A Connection?

Leafing through some journal at the Hawaiian Historical Society last week, I discoverd the mantel gifted to Twain by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee was crafted by F.N. Otremba. In addition to the fireplace mantel, Otremba also carved a koa armchair for Twain's new home, "Stormfield," in Connecticut.

But that's not all. Otremba is more famous for carving a statue of King Kamehameha I, the first Hawaiian monarch much regaled to this day for uniting the Hawaiian Islands--through force, I might add. A statue of the King fronts the Ali'iolani Hale, the judiciary building that my Fodor's guidebook says once served as the parliament hall during the kingship era. (Hmm, I wonder if it was where Twain sat, bored as dirt, reporting on legislative proceedings, where he came to admire the enlightened president of the assembly--the King's father--His Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa, and where he came to abhor the traitorious Charles Coffin Harris, an American serving as the King's Minister of Finance.) The statue was dedicated in 1893 as part of King Kalakaua's coronation ceremony.

Conveniently, the statue resides just one block from where I sat in the quiet library of the Hawaiian Historical Society. I ambled over for a look, a few pics.

Upon further research, I have unearthed information that claims this statue--the one before my eyes--is one of three cast in Paris from a model made by American artist Thomas R. Gould, not Otremba. Gould modeled the figure in his studio in Rome in 1879. A year later, it was cast in bronze in Paris and shipped from Germany. During its voyage to the Islands, the ship caught fire and sank, so a second statue was cast from the original mold. This source of mine says King Kalakaua dedicated it in 1883, so we have a discrepancy of dates that will require more research. Standing eight and a half feet tall, the statue depicts Kamehameha in his royal garb, including a helmet and cloak of rare feathers. He holds a spear in his left hand, symbolizing the kingdom’s ability to defend itself from hostile nations. (In the end, it didn't.) His right hand, however, is extended in a welcoming gesture of aloha. (Perhaps too much of this resulted in what turned out to be a defenseless takeover.) The original statue was eventually recovered and regales on the Big Island.

So, what happened to Otremba's statue? Alas, this is how things go. A little research leads to more research. More research unearths more questions--questions that keep me in the library. Before you know it, with all this digging, I'll wind up in China.

"...the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean..."

March 18th fell on a Saturday this year. At 4:30 a.m., a chicken serenaded us outside our bedroom window. A crack of thunder woke our dog Penny who crawled on our bed and snuggled in the curl of my belly. Sunrise brought a few rays of color; however, morning quickly turned to rain. Bass thunder returned, reverberating over the mountains. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but we were only half-way through 40 days and nights of rain. I felt soggy, puny and, so, carried my laptop to the sofa. Under a stack of blankets, I reached for the TV remote control. I watched the movie Winn-Dixie. I transferred Eric’s clothes from the washer to the dryer. Back on the sofa, I watched Space Cowboys. I emptied the dishwasher. I read one of my favorite magazines, thinking it would inspire me to write. It didn’t. I watched The Patriot. All the while, it continued to rain. It was not your typical winter day in Hawaii.

If Mark Twain had arrived in Hawaii on March 18 of this year and not March 18 of 1866, he would not have written about the cute, little bungalows of Honolulu surrounded by blossoms. He would not have written about Kanakas or cats or mosquitoes or Diamond Head or the Pali. He would not have written about a sunny Saturday at the market. Indeed, he would have written about the rain.

The kui-‘ilima rain of Honolulu, the ililani unexpected rain, the kili fine light rain, the kili hau chilly rain, the lelehune fine windblown rain, the lu-lau-ko scattering cane leaves rain of Kaua’i, the pakaku rain with large drops, the ua hikik’i slanting rain, the ua lani pili rain downpour, and, of course, the the pipinoke continuous rain. He would have learned the over 100 words for different kinds of rain in the Hawaiian language. Rains of a certain place, angle, volume, intensity.

It’s a good thing for the Hawaiian Promotion Committee that he did not. Then, he probably never would have written that just-right combination of 10 words that delighted one Mr. Wood of said committee--recipient of a letter containing those precious 10 words--so much that he shared them. With whom, I don’t know, but obviously he passed them on, because they have appeared over and over in travel brochures, travel essays, and travel spiels over the 140 years since Twain’s visit. I still run across those 10 words today.

Twain wrote them in a letter of thanks after the Committee sent him a mantel made of the native hardwood Koa for his 73rd birthday in 1908. (One cannot help but note the irony of the Hawaii Promotion Committee's last name.)

Dear Mr. Wood,
The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, and its friendly “Aloha” was the first uttered greeting my 73rd birthday received. It is rich in color, rich in quality, and rich in decoration, therefore it exactly harmonises [sic] with the taste for such things which was born in me and which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content. It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye this lovely reminder of [get ready: here come the 10 words] the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, and I beg you to thank the Committee for providing me that pleasure.

Somewhere along the way, the Hawaiian Promotion Committee morphed into the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and its island-specific cohorts. At the courtesy of the Oahu Visitors Bureau, I depart Monday for Oahu and some Twain sleuthing. I'll tramp around Diamond Head, Waikiki, Honolulu. I'll stick my nose in some dusty, old papers at the Hawaiian Historical Society. I'll try to channel the young Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. I may even try to land an agent.

Thankfully, it’s not raining. Yet.


(Thanks to Kimo Perry for his help with the rainy list.)

One Up on Twain

There’s one thing I did that Mr. Twain never got around to doing. I actually moved to Hawaii. Sure, it took 11 years of dreaming about it, thinking about it and talking about it, but eventually my husband Eric and I did move.

In a letter dated October 26, 1881, Twain wrote his friend Charles Warren Stoddard in Hawaii,

"If the house would only burn down, we would pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of Haleakala and get a good rest; for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for those privileges, and never house-keep any more…. What I have always longed for was the privilege of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich Islands overlooking the sea."

The house never burned. Twain never did move to Hawaii.

And it’s still true the “isles of the blest” are a place for rest and healing. They are still a place for eating poi and even for eating dirt, if you choose, and which explains why Twain’s idea of never keeping house anymore in Hawaii was way off. It’s the very things Twain and I love about Hawaii—the ever-present trade winds, the smell of the salt air, the open-air living—that makes it one heckuva place to keep a clean house. Trade winds carry dirt and salt—they also keep the mosquitoes on the fly—through our open windows and into our living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, even closets creating a sticky substance that sticks to everything and even rusts the paper clips and staples filed in my desk drawers. After a time, the pillows on the couch feel sticky—dog hairs swirling in the air attach like glue and a sprinkling of our iron-rich dirt stains a wash of red. Counters require daily cleaning and windows that stand in the face of the northeast trade winds, alas, do not defy a salty buildup. The need to clean never goes on vacation in Hawaii.

One other thing, Mr Twain, there are now cell-phone-toting and chatting visitors on the summit of your once-secluded Haleakala. I’m sure you’d agree—a travesty.