Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (18 page)

A much more dramatic confrontation arose with the grandmother of the Conqueror’s collateral heirs David Kalakaua and Lydia Kamaka‘eha. After once allowing their elder brother, James Kaliokalani, to attend the school, she withdrew him for the reason that he had been required to water plants in the yard, which was a servant’s job. In the ensuing argument, ‘I‘i maintained that all the boys, and he himself, and the teachers took turns watering plants, for the exercise, which benefited them. “You have no right in the matter,” he scolded her, and placed his left foot on her thigh as he forcibly removed James from her lap—a stunning affront to a high chiefess. She complained to Kekuanaoa, who she knew was close to the king. “I have tried,” he told her, “without success. He has the power from the chiefs, so here we are.”
11
(James Kaliokalani continued at the school, and was sixteen or seventeen when he died in an epidemic of measles, leaving the succession to his brother and sister.)

Papa ‘I‘i became, effectively, vice principal of the school. It was the first of many important advancements for him; over the next thirty years he became an extraordinarily influential voice in Hawaiian affairs, and an important bridge between the two cultures, both of which he respected. The first important decision taken in regard to the children, although it seems very harsh to modern sensibilities, was to separate them almost completely from their previous lives. What made this necessary was that when school started, the children came each attended by as many as two dozen lackeys, shading them with umbrellas, holding out boxes into which to spit, obeying their every whim. No progress was possible with such children, absent the shock of isolation. Eventually their attendants had to be banned because they loitered about, carping over how their precious were being treated. School convened in early May 1840, with eleven noble children ranging in age from three to eleven; the other chosen ones entered as they became old enough. Among them were four future kings, a queen regnant, a queen consort, and a
kuhina nui
. It was a scarifying time for the children, several of whom cried themselves to sleep. “Now all are asleep but one,” wrote an exhausted Juliette Cooke on May 5, 1840, “and he is calling for the steward to come and sleep with him. It is a very trying time for them and for us, too.”
12

The school building was erected on the site of the first ‘Iolani Palace barracks, just northeast of the royal residence and in the approximate location of the present Hawai‘i Capitol. It was in the shape of a hollow square surrounding a courtyard with a well. The entrance was in the center of the south side, with the boys’ and girls’ classrooms to the left and the kitchen and dining room to the right. The Cookes’ apartment was on the east side, one room for them and one for their children. Three boys’ dormitory rooms were on the west side, and two girls’ rooms on the north opposite the entrance. Papa ‘I‘i’s apartment was at the northwest corner, strategically placed between the girls and boys, but a location from where, ultimately, he was not successful in keeping the precocious young people apart.

About six months after the school opened, the Cookes were informed that a condemned man, a murderer imprisoned in the fort and soon to be hanged, had asked to see David Kalakaua, who was only six. Thinking that such an interview would be a good object lesson on the biblical principle of an eye for an eye, they permitted it. They learned only later that the doomed man was High Chief Kamanawa II, sentenced to death for having his former wife poisoned so he would be free to remarry. Kalakaua was his grandson; the future king witnessed the execution of his grandfather—a traumatic event for the little boy that cannot help but have shaped his internal conflict between the old life and the new that played out so painfully during his later seventeen years as monarch. For common Hawaiians the double execution—Kamanawa was hanged with his accomplice—was no less shocking. For generations the high chiefs had held life-or-death power over
kanakas
, and here was one of them, the grandson of no less than Kame‘eiamoku the Conqueror’s right hand, dangling lifeless at the end of a rope by the will of the white missionaries. What a precipitous change in power that was, with the gallows the new
heiau
, and those who violated the new
kapu
were the new sacrifices, even high chiefs. Thus to the persuasion of the pulpit was added the compulsion of the noose.

Days at the boarding school were rigorous: up at five, exercise with a ride or walk, prayers at six-thirty, an English-only breakfast at seven. Three hours of school were followed by a meal and three more hours of school, supper at five-thirty, and then evening prayers. One Bible verse was learned every day, in Hawaiian at the start of the day and in English at the close. All were in bed by eight, the younger ones at seven. Recognizing the children’s boisterous natures, the Cookes were shrewd enough to include a healthy schedule of physical activity. They rolled hoops, flew kites, swung, learned to ride. The Cookes encouraged evident talent, which for several of the children was in music, and several of them became accomplished pianists and composers. Discipline was strict; lateness to a meal was a meal missed; willful misbehavior brought corporal punishment, once unthinkable for children of such station, but preceded by a talk to explain why it was being administered.

In time the square school building was replaced with a more substantial structure, one special feature of which was the “Boston Parlor,” an upstairs drawing room to which the missionaries committed their finest heirloom furnishings. It was a daily exercise in this chamber for the royal children to practice their English and their social graces. One view of the students’ progress was offered by the American consul George Brown, who was invited to a tea party at the school in November 1843, also attended by the other missionaries in the area. “Mrs. Cooke,” he wrote home to his family, “has a large family to take care of, over twenty children of the chiefs male & female, among which is the heir apparent. They have made good progress in their studies & some of them speak English remarkably well. Some of the girls sing & play on the Piano very well for beginners, and most of them have a taste for music.”
13

The children were not allowed trips home, but their parents were permitted to visit the school. None was more vested in the school than the king, with his four adopted children all enrolled. He actually moved in next door to the school, into a large frame house built by his brother-in-law Kekuanaoa, of timbers that Ka‘ahumanu salvaged from the
Hale Keawe
when it was pulled down. The king bought it from him when Kekuanaoa entered financial straits, and it became known as the first ‘Iolani (“royal hawk”) Palace.
14
Kamehameha III, like many visitors, remarked on the students’ gift for music; he once heard his niece Victoria Kamamalu, still only a toddler, as she arced high in the swing during recess, belting out American songs at the top of her lungs. It was probably more than a glancing reference to her mother, Kina‘u the
kuhina nui
, who had disagreed with him so vociferously over foreign and religious policy, when he said to her
kahu
John Papa ‘I‘i, “What a loud-voiced girl. She may have as great a voice as her mother’s.”
15
Kekauluohi, the present
kuhina nui
, had a grass house erected on the grounds so that she could sojourn in proximity with her son William Lunalilo.

The royal students’ proficiency in English reached such a degree that one of the exercises in their notebooks was an extended fantasy on words ending in “tion:”

M
ARY
M
ODERATION’S ANS. TO
T
IMOTHY
O
BSERVATION

Sir:

I perused your oration with much deliberation, & with no little consternation at the great infactuation [
sic
] of your weak imagination to show such veneration on so slight foundation. But after examination, & serious contemplation, I suppose your admiration was the fruit of recreation.…

It went on for several more lines before being subscribed, “I am without hesitation, yours, Mary Moderation.”
16

Nor were all their English lessons apparently in standard English. For reasons no longer obvious, the notebook of Prince Lunalilo, son of the new
kuhina nui
, shows him copying out the poem “The Louisiana Belle” in dialect:

In Louisiana, dat’s de state,

Whar ole massa eber dwell,

He had a lubly colored gal

Called de Louisiana Belle.

The young
ali‘i
of Hawaii, their dark skin notwithstanding, were not taught English in slave dialect, indeed the New England missionaries had a pointed antipathy toward slavery. The point of teaching this poem (and “Black Jupiter,” among others) remains a mystery.
17

In 1846 the name was changed to the Royal School. “Friday evening as we about retiring, his majesty and suite called on us, accompanied by martial music. The parlor and court were filled.” They desired to hear the piano, so the children did a command performance of several songs.” “We passed cake, pie, grapes, figs, etc,. such as we happened to have on hand.… The queen is a very pleasant woman, and were it not that she is about as large as a barrel, she would be quite pretty. The children said she completely filled two chairs!!”
18
The presence of the royal family next door had one unintended consequence when Queen Kalama took a fancy to her husband’s eldest nephew, Prince Moses Kekuaiwa. To the native culture, having a boy toy in the family was all in good fun, but the Cookes, when they learned of it, were horrified that the heir apparent was setting such a bad example—followed closely by his two brothers Lot and Alexander. They often slipped out at night to drink and carouse, enduring Amos Cooke’s lectures and whippings only to slip out again.

Cooke’s stern discipline of the boys gave no hint of his own misgivings about whether that was the best way to handle them. Gerrit Judd called one morning and imparted to Juliette Cooke “that he thought we were governing too much now-a-days by force…,” Amos Cooke wrote in his diary. “I have felt very bad about it ever since.… I stayed at home. I could not eat any dinner. Have read 150 pages in ‘How Shall I Govern My School.’ … This evening I feel like giving up the ship. The children are disaffected, and I have reason to fear the parents are also, and why should I sacrifice my life, and my wife’s … for those who have no heart to improve by it.”
19
The Conqueror’s grandchildren were only the most prominent offenders. Princess Jane Loeau, who was the oldest of the students, was also the most precocious,
20
but all seemed to require vigilance, and the royal students’ sexual capers drove the Cookes to distraction. The Royal Council eventually ordered Moses’s expulsion from the school; his death shortly after from measles left his brother Prince Lot Kapuaiwa next in line to the throne.

The Cookes’ contest of wills with Moses was little compared to the battles they had with Lot. At twelve, he fell heavily in love with Princess Abigail Maheha, fourteen. Being willful
ali‘i
children, every remonstrance, coercion, and punishment the Cookes could devise failed to keep the pair apart, and Abigail became pregnant. For her shame, she was forced to marry not just a commoner but her mother’s gardener, on February 3, 1847, and the pair was exiled to Kaua‘i, where they were warned to remain in penitent quiet.
21
Lot was beside himself, and swore an oath never to marry—although he had been betrothed almost since birth to Princess Bernice Pauahi. They were first cousins once removed, but from different wives of Kamehameha I. If ever the inbred dying dynasty of the Conqueror had a chance at survival, that union would have been the likeliest possibility, but owing to Lot’s fit of rage—and later during his years as King Kamehameha V he kept his vow—he likely doomed his line to extinction. It was not the only time that the history of Hawai‘i turned on a royal tantrum—although Bernice had her own mind on the subject, announcing that she would marry Lot if commanded, but she did not like him and would as soon be buried in a coffin. (The child of Lot and Abigail did survive, and that line continues, so there remain on Kaua‘i living direct descendents of Kamehameha I. Owing, however, to the introduced concept of legitimacy, they were excluded from further consideration.)

Such struggles at the school wore heavily on Juliette Cooke, who was also engaged in bearing and rearing her own seven children. Consul Brown found that, “Mrs. Cooke is a very interesting woman, but is not well. She has too much care … for one lady, without help. The Board ought to send out a woman to answer as housekeeper, so that she may have more time to apply to the essentials of her pupils. And it is highly important that these children, of all others, should be properly brought up, as they will have the Government of the Islands in their hands bye & bye. If Mrs. Cooke is not relieved, she will fail, & will be a loss not easily repaired.”
22

Despite these battles royal, both the Cookes and the students could put on quite a convincing show when company came calling. “I have seldom seen better behaved children,” wrote Capt. Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy’s Exploring Expedition, “than those of this school. They were hardly to be distinguished from well bred children of our own country, and nearly as light in color.” No matter how fractious when among themselves, all presented a united front to the outside world. “Our teachers seek our good, sir,” one of the princesses explained to another officer, in faultless English. “They have experience and know what is best for us. We have confidence in their judgment and have no inclination to do what they disapprove.”
23
Frequent resort to the rod for discipline, especially among the boys, was for internal knowledge only; the chiefs could not be expected to keep the
kanakas
’ respect if word got out that they allowed
haoles
to beat their children.