page_title: Kaʻiulani
section_title: Establishing life in Europe 1893–1897
hierarchical_section_title: Kaʻiulani / Establishing life in Europe 1893–1897
caption_attribution_description: English: Princess Kaiulani, photograph taken in Jersey. She visited Jersey during spring 1892, winter 1894, summer 1896, and summer 1897.
context_page_description: Kaʻiulani was the only child of Princess Miriam Likelike, and the last heir apparent to the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom. She was the niece of King Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani. After the death of her mother, Princess Kaʻiulani was sent to Europe at age 13 to complete her education, under the guardianship of English businessman and Hawaiian sugar investor Theo H. Davies. She had not yet reached her 18th birthday when the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom altered her life. The Provisional Government of Hawaii rejected pleas from both her father Archibald Scott Cleghorn, and provisional president Sanford B. Dole, to seat Kaʻiulani on the throne, conditional upon the abdication of Liliʻuokalani. The Queen thought the kingdom's best chance at justice was to temporarily relinquish her power to the United States.
  Davies and Kaʻiulani visited the United States to urge the restoration of the kingdom; she made speeches and public appearances denouncing the overthrow of her government and the injustice toward her people. While in Washington, D.C., she paid an informal visit to President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances Cleveland, but her efforts were in vain.
context_section_description: Prior to the 1893 overthrow, Kaʻiulani had been allocated an annual pension by the Hawaiian government. As a member of the royal family, she had received annually $5,000 from the civil list between 1882 and 1888, $4,800 between 1888 and 1892 and $10,000 as heir apparent to the throne in 1892. Archibald Cleghorn had also been supported from the Hawaiian civil list through his governmental positions. These sources of income ended after the overthrow.
  The unsettled political situation in Hawaii prevented Kaʻiulani from returning home, and her father arranged for her to remain with the Davies family in England. The press releases under her name were in reality created by Davies who, in the beginning, did not ask for her input. It is unclear whether any of the public statements were at her request, but he did eventually give her the opportunity to approve the final product before it went to the news media of its day. The teenage Kaʻiulani spent her summer of 1893 with the Davies family in Killiney, Ireland, where she and her friends played cricket and enjoyed tea.
  That winter, Mary Ellen Davies sent her daughter Alice Davies Warner to Wiesbaden, Germany with Kaʻiulani, and three other women of the same age. Traveling with a chaperone, they were primarily there to learn the German language. Alice later said, "... I forget just about everything about that journey except that she made many conquests among the susceptible German officers we met." Family friend Lillian Kennedy remembered a very fun-loving young lady who engaged in pillow fights and played hide-and-seek games. Politics in Hawaii began seemed far away and less important to her. She was beginning to enjoy life abroad, so much so that she resisted returning to the Davies home to once again become a political asset.
  Accustomed to the life of a Victorian society woman, Kaʻiulani preferred her new life. Writing to her father on June 10, 1894, she expressed her sadness at the change in Hawaii and asked him to consider a life abroad in Europe. After the 1895 royalist counter-revolution, he agreed. While they were abroad, the news of the March 6, 1897 death of her half-sister Annie impacted both Kaʻiulani and Cleghorn.
  From August 1895 to October 1897, she and her father assumed the lives of itinerant aristocrats traveling across Europe and the British Isles. They stayed in the French Riviera, Paris, and the island of Jersey, as well as England, and Scotland. Kaʻiulani was treated as royalty in the French Riviera where they wintered each year and made friends, including that of Nevinson William (Toby) de Courcy, an English aristocrat, who corresponded with her over the next three years and saved her letters until his death.
  During these years, Kaʻiulani began to have recurring illnesses, writing her aunt Liliʻuokalani that she'd had "the grip" (influenza) seven times while living abroad. She also complained of headaches, weight loss, eye problems and fainting spells. A migraine episode in Paris on May 4, 1897 prevented her from attending the Bazar de la Charité, which caught fire and killed a number of French noble women including the Duchess of Alençon. Growing expenses also exacerbated Cleghorn's draining financial status, and he wrote to Liliʻuokalani, asking for assistance.
  Kaʻiulani knew little about financial management and had no means to repay her benefactors. As her funding ran out, she wondered if the Provisional Government would give her an allowance. Her father had no means to support her, so both were dependent upon the generosity of others. Davies was a hard-nosed businessman who had risen from working-class parents, to making a fortune in Hawaii's sugar plantation business. While he agreed to assist with the finances, he took the princess to task for her careless spending in 1894, "I am disappointed in what you say about money matters because I have always been disagreeably plain about them. . . You have the chance to be a heroine but unless you exercise resolution and self control... we shall all fail" He cautioned that any funding from the Provisional Gover
caption: Kaʻiulani on the Isle of Jersey, c. 1896–1897
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