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THE name Frank Ward Hustace III is weighed with island history and no one is more aware of this than the man who carries it.
Frank Ward Hustace III captures
the spirit of his lineage with his
newly released bookBy Cynthia Oi
Star-BulletinHis father was territorial land commissioner and had other government positions. His grandfather was the first son of Mary Elizabeth "Mellie" Ward Hustace, the eldest of seven daughters of Victoria Robinson Ward, a descendent of ali'i and a lifelong friend and supporter of Queen Lili'uokalani. His great-great grandfather was Curtis P. Ward, who was the shopkeeper of the Royal Custom House and who built a thriving livery and dray business.
The Wards owned more than 100 acres of land that ran from Thomas Square to the sea. At the time, the land was considered the outskirts of Honolulu. Today, it is right in the heart of the city and houses mainly businesses, the principal of which is the Victoria Ward Centers.For all the heavy historical data that brushes the family's portrait, Hustace III paints a more spiritual story of his great-great grandmother and her descendants in his book, "Victoria Ward and Her Family." Subtitled "Memories of Old Plantation," in reference to the family home, it reminisces about life in a time when Honolulu was compact in size and social order.
On a recent evening, Hustace signed copies of his book at a table under the trees in a small plot of grass between the Blaisdell Concert Hall and Blaisdell parking garage, an appropriate site because it was where Old Plantation used to be. About 100 people gathered to celebrate the book's publication and exchange memories about the family.
"Here are all kinds of people, remembering a time past, people filled with nostalgia, eh," said Hustace's father, Frank Jr., who his son says inspired the book.The cool night was scented with ginger lei presented to female guests. Fern and hinahina were draped over white tablecloths and musicians strummed soothing songs while party-goers drifted from one conversation to the next. With blurred eyes, an observer could imagine what parties might have been 75 years previous. Some of the names on the guest list -- Magoon, Cooke, Robinson, Wodehouse -- would likely be the same.
At the reception, older guests recalled their encounters with Victoria's seven daughters and their memories of Old Plantation. The house was an elaborate, two-story affair with wide verandas, French windows, a curving central stairway and a widow's walk. The house was shielded from the road by hundreds of trees -- coconuts and mangoes, avocados and pomelos, adding to its aura of mystery. Vegetable gardens and a fish pond put food on the table. Wells provided running water.
The Ward sisters were as much products of their environment as of their own wills. They were well educated and fluent in the Hawaiian language. When their father died at age 53, Victoria kept the businesses going, setting an example of a capable woman for her daughters.The book reprints ledgers she kept on family income and spending. In later years, other ledgers might have shown the price of chickens, sold by George Yuen's mother to the Wards.
Yuen, a retired water board director, remembers playing in the yard at Old Plantation.
"Every Sunday, my mother used to deliver chickens, capons, to the family. They loved the capons my mother use to raise," Yuen said. "They were nice people, but they kept mostly to themselves."
He is pleased about the book. "I hate to see us forget the Old Plantation," he said.
Hustace, who lives and works on the Big Island, researched the book off and on for about 25 years when he worked in Honolulu as a production stage manager.
"It coincided with the time I was working with the Honolulu Theatre for Youth. The offices were downtown and often I ate my lunch at the (Iolani) palace there and quite naturally I gravitated to the archives," he said.His interest in his family's past, however, had been percolating in his mind since childhood.
"As a boy, I remember peering around dim parlors of old houses while my father visited family elders," he said in a personal statement. "Lounging sleepily in his lap. half-listening to the soft talk and laughter, I absorbed stories from a distant time."
Although "the backdrop of their lives has the allure of romance -- staunch monarchists during years of political upheaval; a resolute widow with seven daughters; a graceful, decaying mansion" -- as research swelled his files, what emerged was the spiritual vivacity of Victoria Ward and her family.
"Many people felt their spirits during their lifetime as I did ... and I knew just from the comments from people, from many who have passed themselves, how interested they would be to learn about that family," Hustace said.
Besides the stories, much of the book's impact comes from the numerous photographs of the estate and the people who lived there: The sisters lounging on the lawn, stringed instruments in their laps; Victoria with her sister, Mary E. Foster, on an automobile outing with Queen Lili'uokalani; family and friends at a luau shaded by coconut trees; a plume of water arching high over an artesian well; taro sprouting in marshy plots.What Hustace has avoided in the book is a recounting of many publicly reported events involving the Wards, such as the sisters' court battles with each other later in their lives.
"They were very, very private people," said the elder Hustace, "high principled."
The author said he did not intend to present a glossy, rose-colored view.
"There are stories I could tell about personal conversations, feelings expressed by individuals that if you read in the transcript, in the newspaper or in court documentation, you'd form one opinion and by listening or talking or relating to others personally, you might form quite a different one."Neither one is the essence. Each of them is the outer covering, like our clothes or skin. The impulse within is more what I was looking for," he said. "The thread is the spirit that surfaces throughout."
The book was funded and published by Victoria Ward Ltd. and contains in its back pages an aerial, color photograph of Ward Warehouse and Ward Centre, along with Blaisdell Center and the Koolau range in the background. It is a jarring element after the sepia and black-and-white photographs of the previous pages, designed beautifully by Barbara Pope.
"I had always expected to have the final pages devoted to the corporation and I think it's appropriate," Hustace said.
The book would never have come to fruition without the support of the corporation, he said. "I don't have the financial means to produce a book of this kind.
AUTHOR SIGNINGS
What: Book signings by Frank Ward Hustace III, author of "Victoria Ward and Her Family: Memories of Old Plantation," $25, Victoria Ward Ltd., publishers
"I think corporations have an opportunity and a responsibility to support the literary arts in a creative way."
Hustace said he may write more about the family and its history.
"There's another story to be told about Curtis and Victoria and their young married days and the interconnecting friendships with other families."
He also has an album of cartes-de-visite, portrait photos used as a visiting card, that people used to give each other.
"It is an intact record of what families were friends with one another," he said.
He has many files of researched material from other branches of his family tree, from the Robinsons, Hustaces and the Bolles, that he may fashion into books, too.
"The family is also fortunate to have numerous chants within its possession, name chants, travel chants that describe the travel and movements of various people and extensive genealogy."
But for this book on Victoria Ward, he wanted to focus on spirit.
"When you touch the spirit of a story, that livening feeling you get when you touch someone's life, you're touching your own spirit," he said. "That was my goal."
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