A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct.
Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to revive at any favorable opportunity.
He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut—a process which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by enigmatic and evasive smiles.
Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as "dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his vanity, and smiled behind his back.
Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he had suddenly aged—a common experience enough for white men coming suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble. This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was taking its little revenge.
He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark.
The Old Spirit.
On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas L'Esprit Veille. The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily declined and he was every day less talked about.