Hawaiian Connection

Those curious about the obscure side-notes of history may find it interesting that Queen Victoria was a great friend to the royal family of Hawaii in the nineteenth century, in particular the dowager Queen Emma. I have been living in Honolulu this past year, and the wealth of artifacts and information connecting the two royal families here is dazzling. Queen Emma and Kamehameha IV of Hawaii so idolized the British royal family that they asked Victoria to be godmother to their only son and named him after Prince Albert. Victoria graciously accepted and sent him a silver christening cup, only to find out that the toddler prince had died. only months later, Victoria received a letter from Emma that Kamehameha IV, in his grief, had followed their son to the grave. Victoria had herself become a distraught widow only a couple of years prior, and hastened to send letters offering solace to Emma, whose grief she understood only too well. The two women kept up a correspondence until Emma's death in the 1880s, and Emma had the pleasure of meeting her beloved friend and mentor on a state visit in 1865. Victoria invited her to stay with the royal family at Windsor Castle, and helped her raise $30,000 for the building of a new cathedral in Hawaii. Victoria was somberly gratified to see that Emma, like herself, wore the perpetual widows weeds. Both women had married in love matches, both had been widowed tragically early (Emma when she was only in her twenties), and both remained in deepest mourning until their deaths.

If you go to Queen Emma's summer palace (a lovely, modest building with a broad, breezy veranda nestled peacefully at the foot of picturesque, rainy mountains) you can see such treasures as a locket containing Queen Victoria's hair, jewelry and priceless European furniture given to Emma by Victoria and Albert, a painted portrait of the Queen hanging in Emma's private bedchamber, and two beautiful etchings of Victoria and Albert proudly displayed among the Hawaiian royal portraits. The lock of hair especially was an unexpected revelation that was as thrilling to stumble upon as anything I saw in the great museums of England and France.

Furthermore, if you go to the Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu, you can find portraits of Hawaiian monarchs painted by British master and and Royal Academy member John Hayter (brother to a court painter of Queen Victoria), and a fantastic original Winterhalter of Victoria and Albert's dear friend King Louis Philippe of the French, which Louis sent to the royal Hawaiians. There are also photographs and jewels worn by Queen Kapiolani and Lili'uokalani when they attended Victoria's diamond Jubilee. Also, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu contains a teapot presented by Lord Byron to the gorgeous Hawaiian Queen Victoria Kamamalu who created a sensation at the British court in 1824 on a state visit.

The British Monarchy, along with most European heads of state, was shocked and appalled in 1893 when the USA illegally annexed the Hawaiian Islands, declaring the benevolent and popular constitutional monarchy of Hawaii a tyrannical despotism, and imprisoning Queen Lili'uokalini. I was even told by a European coworker recently that in some countries, Hawaii is still officially recognized as a sovereign kingdom. I don't know if that's true or not, but the thought alone is interesting.

Interestingly, the Hawaii state flag is the only flag in the USA to contain the flag of another nation (the British flag) in honor of Hawaii's friendship with the British. And on a superficially related note, Queen Emma was the first person of color to attend a White House state dinner, and King Kalakaua was the first foreign head of state (and the first reigning monarch) to attend a White House state dinner.