The island of anarchy: A fragment of history in the 20th century

by Elizabeth Waterhouse

To him in his old age, after years of desolate wanderings, the thought of a home in a new Atlantis was welcome indeed,—the soft sweet air of the southern seas, the beautiful vegetation and strange fantastic story of the Island awakened the old poetic feelings of his youth, and it seemed as if his mission to the world would here meet fulfilment and find its lost harmony with the earlier longings of his genius and fancy.

Through his help and counsel the first settlement of the land was organized, houses suitable to the climate were built, Indian corn and other crops for which they had brought a common stock of seed were sown for the coming season, and to each was allotted an equal share of the fruitful land on which there was only so much need to labour as Adam found in Milton’s Paradise.

Some of course were more industrious, some more ingenious, than others. Some had less bodily vigour; among these were those of whom I have spoken as the elect few—the old Scholar and a little company of young clerics, “Priests” of the Church of England.

This Church from the time of its disestablishment had begun a new life—it had at once shown its vitality by casting off some of its old disused organisms and by adapting itself in quick sympathy to the needs of a changed order of things.

The young Priests of whom I have spoken believed that men had lost sight of the great communistic idea of early Christianity, and they made themselves poor and homeless for the sake of their creed. True brethren of the Cross they were, not the less willing to cast in their lot with the outlawed because most of these denied the Christian faith with their lips. Some of them they knew acknowledged it in their lives, while in the multitude who cast away all law and chose evil rather than good, they recognized the lost sheep whom it was their mission if possible to recall.

These men, who were less strong in body than many others, were yet much more skilful in the use they made of the advantages which all shared alike, and even the women, of whom a small company of enthusiasts had arrived, were so wise and industrious in the building of their simple homes and the tilling of their small plots, that the western point of the Island, in which these elect ones took up their abode, became soon a thriving and pleasant settlement, while the homes of the less intelligent, even of those who were of great bodily strength, were of poorer construction, their lands worse tilled, and an altogether different manner of living and occupation prevailed among them.

And this notwithstanding that the little brotherhood of Priests made no home for themselves beyond a rude shelter from the air before they had built with the best skill they possessed, and with all the help they could persuade others to give them, a church where daily worship of the simplest kind was offered.

Things went for a time very happily; all that the elect company possessed of skill or knowledge they were eager to share with others. The old Scholar of whom I have spoken gave advice in regard to the building of each new dwelling; those whose crops were the largest shared with those who had least, and through the whole little colony in the western part of the Island a common exile produced a common feeling of loyalty to one another, and of desire for the good of the community, to which for a time even those who professed to believe in no moral order yielded. I cannot say that the white wooden church among the Bread-fruit trees held many worshippers, but at least the Christian Brotherhood was looked upon as a harmless and kindly element in the new society.

Some Russian noblemen and students were among the next arrivals. They were full of enthusiasm for the future of the settlement, though enraged at their banishment, and a little jealous of the established order they found on the island and of the influence of the Scholar and the Priests. The former, by the love and esteem in which he was held by many, and even by the beauty of his venerable countenance, seemed to them dangerously like a patriarch or chief, and the superiority of the western dwellings was to them a sign of something reactionary. They built their own homes rather carelessly, and gathered little companies together by the side of the Lagoon to whom they talked in low and earnest tones and in excellent English of the beauty of Anarchy and of Nihilism, glorifying the absence of certain things as a presence more than any religion or philosophy had done before. The “Nothing” of Molinos, the emptiness of Nirvana, would have been far too existent for them.

Their ideas did not always meet with acceptance, for even the more violent of the Socialists could hardly see that there was an object for destructive denunciations in the simple order which seemed to them an assurance of individual freedom.