Three Earlier Visitors

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 513, 22 April 1949, Page 16

Three Earlier Visitors

Of course, it isn’t surprising that Mr. Gibbings enjoyed the South Seas. Europeans of sensibility have generally been pleasantly excited by that gracious, colourful, and unhurrying world. If we turn to the writings of those who have left a record we find a great measure of agreement as to the qualities which they have valued most. For example, let us consider the experience of three men who reached the Pacific about sixty years ago. There was the Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, who arrived in 1888 and finally settled in Samoa in 1891, There was the Bostonian, Henry Adams, who spent part of 1890 and 1891 in the Islands; and the French painter, Paul Gauguin, who arrived in Tahiti in 1891. All were middle-aged, and all had passed through years of trouble. Stevenson had been ill for most of his life; Adams, deeply disturbed by the suicide of his wife and exhausted by the writing of his great history of the formative years of the United States; Gauguin had been rent between his duty to his family and

to his vocation as a painter. When they reached the Islands, all but the memory of former difficulties seemed washed = away. Soon Gauguin wrote: "I begin to think simply, to have only a little hatred for my neighbour -to like him better. ... I escape from the artificial, I enter upon the natural," And listen to Henry Adams, describing an evening entertainment in Samoa: "The mysterious depths of darkness behind, against whieh the skins and dresses of the dancers ,.mingled rather than contrasted; ... the conviction that we were ‘as good Polynesians as our neighbours — the whole scene and association gave so much freshness to our fancy that no future experience short of being eaten will ever make us feel so new again." Stevensoh’s experience hardly needs re-telling, In Samoa he found new health, byt also — and perhaps more import-

ant-a life which he could share in to the full. He was able to look back on his past forebodings: "I feared I should make a mere shipwreck and yet timidly hoped not. I feared I should never make a friend, far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might." How differently it had turned out! At "Vailima" he was the centre of a large family circle, the master of a considerable Samoan entourage, the respected counsellor of high chiefs. It was these last Samoan years which brought his personality, and so also his work, to full maturity. But the story is the same if one turns from those who had difficulties to escape from to the young and assured. Rupert Brooke wrote home from Samoa in 1913, concealing excitement beneath a simulated weariness: "It’s all true about the South Seas! I get a little tired of it at moments, because I am too old for Romance. But there it is; there it wonderfully is." And when he was back in England the memory lingers? "If ever you miss me suddenly, one day, from Lecture Room B in King’s, or even from the Moulin d’Or at lunch, you'll know ... that I’ve gone back." The Islands Themselves The experiences of the writers themselves in the South Seas are thus well known to us. But how much have they told us about the Islands? How far have they succeeded in communicating an impression of the quality of life among the Island people? We certainly know what the Islands look like. Whether we go to the narratives of the 18th Century explorers — Cook, or Bougainville, or La Perouse-or to the South Sea writings of Dana, or Melville, or Stevenson, we can find many admirable descriptions of the scenery of the South: Seas. Indeed, we know from childhood reading the difference between a

"high" island, with its densely forested mountains, and its surrounding barrier reef, and an atoll, lying like a wreath upon/the sea, its narrow rim of coconutplanted land surrounding a blue-green, lagoon. We know the brilliant hues of the hibiscus, the waxy-white of the frangipani, the look of oranges among their dark green foliage, the leaves of the banana tree, large enough to be used as an umbrella. We have heard in our imagination the unceasing roar of the waves upon the reef ‘and seen the sun glistening upon the bodies of flying-fish as they rise from the water. But how much do we know about the people of the Islands? Probably, as with the scenery, our knowledge is restricted to appearances. We know that the Polynesians are tall and well-built, bronze-skinned, with black wavy hair, strikingly handsome by European standards; that their bearing and manners are dignified and graceful. Many of the writers don’t tell us much more than that. They describe the people with the meticulous accuracy which suffices for plants or birds, but fails to communicate any understanding of a people’s humanity. When they venture further the picture has often been falsely coloured by the light of some preconceived theory. It is so, for example, with the 18th Century naturalist who accompanied one of the explorers. He described the Tahitians as "men withou* either vices, prejudices, wants or dissen--sions" who "recognise no other God but love." The first missionaries to Tahiti described the same people as "wild, disorderly" savages, "dancing and capering like frantic persons about. our decks." Only occasionally, generally in the obscute book of some retired trader or adventurer, is there a living portrait of a Polynesian, Few Real Successes When real human beings do appear in the better known books with a South Sea Island setting, they are generally European or, at least, persons of partly ‘European ancestry. It requires a smaller leap of the imagination to understand a man who looks back to far-off evenings in the Cafe Royal or a chapel in Tooting, or who claims descent from Henry VII, than to understand one whose memories centre upon kava ceremonies or the intricate problems of succession to native titles. Yet even here the successes have not been numerous. We cannot go to Stevenson, for he did not get nearer to accurate characterisation than in his portrayal of Wiltshire, the trader in The Beach of Falesa. The trader’s appearance is described accurately enough, and his actions are credible. But Stevenson failed to catch the vein of understatement, the significant silences, which would have marked his conversation. Wiltshire talks like one of Mr. Stevenson’s highly articulate friends. It is not, I think, till we reach Mr. Somerset Maugham that the lethargic planters, the nervously excited missionaries, the seedy clerks who have taken to drink, enter the pages of literature. But these, of course, are only a few of the types of Europeans to be met with, and Mr. Maugham wisely refrains from attempting to draw Polynesians in any detail. And so, belatedly, I return to Mr. Gibbings’s book; for it is, pre-eminently, a book filled with people. They pace through its pages with al! the vigour of the men and women who dwell in (continued on next page)

Dver the Reefs

(continued from previous page) ~* the South Seas-chiefs and native pastors, schooner captains, half-caste traders, government officials, their wives and their children. It is not, of course, that Mr. Gibbings neglects the physical background, but he is able to save himself much purely descriptive writing through his admirable wood engravings. And what engravings they are, combining strength with delicacy, and serving as a medium for Mr. Gibbings’s unflagging wit and

enthusiasm! Indeed, ‘one’s regret at approaching the end of a chapter is considerably mitigated by the excitement of wondering what is going to be served up as.a tail-piece-an exquisitely engraved hibiscus, a colourfully marked fish, a cooked pig watching us with a glazed eye from his platter, or: a curiously clad small boy. And then there are

«he more ambitious engravings, such as the magnificent one of Papetoai Bay, in the island of Moorea, with its fantastically eroded peaks rising like New York skyscrapers from a shore fringed with palm trees, or the two that show breaking waves, which have captured the fleeting moment before the wave finally disintegrates on the reef. Fact and Fiction But there is so much in the text that needs mentioning that I shall say no more about the engravings. Perhaps it is well to begin with my one regretthat Mr. Gibbings does not add a note explaining his. method of work. It is easy, at the moment, for anyone who knows the Islands, to see what he has done; but the book is too valuableas an account of the actual state of things-for the future student to be left in doubt as to what is fact and what fiction. Most of the characters are drawn straight from life, but a few are fictitious and many of the speeches and conversations appear to be a distilling of the spirit of much actual talk. It is worth saying this, because Mr. Gibbings is such a scrupulous observer that his fictions are’ quite as authentic, in spirit, as his straight reporting. The best chapters, I think, are those dealing with Samoa. By contrast with the Cook Islands and Tahiti, where Mr. Gibbings also spent much of his time, Samoa has been little changed by the impact of the West. The Samoans have remained proudly true to their ancient culture. They have maintained the traditional crafts, such as house-building and bark-cloth making. They have refused to adopt European dress. Ceremony has been modified to accord with the demands of mission teaching, but it has not lost its importance; and even the Christian Church has been made an instrument of Samoan culture, Traditional dances, too, have not lost their hold. As Mr. Gibbings writes: "Even before they can walk, Samoan children learn to dance. Babies in their mothers’ arms, looking on while others siva, wave and clap their hands in time with the

music; tiny children, swaying on unsteady feet, posture and wriggle to the rhythm of the drums. Many a time, when grown-up men and women were dancing, I have seen children edging in from the outskirts of the fale, intent on every movement of their elders, hardly able to restrain their own desire for action." There are many passages in the section of the book on Samoa which I wish had time to quote. But, indeed, he book can be opened almost anywhere with the certainty of

finding good things. Let me quote two references to the Cook Islands. First, Mr. Gibbings’s conversation on the world’s religions with a wise old Rarotongan, who ended it with the remark: "All religions are the same when _ they are alive. It is only when they begin to die that they begin to differ." Second, his account of the austerely splendid

welcome given to him by the London Missionary Society congregation in Mangaia. It began with an invitation which said: "We shall be too please if you accept our kind invitation without fail. Please reply before your decision." It continued with a church service, when he was offered a pillow to sit on embroidered with the motto: "Good luck to love." And it concluded with a feast for himself and the Pastor, at the end of which he was briefly told, like a small boy who had been subjected to discipline: "Now you may go." Yes, Over the Reefs is full of good things. And there is always Mr. Gibbings himself, arguing, telling stories, enjoying himself enormously. But, of course, Mr. Gibbings is an Irishman, so perhaps success came to him less hardly. For the spirit which underlies Polynesian culture-personal, uncomplicated, untainted by experience of mass living-is the spirit which some have found in the Athens of Aeschylus and which some, like myself (and assuredly Mr. Gibbings) have sought for and found in the west of Ireland.