Soon after St. Damien’s death, a protestant, the Reverend Doctor Hyde wrote a scathing commentary illustrating his extreme dislike of the Priest stating in part, “The simple truth is, [Father Damien] was a coarse, dirty man, headstrong, and bigoted.”
It was not long before the famous author of the recently published and highly acclaimed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson clapped back. He wrote in part:
“You make us sorry for the lepers, who had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and father. But you, who were so refined, why were you not there, to cheer them with the lights of culture? Or may I remind you that we have some reason to doubt if John the Baptist were genteel; and in the case of Peter, on whose career you doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all he was a ‘coarse, headstrong’ fisherman! Yet even in our Protestant Bibles, Peter is called Saint.”
The scathing rebuke of the haughty Dr. Hyde went on:
““[T]he blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done.”
And deals a final blow with:
“For, if that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage.”