Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (34 page)

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As Kamehameha V passed forty he took less and less care for himself, and his weight ballooned to nearly four hundred pounds before his body began to give out. Diagnosed in that nineteenth-century way with “dropsy of the heart,” the dying mountain of a king sent for his lifelong friend, but never wife, Bernice Pauahi, on the morning of December 11, 1872—his forty-second birthday. She had now been married to Charles Bishop for twenty-two years in the most congenial of the mixed-race marriages, managing her estates and charities while her husband made ever more money. When she arrived she found an extraordinary scene in the death chamber. Six possible claimants to the throne were there. Lot had said that surely God would not take him on his birthday, but when his doctors assured him that his time had come, he said, “God’s will be done.”

His attorney general, Stephen Phillips, was at the bedside, urging the king to dictate a will and name a successor. The king said he needed time to make such an important decision, but time was now the one thing he did not have. He turned to a trusted friend, the longtime governor of Maui Paul Nahaolelua, and asked whom he favored. Nahaolelua was known to favor Dowager Queen Emma, but she had already recognized the superior claim of William Lunalilo, whom the king disliked but knew to be immensely popular. Whatever he said, Nahaolelua would make five enemies. He finally parried, “They are all
ali‘i
.”

The scene was selectively recorded by Lot’s close friend, privy councillor, and the governor of O‘ahu, the American-born John Owen Dominis, who was also the brother-in-law of Lot’s ambitious chamberlain, High Chief David Kalakaua. When Bernice arrived, the king told her that he wanted her to succeed him. “No, no, not me,” she declared. “Don’t think of me, I do not need it.” The king protested that he was thinking of the good of the country, not of their friendship. Bernice refused again. “There are others, there is your sister, it is hers by right.”

She was correct; the king’s half sister Princess Ruth Ke‘elikolani (also present) was, aside from her close friend Bernice, the only surviving direct descendent of the Conqueror. Kamehameha III had removed her from the succession over the question of her legitimacy, but when Lot answered that she was not suitable, he was probably alluding to her truculent bearing, her defiant paganism, and her contempt for foreigners, which would have made her a problematical monarch. Bernice would not be moved, however; King Kamehameha V entered extremis and expired an hour later.

Elizabeth La‘anui, also their classmate at the Royal School, later claimed that before seeing Bernice Kamehameha V offered the throne to her and she declined. Such an offer would have been quite proper, if it happened, for she was a strong candidate, great-granddaughter of the Conqueror’s older brother. Like Emma she was one-quarter white (granddaughter of Kamehameha II’s shady French secretary Jean Rives); unlike Emma she was married to a white, Franklin Pratt of Boston. Emma also tended Lot in his final hours, but Dominis, alert to promote the interests of the Kalakaua family to whom he had tied his own fortunes, wrote her out of the scene, although all the principal claimants were right there in the room.
7
On his deathbed Kamehameha V was heard finally to mumble his assent that Lunalilo, “unworthy” as he was, would have to do, but that fell well short of a decree. Lot’s constitution provided for just such confusion, so when no successor was named, the legislature would choose the monarch.

Of the four principal contenders to the throne, Bernice Bishop had recused herself, and Ruth Ke‘elikolani was discounted for her questioned legitimacy and reactionary ways. David Kalakaua wanted the job badly and began lobbying his fellow legislators, but one big obstacle stood in his way: William Charles Lunalilo. It may have taken court genealogists to advise the Kamehamehas of his high birth, but it was no mystery to his mother, the
kuhina nui
Kekauluohi. At the very time of his birth she had chanted, “I luna, i luna, i lunalilo” (up high, up high, disappears up high).

At one time he had the makings of a splendid king—handsome, popular, extremely intelligent and liberally disposed, he was a famously brilliant conversationalist and debater—and he aimed to accommodate the Americans where he could while stemming their march to take over the whole country. Once again, however, the Kamehameha family ruined their people’s chances for happiness, this time by sabotaging Lunalilo’s chances for happiness when they crushed his romance with their sister Victoria Kamamalu over fear of being outranked by his children.
8
(It was extraordinary how “genealogy” had simply become a new word for
mana
.) Distraught, Lunalilo then sought the hand of Kalakaua’s sister, Lydia Kamaka‘eha, but she also declined him—at the urging of Kamehameha IV—and she entered that dismal marriage with Dominis.
9
The Kamehamehas’ jealousy of Lunalilo’s rank apparently extended also to refusing him a position at court, where he could have trained for the reign that most people assumed would one day be his.
10
William Lunalilo therefore gimped through adulthood as a lonely alcoholic bachelor, and was far gone in both drink and tuberculosis at the time the whole matter landed in the legislature.

Lunalilo announced that he would accept the throne only on condition that they hold a plebiscite for the people to vote their choice, and, wrote Castle, “I presume their expression will be in his favor as he is popular.”
11
In that referendum the only candidate to stand against him was Kalakaua, and it was a fascinating campaign that showed Hawai‘i in transition, with Lunalilo standing upon his royal rank but enlightened to seek the suffrage of his people, and Kalakaua running something like an American-style campaign, buttonholing key legislators for support, spreading stories about his opponent, and making promises he couldn’t keep.

Lunalilo’s only statement was that, notwithstanding his right to inherit the throne, “I desire to submit the decision of my claim to the voice of the people,” with the single promise that if he were elected, he would restore the constitution of Kamehameha III, and “govern the nation according to the principles of … a liberal constitutional monarchy.” His only misstep—whether it was published at his direction or only a widespread misconception—was a claim of direct descent from the Conqueror. A circular authored by a committee of “Skilled Genealogists” in Kalakaua’s service quickly brought that up short, but it did nothing to dent Lunalilo’s popular support.

Kalakaua did attain a measure of royal connection when he married Esther Kapi‘olani, the erstwhile governess of the unfortunate little Prince of Hawai‘i, and whom Emma blamed for his death. (Kapi‘olani’s Christian name is often rendered as Julia, but
Kulia
—Strive—was her motto, not her name.) Her elderly first husband, Emma’s uncle, died, and she and Kalakaua wed not long after Kamehameha IV died. Kapi‘olani, unlike Kalakaua, was distantly related to the Kamehameha line, a tincture that would pass to their children, if they produced any.
12

For his part, Kalakaua published a platform of windy but clever promises, first shrewdly tying himself to Kamehameha I by promising to enforce the Law of the Splintered Paddle—which he pointed out had been suggested to the Conqueror by Kalakaua’s ancestor Keaweaheulu. Second, he promised to increase the population “and fill the land,” although one can imagine any number of randy Hawaiians wondering with amusement how much personal attention he meant to devote to that pledge. He promised to repeal all personal taxes and pay off the national debt by putting native Hawaiians into government offices—which sounded mighty but made no sense whatever. The plebiscite would be a nonbinding referendum only, and at root, Kalakaua’s chances came down to his ability to influence legislators who would actually decide which would become monarch. Britain and the United States both detected a possibility of trouble—if Lunalilo won the election, which he would, but Kalakaua turned the legislature, which he might, there could be violence. Both consuls requested warships to protect the property of their respective citizens, but only the 2,400-ton screw sloop USS
Benicia
arrived in time.

Lunalilo’s triumph in the referendum was so overwhelming that when the legislature convened to vote for monarch, his jubilant supporters thronged the grounds. Their numbers were sufficiently intimidating that one of their supporters in the legislature moved that the members sign their ballots when they voted—a sure antidote to any American-style skulduggery on Kalakaua’s part. It worked, and the vote was unanimous, but for one—John Owen Dominis, Kalakaua’s brother-in-law; he abstained.

Though a husk of his former self, Lunalilo took the oath as king on January 8, 1873. Mark Twain had met him in 1866 and liked him enormously, finding him “affable, gentlemanly, open, frank, manly; [he] is as independent as a lord and has a spirit and a will like the old Conqueror himself. He is intelligent, shrewd, sensible, is a man of first-rate abilities, in fact.… He has one unfortunate fault—he drinks constantly, and it is a great pity.… I like this man, and I like his bold independence, and his friendship for and appreciation of the American residents.… If I could print a sermon that would reform him, I would cheerfully do it.”
13

The solemnity of the investiture was largely destroyed when the new king, who was quite musical and had always wanted to lead the band, suddenly seized and donned the bass drum, and led the musicians in a march around the palace grounds, whomping it with abandon. As a youth Lunalilo had been diffident where girls were concerned, and in his student workbook he once composed a poem to inscribe in a girl’s autograph book—if one should, he wrote, ever ask him to. Marching to church in the Royal School he was often paired with Emma Na‘ea and the two had remained close friends. He had always been careful of his appearance, and recorded in his diary bathing in a stream with his father and using
palolo
, a traditional hair-straightening pomade.
14
Then came his wrenching romantic reversals with Victoria Kamamalu and Lydia Kamaka‘eha, and Lunalilo, who might have ushered the Hawaiian kingdom into happier days than they had known under the Kamehamehas, instead came to the throne a broken man.

Indeed, much of the government’s focus from the outset was on keeping him alive, just at a time when national issues required vigorous attention. The 1872 sugar crop was not good, and in defiance of the law of supply and demand, prices were depressed as well. The subject of a reciprocity treaty with the United States was back in circulation, but with their Reconstruction almost spent, the Southern states were about to regain a voice in Congress, so protection of Southern sugar just promised further disappointment. Then Henry Whitney of the
Pacific Commercial Advertiser
spoke up. Why not, he suggested, offer the Americans a fifty-year lease on the Pearl River basin west of Honolulu, in exchange for importing Hawaiian sugar duty-free?

It did not seem suspicious. The presence in Hawai‘i at that moment of a high-level American military delegation was easily explained away. During his decline, Kamehameha V planned to visit the United States for medical treatment, and as a courtesy, the U.S. Navy dispatched the USS
California
, a large, new, massively armed wooden steam frigate, to transport him. She was under command of Adm. A. M. Pennock, whose orders included turning the port call into a goodwill visit, and to “use all your influence and all proper means to direct and maintain feeling in favor of the United States.” Also present on board were Lt. Col. B. S. Alexander, of the Corps of Engineers, and Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, commander of the Division of the Pacific. They, it was reported, were on a recreational leave for Schofield’s health—although Schofield was only forty-two.

What no one in the islands knew was that they were on a secret mission, “for the purpose of ascertaining the defensive capabilities of the different ports and their commercial facilities, and … to collect all information that would be of service to the country in the event of war with a powerful maritime nation.” So far from their interest in Pearl Harbor being coincidental, their orders also warned, “It is believed the objects of this visit … will be best accomplished if your visit is regarded as a pleasure excursion, which may be joined in by your citizen friends.”
15
What everyone knew was that the Pearl River estuary was the most capacious and most sheltered harbor in the Pacific, but blocked by a coral reef. Alexander being an engineer, short of taking soundings or otherwise arousing suspicion, he could estimate how much effort it would take to blast through it, how much dredging would be required to service a fleet, the best location for a coaling station, and other logistics.

Henry Whitney, who had sold the
Advertiser
and now published the
Hawaiian Gazette
, gave plausible reasons why and how a lease would benefit the kingdom. “It will defeat and indefinitely postpone all projects for the annexation of these Islands to any foreign power, at the same time that it will secure to us all the benefits claimed by the advocates of annexation, and will guarantee our national independence under our native rulers as long as the treaty may continue.”
16
An important clause, that last one. If apples and oranges make a poor comparison, Whitney wrote an entire fruit basket on the question of how American warships in Pearl Harbor could satisfy the cases both for and against annexation.

The U.S. minister to Hawai‘i, Henry Peirce, had apparently not been included in the plan to quietly assay Pearl Harbor’s defensive potential, and when asked about the possible quid pro quo, repeated that the United States had no territorial ambition in the kingdom, but sent dispatches to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish detailing the activity and requesting instructions. The sick and unhappy king was persuaded to support the idea, but if the previous thirty years had taught the educated native class anything, it was that alienation of any part of
Hawai‘i nei
was anathema. As the plan became more widely known—and helping to raise the alarm was Walter Murray Gibson, the excommunicated Mormon, now publishing a bilingual newspaper called the
Nuhou—
public gatherings against it were so large and angry that Lunalilo must have known that he had stepped amiss.