Books: Noble Savage

OMAI, FIRST POLYNESIAN AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND—Thomas Blake Clark—Colt Press ($3.50).

Fanny Burney mentions him. Horace Walpole mentions him. Boswell mentions him. But Thomas Blake Clark’s handsomely bound and printed book is the first full-length account of Omai (pronounced Oh, My!), the Polynesian Islander, who for two years (1774-76) was “the lyon of lyons” of London drawing rooms.

A year before the embattled farmers started shooting at Concord, bored British society was looking with almost unseemly eagerness for a noble savage. Rousseau had written that as civilization progresses, morals decline. Advanced Britons had reached the point where they were looking almost anywhere outside themselves for an ideal. Their quest turned up answers perfectly familiar today—from the psychiatric to the proletarian. Before Omai’s advent there had been inspected, briefly accepted, abruptly rejected:

> Peter the Wild Boy, a German importation. But after 30 years of England,he still spoke gibberish.

> Henry Jones, “the Poetical Bricklayer,” who succeeded a “Poetical Shoemaker.” Henry was taken up by letter-writing Lord Chesterfield, but literary success went to his head. He died after being run over while drunk.

> Ann Yearsley, “the Poetical Milk-Woman of Bristol,” who succeeded the “Poetic Washerwoman of Peterfield.” While collecting slops for her pigs from the kitchen of a bluestocking, Ann one day let slip that she wrote. The Blue-stocking Club rechristened her “Lactilla.” No lady, Lactilla too had to be dropped.

Captain Cook’s expedition took Omai to England from the Sandwich Islands as a treat for Cook’s patron, the gaming Earl of Sandwich. This noble savage clicked at once. Lord Sandwich was ravished when Omai, who had never seen a horse, exclaimed: “What a big hog!” He was captivated when, during his first coach journey, Omai observed: “We go one way; houses, fences, trees all go other way. Ver’ fine—sit, talk, maybe sleep, and at same time go!” Lady Carew was enchanted when she asked Omai how he liked tea. “Ver’ well,” he said, “not ver’ ill.” Lady Townshend was even more enchanted when she asked Omai how he liked notorious Lady Carew. “Ver’ nice,” he said, “not ver’ nasty.”

Soon the noble savage’s life was a whirl of London parties as drawing-room doors flew open. Omai dressed in the height of fashion. Baffling British etiquette held no mysteries for him. He was presented to George III. Sir Nathaniel Dance and Sir Joshua Reynolds (see cut) painted his portrait. His manners were preferred to those of Mr. Philip Stanhope (the bastard boy on whom Chesterfield lavished his famed letters of advice on how to behave: “Remember the Graces, the Graces, the Graces”). Only ungracious, hardheaded Sam Johnson growled to Boswell: “Don’t cant about in defense of savages!”

This enormous success, says Author Clark, was due to a paradox. Omai’s predecessors, Lactilla and the Bricklayer, failed precisely because they were savages. Omai was only ethnologically a savage; he was the Polynesian counterpart of British salon society. His sense of etiquette and histrionics, gesture, intonation, mimicry, were almost instinctive. His knowledge of intricate Polynesian ritual went beyond anything imagined even in ritualistic London drawing rooms. And, Author Clark believes, Omai had a touch of social genius.

Even Omai’s desertion of England was a social success. Fanny Burney asked Omai if he was eager to get back to his native Eden. “Yes, Miss,” he said, “no mutton there, no coach, no dish of tea, no pretty Miss Horneck; but have good air, good sea, and very good dog.” Miss Burney understood that he meant roast dog.

Captain Cook did everything possible to re-establish Omai among his fellow savages in a position worthy of a man who had once kissed Lady Carew’s hand. But Omai’s later history is vague and ambiguous. Later English expeditions could find hardly a trace of him. A missionary discovered that Omai had taken to potting uncongenial natives with a pistol. The Polynesians dismissed him with noble savagery from their minds. “Was he killed?” asked one British inquirer, the Bounty’s Captain Bligh. “No, no, not killed,” the savages told him with bored, Chesterfieldian politeness, “just die.”