“I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be repeated”

[Dots between square brackets indicate cuts made by Sidney Colvin. For full, correct and critical edition of this letter, see Mehew 6, 2176.]

To Sidney Colvin [Colvin 1911, 3, pp. 151-4]

Honolulu, [early] June 1889

My dear Colvin,

I am just home after twelve days’ journey to Molokai, seven of them at the leper settlement,

Molokai leper settlement, late 19th century [https://i.ebayimg.com]

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.

Young Hawaiian boys with leprosy, banished
to the remote island settlement of Kalaupapa,
away from their families and friends [www.fic.nih.gov]

I used to ride over from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left),

Molokai northern promontory, with the two leper settlement of Kalawao and Kalaupapa.

Kalawao leper settlement, Molokai island, Hawaii, late 19th century [www.nps.gov]

Kalaupapa leper settlement, Molokai island, Hawaii [https://88446202.weebly.com]

go to the Sisters’ home,

Charles Reed Bishop (1822-1915), a wealthy Honolulu banker and philanthropist, had founded the Home for leper girls at Kalaupapa in 1888 [https://upload.wikimedia.org]

The Home for leper girls at Kalaupapa was run by a group of Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, New York, led by Mother Marianne Cope (1836-1918; canonized Saint Marianne of Molokai in 1912) [https://religionnews.com]

Mother Marianne Cope (1836-1918) in her last year, with the girls of the Bishop Home [https://media.npr.org]

which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with seven leper girls (90° in the shade), got a little old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired enough, but not too tired.

The Charles R. Bishop Home and grounds [www.nps.gov]

The girls have all dolls, and love dressing them. You who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who know so many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an acceptable gift to send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend Sister Maryanne, Bishop Home, Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.

“Interior of the Bishop Home”, 1904 [https://88446202.weebly.com]

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 only 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 towards Catholic virtues. The passbook 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 folks’ 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.

Father Damien (1840-1889; canonized in 2009), born Jozef De Veuster, the famous Belgian Roman Catholic missionary priest, went to Molokai in 1873 and devoted the rest of his like to caring for the lepers and improving conditions at the settlement. He had died of leprosy on 15 April 1889, just a few weeks before RLS’s arrival.[https://upload.wikimedia.org]

It was a European peasant: dirty, bigoted, 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.

Father Damien with his orphan boys in Kalawao [www.swordofthespirit.net]

Saint Damien of Molokai on his deathbed, 14 April 1889 [https://upload.wikimedia.org]

A man, with all the grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that. The place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy, and bleak.

The cemetery next to St. Philomena church, Kalaupapa, Molokai [https://s.hdnux.com]

Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep;

The cliffs of Molokai, 1700 feet high [https://external-preview.redd.it]

the front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it,

Molokai promontory [www.thisweekhawaii.comg]

as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach;

Bathing machines at Portobello Beach, Edinburgh, stereograph, 1860s-1890s [www.laurelcottagegenealogy.com]

and the population – gorgons and chimaeras dire.

Hawaiian leper boys, Molokai, 1920s [https://storage.googleapis.com]

All this tear of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day after I got away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up into the mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the figures: I should guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit for what residents allege; and I was riding again the day after, so I need say no more about health.

The view down to Kalaupapa from a turn in the steep, more-than-three-mile cliff trail [www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs]

Honolulu does not agree with me at all: I am always out of sorts there, with slight headache, blood to the head, etc. I had a good deal of work to do and did it with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have been gaining strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging. By the time I am done with this cruise I shall have the material for a very singular book of travels: names of strange stories and characters, cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian poetry, – never was so generous a farrago.

I am going down now to get the story of a shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a murderer: there is a specimen.

From the ‘Daily Alta California’, 21 April 1889: Captain and crew of the Wandering Minstrel had been schpwrecked on Midway Island in February 1888. There they found a seaman abandoned by another shipwrecked crew because suspected of murder. The men of the Wandering Minstrel were rescued on 6 April 1889. The story became the germ of the plot for RLS and Lloyd’s ‘The Wrecker’ [https://cdnc.ucr.edu]

The Pacific is a strange place; the nineteenth century only exists there in spots: all round, it is a no man’s land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes.

Hilo Bay, Hawaii, late 19th century (?). Surfing is believed to have been invented in the Polynesian islands in the 18th century [https://i.dailymail.co.uk]

It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill you were, I should be now on my way home. I had chartered my schooner and made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite news. I feel highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry you a little. Our address till further notice is to be c/o R. Towns & Co., Sydney. […] That is final: I only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may now publish it abroad. […] – Yours ever,

R.L.S.