Our Hawaii

by Charmian London

(1) Queen Lydia Kamakaeha Liliuokalani. (2) Governor John Owen Dominis, the Queen’s Consort. (3) A Honolulu Garden—Residence of Queen Emma.

Although this memorable week saw all the pageantry and sport that was possible to crowd into it, to many minds the greatest charm of it was in the more specific services devoted to the Centennial itself, one of the most beautiful exercises being the song contests of the churches from the different islands. The Hawaiians take the keenest interest in this expression of themselves.

Lavish entertaining, after the manner of Honolulu, we did that spring and summer in the old house at Waikiki—luncheons, dinners, dances, card-parties, teas under our hau tree, with ever the swimming between whiles. Sometimes, after the day’s round of social events, winding up with dancing, our guests and we trooped out of the spacious, half-open bungalow, through the great detached lanai roofed with a jungle-tangle of blossomy hau trees old in story; across the lawn bordered with young Samoan coco-palms planted by Arthur Wilder; and along the sea-wall right-of-way to a tiny beach two gardens away toward Diamond Head. Here we slipped into the sensuous lapping waters under a rust-gold moon, or the great electric-blue stars, and swam for a wonderful hour.

“The Southern Cross rides low, dear lass... and the old lost stars wheel back,” Jack would paraphrase softly while we timed our strokes for the diving float in the channel. “What shall it be, Twin Brother? The house over there is for sale. Shall I buy you it, now, for the first of our string of island homes?—or a sweet three-topmast schooner after the War, to do it all over again, only better—though never more sweetly than in the dear little old tub—and sail on round the world as we love to plan?”

What other choice for me, who had heard and answered “the beat of the offshore wind”? The three-topmast schooner, by every wish, with all it implied of resumed adventure overseas. Our dreams had been rudely cut midmost by ill health. But those we had realized, instead of seeming true, were still wrapped as in a blue and rose glamor of untried desires. “Which way I feel goes to prove,” I wound up somewhat of the above to Jack, “that the becoming of them, as far as they went, was in excess of the anticipation.” And he, to withhold me from the verge of sentimentality, made the shocking rejoinder: “You mean to say—am I right?—that the young fuzz has not worn off your enthusiasms! Never did I see woman who wanted to go to so many places!”

Ah yes, Jack had learned full well to “loaf” in the tropics. With his comprehensive knowledge, mastery of his implements, and his alert sense of form and color, those inexorable thousand words a day consumed little energy; and there was scant exertion in his habit of life in the palm-furnished, breezy bungalow of wide spaces, and the deep gardens of hibiscus and lilies. Too little exertion. Too seldom was the blue-butterfly kimono changed for swimming-suit or riding togs; too often, from the water, I cast solicitous eyes back to the hammock where, out of the blue-figured robe, a too white arm waved to show that he was watching me put to use the strokes in which he had coached me. “Oh, yes—no—yes—no, I think I’ll hang here and read,” he would waver between two impulsions. Or, “No thank you—I’ll read instead—all this war stuff I want to catch up on. I’m glad you asked me, though,” half-wistfully, “—you forgot, yesterday, and went in alone.” Forgot, no! Never once did I forget. I was avoiding all approach to the “nagging” we still never permitted in our family of two.

And ever the Great War pressed upon spirit and brain and heart. But this is a book on Hawaii, not a biography; and besides, I have written and published the Biography proper, which relates all the inwardness of the last phases of Jack London’s life.

All during those last months, there was in Jack the widening gratification that he was advancing in his conquest of the heart and understanding of Hawaii’s people, Hawaii-born Anglo-Saxon and part-Hawaiian, and the all-Hawaiians themselves.

Then, one day, we met Mary Low—Mary Eliza Kipikane Low—a connection of the Parker family. At a midday luau in a seaside garden at Kahala, on Diamond Head, we came together with Mary and, as if it had been foreordained, were forthwith adopted by her capacious heart. Like a devoted elder sister, she assumed a sort of responsibility for us twain with her people. Only an eighth-Hawaiian, no malihini would be competent to detect her Polynesian affinity. But, to us, the royal arches of the black eyebrows on her broad forehead, and the high aquiline nose and imperious lift of her small, fine mouth, expounded the quintessence of Polynesian aristocracy as we had come to know it here and under the Equator.

Already Jack was in the way of becoming ineffaceably associated with the interests and affections of Hawaii—was there not more than a hint of intention to enshrine him in the inner circle of that seclusively exclusive lodge, Chiefs of Hawaii?—and he was bound in good time to come into his own with them all; but Mary, bless her forever, hastened the day, else he might have faded back from the world ere he had known the “Kamaaina” that had begun to form upon their lips.