Part 5 (2/2)
Tahiti, Sah Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's ”Omoo”), which are the chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or froht-haired Malays of the peninsula, h the stories of Joseph Conrad These island people, the Polynesians, were found speaking all the sah in different dialects; they had, for the ion, manners and customs were very si to a coin in the island of Samoa And yet from Sa ocean, still ierous stor currents How then had they reached Tahiti?
The anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of the Caucasian or Indo-European Though their skin is dark, it is for the most part less dark than that of the natives of India Set a Maori soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the difference between the clear yellow skin of the forht and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter In other characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian They are a tall, well built,favorably with the Malay
Their hair is black--or in so with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the Papuan Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases very beautiful Only the nose appears abnor in infancy
We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which oes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked shi+ps, capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a voyage of so such shi+ps) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island In order to accoy and astronoreat Later on, under the influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, careless, effe Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchh and scientific German The combined influences of missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889
To these people caedy of their history It is true that he eary of Europe and had set out with the aim he had cherished since the Martinique days--to be the first painter of the tropics But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, because he believed that here was a country where one could live for aluin had no private means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their tias, could afford not to sell their pictures because they had other resources But Gauguin was forced to find so pictures that, as he kneell, it would take the public some time to accept In a letter to de Monfreid he stated his syste, I knew that this would be a life froically, I habituated th in work and worry for the th into the day--like the wrestler who does not e When I lie down in the evening I say to ained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead
In , but each day for itself--at the end of a certain time, this covers a considerable extent of surface If les and labors! Every day a link That is the great point”
Such was the frauin went to Tahiti What he found there was not the ”Pays de Cocaigne” he probably expected The Gods do not give their gifts in this fashi+on Gauguin asked iven But he asked for material comfort and was offered instead spiritual salvation In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought hies, its own terrible parable to all hth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti He was at the ti the last winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to take to his bed
He was noithin a few days of his forty-third birthday Although possessed of a nor constitution, fortified by the open-air existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as boxing, fencing and swi, of which he was very fond, his health, when he reached Tahiti, becaely due to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for livelihood
His prospects were not brilliant The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took him for a spy sent out froetting into contact with the degraded and exploited native population The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, disgusted him The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to all whites
A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his interest It was the death of the last male representative of the old royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen Poled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in her opposition to the French occupation Pomare V had abdicated eleven years previously; noas dead and, with his death, the last dying gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct
Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Ad to the rites of Christianity; but in the attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the eanism still smoldered in the island and were ready to revive at any favorable opportunity
He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process which went far to exhaust his set in touch with the inhabitants This made still further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought aith him from France The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to approach hiht of provisions, liquor, et into closer touch with theuin persisted Though we es of ”Noa Noa” as representing rather the dream than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the natives to accept him as one of their own kind But, unfortunately, the natives had seen thousands of Europeans before hiers of the Pierre Loti type or co upon thee in the only way possible to a conquered race They spent hisand his vanity, and smiled behind his back
Before a year was out his capital had vanished There were no buyers for his pictures on the island and Paris was far away Gauguin found that he had suddenly aged--a co suddenly into a tropic clie Eden, which the white e
He atteovernor to furnish funds for his passage back to France In vain He hoped that buyers for his pictures would come forward in Paris Useless Fortunately his fa to neutral countries Thanks to his wife's efforts he was invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark
[Illustration: The Old Spirit]
On the eighth of Deceht pictures to this exhibition, a which was the superb canvas _L'Esprit Veille_
The picture created an ien when exhibited the next year and brought him in some money But in Paris his fame steadily declined and he was every day less talked about
Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to h, who had supported him and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his unfortunate brother into the grave Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, Bernard, Serusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting that they had taught Gauguin soh were better artists The halo of victory which had crowned his departure fro
He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew,he had done before Moreover, he believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as elsewhere What he had seen in Tahiti had given hiination, always synthetic and non-realistic, could work His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a longer stay He believed that in returning to Paris he could ure If he did not, perhaps it would be better to give up painting altogether He was growing old