What Happened To Emma?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 4

What Happened To Emma?

[Reviewed by A.RJ Queen Emma. By R. W. Robson. Pacific Publications. Sydney. 239 pp. The sub-title of this book gives, in briefest summary, the story of the woman who was known as “Queen Emma” —“The Samoan-American Girl who founded an Empire in 19th century New Guinea.” Emma was born in 1950 as Emma Eliza Coe, the daughter of Jonas M. Coe, an American trader in Samoa, who became the United States Commercial Agent in that group from 1864 to 1874. Between 1847 and 1881 Coe “married” six Samoan women of high rank, at least three of these marriages being formally recorded. Emma was the second daughter of the first marriage, her mother being a member of the famous Malietoa family. Her descent from a royal family may possibly have entitled her to be called “Princess,” which indeed she was by a San Francisco newspaper, but her title as “Queen” came from her own success in establishing a small commercial and plantation empire in New Britain shortly before the Germans annexed that island as part of their New Guinea colony.

Emma was well educated in Sydney and San Fransisco, where her uncle and aunt kept watch on her. On her return to Samoa, she married James Forsayth, whose son she bore and whose name she carried long after he had disappeared and she had gone off with other men. including Thomas Farrell with whom she started a business in New Guinea in 1879. Later she married a German, Captain Paul Kolbe, to whom she remained attached for the concluding twenty years of her life. She died in 1913. Her real importance lies in the success with which she opened up a plantation economy and made a fortune in New Britain and the surrounding islands. Unfortunately, Mr Robson gives few details and fewer facts concerning the economic empire Emma developed—he is more concerned with personal details. This book makes no very serious contribution to the history of the Pacific: Emma was undoubtedly a fascinating character whose story should have been told, but her influence on significant political decisions was at most of only marginal importance. Mr Robson, the New Zealand born editor of "The Pacific Islands Monthly.” has been at work for many years assembling his information and he has been at pains to make a readable story out of the details he has collected. Mr Robson seems overanxious to suggest that Emma was a “great lover.” Although she resisted the advances of the notorious Bully Hayes one

night after a good dinner on board his vessel by jumping overboard and swimming ashore, she did have affairs with various men. Mr Robson makes the most of them, even when his sources are inadequate for his purpose. Thus, when Colonel Steinberger, the personal representative of President Grant of the United States of America, was on his first visit to Samoa in 1873, Robson holds that Emma provided something more than secretarial assistance. He adds “there is little doubt that Emma and the Colonel were lovers, although their affair was conducted with such discretion that the many writings—and the missionaries’ reports were voluminous—have little hint of scandal.” Emma certainly visited the United States while Steinberger was back there, but the romance does not seem to have flourished. On her return to Samoa, she became very friendly with a fellow-passenger, a Major Latrobe, a good looking sophisticated member of a prominent Baltimore family. Reporting this “warm friendship,” Robson cannot refrain from adding “Apia gossip put them into bed together, but there is no evidence of it in the record.” While this sort of thing may make a good story, it is not very satisfactory if the intention is to give an historically accurate account of what happened to Emma. The author has done serious research and he reports the discovery of letters written by

Emma, of rare books in both English and German, and of some unpublished manuscripts, but he does not document his assertions. This lack of documentation is a serious one, especially as Mr Robson describes his book as “an authentic history of one of the most remarkable of the people who shaped the growth of the South Pacific islands last century.” “Queen Emma,” then, is a chatty account of a singularly interesting woman. The fact that she had contact with famous figures in American, Samoan, Hawaiian and New Guinean history makes her story the more interesting. Mr Robson’s style Is vigorous, if unpolished. This is particularly the case where he is apparently paraphrasing Emma's own views. For example, in discussing an incident which helped to spark off her marriage to Kolbe in 1893, he writes: “In birth, she was the daughter of a distinguished American family, and of royal line in Samoa; in wit and in wealth, she knew herself to be the equal of anyone. But, because she had Samoan blood, oafish people had sometimes snubbed her, and she was treated with disdain by brainless bitches like this baroness from Berlin.”

The photographs and the appendices on “The de Rays Swindle of 1877-1884” and “Attacks by Natives on Europeans, 1876-1904” add to the interest of this entertaining biographical study.