Spirit of Aloha | Features | March/April 2007

They Came to Write in Hawai‘i
By: Joseph Theroux

For Jack London, Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, the Islands were a home away from home

I. Jack London .

For Jack London, Hawai‘i was “a sweet land,” and, for the last years of his young life, it was a home away from his beloved California ranch, a place where he sought stories and adventure. .

He arrived at Pearl Harbor, his “Dream Harbor,” in 1907, aged 31, aboard his yacht, Snark. (He took the name from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark.”) It was the antithesis of his early days in the frozen north, where his first successful stories were set. Here he would revel in the sand and sun, ex­plore the volcanoes and mountains.

Though the 27-month voyage would end in Australia—due to ill health, difficulties with the Snark and pressing busi­ness at home—he would eventually emerge with material for several books, magazine articles and stories, much of it from Hawai‘i. Among these were South Sea Tales, The Cruise of the Snark and The House of Pride.

When he arrived, he was already the world-famous author of The Son of the Wolf, The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf and White Fang. Everybody knew Jack London. He was soon bestowed with his Hawaiian name: Keaka Lakana. He and his Mate, as he referred to Char­mian, rested at Waikīkī, swam and surf­ed. As he gazed along the beach, he said, “Enjoy it now because one of these days it will be covered with one long hotel.” But they soon realized that there was more to the Islands, and set out to find “real Hawai‘i.”

They became friends with Lorrin Thur­ston, leader of the annexation movement, who wrote a letter of introduction to his Shipman relatives in Hilo. They could stay at the family estate on Reed’s Island.

They traveled the Islands by car, train, carriage, on foot and by horseback. London rode mules and rode the cane flumes, picking up fine splinters on his posterior. (You can’t ride the flumes nowadays, but you can ride a kayak down the Kohala irrigation ditch.) On Maui, they met Louis von Temp­sky and his daughters Gwendolyn and Armine, and were impressed with their riding abilities.

On Moloka‘i, they saw firsthand the suffering of the leprosy patients at Ka­lau­papa, and London wrote The Lepers of Molo­ka‘i. He was struck by both the horrors of the disease and the good humor of the patients. His journalism reflected the positive aspects of the subject, but his fiction emphasized the horrors for dra­matic purposes. For this, he was much criticized by Honolulu community leaders—including Thurston—and for a while he was vilified in the newspapers.

On the Big Island, they visited Kona, Kohala, Kealakekua and Nāpō‘opo‘o. At the Parker Ranch, they saw their first rodeo and delighted in the wild roping and colorful riders. They drove a Model T—outfitted with train wheels—on the railroad track from Hilo up the coast to Pa‘auilo and “pronounced it one of the most scenically beautiful rail journeys we ever had the good fortune to travel.”

Staying at the Shipman House—for a month, because the Snark was again having engine troubles—he did his usual 10 pages each morning. They were soon part of the family, and donned kimonos for breakfast. (Known as “the castle white mansion,” it is now a bed-and-breakfast where you can sleep in Jack London’s bed and see Thurston’s letter of introduction.) The languid mornings on the verandah overlooking Hilo Bay inspired him to begin his autobiographical novel, Success, (a title better than the one he eventually settled on, Martin Eden).

He lectured on socialism at Spreckels Hall in Hilo. The title of the lecture was Revolution. No one asked, as the Apia writer Thomas Trood would wonder, following a similar lecture, “In your Socialist Eden, would everyone have a yacht?”

London returned to Hawai‘i in early March 1915, after cover­ing wars in Mexico and Japan. The next day, he took the Mat- ­sonia to Hilo to see the erupting volcano, Kīlauea. He had first spied it in 1893, as a crewmember on the sealer Sophia Suther­land when he was 17, and promised himself he’d return someday. They saw Rainbow Falls above Hilo and Green Lake in Kapoho.

They returned to Maui and took the plantation train to Pā‘ia. He again met up with the von Tempskys. They rode horses and visited the massive erosional basin at Haleakalā, the House of the Sun. Sixteen-year-old Armine, chubby and red-haired, approached him with some of her stories about Africa and polar snows. She asked him his opinion. He read each one and pronounced them “clumsy, incoherent tripe.” He handed them back, adding, “But every so often there’s a streak of fire on your pages.” Thus encouraged, she went back to write of Big Island cowboys and the Island ranch life she knew, and so be­came Hawai‘i’s first novelist.

The Londons, meanwhile, took a six-week trip around the Big Island.

“Why not spend our winters here?” he mused to Charmian. At his California ranch he often dread­ed the blank page and sometimes resorted to buying story ideas from a young writer named Sinclair Lewis. His writing was sometimes derivative and his re­fusals to rewrite put a burden on his editors, but his Ha­wai­ian work was fresh and original. In Hawai‘i he was in­spired. He wrote some of his best essays and stories of it: “The House of Pride,” “Ko‘o­lau the Leper,” “The Sheriff of Kona,” “The House of the Sun,” “The Art of Surfing.”

His last visit to Hawai‘i—ar­riving in December 1915—was his longest: eight months. He met with Duke Kahana­moku, Prince Jonah Kūhiō and Queen Lili‘uokalani, as well as average folks. Though young and active, he was suffering from uremia and a kidney complaint.

He returned to the ranch at the end of July 1916. He was ill, but continued to work. He had six months to live. He said, “Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.”

He would complete some 50 books in his short life. His last magazine piece was titled “My Ha­waiian Aloha.” He died of a morphine overdose in his 41st year in the Valley of the Moon—his California estate—probably dream­ing of the House of the Sun, for his final, unfinished novel, Eyes of Asia, was set in Hawai‘i.

He was remembered in the Islands with a chant that ended:

Ha‘ina‘ia mai ana ka puana,
No Keaka neia inoa
“This song is then echoed,
’Tis in honor of Jack London.”


II. Mark Twain
In 1866, the man who would be­come Mark Twain lay in a Honolulu boarding room bed suffering from saddle sores. While Twin was feeling sorry for himself, a man was brought in, emaciated and bearded, and placed in a nearby bed. He ranted of storms, starvation, dehydration and death. Twain grabbed his notebook and began transcribing the man’s story. It turned out to be the re­mark­able tale of the burning of the clipper ship Hornet, and the longest open-boat voyage on record.

Twain would be up all night writing the story for the San Francisco Union. At nine the next morning, he tossed it onto the deck of an outbound steamer. It was telegraphed everywhere and he scooped the world on the tragedy and made his name as a writer of international fame.

The man who would be called the father of American literature had ar­rived in Hawai‘i unknown, unremarked on by the local papers or the community, a jour­nalist to cover the business and economy of the Islands. But Twain would do much more. He was using the name Mark Twain, but would later complain that it was not recognized, and sometimes printed as “Mike Swain or MacSwain.”

He had sailed under his pen name and disembarked the Ajax in Honolulu on March 18, 1886, and left on July 19 on­board the Smyrniote. He was in the Islands only four months, yet the place was to him a source of inspiration for many stories and lectures. He called it “the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean.”

He was 31 at the time, with bright red hair and a long mous­tache. A. Grove Day says in his introduction to Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawai‘i: “He talked and gesticulated so much that people who did not know him thought he was always drunk.”

He spent two months in Ho­no­lulu, Waikīkī and Nu‘u­anu, five weeks on Maui and three weeks on the Big Island. He landed at Kona and traveled along the south coast and up to Hilo and the volcano at Kīlauea. He wrote of the coffee, orange and sugar groves and advised readers to “pack up your carpet sacks and go to Kailua. A week there ought to cure the saddest of you all.”

At Kealakekua, he noted the beautiful rainbows, which were “present to you at every turn … barred with all bright and beautiful colors … like stained cathedral windows,” and bemoaned the name of the Sandwich Islands: “Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery the Rainbow Islands?”

At Wai‘ōhinu he was overwhelmed by the lush scenery and the flowering and fruiting trees, mango, papaya and banana. On June 1, he stayed the night at the home of Capt. Charles Spencer, later minister of the interior, and helped him plant two monkeypod trees. Spen­cer’s tree did not thrive, but Twain’s did. High winds took it down 90 years later, on Dec. 2, 1956.

From Wai‘ōhinu, he rode a mule through the lava fields to Kīlauea, where he would remain several days. As he gazed over the crater, he watched the steam rising and sniffed the air. “The smell of sulfur is strong but not unpleasant to a sinner.” The quote is actually engraved on a plaque at the Vol­cano House, overlooking the crater. (He stay­ed at the original Vol­cano House, which is now restored and used as a gift shop and art gallery.) He noted the snow on Mauna Kea and ob­served that “one could stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets and furs to keep warm) and while he nibbled a snowball or an icicle … he could look down on tufted coco palms.”

On Maui, he visited the whaling port at Lahaina and the cane fields at ‘Ulu­palakua. Intensely curious about all he saw, he studied the mechanisms of a su­gar mill with its grinders, cooling vats and “centrifugals.” He was struck by the beauty of the is­land and the friendliness of the people. “I went to Maui to stay a week,” he wrote, “and re­­mained five. I had a jolly time.”

He heard descriptions of the horrors at the leprosarium at Ka­laupapa on Mo­lo­ka‘i—at that time run by thugs and thieves, the patients without any medical facilities—but he was either prevented from visiting or reluctant to do so. In addition to his economic reports on agriculture and trade, he gathered detailed accounts of the death, funeral and burial of Princess Victoria Kama­ma­lu. He did pen portraits of Wil­liam Ragsdale, the brilliant half-Ha­waiian lawyer and government translator, Col. David Ka­lā­kaua (who was then a can­di­date for kingship, though he would not rise to that position for several years) and the “irascible” Board of Health’s pres­ident, Ferdinand Hutch­i­son: “… sandy hair, san­dy moustache, sandy complexion … altogether one of the sandiest men I ever met.” When Rags­dale was diagnosed with leprosy 10 years later, he was sent to Ka­lau­papa, now bettered in the hands of Father Damien.

Twain was impressed with the generosity of the Hawaiians: “If a Kanaka who has starved two days gets hold of a dollar, he will spend it for poi, and then bring in his friends to help him devour it.”

He observed the Legislature. Of it he wrote: “The mental caliber of the Legis­lative Assembly is up to the average of such bodies the world over—and I wish it were a compliment to say it …” This was the man who would later remark more concisely, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” Clearly not a fan.

“The Burning of the Clippership Hor­net at Sea” was widely reprinted and made his name. Thirty-three years later, he wrote a piece for Century magazine that he called “My Debut as a Literary Person,” and recalled the night in Hono­lulu when he met the sailors: “They were mere skinny sketches; their clothes hung limp … and fitted them no better than a flag fits the flagstaff in a calm.” They shared their stories, answered his questions, even gave him their letters and journals to read.

He documented the story of the Hor­net. An explosion—apparently from a man smoking in the hold—burned and sank the ship in 20 minutes. The captain divided his crew into two longboats and had them on rations enough for 10 days. After eight days they were on half-rations. When they were re­duced to breadcrumbs and the occasional flying fish, the men soon found themselves chewing their boot leather, and later would “pound wet rags to a sort of pulp” and eat that. When they reached 43 days, they were near death.

Twain wrote of the 4,000-mile open-boat voyage, the heroism of the captain, Josiah Mitchell, of Maine, who had saved 10 of the original crew, and the Hawaiian wo­men of Lau­pāhoehoe who had waded into the waves to cradle the sick men like infants and carry them ashore. He said the Hawaiians were “the very in­carnation of generosity, un­self­ish­ness and hospitality.”

Since he never published his Ha­wai‘i articles, Twain felt free to mine them for material in other books, like Following the Equator, Roughing It and A Con­­nec­ti­cut Yankee in King Ar­thur’s Court. His Innocents at Home, written five years after he left Ha­wai‘i, had several chapters about Ho­no­lulu. “It was tranced luxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any world but these enchanted islands.”

Mark Twain always intended to re­turn to Hawai‘i, but he never did. When he passed by aboard the S.S. Warrimoo in 1895—writing Following the Equator—a cholera outbreak in Honolulu prevented his ship from docking. “Thus sud­denly did my dream of 29 years go to ruin.” He would often lecture on the Is­lands and, as late as 1889, he was giving a talk on Hawai‘i base­ball in New York. Though by now a world traveler, he would remark of Hawai‘i during that talk: “No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one.”

III. Robert Louis Stevenson
On King Street in Honolulu, behind Ka‘iulani School, is a massive banyan tree. To reach it, you must check in at the school office, then proceed through the parking lot, across the basketball court and pass through a gate in a chain-link fence. At the base of the tree, amid leaves and debris, there is a forgotten bronze plaque.

On it is inscribed a portion of a poem, written in 1889 by Robert Louis Steven­son, on the occasion of Princess Ka‘iu­lani’s departure for schooling in England:

Forth from her land to mine she goes,
The island maid, the island rose,
Light of heart and bright of face:
The daughter of a double race.
Her islands here, in Southern sun,
Shall mourn their Ka‘iulani gone
And I, in her dear banyan shade,
Look vainly for my little maid.


But the banyan there is not the original tree, which stood miles away in Wai­kīkī, and her birth date on it is a year earlier than the correct one of 1875. Few know the full story of the tree or the plaque.

Stevenson first arrived with his wife, Fanny, mother, Mrs. Margaret Steven­son, and stepson, Lloyd, in Honolulu on Jan. 24, 1889, aboard the yacht Casco. They had come from Ta­hiti, where he had begun his travel letters that would make up his book In the South Seas. Within days, King Kalākaua stepped aboard to meet the author of Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Stevensons returned the call on Feb. 5, dining at the palace.

Later, a grand lū‘au was held at the home of Henry Poor, at Ka­pi‘olani Park near Waikīkī. Poor was a government official and world traveler who had represented the kingdom at the coronation of Tsar Alexander III and was secretary to the Hawaiian legation to Samoa in 1887. (Stev­enson’s stepson-in-law, Joe Strong, had been government artist on the Samoa trip.) The name of Poor’s home was Manuia, Sa­moan for “good health.” Sev­eral photos were taken of the event and they are still widely published. (Strong is on the right, though often cropped from the photos.)

Stevenson soon tired of the Ameri­canized life in Hono­lulu—and the lionizing that took time from his writing—and wished to visit Polynesians again, whom he called “God’s greatest creations.” He set off for Kona on April 26, on the steamer W.G. Hall. They landed at Ho‘okena, where he spent a week. There he walked the beach and smoked and noticed an isolated house on the hill. He later learned it was a place of detention for those diagnosed with leprosy. He watched a trial in session, and was called upon for his opinion on the status of a disbarred lawyer. (The au­thor, in fact, had a degree in law.) Diplo­matically, he sided with the Hawaiian judge. He visited the City of Refuge, Hale o Keawe, and heard the legend of Keawe, the warrior chief. He later watch­ed an old man and a little girl ordered onto a ship bound for the leprosarium at Kalaupapa. He knew he must also see that place. He was taken with a story that was swirling in his head, of a Hawaiian sailor, Keawe, who was diagnosed with leprosy and traveled the Pacific with an evil genie in a bottle. Stevenson did his first draft of one of his best stories—The Bottle Imp—in Hawai‘i.

In May, Stevenson received permission to visit Kalaupapa, a month after the death of Father Damien. He sailed on the Kīlauea Hou. Tubercular himself, and, like many, fearful of the disease, he was nonetheless soon heartened by the grace and humanity he found at the Moloka‘i location. He refused to wear the gloves provided to him when greeting the patients. He not only donated a croquet set, but insisted on teaching the children the rules of the game. He met Mother Marianne and Brother Joseph Dutton. Dutton, a Civil War veteran, was struck by the author’s sensitivity. He later remarked that Stevenson was “quick to feel, quick to love.” He spent eight days at Kalau­papa. Later he shipped over a piano.

Before Stevenson left Hawai‘i, news reached Honolulu of the wreck of the Wandering Minstrel on Midway Island. He interview­ed the captain and heard a story of murder, marooning and star­va­tion. His novel The Wrecker would be loosely based on the event.

Stevenson visited Hawai‘i once again after he had settled in Samoa. He planned a short visit in September 1893, but he took ill and was forced to bed. His wife arrived from Apia to nurse him. He stayed at the Bella Vista Cottage at San Souci, when it was managed by George Lycurgus (later manager of the Volcano House). It was there in October that Steven- son wrote to the Advertiser, complaining of the new invention—the telephone—that was, he wrote, “bleating like a deserted infant.” He spoke to the Scot­tish so­ciety, The Thistle Club of Ho­no­lulu, and was elected an honorary chieftain. He wrote the poem “The High Winds of Nu‘u­anu,” recalling the gusts “pulsing through the gorge … howl­ing through the glen.”

There is a story that Stev­en­son wrote in a grass shack own­ed by Ka‘iu­lani, which was supposedly moved to the Wai‘oli Tea Room in Mānoa Valley. For years, postcards were sold de­picting “The Hut Where Stev­en­son Wrote.” The true story is better.

Stevenson had met the prin­cess, daughter of Archibald Cleg­horn and Miriam Likelike, when she was 13. Her favorite playground was beneath a ban­yan on the family property at ‘Äinahau, near Waikīkī, where he read her poetry and stories, amid her pet peacocks. The verse he wrote to her upon her departure from the Islands became fa­mous. It was his ode to her and the Hawaiian Islands.

Yet she would never ascend to the throne. She died of pneumonia at age 23 at ‘Äinahau in 1899, five years after Stevenson himself died. It is said that peacocks shrieked at the hour of her death.

In 1930, the Daughters of Hawai‘i erected a memorial to Ka‘iulani and placed it on the banyan. It quoted the poem and added:

WRITTEN TO Ka‘iulani BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON WHO OFTEN SAT WITH HER

But the tree was cut down in 1949. A cutting was planted at Ka‘iulani School, which had been named for her a month after her death. The plaque was later moved there. There is, however, another signpost in memory of Ka‘iulani and Steven­son at ‘Äinahau. Just a block inland of Waikīkī you will find an alley off Lili­‘uokalani Avenue. This is Tusitala Street, which invokes Stevenson’s Samoan name, “teller of tales,” and the place where their banyan once stood.

JOSEPH THEROUX is a public school administrator on the Big Island and writes on aspects of Hawai‘i and Pacific history.



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