Father Damien as a dirty old peasant who had contracted leprosy through his immoral habits, the project to erect a monument to his memory would be abandoned. ‘I’ll not believe it,’ p. xsaid my husband, ‘unless I see it with my own eyes; for it is too damnable for belief!’

p. x

But see it he did, in spite of his incredulity, for in Sydney, a month or two later, the very journal containing the letter condemnatory of Father Damien was among the first we chanced to open. I shall never forget my husband’s ferocity of indignation, his leaping stride as he paced the room holding the offending paper at arm’s-length before his eyes that burned and sparkled with a peculiar flashing light. His cousin Mr. Balfour, in his Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, says: ‘his eyes . . . when he was moved to anger or any fierce emotion seemed literally to blaze and glow with a burning light.’ In another moment he disappeared through the doorway, and I could hear him, in his own room, pulling his chair to the table, and the sound of his inkstand being dragged towards him.

That afternoon he called us together—my son, my daughter, and myself—saying that he had something serious to lay before us. He went over the circumstances succinctly, and then we three had the incomparable experience of hearing its author read aloud the defence of Father Damien while it was still red-hot from his indignant soul.

As we sat, dazed and overcome by emotion, he pointed out to us that the subject-matter was libellous in the highest degree, and the publication of the p. xiarticle might cause the loss of his entire substance. Without our concurrence he would not take such a risk. There was no dissenting voice; how could there be? The paper was published with almost no change or revision, though afterwards my husband said he considered this a mistake. He thought he should have waited for his anger to cool, when he might have been more impersonal and less egotistic.

p. xi

The next day he consulted an eminent lawyer, more from curiosity than from any other reason. Mr. Moses—I think that was his name—was at first inclined to be jocular. I remember his smiling question: ‘Have you called him a hell-hound or an atheist? Otherwise there is no libel.’ But when he looked over the manuscript his countenance changed. ‘This is a serious affair,’ he said; ‘however, no one will publish it for you.’ In that Mr. Moses was right; no one dared publish the pamphlet. But that difficulty was soon overcome. My husband hired a printer by the 

 Prev. P 4/183 next