Our Hawaii

by Charmian London

(1) Iao Valley, Island of Maui. (2) Rainbow Falls, Hawaii.

Before reclining upon the green-carpeted wharf, we haole guests were weighted with leis of the starry plumeria, awapuhi, in color deep-cream centered with yellow, in touch like cool, velvety flesh, clinging caressingly to neck and shoulder. The perfume is not unlike that of our tuberose, or gardenia, though not quite so heavy. Half-breathing in the sensuous air, we were conscious of the lapping of dark waters below, that mirrored the star-lamped zenith.

Our unforced relish of their traditional delicacies had much to do with the unbending of the natives, both those who sat with us and those who served. And when we were seen to twirl our fingers deftly in their beloved poi and absorb it with avidity that was patently honest, the younger women and girls were captured, ducking behind one another in giggly flurry at each encounter of smiles and glances. I wonder if they ever pause to be thankful that they live in the days of ai noa, free eating, as against those of ai kapu, tabu eating, which obtained before the time of Kamehameha II.

The foods were of the finest, and, half-lying, like the Romans, we ate at our length—and almost consumed our length of the endless variety, this time without implements of civilized cutlery. We pitied quite unnecessarily, those who boast that they have lived so-and-so many years in the Islands and have never even tasted poi—together with most other good things of the land and sea and air.

Recalling the christening feast at Pearl Lochs, we looked vainly for some sign of desire on the part of the Hawaiians to dance, and finally asked Mr. Kawewehi about it. The young people appeared unconquerably shy, but an old man, grizzled and wrinkled, his dim eyes retrospective of nearly fourscore years, squatted before us, reenforced with a rattling dried gourd, and displayed the rather emasculated hula of the Kalakaua reign—an angular performance of elbows and knees accompanied by a monotonous, weird chant, the explosive rattling of the gourd accentuating the high lights. This obliging ancient responded to several encores; and while the “dance” was different from any we had witnessed, it seemed a bloodless and decadent example of motion in which was none of the zest of life that rules the dancing of untrained peoples.

With smiles and imploring looks, and finally, in response to their tittering protestations of ignorance of the steps, declaring that after all we believed they did not know the hula, we touched the mettle of some of the younger maidens. One white-gowned girl of sixteen disappeared from the line sitting along the stringer-piece of the pier, and presently, out of the dusk at the land-end, materializing between the indistinct rows of her people, she undulated to the barbaric two-step fretting of an old guitar that had strummed throughout. Directly the social atmosphere underwent a change, vibrating and warming. Wahines with their sweet consenting faces, and their men, strong bodies relaxed as they rested among the ferns, jested musically in speech that has been likened to a gargle of vowels. Another and younger sprite took form in the shoreward gloom and joined the first, where the two revolved about each other like a pair of pale moths in the lantern light. Fluttering before Mrs. Kawewehi, with motions they invited her to make one of them; but either she could not for diffidence, or would not, even though her husband sprang into the charmed space and danced and gestured temptingly before her blushing, laughing face. A slim old wahine, coaxed by the two girls, whom all the company seemed eager to exhibit as their choicest exponent of the olden hula, next stood before us, and held the company breathless with an amazing and all-too-short dance. Unsmiling, she seemed unconscious of our presence—twisting and circling, drawing unseen forms to her withered heart; level eyes and still mouth expressionless, dispassionate as a mummy’s. She was anything but comely, and far from youthful. But she could out-dance the best and command the speechless attention of all.

Came a pause when the guitar trembled on, though it seemed that the dancing must be done. Just as, reluctantly, we began to gather our leis and every day senses, in order not to outlive the sumptuous welcome, into the wavering light there glided a very young girl, slender and dark, curl-crowned, dainty and lovely as a dryad, who stepped and postured listlessly with slow and slower passes of slim hands in the air, as a butterfly opens and shuts its wings on a flower, waiting for some touch to send it madly wheeling into space.

And he came—the Dancing Faun; I knew him the moment he greeted my eyes. Black locks curled tightly to his shapely head, his nose was blunt and broad, eyes wild and wicked-black with fun, and lips full and curled back from small, regular teeth. I could swear to a pointed ear in his curls to either side, and that his foot was cloven. I could not see these things, but knew they must be. His shirt, for even a Faun must wear a shirt in twentieth century Hawaii, was a frank tatter—a tatter and nothing more, over his bister, glistening chest. The hands, long and supple, betokened the getting of an easy livelihood from tropic branches.

The listless dryad swayed into quickened life, and the last and most beautiful spectacle of the night was on. I do not try to describe a hula. To you it may mean one thing, or many; to me, something else, or many other things. History tells us that the ancient professional dancers were devotees of a very naughty goddess, Laka. One may read vulgarity and sordid immorality into it; another infuse it with art and with poetry. And it is the love-poetry of the Polynesian. A poet sings because he must. The Hawaiian dances because he cannot refrain from dancing. Deprived of his mode of motion, he fades away, and in the process is likely to become immoral where before he was but unmoral, as a child may be. The page of the history of this people is nearly turned. Such as they were, they have never really changed—the individuality of their blood, manifested in their features, their very facial expression, is not strong enough to persist as a race, but unaltered endures in proportion to its quantity, largely mixed as it now is with other strains. The pure-bred Hawaiians are become far-apart and few, dying off every year with none to fill their gracious places. The page is being torn off faster and faster, and soon must flutter away.