Books and films
By * Fr FE Burns PE, 'The strange case of Father Damien and Robert Louis Stevenson', AD2000, Vol 15 No 8 (September 2002), p10
Father Damien’s life and work have become
more well known lately through books and films. And both men have been honoured
and commemorated by statues and plaques. But the greatest monument to them both
– and the one that tells us much about each – is the beautiful, powerful and
somewhat reckless defence of Damian penned in Sydney by Robert Louis Stevenson.*
Hawaiian Board of Health Leper Settlement
By * RLS letter 2176 quoted in Roger G Swearingen, 'Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales', 2013
‘I
can only say the sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion strung me
too high to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights’, Stevenson wrote
to his friend Sidney Colvin after his return to Honolulu in early June 1889. ‘I
have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be
repeated: yet I have never admired my poor race so much, nor (strange as it may
seem) loved life more than in the settlement.’ *
Sparking a reaction
By * Roger G Swearingen, 'Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales', 2013
Stevenson’s Father Damien was sparked in reaction to a Congregational minister
in Honolulu Rev Dr Hyde’s private comments casting grave aspersions on the
moral character of Fr Damien to Rev HB Gage in California; comments that Gage
then made public, apparently first in The
Congregationalist, Boston – a widely circulated Protestant weekly – in
August or September 1889. The comments were printed in Australia in The Presbyterian, Sydney, on 26 October
1889 where Stevenson read them.*
Attracted a large audience
By * Roger G Swearingen, 'Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia: Treasures in the State Library of New South Wales', 2013
Ten days after his arrival in Sydney
‘Cardinal Moran [the Archbishop of Sydney] opened a new series of lectures at
the Roman Catholic Bible Hall, William-street … with a subject which attracted
a large audience – ‘The life and labours of Father Damien, the Apostle of the
Lepers’ (Sydney
Morning Herald, 25 February 1890).
According to the newspaper report,
Cardinal Moran devoted most of his talk to noting that there had been no
response from the editor of The
Presbyterian ‘to sustain and prove his grave charges, or else withdraw
them’.*
It was only a small job
By * James Grant quoted in George MacKaness, 'Robert Louis Stevenson: His Associations with Australia', 1935
‘At
that time I was employed at the old Ben Franklin Printing Office, the
proprietor of which was a member of the Cercle Francais, a coterie of literary
and musical men whose meeting place was in Wynyard Square … I do not think his
[Stevenson’s] visit made much stir, but the ‘Cercle’ entertained him, and to my
employer was entrusted the job of printing the Apologia [Father Damien]. It was
only a small job – I think 100 copies …’ *
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