The Defence Of Damien

( Originally Published 1922 )

A PERSON all unknown to fame, one Rev. Frederic Rowland Marvin, makes a sinister bid for notice by impeaching the integrity of Robert Louis Stevenson's motives in writing the celebrated Let-ter on Father Damien.

Needless to recall, the Letter was addressed to the Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, who had cast some very gross and unmerited aspersions upon the martyr priest.

Damien, as all the world knows, was a Belgian missionary priest who had devoted him-self to the service of the lepers at Molokai, and who, contracting the disease, at the height of his vigorous ministry, died among them. The question of his saintship cannot be taken up by the Church until a hundred years after his death. Meantime many people of different religions, and some of none at all, regard Damien as the only authentic saint of modern times. Robert Louis Stevenson was unquestionably of this opinion.

The Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, in a letter to a brother parson (the Rev. H. B. Gage) made the hideous charge that Damien had be-come infected with leprosy through sexual intercourse with the women lepers of Molokai; characterized him as "a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted", and sneered at the chorus of praise which his heroic death had evoked. All of which was extensively circulated by religious papers of the Hyde denomination.

This precious testimony came under the eye of Robert Louis Stevenson, who had himself visited the leper colony when Damien was "in his resting grave", and had collected the whole truth regarding him from the witnesses of his life and death. By a useful coincidence, the author had likewise seen the reverend slanderer Hyde and held converse with him at his "fine house in Beretania street" (Honolulu).

The posthumous attack upon Damien by a rival but recreant missioner, breathing a sectarian malignity rare in our time, touched that fiery intrepid soul to an utterance which ranks with the highest proofs of his genius and the best fruits of the liberal spirit. His Letter on Father Damien is, in truth, the quintessence of Stevenson, the choice extract of his passion and power, his deep-hearted hatred of injustice, his princelike contempt of meanness, his loathing scorn of religious bigotry, his tenderness, delicacy, and chivalry,—all conveyed in a flawless triumph of literary art. Not vainly did he boast:

"If I have at all learned the trade of using words to convey truth and to arouse emotion, you have at last furnished me with a subject." And again: "I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility; with what measure you mete, with that it shall be measured to you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home."

I can never read the Letter to Hyde without seeing a flame run between the lines; I never lay it down that I do not at once bless and damn the Rev. Dr. Hyde for having provoked it: indeed there is a sort of merit in having challenged such a flagellation. But not being myself parson-led, I wish the gentleman no worse damnation than is assured to him in Tusitala's honest tribute.

Well, this is the piece of work which Dr. Marvin—he is, it appears, a parson like the eternally disgraced Hyde—seeks to disparage by attainting the integrity of the knightliest figure of modern letters. Let us see how this bold parson achieves the asinine exploit of kicking the dead lion and betraying his folly to the world.

After stating the extraordinary assumption that Stevenson's Letter on Father Damien "was never regarded as anything more than a striking exhibition of literary pyrotechny", Dr. Marvin proceeds to judgment as follows :

"Stevenson's letter was, I am fully persuaded, more the work of the rhetorician than of the man. He was carried away by the opportunity of making a rhetorical flourish and impression, and so went further than his own judgment approved. Stevenson was a man of many noble qualities, and conscience was not wanting as an element of power in his life, but his letter to Dr. Hyde was not honest, nor had it for any length of time the approval of his own inner sense of right and justice. He did not really believe what he wrote, neither did he intend to write what he did. The temptation from a literary point of view was great, and the writer got the better of the man."

Here the parson speaks in no uncertain tone—a mere literary man would not so frame his indictment. But what a gorgeous piece of impudence !

I would not take the Rev. Dr. Marvin too seriously, but lest any person with the wit of three asses should be deceived by his shallow effrontery, one feels bound to notice it. And since the Rev. Doctor has of his own free will made himself yoke-fellow with the defamatory Hyde, it is but just that he be clothed with the full dignity of his election.

To discuss the foolish, nay vicious question which he has raised concerning Stevenson's honesty of motive in writing the Letter to Dr. Hyde, would shame any man—not a parson—of common sense. Nor is it needful in any case, Dr. Marvin sufficiently putting himself out of terms in these words: "The temptation from a literary point of view was great, and the writer got the better of the man."

Now, lovers of Stevenson have no need to be reminded that such was his passionate care to avoid the slightest doubt of his sincerity in writing as he did upon Damien and to repel the stock literary imputation here uttered by a worthy champion of Hyde, that the Letter was printed originally for private distribution only. Although the public demand for it soon became irresistible, Stevenson consistently re-fused to touch a penny from the publication. In 1890 he put this bluntly to a London publisher who wished to bring out an edition :

"The Letter to Dr. Hyde is yours or any man's. I will never touch a penny of remuneration. I do not stick at murder: I draw the line at cannibalism. I could not eat a penny roll that piece of bludgeoning had gained for me." . . .

"If the world at all remember you" (said the Letter to Hyde) "on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in virtue of one work : your letter to the Rev. H. B. Gage."

Was ever such a sight vouchsafed to gods or men as this of the Rev. Dr. Marvin struggling belatedly to win for himself a small title in that infamous remembrance—to snatch a rag from the garment of shame which the great artist fitted upon Dr. Hyde in his character of Devil's Advocate against Damien? . . .

The defence of Damien remains one of the cherished documents of the free spirit. I thank Dr. Marvin for having given me an occasion of re-reading it, and I cheerfully accord him the grace of having moved me to perform this religious duty twice, instead of (my usual practice) once, in the year. I can but wonder what manner of man is he that it should have done him so little good; yet I know I shall love it the more that its truth is thus again proven by the futile attacks of a spiritual fellow to Hyde.

Yes, I reread—as, please God, often I shall reread-that true story of Damien's martyrdom, bare and tragic as Molokai itself, traced by the hand of one who had no sympathy of religious faith with him but only the common kinship of humanity—"that noble brother of mine and of all frail clay". I read again, with quickened pulse, of the lowly peasant priest, who, in obedience to the Master's call, "shut to with his own hand the doors of his sepulchre!" I saw once more that woeful picture of the lepers' island, surrounded by a great waste of sea, which to those condemned wretches spells the black despair of infinity: —in its midst the hill with the dead crater, the hopeless front of precipice, the desolation there prepared by nature for death too hideous for men to look upon. Again I made that melancholy voyage to Molokai and wept with Tusitala as he sat in the boat with the two sisters, "bidding farewell, in humble imitation of Damien, to the lights and joys of human life". I shuddered to mark the fearful deformations of humanity that awaited us on the shore—the population of a nightmare—every other face a blot on the landscape. I saw the place was an unspeakable hell even with the hospital and other improvements, lacking when Damien came there and "slept that first night under a tree amidst his rotting brethren". I visited the Bishop-Home, whose every cup and towel had been washed by the hand of "Dirty Damien". I saw everywhere the tokens of his passage, who "by one striking act of martyrdom had directed all men's eyes on that distressful country—who at a blow and the price of his life had made the place illustrious and public". I thought upon that great and simple renunciation, daunting the mind with its sheer sacrifice which, better far than all the loud-tongued creeds, brought the living Christ within sight and touch and understanding. And these wonderful lines of Browning came into my mind with a sudden vividly realized meaning and pathos:

Remember what a martyr said
On the rude tablet overhead:
"I was born sickly, poor and mean,
A slave—no misery could screen
The holders of the pearl of price
From Caesar's envy; therefore twice
I fought with beasts, three times
I saw My children suffer by his law;
At last my own release was earned;
I was some time in being burned,
But at the close a Hand came through
The fire above my head, and drew
My soul to Christ whom now I see.
Sergius, a brother, writes for me
This testimony on the wall
For me, I have forgot it all."