CAPTAIN FURNEAUX EVIDENTLY LOST NO TIME IN REPORTING TO HIS NAVAL superiors in the capital. Accompanied by his exotic companion, he travelled post-haste from Portsmouth to London and, if the newspapers are to be credited, arrived there on the night of 14 July, went into temporary lodgings, and the next morning called on Lord Sandwich at his house in the Admiralty.1 The sequel is not wholly clear, but it seems that the First Lord then summoned Mr. Banks who with Dr. Solander hurried to greet Furneaux and the unexpected visitor from the South Seas. ‘His name is Omai’, wrote Solander in a description of the meeting; and as Omai — or one of its variants — he would henceforth be known. Now in his early twenties, he was still a boy when they were in Tahiti, observed the doctor, and not so ‘remarkable’ as to make them remember him. On this occasion he instantly recognized Banks but with Solander he had more difficulty. While he was talking to Furneaux, Solander related, the young native, who had been in the next room, ran in saying he heard the voice of Tolano (Solander’s Tahitian name). After eyeing the doctor closely as he walked round him, Omai at last thought himself mistaken. ‘He then’, the account continues, ‘desired Capt Furneaux to make me speake, which I had no sooner done than he cried out, he was sure I was Tolano, but much encreased in bulk.’ Soon they were ‘conversing pretty freely’ with one another in the ‘South Sea Language’ which, happily for Omai, Solander, Banks, and his servant had not forgotten.2
Another witness of the reunion was Dr. Burney who also called at the Admiralty, probably to inquire after his son James (known to his family as Jem). What news their father picked up was quickly passed on by Fanny to her sister Susan. Captain Cook, she reported, was to stay at sea another year, but Captain Furneaux’s ship had been so mauled in a storm and his crew so depleted by sickness and the loss of hands that he had been obliged to return to England without pursuing the original design. ‘I am heartily glad that they are returned’, Fanny went on, ‘& I hope that a Country so savage as New Zealand will never more be visited by my Brother.’ She next turned to the man whom Captain Furneaux had brought with him and whom her father had enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing. ‘I found myself very curious to have the same sight’, she remarked, continuing with a description of the ‘Stranger’:
He was dressed according to the fashion of his Country, & is a very good looking man — my Father says he has quite an interesting Countenance. He appeared to have uncommon spirits, & laughed very heartily many Times. he speaks few English words — & Capt. Furneaux a few Otaheite words. — they had got Mr Banks there, on purpose to speak with him — but Mr Banks has almost forgot what he knew of that language. But you must know we are very proud to hear that our Jem speaks more Otaheite than any of the Ship’s Crew. — this Capt. F. told my Father, who was Introduced to this Stranger, as Jem’s Father — he laughed, & shook hands very cordially, & repeated with great pleasure the name thus Bunny! O! Bunny! immediately knowing who was meant. & the Capt. Says that he is very fond of Bunny, who spent great part of his Time in Studying the Language with him.3
Following discussions with the First Lord and other officials, Banks carried off this heaven-sent replacement for the lamented Tupia, lodged him in his town house, and launched him on a meteoric social career. He escorted Omai to fashionable drawing-rooms, introduced him to such friends as Constantine Phipps, and on Sunday 17 July, only three days after the Adventure reached Portsmouth, presented him to the King and Queen at Kew. On the 21st he sent off a hurried note to his sister who was staying with their mother at Sunninghill in Berkshire. He had been so continually occupied these many days past that he had really had no time to answer her kind letters, he apologized. She would know by the papers that the Adventure had arrived, bringing an Indian from the South Sea Islands. The Admiralty had put the man under his care; ‘&’, he explained, ‘as I receivd so many marks of Freindship from His Countrymen I have taken the Charge’. That day they were to carry him to Baron Dimsdale for inoculation, after which he himself would be free and would wait upon Sarah Sophia and their mother at Sunninghill. He sent dutiful respects to Mrs. Banks and, by way of postscript, a laconic item of news: ‘ten of the Adventures people have been rosted & Eaten by our freinds in new Zeland’.4
In the next two years Omai was to fall under the scrutiny of varied and sometimes contradictory witnesses who communicated their impressions to an eager public or passed them on to less fortunate friends or consigned them to posterity in notebooks and journals. One such was Miss Banks who on the day her brother announced the Indian’s arrival entered the earliest of a series of ‘Memorandums’ on the ‘South Sea Islander’ as she termed him at this time. He was, she asserted, ‘a Priest in His own Country’ and ‘a native of Ulhietea’ (one of many versions of the modern Raiatea). The information came not from her brother but more deviously from Dr. Mills, Dean of Exeter, who had it in turn from a letter written by Mr. Bates, Lord Sandwich’s secretary, to a Mr. Desalis. From the same source emanated somewhat improbable details of the islander’s conduct when he waited on the King the previous Sunday: ‘he was much struck at first, and soon made a Speech to His Majesty to the following Effect. “Sir, You are King of England, Otaheite, Ulhietea, & Bola Bola: I am your Subject, & am come here for Gunpowder to destroy the Inhabitants of Bola Bola, who are our Enemies.”’5
Hitherto the London newspapers had shown no particular interest in the premature appearance of Cook’s escort. Several days after the event they duly noted the arrival of the Adventure (known to some bemused correspondents as the Endeavour).6 They briefly reported the movements of Captain Furneaux (more often called Fonnereau).7 And they casually mentioned that he had brought from the South Seas ‘a native of those parts’ or, alternatively, ‘one of the Savages’.8 Nothing more was heard of the Savage for nearly a week, but there was some news of the Adventure’s voyage. A glowing account from the ship’s surgeon, Mr. Andrews, praised the exceeding fertility of the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand and recommended it as suitable for British settlement. A brief note stated that the ship’s journals had been sent to the Admiralty, and from that office came a formal statement: Captain Furneaux had reached Spithead on the 14th instant, having circumnavigated the Globe and met with much ice but no land; he had parted company with the Resolution off the coast of New Zealand and did not expect her back that year.9 There for the time being comment on the expedition ended as writers and correspondents turned to more diverting topics: the seventh marriage of Mr. Dickson, the Spitalfields weaver; the rebellious conduct of certain persons in the colony of Massachusetts; the return of Mr. Bruce from Abyssinia where the inhabitants ate meat taken from live animals and cut slices out of their captives till, ‘piece-meal’, they died.10
The emergence of a rival to Mr. Bruce was marked by a brief paragraph in the Daily Advertiser on 22 July. The native of Otaheite, it reported, had been presented to the King and was now with Mr. Banks, ‘the gentleman who first projected the voyages to the South Seas for discoveries’. The native, ‘a tall, genteel, well-made man’, had known Mr. Banks in his own island and, on seeing him, ‘immediately accosted him with the greatest seeming pleasure.’11 Before appearing at Court, asserted the London Chronicle in a fuller account of the ceremony, the man had received instructions for his behaviour, but so great was his embarrassment as the King approached that he remembered only to kneel and when his sponsors urged him to speak could merely stretch out his hand and repeat the familiar, ‘How do ye do?’ To which salutation His Majesty responded courteously by very freely shaking his hand. The nobles in attendance at the levee, the writer noted, displayed a good deal of mirth at the ‘innocent native freedom of this Indian visitor’ who, it was further stated, ‘received invitations from many people of the first rank.’12 In a contemporary print of the scene Omai, clad in a long white gown and holding a curious triangular hat or head-piece, is seen kneeling before the royal couple. Behind him stand Banks and Solander, while the King steps forward to clasp the suppliant’s hand.
Having belatedly discovered the celebrity in their midst, the newspapers now vied with one another to follow his every movement and, when their own resources failed them, copied their rivals, paraphrased them, or simply drew on the imagination. The General Evening Post reproduced the Court anecdote with minor changes, added its own quota of anecdote in successive issues, and recorded a notable social occasion. On Thursday 21 July, it announced, the native of Otaheite dined with the Duke of Gloucester, accompanied by Messrs. Banks and Solander, both of whom retained sufficient knowledge of his tongue to converse familiarly with ‘this adventurer’. Also present at the function, according to a second announcement, was Mr. Bruce, ‘lately returned from Abyssinia’, who from the similarity of the Otaheitean to other languages was enabled to hold some conversation with his fellow guest. The native, ran a further paragraph, was to continue with Mr. Banks during his stay in England ‘which it is presumed will be for some years, until he has acquired the English language, and a thorough knowledge of the customs of this country.’ His introduction to one novel custom, already mentioned by Banks, was the subject of separate and conflicting accounts. In the first the native was reported to have been so alarmed by the apprehension of catching smallpox (‘almost always fatal to the people of his country’) that on the advice of his medical friends he determined to be inoculated; accordingly he had left with Dr. Solander and Mr. Banks for Hertford to consult Baron Dimsdale. The second version credited the decision to the King who, on learning that the visitor had not yet suffered from smallpox, ‘said it would be extremely imprudent to expose him to the crouds that curiosity would incline to see him, before he was secure from that disease, so fatal to all his complexion.’ His Majesty therefore desired that the man might instantly be placed under the care of Baron Dimsdale, ‘at the same time declaring that he would take him under his protection, and defray the expence that might attend this and every other measure that might be for his advantage or amusement while in England.’13
Late in July two correspondents in the London Chronicle used the unsophisticated stranger to attack the evils of their age. The salutation of the poor native of Otaheite to His Majesty, observed one anonymous writer, would be pertinent if put to other European monarchs. The ‘Semiramis of the North’ would answer with difficulty if asked how she did after breaking all her solemn engagements with the republic of Poland. And if the ‘great Machiavel of the North’, guilty of so much oppression and bloodshed, were similarly questioned, would it not puzzle him to reply? ‘In short,’ this critic suggested, ‘it might be very well that all petitions and remonstrances for the future should conclude with the famous question, How do you do?’14
The other letter was lengthier and more elaborate. Signing himself Otaheite, the writer purported to be a native of the South Seas induced to visit Europe by the ‘beads, ribbands, and looking-glasses’ which navigators had bestowed on his people in return for their produce. Now long resident in England, he read with interest that the Adventure had arrived with ‘one of the Savages’ and asked what the term meant. Savages, a learned friend replied, were ‘all those barbarous nations that are uncivilized, and that do not live in a regular manner or method of policy or religion.’ To which Otaheite in his turn retorted:
You had better have said, that all those who are not conversant with European manners are Savages; for your definition, Sir, is as injurious as it is unjust. We practise those virtues you only teach; are enemies to luxury, strangers to adultery, constant to our wives beyond European example, … never go to war but from a principle of self preservation or self defence, practise the virtues of humanity and benevolence in a degree that would do honour to the noblest Monarch in Europe; and whilst we entertain the most sublime ideas of an Almighty Being, do not cut the throats of each other for differing in the manner of worshipping him.
His fellow islanders, he went on, did not murder the innocent and helpless indiscriminately; their men did not preach chastity to women while taking every opportunity to violate it; nor did their women abandon new-born children to the care of unfeeling nurses. ‘Let me beg of you for the future, Sir,’ he urged, ‘never to call us barbarous, you deserve the appellation yourself ….’15
Soon after, early in August, the London Chronicle returned to its anecdotal vein in a long article simultaneously published, with some additions, in the St. James’s Chronicle. Everything relating to the native of Otaheite, ran an introductory note, engaged ‘the Attention of Philosophers, as well as the commonly-curious’; these particulars were therefore laid before the public and could be depended on as authentic. The exceedingly miscellaneous particulars began with the ‘Ranks of Distinction in Otaheite’ which were three — ‘Nobility, Gentry, and Mobility’. This native, the writer asserted, belonged to the last class, in person was rather taller than the middle size, tolerably well made, and ‘so docile in his Memory’ that he scarcely needed to be told the names and uses of things twice. He was first entertained in Lord Sandwich’s drawing-room where he paid little attention to the company, ‘being so taken up with admiring the Furniture, &c.’ On meeting Dr. Solander (whom he knew in his own country), he ran up to him in the most cordial manner and embraced him so closely as to lift him off the ground. Being civilly reproved by the doctor and informed that a shake of the hand and the words ‘How do you do?’ were the usual salutation in this country, he repeated the greeting ‘tolerably correct’. When taken to Court, he was ‘as much dressed in the Habit of his Country as was consistent with Decency’ and told he must kneel before the King and kiss his hand. Whereupon ‘he replied, with some Emotion, “What, won’t he eat me when he has got me down?”’ Reassured, he knelt when the King approached and, remembering Dr. Solander’s words, immediately repeated them, ‘to the no small amusement of the whole Drawing-Room’. At a later function he greatly admired a watch which its owner, a nobleman, offered to him; ‘but the other looking round the Room very carefully, said, “Won’t these People think I stole it?”’ He took this precaution, the writer assumed, because of the punishment his countrymen had received for thefts from visiting English sailors.16
Most of the remaining observations referred to the native’s peculiarities and personal habits. When first desired to sit, he threw himself at full length on a sofa and only with difficulty learned the use of a chair. He dined principally on soups and partook ‘promiscuously’ of vegetables; he was rather fond of drinking and appeared to give the preference to Madeira. From the restlessness of his temper he seemed to want exercise which, according to report, he would shortly be indulged with in some of the private parks, ‘after the manner of his own Country’. In respect to mental qualities, he apparently possessed scarcely any, for he sought ‘immediate corporeal Gratifications’, showing himself ‘a Sensationalist of the first Kind’. He had never yet displayed ‘any Inclination towards the English Ladies’, though a Dutch lady at the Cape of Good Hope ‘in some small Respects’ attracted his regard but not his love. Finally, and perhaps through some association of ideas, the writer turned abruptly to ‘Queen’ Oberea. She was, he reported, ‘retired to the Country’ during Captain Furneaux’s stay and failed to visit him, explaining that she had neither hogs nor dogs to present him with. The real reason was: ‘she highly resented the miserable and fatal Disease introduced by the European Sailors amongst her People, which had swept off almost all the Inhabitants of her Isle.’17
The rival Evening Post quickly published its own authentic particulars, supplying for the first time in the popular press a name for the visitor. The writer called him Omiah (to rhyme with Jeremiah?) and set out to defend him from his detractors. Omiah, he held, was far from displaying the simplicity and ignorance mentioned in some papers. On the contrary, his deportment was genteel, resembling that of well-bred people here — a fact that was the more extraordinary considering how short a time it was since he had left the South Sea Islands where manners, though by no means savage, were yet totally different from those of polished people in Europe. As for the report that he had feared the King might eat him when told he must kneel down to kiss His Majesty’s hand, it contained more pertness and ill-nature than wit. That Court joke had not the least foundation in the usages of Omiah’s country where the people were as far from being cannibals as the English; indeed, it confused their customs with those of the New Zealanders who inhabited an island very remote from Omiah’s and who did actually eat ten of the expedition’s men. Not to be outdone, in its next issue the London Chronicle, source of the ill-natured jest, calmly reproduced this and other portions of the article, adding its own self-righteous introduction: former accounts of Omiah were for the most part either false or a gross misrepresentation of the facts; it therefore presented a ‘more just’ version to the public.18
The new version made it clear that Omiah was a native not of ‘Otaheitee’, so well known through the voyages published by Dr. Hawkesworth, but of ‘Ulatea’ whence he had been driven by the ‘King of Bola-Bola’. Another refugee from the same place was Tupia who owned large possessions there and had become ‘a person of great consideration’ when Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander met him. Omiah likewise had some estate in his native island but, on becoming an exile, was at first obliged to take up fishing and similar employments to gain a livelihood. Being wounded in an unfortunate ‘fray’ with the British, he was thought entitled to some better provision and put under a priest ‘to learn that kind of science which qualifies for the priestly profession’. He was in this situation when Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander visited the South Seas, and it was his acquaintance with them and other gentlemen of the Endeavour that probably disposed him to consent to coming with Captain Furneaux. In addition, it was said, a flatness in his nose, indicating Negro blood and making him ‘less respectable’, also induced him to undertake the voyage that he might gain ‘personal consequence’ and so compensate for this disadvantage. The article mentioned the death of the man brought to France by Mr. Bougainville and stated that another islander was on the Resolution which was expected to return the following year. If he arrived safely, the intention was to send out a ship, at government expense, to carry both men back to their country. For the present Omiah was at Hertford in the care of Baron Dimsdale. In submitting without hesitation to being inoculated, the writer observed, he showed the strongest instance of his implicit faith in Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander.19
HIS TWO PATRONS followed every stage of Omai’s ordeal with close personal solicitude; it seems likely, in fact, that they rather than the King (as the Evening Post asserted) had proposed the measure in the first place. Only a year before they had witnessed the sad fate of the Eskimo family, almost wiped out by smallpox on the eve of their return to Labrador, and more recently, through the men of the Adventure, they may have learned of Aoutourou’s death from the same fatal malady. Omai must therefore submit to inoculation, introduced from the Near East half a century before. And who better qualified to carry out the operation than its most eminent practitioner, a figure well known in the Banks circle? Six years earlier, on the recommendation of Solander’s friend Dr. Fothergill, Dimsdale had travelled to Russia to inoculate the Empress Catherine and her son the Grand Duke Paul. His treatment had been an unqualified success, bringing the doctor both honours and wealth. The grateful Semiramis of the North had not only created him a baron but awarded him the magnificient fee of £10,000 together with an annuity of £500. Now he was established in the small county centre of Hertford, some thirty miles from London.20
The trio did not leave for Hertford on 21 July, as Banks had informed his sister. Perhaps their plans were upset by the invitation, or royal summons, to dine that evening with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. The next day they were still in London, for on ‘Friday night, July 22’ Solander began an apologetic letter to John Ellis in Hampstead. ‘Nothing but the arrival of an Otaheite friend’, he explained, ‘could have made me so forgetful, in regard to you and many more of my English friends. But as I am one of the three that he can converse with, I have been obliged to give him almost all my time, in hopes that my other friends will forgive me.’ He had waited upon Dr. Fothergill concerning the corals, he told Ellis, and had delivered the walnut twig to Mr. Fabricius. Then followed an account of Captain Furneaux’s doings after he left England in 1772. Summing up the captain’s exploits, Solander remarked: ‘Notwithstanding he has not discovered any new lands, he has still made a glorious voyage; he has sailed round the globe, in a higher southern latitude than any ship before. He has proved that there is no large southern continent, and that the French pretended discoveries are small islands, instead of continents; or perhaps, as my friend Omai calls ice, things that the sun drives away, or causes to vanish.’ He had been so long writing the letter, he went on, that Omai was almost asleep. His charge would visit Ellis at Hampstead as soon as he had recovered from smallpox; tomorrow they were to take him to Baron Dimsdale for the operation which, with all his heart, Solander hoped might be ‘attended with success’. ‘He is a well-behaved, intelligent man’, the letter abruptly ended.21
The proposed journey seems to have been made on the 23rd and four days later Solander was back in London, again relating the details of Furneaux’s voyage to a colleague, this time Dr. Lind of Edinburgh, his companion on the Iceland expedition. He said little of Omai but promised in his next letter a full account of his ‘South Sea friend’ who, he said, was ‘now preparing for inoculation’.22 During this interlude the young man came under the scrutiny of a sympathetic observer, probably the Revd. J. E. Gambier of Cookham. In the course of a visit to Hertford, he reported to an unnamed correspondent, he had met Omiah through Mr. Andrews, the Adventure’s former surgeon, who was acting as interpreter, and dined in their company. Omiah was fond of ham and all animal food, but was very abstemious ‘on an apprehension that such viands are un-salutary.’ No consideration could tempt him to eat a morsel of chicken or a bit of pastry because he was shortly to be inoculated. ‘How the strict & rational temperance of this Savage’, the writer moralized, ‘ought to shame the Thousands among ourselves who prefer gratification to Health.’ Particulars of the man’s appearance and build were supplied. He was a little over five feet nine inches in height, and
lusty, strong made & active. broad chest & broad flat shoulders — legs very well made — the calf muscular & large the ancles taper but strong. His Complexion much resembles that of an European, accustomed to hot climates: His features are regular — his eyebrows large & dark — His Countenance is often illuminated by a most unaffected Smile — His Hair black & dressed in the english fashion. He was dressed in Pompadour — with white waistcoat, & he seemed as easy in our habit, as if he had been born in Pall-Mall.
His hands were ‘Tataowed’ according to the mode of his country where, asserted this somewhat credulous witness, it was usual to mark the right hand in a particular manner on marrying. Omiah was about thirty years of age and bore nine such marks. Some of his wives, he said, he left on account of their sterility, some he retained; and he bitterly regretted he did not have his favourite wife with him in England.23
As regards language, Omiah pronounced with fluency a few common expressions such as ‘How do you do?’ But as the whole island vocabulary did not exceed a thousand words (according to this dogmatic authority), he was at a loss for terms to express the new ideas with which his mind had become stored since his arrival. For example, since these Southern people had only two quadrupeds, the dog and the hog, he had no way of describing a horse except as ‘a great hog that carries people’ and a cow as ‘a great hog that gives milk’. When introduced to Lord Sandwich,
… He first pointed to ye Butler — and said — (in his own language wch was interpreted by y∈ Surgeon of Captn Fourneauxs Ship — / He is King of ye Bottles — then pointed to Capt Fourneaux — said He is King of ye Ship — But to Lord Sandwich he said — You are King of all Ships.
Further scraps of conversation and sundry anecdotes were adduced to illustrate other aspects of Omiah’s character. His outlook was evidently utilitarian, for he said ‘he would remove pretty trees that bear no fruit out of the shrubberys, & replace them with pretty trees that bear sweet fruit.’ A man of delicate sensibilities, he was so affected by a funeral at Hertford that he was forced to leave: ‘He wept plentifully with them that wept at the grave, & at length he went away from ye mournful Scene.’ When told that people were buried in the local churchyard, he ‘asked whether the Baron had not that place to put his patients in — and he Supposed that every person buried there had died under inoculation with the Baron.’ Seeing some anglers near the town, he was curious to learn ‘how they managed their Sport’. But as soon as he observed that they baited the hook with a living worm, he turned away with horror, saying he ‘would never again taste fish caught with so much cruelty.’ His compassion was matched by his courtesy. When he visited Gloucester House, Her Royal Highness, lacking a small gift for him, thought a pocket handkerchief, embellished with her coronet, might serve: ‘She presented it to him — Omiah received it with reverence, and immeddiately Kissing the Coronet he Smiled & bowed profoundly to ye Duchess.’ Bringing the letter to a close, the writer dwelt briefly on the islander’s antecedents and singled out for praise two more characteristics:
He was intended for the honor of ye Priesthood — but he resolved to see ye Country of white men — & to trust white men because he Loved two white men — Banks & Solander (by ye way neither of ym very white) and he was resolved to die or to know the truth of the white mens Story for himself.
All things considered — does the History of ye world produce a parallel instance of intrepidity & Curiosity? I think not24
By some means the letter came into the hands of a nameless but obviously well-informed writer who eliminated repetitions, phrased it more elegantly, and in other respects prepared it for publication. He correctly extended the list of quadrupeds known in the South Seas by including a third, the rat. To the account of Omiah’s dietary habits he added that he handled knife and fork well and behaved at table ‘with great decency, cleanliness, and void of any awkwardness’. For the benefit of students of Rousseau, he reported that while at first a house was ‘matter of astonishment’ to Omiah and horse-drawn carriages ‘wonderful’, he now accepted them ‘without any marks of surprise’. He amplified some passages, excised others, and for the original naïve conclusion substituted a suitably rotund piece of rhetoric:
Perhaps, if the history of his countrymen be considered, the doubts that must naturally be presented to him, and the circumstances of his independence, family, and popularity, there is not in any history of the world a much greater instance of resolution, intrepidity, and curiosity, if a parallel, to what Omiah has evinced.
27 Probably the first likeness of Omai published in England
The revised composition, entitled ‘Genuine Account of Omiah’ and signed with the pseudonym Apyrexia, appeared in the August issue of the London Magazine. A crude illustration showed the subject clad in flowing gown and cloak, the right arm extended in a gesture of declamation, the left bearing a wooden stool, the hand plainly tattooed. Copied by the newspapers, appropriated by other journals, this letter was the most widely circulated of all contemporary reports of the intrepid visitor.25
In the meantime he had again proved his heroic mettle. ‘My Lord’, wrote Banks from New Burlington Street on 29 July, ‘I have the honour to acquaint your Lordship that this day Omai was inoculated in as good spirits as possible’. Baron Dimsdale had delayed the operation, Lord Sandwich was informed, partly in order to prepare his charge, partly to obtain ‘matter to his satisfaction for communicating the disease’. He contrived to treat several children at the same time and showed Omai ‘the person from whom the matter was taken’; she had ‘a very favourable Kind’ and ‘several large pustules on her face’ — a source of gratification both to his friends and to the patient who ‘understood thoroughly the disease he was to expect’. ‘The regimen prescribed him by Baron Dimsdale is rather strict but he has at all times conformed to it with the most scrupulous exactness so that we have a most favourable opinion of him’, Banks reported, especially as in Russia, he went on inconsequently, Dimsdale had treated with success a large number of Cossacks. With the Baron’s consent he had now brought the young man to town and would keep him at New Burlington Street pending their return in a few days to Hertford; there they would remain until the distemper was over. He would then, Banks promised, bring Omai back to London and, as soon as he was quite recovered, settle him in lodgings according to Lord Sandwich’s directions. ‘I find him in all things’, Banks ended, ‘sensible very docile & very gratefull for the favours receivd from your Lordship who on all occasions he is told to look up to’.26
Banks duly left London on Thursday 4 August but first sent a brief message to his sister. He found it necessary to go with his Otaheite friend to Hertford, he told her, to be with him during his illness which was expected to come on by the following Saturday. At this time Miss Banks was pursuing her own inquiries into Omai’s antecedents and present condition. After all, she had learned from one of her brother’s servants, he was ‘not a Priest of the Island he left but quite a common Man’. He had quitted his home ‘because his Countreymen teized him about his Nose being flatter than other peoples’; further, they had warned him that ‘if he went with our people they would kill and eat him’. This conversation, she continued (giving her version of a story first recorded by James Burney), recurred to Omai’s memory the first time he was called to prayers in the cabin, making him so afraid that he hastened on deck and, as he later declared, would have jumped overboard had anyone approached him with a knife. More snippets and anecdotes, culled from various sources, added to the bulk of Sarah Sophia’s ‘Memorandums’. Omai was ‘overjoyed’ at meeting Dr. Solander and her brother but had not recognized the latter’s servants. At Court he asked the King how many children he had, kissed the Queen’s hand, and altogether behaved ‘very decently’. While visiting the Duke of Gloucester in the dress of his own country, a ‘great concourse’ gathered about him, but no particular notice was taken another time when, in English costume, he walked in the park with Dr. Solander. Sometimes he inquired how many moons it would be before he would return to the South Seas. Now, she reported, he was under inoculation, had shown himself ‘very tractable’, and was ‘perfectly sensible he was going to have an illness.’27
As he awaited the outcome of Baron Dimsdale’s treatment during the first week of August, Banks heard from Constantine Phipps. Since his return from the Arctic in the previous autumn that industrious navigator had been preparing an account of the voyage and only the day before, he announced, had presented the published work to the King who received it ‘very graciously’. He had ordered a copy with a set of prints for Banks and, if he should want more for any particular friends of his own, there were still a few in reserve. He was going into the country for the remainder of the summer, Phipps told Banks, and, in case there was anything to report or command, would be at Mulgrave, near Whitby, whence he would visit the York races. ‘I beg you will remember me in Your best Otaheite to my worthy Friend Omiha’, he asked, ‘I am very Anxious to hear that he is past all Danger ….’28
Solander did not accompany Banks on 4 August and the next day drew up another of his accounts of the expedition. Writing from London to Lord Hardwicke, he described the Adventure’s voyage in detail but passed rather summarily over the ‘young man’ Captain Furneaux had picked up in the Society Islands. He knew those who had been with Captain Cook perfectly well, the doctor related, and it was pleasing to them that they ‘had not forgot the South Sea Language’, so they were able ‘to converse with him without difficulty’. He was ‘well behaved and intelligent’ but ‘not at all a handsome man, and rather browner than most of his countrymen, perhaps owing to his having been a fisherman.’29 On the 10th, addressing his letter more specifically from New Burlington Street, Solander discussed with John Ellis the distribution of seeds brought to England by Captain Furneaux and Mr. Bayly. He had been to Hertford, he also informed Ellis, to attend his friend Omai during his ‘confinement’ and had left him the day before when he was declared to be out of danger: ‘The small pox was come out, and seemed to be of a mild sort.’ He had promised to go down again in a couple of days, Solander added, and would be with Omai until the following week.30
Once the medical crisis was over, Banks, who had remained at Hertford with the patient, was quick to announce the news. A message went to his sister and, dated 12 August, was duly entered among her jottings: ‘he says “Our Indian is now in a fair way, he has indeed never been in any other: he is rather full than otherwise but a very distinct & good sort which I hope will turn on Thursday”.’31 Again on the 12th he wrote briefly to Dr. Charles Blagden, one of his companions during the tour of Wales a year before. ‘Omai has now got through all Dangers from inoculation’, Banks reported, adding mysterious details similar to those sent to Sarah Sophia: ‘he is full but of a very distinct & good kind which we expect will turn tomorrow or next day’. As for the invalid’s spirits: ‘he has been Low these two days on account of pustules in his Throat which trouble him much but he fears nothing’. Otherwise they were all well, he assured Blagden; his one complaint was that the Dimsdales had shown no care of Omai and no civilities to themselves.32
The joyful tidings were also passed on to the First Lord who replied to Banks in an exceedingly amiable letter sent from Hinchingbrooke on 14 August. ‘You have made me particularly happy in the account you have troubled yourself to give me of our friend Omai’s being out of danger,’ wrote Sandwich, ‘pray make my compliments to him, & tell him how much pleasure I have recieved in this, as I shall in every thing else that can contribute to his well fare.’ Following these courtesies he referred to more practical matters. The terms proposed for lodging and boarding Omai and Mr. Andrews — £160 a year — he considered perfectly reasonable, and the fact that the young man would be in Mr. Banks’s neighbourhood, and consequently more under his inspection, would be ‘a very great additional advantage’. He also thought twenty guineas a ‘proper fee’ for Baron Dimsdale and supposed the doctor would be perfectly satisfied with it. ‘I am very happy to find that you intend to make me a visit’, he went on; and if the guests would let him know when he might expect them, he would contrive to go to town when they were ready and bring them down to Hinchingbrooke in his coach.33
II Omai, Banks, and Solander by William Parry, c. 1776
Five days later the saga of Omai’s inoculation came to a voluminous end in the account Solander had promised his Scottish friend Lind towards the end of July. The visitor had now been in England more than a month, for most of that time in the company of his two patrons and Mr. Andrews, all three of whom had some knowledge of his language and had, presumably, shared his confidences and disclosures. Solander thus spoke with an authority equalled by none of the newspaper writers. Omai, he stated, was born in Raiatea where his father was ‘a Man of considerable landed property’ until, about twelve years before, he had been dispossessed and killed by Boraboran conquerors who still occupied his estates. With a few servants the boy took refuge in Tahiti and was there at the time of Captain Wallis’s arrival. He was wounded in the side by a musket ball ‘the famous day, when Capt Wallis fired upon the Otaheiteans on One tree hill’. The scar was still very visible, and so was another from a spear wound in the arm, received ‘in one of their civil wars’. After the Dolphin’s departure, Omai, ‘bound himself prentice to a Priest or Wise man’ and was serving in that capacity during the Endeavour’s visit. Soon after, he left for Huahine where he was living ‘as a private Gentleman of a small fortune’ when Captains Cook and Furneaux reached the island. Becoming a favourite of the Adventure’s surgeon and its armourer, he resolved to go with them to Europe. His four servants all tried to dissuade him, as did his ‘King’, but Omai was resolute and parted from them in high spirits.34
Omai was ‘not above 21 or 22 years old’, Solander estimated, and had grown a little during the voyage. He was very brown, almost as brown as a mulatto, and not at all handsome but well made. His people, he said, laughed at him because of his ‘flatish nose and dark hue’ and this, Solander supposed, might explain his visit; for Omai hoped that when he returned and had ‘so many fine things to talk of’, he would be much respected. On his arrival he first lived at Mr. Banks’s house and afterwards removed to Hertford where he had been inoculated by Baron Dimsdale. Now he was quite recovered and the next day they proposed going up to town for good. Mr. Banks and he, Solander reported, had been with Omai almost continuously, while Mr. Andrews, the Adventure’s surgeon, and Mr. Banks’s servant had lived with him in the inoculation house the whole time. Luckily for them all, it happened that ‘the blue Horse Guards’ were quartered at Hertford and they had passed the weeks very agreeably in the society of the officers. The other day, he remarked, Lord Elibank, Governor George Johnstone, and Captain Blair had called on them, but poor Omai was then ‘in his worst Pickle’, so the visitors did not see him to great advantage.35
As yet Omai spoke no English, but Solander thought he would soon learn it, as he was desirous of doing so. He already knew several words and began to pronounce S ‘tolerably well’, though he could not manage R. He was well behaved, easy in his manners, and ‘remarkably complaisant to the Ladies’. As only one of many instances of his ‘Gallantry’, Solander cited his kissing the Duchess of Gloucester’s handkerchief. Omai was in sum a ‘sensible communicative Man’ and altogether a ‘valuable acquisition’. He had pleased everyone, while he in turn was pleased by his reception. ‘We think that the King has promised to send him back;’ Solander went on. ‘It is a thing so much wishd for, by us, I mean that an other S.S. Expedition should take place, that I have only said we think so ….’ Lord Sandwich and Mr. Banks were now quite cordial again, he observed, and they were soon to go down to Hinching-brooke. Solander apologized for continuing so long on one subject but explained that he could hardly get anything else in his head to write about, especially as his friend Omai was then sitting by his side, ‘quite elevated by having been informed that he to morrow is to leave this place of confinement.’36
