This next year, the Vision Forum family catalog will feature several new items in our Beautiful Girlhood Collection, including two new dolls and accompanying historical dresses. It is a real joy to announce we will also be featuring a section on one of the most interesting and courageous heroines of the last two hundred years — the Christian Princess Ka’iulani of Hawaii. For years I have been sharing her story with audiences around the nation and in the South Pacific. Today, I would like to share a few thoughts on the beautiful, but all-too-short life of a princess who modeled femininity, grace, intelligence, skill, and devotion to Christ.
She was known as Pua o Hawaii (“Hawaii’s Flower”). A devout believer, Christian poet, and the last great hope of the Hawaiian monarchy, Princess Victoria Ka’iulani Cleghorn came from amazing stock. Born October 16, 1875, her full name was Victoria Ka’iulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawêkiui Lunalilo. The only daughter to Princess Likelike (King Kalakaua’s sister) and Scottish merchant Archibald Cleghorn (later Governor of Oahu), Ka’iulani was fifty percent Scot and fifty percent Hawaiian royal blood. From her earliest days, Ka’iulani was raised with a deep sense of responsibility to the heritage of both “tribes and tongues and nations.”
More importantly, she was self-consciously trained as a Christian princess. Of her life purpose and sense of Christian duty, Theo Davies (family friend, guardian, and protector of Ka’iulani during her visit to America) wrote:
“Kaiulani is not an idle nor a butterfly girl, and she will want to take life earnestly.... Another thing, and most important, is that Ka’iulani is not a mere worldling; she feels that her life is to be one of service to the King of Kings, and that she is to help her own people live near Him. It is a solemn question to ask how you can help Ka’iulani in this work.... I know it is Ka’iulani’s great desire to help the Hawaiian girls into lives of Christianity and purity.”
A Father and Daughter Relationship to Be Remembered
For most of her childhood and young adulthood, Princess Ka’iulani was constantly at the side of her father Archibald Cleghorn. Her mother died when she was but a girl, so her devoted father took the princess with him around the world for advanced training in England and Scotland. Their relationship as father and daughter was legendary in their own day, and now serves modern generations as an example of what can be accomplished for Christ when fathers disciple their daughters, and when daughters wholeheartedly embrace the righteous visions of their fathers.
A woman of striking beauty, but known for her personal restraint and grace, the princess spoke numerous languages and would redefine for the American people what it meant to be a Christian of Pacific island descent. During her trip to the United States, she would stun the American people (who were anticipating an uneducated savage) with her nobility, manners, talent, and courage when she traveled to plead the cause of her people against the unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by heavy-handed American businessmen and imperialists.
A Skilled, Gracious Christian Princess
Ka’iulani skills were diverse and accomplished. An equestrian, gardener, poet, painter, and noteworthy seamstress, the princess was one of the most artistically and practically trained women of her generation. By young adulthood, the princess had earned a reputation as an expert surfer (in the true tradition of the Hawaiian monarchy). She was able to develop and accomplish great proficiency in her surfing skills, and was known for fearlessly going great distances out beyond the reefs.
The gratitude of the princess for her dual Scottish and Kanaka Maoli ancestry was evidenced in the comfort and familiarity she demonstrated with both cultures. A true Victorian and Hawaiian Royal, Ka’iulani was at ease eating poi and raw fish or holding elegant afternoon teas. She loved feminine clothing and had a knack for making practically anything she sewed look majestic.
Ka’iulani and Robert Louis Stevenson
By the age of thirteen, Princess Ka’iulani had found a dear friend in the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who delighted her with wonderful stories and poetry. Ka’iulani was Stevenson’s “little royal maid,” and dearly beloved in his eyes. Once Ka’iulani had written:
Mr. Stevenson: Dear Sir: Your kind note has come. I thank you for it. Papa and I would like to have you come to our home on Tuesday next for dinner and Papa promises good Scotch “kaukau” for all you folks. My pony Fairie has a cold today so I cannot go riding. When you come please bring your flute. I am your most affectionate and obedient friend. Ka’iulani C.
Like Mark Twain, Stevenson’s journey to the beautiful Hawaiian island and his interaction with the Hawaiian royalty would serve as the basis for great literary inspiration in the form of essays and poetry. The author of
A Child’s Garden of Verses;
Treasure Island;
Kidnapped, and
The Black Arrow, Stevenson took time to pen the following verses in Princess Ka’iulani’s autograph album just before her departure to England:
“Forth from her land to mine she goes,
The Island maid, the Island rose;
Light of heart and bright of face:
The daughter of a double race.
Her islands here, in Southern sun,
Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,
And I, in her dear banyan shade,
Look vainly for my little maid.
But our Scots islands far away
Shall glitter with unwonted day,
And cast for once their tempests by
To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.”
Ka’iulani Appeals to America in the Name of Christ
Contrary to the revisionist historians like James Michener and his uncharitable, offensive novel Hawaii, the early Christian missions movement to Hawaii represented one of the most God-blessed “first-wave” efforts at fulfilling the great commission in history. Regretfully, however, some noble men and women who brought Christianity to the Hawaiian islands did not succeed at winning the hearts of the third- and fourth-generation children of missionary descent to be born on Hawaii.
The consequences of this multi-generational failure were devastating. Some of the grandsons and great grandsons of the men and women who brought Christ and Christian culture to the Hawaiian islands, exchanged their ancestors’ legacy of love for the Hawaiian people for a gunboat diplomacy aimed at securing political power for themselves and the overthrow of the Christian monarchy. In one day, they destroyed the government. Their successful military and political actions were not merely unbiblical and unlawful, but dishonoring to the glorious legacy of Christian missions bequeathed to them by their ancestors.
At the time of the coup d’etat, Ka’iulani was traveling outside her nation. Grief-stricken, the princess would travel to the United States in the hopes of appealing to the President and other leaders to stop the ungodly seizure and impending annexation of her nation by America. Speaking to reporters in New York, the princess declared:
“Seventy years ago Christian America sent over Christian men and women to give religion and civilization to Hawaii. Today three of the sons of those missionaries are at your capitol asking you to undo their father’s work.... Today, I a poor, weak girl, with not one of my people near me and all these statesmen against me, have the strength to stand up for the rights of my people. Even now I can hear their wail in my heart, and it gives me strength and I am strong ... strong in the faith of God, strong in the knowledge that I am right, strong in the strength of seventy million people who in this free land will hear my cry....”
Although the princess was not successful in her appeals to have the monarchy restored, she did earn the love and appreciation of many. Of Ka’iulani, one newspaper wrote:
“She is beautiful.... There is no portrait that does justice to her expressive, small, proud face. She is exquisitely slender and graceful, holds herself like a princess, like a Hawaiian — and I know of no smile more descriptive of grace and dignity than this last.... Her accent says London; her figure says New York; her heart says Hawai’i.... But she is more than a beautiful pretender to an abdicated throne ... she has been made a woman of the world by the life she has led.”
The Death and Legacy of Ka’iulani
Despite her beauty, wisdom, and courage, the princess never saw the restoration of her beloved Hawaii. In God’s providence, the Lord saw fit to usher the brokenhearted princess into eternity in the year 1899, shortly after the annexation of her country. She was only twenty-three years old. Upon Ka’iulani’s death, her peacocks began a strange screeching that disrupted people for many miles.
The newspaper The Advertiser wrote: “And there passed away she who was the most beloved of the Hawaiian race.”
A Western paper observed:
“Everyone admired her attitude. They could not do otherwise. Her dignity, her pathetic resignation, her silent sorrow appealed to all. The natives loved her for her quiet, steadfast sympathy with their woe, her uncomplaining endurance of her own ... her queenly display of all necessary courtesy while holding herself aloof from undue intimacy. It was impossible not to love her.”
Today the Christian princess is memorialized in numerous beautiful ballads which reflect the nineteenth century Hawaiian form in which English and “Olelo Hawaii” are mixed together. Especially beautiful is the song
Nani Wale o Ka’iulani which proclaims:
“Our love for you forever will remain... Nani wale o Ka’iulani, There’s beauty in the sound of your name. Kou aloha mau loa e Ka’iulani... Our love for you forever will remain... Precious flower in the misty rain...”
