Diamond as the Queen’s. View. .re are King's Walks and Prince’s s all through its labyrinth of tropic . When Governor Cleghorn planted hundred palms in honor 's birth his garden 1 the slumbering chieftains the ‘onqueror. is known of ] Did Not Understand It All at First”. When She Had New Ideas of Her Position. daughte ground race. The grass hovs : of her forbears are still preserved upon the The big two-stori:d ho in which she lives has sheltered crowns in family intimacy. By all the of poetry and romance this room should be other than it But poetry and romance were first to yield to the civilizing touch which has crept upward to the native’s throat. The decorative arts of the Hawalians are no more. The Princess stooped upon the landing three steps above the base and shook out a tail of yellow chiffon, th ceping skirt of a glorified holoku. The royal yellow floated from the shoulders, clung to her youthful bust and arm: cast its glow upward over her face and throat, fell in waves about her f She looked like some dark, soit-petaled, slim-stalked lily growing in a patc of sun. 1 ask thy pardon, holoku! I have cursed thee for a Fairy of evil, of gaudy colors and of calico. The native woman wallows in monstrous widths of great garish hue; the Jap loses her shrinking, insufficient legs behind drabbling dis- mal colored folds; the half-white sports all hard white cottons that will take and hold the starch against this melting air; and one sees all these first. 1 felicitate the well-intentioned missionary who invented this garment to teach the gentle savage shame and had no more idea than had I of what might be its sweet seductions cut from shimmering stuff to cling or float about a slender palm-like shape and make fine mystery of youthful curves. The Princess carried an ancient native fan, a matter of braided palm, of length and subtle grace, and she fanned herself slowly with that long, na- ic, outward, upward sweep which is the grace of the higher Honolulu as it {< ihat of all Spain. She walked admirably, holding her supple body with fine Teserve, moving with a sort of indolent dignity, very foreign, very fetching, and I should say, out of a slender knowledge of kingly things, very regal, and it occurred to me that this girl who has just lost a Throne would have graced it well. There is much in heredity and more in education. The Princess Kaiulani was reared to be a queen, She has the grand air, a small, proud head, fine, direct eyes under sensitive, snaky, brilliantly black brows, a little haughty nose. o little bitter-sweet mouth, a crisp English accent, a manner distantly gracious, the bearing of & woman born and educated to a sense of superiority. This more than the rest evolves her position pathetic. This is what I wanted her to talk about. Crowns are popularly supposed to be uncomfortable, but few queens have voluntarily changed them for an casy pillow. I have no doubt that the ex.heiress to the ex-kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands wiil lead ppier life as Miss Cleghorn of the United States of America, but the cannot be without a personal disappointment to a girl of twenty three ho has looked forward to the divine right to rule over the land of her birth, and 1 think of the tragic childhood of all royalty as in the little kingdoms of the world as in its vast empires, loaded with the restrictions of rank, choked in its natural democratic impulse to be free and friendly, and all this misery made useless by a fling of ironic destiny. “How do they manage such things here?” I asked the Princess. were you educated, and when did you find yourself out?” “Ah, very early. very early indeed,” she answered. 1 don’t think I quite understood it at ali, but I knew I was —well, somebody different, you know, because I was tabu.” :‘You were—I beg your pardon?” “Tabu? Ok, not to be touched—sa- “How TO-DAY. to touch me except persons of my own rank and of course the servants who dressed me, and my foster-mother. And I want to tell you something very strange—it seems like a sort of fatality—all these servants I had are gone; they are dead; they have died recently, quickly, one after the other and since this trouble of ours. My foster-mother died on ‘Saturday. I had not seen her for three months and no one liked to tell me she was ill. You see my people kave been educated to keep all sadness aud trouble from me.” The Princess smiled a little bitter smile. “It is too soon to expect anything else of them. Still T should have liked to know about my foster-mother. : She died Saturday and they buried her before I was awake. Then my man-nurse, Sam Alapali, dled a little white ago. But he was very old. .He taught my mother to ride, and he taught me. He was very strict and he did not care a bit about my rank. He was a petty chief and carried himself like a king. He made'me learn to ride without a pommel. Then without a stirrup. Then without a’saddle, and I must not stir from my geat or he would scold and scold. Actually I was afraid of him until he died. “I found out very early that I could be as naughty as I liked with my nurses and I enjoyed that very much, because I was naturally naughty, I suppose. I had one nurse that I hated and I used to love to beat ner.” The Princess smiled serenely. *“But even that got tiresome after awhiie. I was the only one you know and very delicate and every one jetted me at home and at the Palace, but still I was very lonely. I missed something that all my triends who were allowed to come to play with me seemed to have. They could not use my chair, or sit on my bed or touch me even when we played tag in the garden. I could never:be alone with them. I had always six or seven women watching and watching me. I was not allowed to climb the trees as they were, or to race about down to the beach, or to do any of the things that children have to do alone among themselves without any nurses or elders fussing about. “I remember that I cnvied my friends very much and I envied the children of the servants, who did quite as they pleased, even more. Then I can remember u quite new sensation which came to me when I found out that they also envied me. That was a very délicious feeling. It served to give quite a new taste to life and I was not lonely for a long while after that. It came abgut in this way. I had a friend, a very jolly, careless little girl, and one day when we had been playing together we went up into my bedroom and she threw herself down on my bed. I.remember how my nurse rushéd at her across the room, ‘How dare you,” she said, and she took hold of her roughly and pulied ker to the floor. ‘Sit there!’ she said, ‘that is the place for you.’ “The little girl went home and I thought about it a long time. seen my nurse angry and it made a great impression on me. the place for her?” I asked, and my nurse said, ‘Because.’ “That didn’t seem a very good answer and then I asked, for the first time I think, ‘“Why shouldn’t people touch me or use my things or sit on my chair or on my bed?" “And my nurse said, ‘Because you are a Princess ard the others are not.” Jg it very nice to be a Princess? 1 asked, and my nurse said that it was the nicest thing in the world except to be a Queen, and after that, although I was glad I was a Princess, I always wantcd to be a Queen.” “Always?” f “Yes, always,” answered Kaiulani. “Why shouldn’t I tell the truth about it? 1 was mad with joy when the news of the proclamation declaring me heiress to the kingdom reached me abroad. I said to myself like a little girl, ‘Now some day I shall be a Queen’ And meantime, after the Queen, I would come first ‘Why is the floor ered. you know. .Ng ore was auppased _ Jn the kingdom. I thought my heart would break when I heard that the 1 never had’ -monarchy was overthrown, and I had all a girl's dis- appointment, and I think all a Queen’s. I had want- ed to be a good Queen some day. I had thought about it and made all sorts of vows and plans you can think of. I dreamed of all that I would do for my people. 1 was sure that I could make them the happiest people in the world. They are a happy people, you know—very kind and simple and trusting. They have shown that to the world, haven't they?” The brows of the Princess Kaiulani curled like little angry adders. “Oh, they have been too kind, too simple, too trusting. They have listened and be- lieved until they have been betrayed. Do you know what one of them, one of our old chiefs said to me? He came to me over miles and miles of country on horseback to know if the news was true. He would not take the word of any one except my father or myself. ‘And we will have no country of our own now? he said. You know the Aloha Aina, the love of coun- try is very strong in our hearts. My father told him ‘No. ‘And no flag? “No,” my father said, ‘and no flag.’ And then he asked about me. Some of my people are very fond of me. ‘And the Princess? he asked. My father said, ‘The Princess will be Miss Cleghorn. ‘No flag,’ he said, ‘no country? Is that what Chrlrsti- anity has done for us? The mifssionaries came here to us and taught us to look to heaven for happiness, and while our eyes Swere on the skies they have taken our land from undcer our feet.””” “I Wasa Princess, but Wanted to Be a Queen.” At School in England. Katulani brought her flexible brows together over her nose and looked away out through: the wide windows down the grove of palms that were set cut to grow in the first year of her life, which tower over the roof of Aina Hau and will fling their careless tufts to these trade winds when the house of Kamehameha is forgotten. “And those who brought the influence to bear?"” “Could you feel anything but bitterness? There is nothing in our philosophy more than in yours to reconcile us to the extinction of our race.” “You think it may mean that?” “I know it means that,” answered the Hawaiian sadly. ‘“My people cannot exist long under a republic. They must be led, guided, directed, ruled, and vwho will do that for them? If I had the means I would give my life to them. 1 think they expected it of me, perhaps. What can I do, what can any one without money? They will be gone from the face of the earth before they can grasp these new conditions. It is hard to unlearn, it is the hardest thing in the world. I have felt that so strongly as I have talked with you about my childhood. I have to unlearn all that, you know—all that I was educated—all that ] was intended to be. They tell me I will bémuch happier. it is easy for other people—for the successful ones to prescribe happiness for us who have lost. “Do you know what I am asked? I was asked if I would be at the Annexa- tion Ball. I looked—do you see?—looked at the one who asked me that. Then 1 said, ‘Why don’t you ask me if I am going to pull d-wn Hawaii’s flag for them?" You know they wanted to find twelve native girls to raise the new flag. They thought it would be poetic. They did not find them. Is it not expected of us to have the Aloha Aina? The missionaries did not teach us to forget that. I am all Hawaiian. I love this country of mine. Its sky, its trees, its people, its food. I went to schooi in England, you know, and after the first excuemeni 1 began to long for the island food—a longing which never passed away. When I came home at last I ran about like a thing mad. I looked for ail the hiding places, I climbed to the roof of the house where I used to. climb to get away from my governess. I cried because my palms had grown beyond me. I asked for all native things—poi, taro, even the raw fish we eat. You would think that a girl educated in England would shrink from that at least. My Aunt, the Queen, was delighted. She sald, ‘That’s right; you are a good Hawaiian.’ “Now there will be no more good Hawailans. We must learn to be good Americans. I am not bitter toward America. Do not say that and do not ' think that. Admiral Miller, who comes to raise your flag over mp¥e, is one of my dearest friends. 1 have many among your people and I will Say that since we cannot keep our country we would rather give it to America than to any other nation of the world. Only—we have a saying here—Pau. It means that 2 thing is finished, that there is no hope for it, that it is dead, that the end has come. It means a great deal for such a little word. Well, do you know, when 1 think of it all, of my country, my flag, my people, my kingdom, that is the word that I must tsha{y to rnylilelt—PAU.c g “I thought nothing would ever reconcile me to my mother" - said slowly. “But I am glad she does not know this. I Ido]izeg xa::‘:ionf:f She was charming; Very brilliant, very happy and sunny; we wor- 3 shiped each other. And I have missed her every day from the first dreadful day she died. It was a dreadful day in every way. . I was taken to the Palace. I remember when she lay for three weeks in state. I can see her dead face now laid against the cloak ef feath- ers. Everything is black against that white, white room. The Continued on Page Twenty-Nine