MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is Friday night, the (I believe) 18th or 20th August
or September. I shall probably regret to-morrow having written you with
my own hand like the Apostle Paul. But I am alone over here in the
workman’s house, where I and Belle and Lloyd and Austin are pigging; the
rest are at cards in the main residence. I have not joined them because
‘belly belong me’ has been kicking up, and I have just taken 15 drops of
laudanum.
On Tuesday, the party set out—self in white cap, velvet coat, cords and
yellow half boots, Belle in a white kind of suit and white cap to match
mine, Lloyd in white clothes and long yellow boots and a straw hat,
Graham in khakis and gaiters, Henry (my old overseer) in blue coat and
black kilt, and the great Lafaele with a big ship-bag on his saddle-bow.
We left the mail at the P. O., had lunch at the hotel, and about 1.50 set
out westward to the place of tryst. This was by a little shrunken brook
in a deep channel of mud on the far side of which, in a thicket of low
trees, all full of moths of shadow and butterflies of sun, we lay down to
await her ladyship. Whiskey and water, then a sketch of the encampment
for which we all posed to Belle, passed off the time until 3.30. Then I
could hold on no longer. 30 minutes late. Had the secret oozed out?
Were they arrested? I got my horse, crossed the brook again, and rode
hard back to the Vaea cross roads, whence I was aware of white clothes
glancing in the other long straight radius of the quadrant. I turned at
once to return to the place of tryst; but D. overtook me, and almost bore
me down, shouting ‘Ride, ride!’ like a hero in a ballad. Lady Margaret
and he were only come to shew the place; they returned, and the rest of
our party, reinforced by Captain Leigh and Lady Jersey, set on for Malie.
The delay was due to D.’s infinite precautions, leading them up lanes, by
back ways, and then down again to the beach road a hundred yards further
on.
It was agreed that Lady Jersey existed no more; she was now my cousin
Amelia Balfour. That relative and I headed the march; she is a charming
woman, all of us like her extremely after trial on this somewhat rude and
absurd excursion. And we Amelia’d or Miss Balfour’d her with great but
intermittent fidelity. When we came to the last village, I sent Henry on
ahead to warn the King of our approach and amend his discretion, if that
might be. As he left I heard the villagers asking _which was the great
lady_? And a little further, at the borders of Malie itself, we found
the guard making a music of bugles and conches. Then I knew the game was
up and the secret out. A considerable guard of honour, mostly children,
accompanied us; but, for our good fortune, we had been looked for
earlier, and the crowd was gone.
Dinner at the King’s; he asked me to say grace, I could think of
none—never could; Graham suggested _Benedictus Benedicat_, at which I
leaped. We were nearly done, when old Popo inflicted the Atua howl (of
which you have heard already) right at Lady Jersey’s shoulder. She
started in fine style.—‘There,’ I said, ‘we have been giving you a
chapter of Scott, but this goes beyond the Waverley Novels.’ After
dinner, kava. Lady J. was served before me, and the King _drank last_;
it was the least formal kava I ever saw in that house,—no names called,
no show of ceremony. All my ladies are well trained, and when Belle
drained her bowl, the King was pleased to clap his hands. Then he and I
must retire for our private interview, to another house. He gave me his
own staff and made me pass before him; and in the interview, which was
long and delicate, he twice called me _afioga_. Ah, that leaves you
cold, but I am Samoan enough to have been moved. _Susuga_ is my accepted
rank; to be called _afioga_—Heavens! what an advance—and it leaves Europe
cold. But it staggered my Henry. The first time it was complicated
‘lana susuga _ma_ lana afioga—his excellency _and_ his majesty’—the next
time plain Majesty. Henry then begged to interrupt the interview and
tell who he was—he is a small family chief in Sawaii, not very small—‘I
do not wish the King,’ says he, ‘to think me a boy from Apia.’ On our
return to the palace, we separated. I had asked for the ladies to sleep
alone—that was understood; but that Tusitala—his afioga Tusitala—should
go out with the other young men, and not sleep with the highborn females
of his family—was a doctrine received with difficulty. Lloyd and I had
one screen, Graham and Leigh another, and we slept well.
In the morning I was first abroad before dawn; not very long, already
there was a stir of birds. A little after, I heard singing from the
King’s chapel—exceeding good—and went across in the hour when the east is
yellow and the morning bank is breaking up, to hear it nearer. All about
the chapel, the guards were posted, and all saluted Tusitala. I could
not refrain from smiling: ‘So there is a place too,’ I thought, ‘where
sentinels salute me.’ Mine has been a queer life.
[Picture: Drawing]
Breakfast was rather a protracted business. And that was scarce over
when we were called to the great house (now finished—recall your earlier
letters) to see a royal kava. This function is of rare use; I know grown
Samoans who have never witnessed it. It is, besides, as you are to hear,
a piece of prehistoric history, crystallised in figures, and the facts
largely forgotten; an acted hieroglyph. The house is really splendid; in
the rafters in the midst, two carved and coloured model birds are posted;
the only thing of the sort I have ever remarked in Samoa, the Samoans
being literal observers of the second commandment. At one side of the
egg our party sat. a=Mataafa, b=Lady J., c=Belle, d=Tusitala, e=Graham,
f=Lloyd, g=Captain Leigh, h=Henry, i=Popo. The x’s round are the high
chiefs, each man in his historical position. One side of the house is
set apart for the King alone; we were allowed there as his guests and
Henry as our interpreter. It was a huge trial to the lad, when a speech
was made to me which he must translate, and I made a speech in answer
which he had to orate, full-breathed, to that big circle; he blushed
through his dark skin, but looked and acted like a gentleman and a young
fellow of sense; then the kava came to the King; he poured one drop in
libation, drank another, and flung the remainder outside the house behind
him. Next came the turn of the old shapeless stone marked T. It stands
for one of the King’s titles, Tamasoalii; Mataafa is Tamasoalii this day,
but cannot drink for it; and the stone must first be washed with water,
and then have the bowl emptied on it. Then—the order I cannot
recall—came the turn of y and z, two orators of the name of Malietoa; the
first took his kava down plain, like an ordinary man; the second must be
packed to bed under a big sheet of tapa, and be massaged by anxious
assistants and rise on his elbow groaning to drink his cup. W., a great
hereditary war man, came next; five times the cup-bearers marched up and
down the house and passed the cup on, five times it was filled and the
General’s name and titles heralded at the bowl, and five times he refused
it (after examination) as too small. It is said this commemorates a time
when Malietoa at the head of his army suffered much for want of supplies.
Then this same military gentleman must _drink_ five cups, one from each
of the great names: all which took a precious long time. He acted very
well, haughtily and in a society tone _outlining_ the part. The
difference was marked when he subsequently made a speech in his own
character as a plain God-fearing chief. A few more high chiefs, then
Tusitala; one more, and then Lady Jersey; one more, and then Captain
Leigh, and so on with the rest of our party—Henry of course excepted.
You see in public, Lady Jersey followed me—just so far was the secret
kept.
Then we came home; Belle, Graham and Lloyd to the Chinaman’s, I with Lady
Jersey, to lunch; so severally home. Thursday I have forgotten:
Saturday, I began again on Davie; on Sunday, the Jersey party came up to
call and carried me to dinner. As I came out, to ride home, the
search-lights of the _Curaçoa_ were lightening on the horizon from many
miles away, and next morning she came in. Tuesday was huge fun: a
reception at Haggard’s. All our party dined there; Lloyd and I, in the
absence of Haggard and Leigh, had to play aide-de-camp and host for about
twenty minutes, and I presented the population of Apia at random but
(luck helping) without one mistake. Wednesday we had two middies to
lunch. Thursday we had Eeles and Hoskyn (lieutenant and doctor—very,
very nice fellows—simple, good and not the least dull) to dinner.
Saturday, Graham and I lunched on board; Graham, Belle, Lloyd dined at
the G.’s; and Austin and the _whole_ of our servants went with them to an
evening entertainment; the more bold returning by lantern-light.
Yesterday, Sunday, Belle and I were off by about half past eight, left
our horses at a public house, and went on board the _Curaçoa_ in the
wardroom skiff; were entertained in the wardroom; thence on deck to the
service, which was a great treat; three fiddles and a harmonium and
excellent choir, and the great ship’s company joining: on shore in
Haggard’s big boat to lunch with the party. Thence all together to
Vailima, where we read aloud a Ouida Romance we have been secretly
writing; in which Haggard was the hero, and each one of the authors had
to draw a portrait of him or herself in a Ouida light. Leigh, Lady J.,
Fanny, R.L.S., Belle and Graham were the authors.
In the midst of this gay life, I have finally recopied two chapters, and
drafted for the first time three of Davie Balfour. But it is not a life
that would continue to suit me, and if I have not continued to write to
you, you will scarce wonder. And to-day we all go down again to dinner,
and to-morrow they all come up to lunch! The world is too much with us.
But it now nears an end, to-day already the _Curaçoa_ has sailed; and on
Saturday or Sunday Lady Jersey will follow them in the mail steamer. I
am sending you a wire by her hands as far as Sydney, that is to say
either you or Cassell, about _Falesá_: I will not allow it to be called
_Uma_ in book form, that is not the logical name of the story. Nor can I
have the marriage contract omitted; and the thing is full of misprints
abominable. In the picture, Uma is rot; so is the old man and the negro;
but Wiltshire is splendid, and Case will do. It seems badly illuminated,
but this may be printing. How have I seen this first number? Not
through your attention, guilty one! Lady Jersey had it, and only
mentioned it yesterday.
I ought to say how much we all like the Jersey party. My boy Henry was
enraptured with the manners of the _Tawaitai Sili_ (chief lady). Among
our other occupations, I did a bit of a supposed epic describing our
tryst at the ford of the Gasegase; and Belle and I made a little book of
caricatures and verses about incidents on the visit.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_.
The wild round of gaiety continues. After I had written to you
yesterday, the brain being wholly extinct, I played piquet all morning
with Graham. After lunch down to call on the U.S. Consul, hurt in a
steeple-chase; thence back to the new girls’ school which Lady J. was to
open, and where my ladies met me. Lady J. is really an orator, with a
voice of gold; the rest of us played our unremarked parts; missionaries,
Haggard, myself, a Samoan chief, holding forth in turn; myself with (at
least) a golden brevity. Thence, Fanny, Belle, and I to town, to our
billiard room in Haggard’s back garden, where we found Lloyd and where
Graham joined us. The three men first dressed, with the ladies in a
corner; and then, to leave them a free field, we went off to Haggard and
Leigh’s quarters, where—after all to dinner, where our two parties, a
brother of Colonel Kitchener’s, a passing globe-trotter, and Clarke the
missionary. A very gay evening, with all sorts of chaff and mirth, and a
moonlit ride home, and to bed before 12.30. And now to-day, we have the
Jersey-Haggard troupe to lunch, and I must pass the morning dressing
ship.
* * * * *
_Thursday_, _Sept._ 1_st_.
I sit to write to you now, 7.15, all the world in bed except myself,
accounted for, and Belle and Graham, down at Haggard’s at dinner. Not a
leaf is stirring here; but the moon overhead (now of a good bigness) is
obscured and partly revealed in a whirling covey of thin storm-clouds.
By Jove, it blows above.
From 8 till 11.15 on Tuesday, I dressed ship, and in particular cleaned
crystal, my specially. About 11.30 the guests began to arrive before I
was dressed, and between while I had written a parody for Lloyd to sing.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I had to start out about 3 for town, had a long
interview with the head of the German Firm about some work in my new
house, got over to Lloyd’s billiard-room about six, on the way whither I
met Fanny and Belle coming down with one Kitchener, a brother of the
Colonel’s. Dined in the billiard-room, discovered we had forgot to order
oatmeal; whereupon, in the moonlit evening, I set forth in my tropical
array, mess jacket and such, to get the oatmeal, and meet a young fellow
C.—and not a bad young fellow either, only an idiot—as drunk as Croesus.
He wept with me, he wept for me; he talked like a bad character in an
impudently bad farce; I could have laughed aloud to hear, and could make
you laugh by repeating, but laughter was not uppermost.
This morning at about seven, I set off after the lost sheep. I could
have no horse; all that could be mounted—we have one girth-sore and one
dead-lame in the establishment—were due at a picnic about 10.30. The
morning was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers over my
knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to take a side path in the bush;
missed it; came forth in a great oblong patch of taro solemnly surrounded
by forest—no soul, no sign, no sound—and as I stood there at a loss,
suddenly between the showers out broke the note of a harmonium and a
woman’s voice singing an air that I know very well, but have (as usual)
forgot the name of. ’Twas from a great way off, but seemed to fill the
world. It was strongly romantic, and gave me a point which brought me,
by all sorts of forest wading, to an open space of palms. These were of
all ages, but mostly at that age when the branches arch from the ground
level, range themselves, with leaves exquisitely green. The whole
interspace was overgrown with convolvulus, purple, yellow and white,
often as deep as to my waist, in which I floundered aimlessly. The very
mountain was invisible from here. The rain came and went; now in sunlit
April showers, now with the proper tramp and rattle of the tropics. All
this while I met no sight or sound of man, except the voice which was now
silent, and a damned pig-fence that headed me off at every corner. Do
you know barbed wire? Think of a fence of it on rotten posts, and you
barefoot. But I crossed it at last with my heart in my mouth and no harm
done. Thence at last to C’s.: no C. Next place I came to was in the
zone of woods. They offered me a buggy and set a black boy to wash my
legs and feet. ‘Washum legs belong that fellow white-man’ was the
command. So at last I ran down my son of a gun in the hotel, sober, and
with no story to tell; penitent, I think. Home, by buggy and my poor
feet, up three miles of root, boulder, gravel and liquid mud, slipping
back at every step.
* * * * *
_Sunday_, _Sept._ 4_th_.
Hope you will be able to read a word of the last, no joke writing by a
bad lantern with a groggy hand and your glasses mislaid. Not that the
hand is not better, as you see by the absence of the amanuensis hitherto.
Mail came Friday, and a communication from yourself much more decent than
usual, for which I thank you. Glad the _Wrecker_ should so hum; but
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
So far yesterday, the citation being wrung from me by remembrance of many
reviews. I have now received all _Falesá_, and my admiration for that
tale rises; I believe it is in some ways my best work; I am pretty sure,
at least, I have never done anything better than Wiltshire.
* * * * *
_Monday_, 13_th_ _September_ 1892.
On Wednesday the Spinsters of Apia gave a ball to a select crowd. Fanny,
Belle, Lloyd and I rode down, met Haggard by the way and joined company
with him. Dinner with Haggard, and thence to the ball. The Chief
Justice appeared; it was immediately remarked, and whispered from one to
another, that he and I had the only red sashes in the room,—and they were
both of the hue of blood, sir, blood. He shook hands with myself and all
the members of my family. Then the cream came, and I found myself in the
same set of a quadrille with his honour. We dance here in Apia a most
fearful and wonderful quadrille, I don’t know where the devil they fished
it from; but it is rackety and prancing and embraceatory beyond words;
perhaps it is best defined in Haggard’s expression of a gambado. When I
and my great enemy found ourselves involved in this gambol, and crossing
hands, and kicking up, and being embraced almost in common by large and
quite respectable females, we—or I—tried to preserve some rags of
dignity, but not for long. The deuce of it is that, personally, I love
this man; his eye speaks to me, I am pleased in his society. We
exchanged a glance, and then a grin; the man took me in his confidence;
and through the remainder of that prance we pranced for each other. Hard
to imagine any position more ridiculous; a week before he had been trying
to rake up evidence against me by brow-beating and threatening a
half-white interpreter; that very morning I had been writing most
villainous attacks upon him for the _Times_; and we meet and smile,
and—damn it!—like each other. I do my best to damn the man and drive him
from these islands; but the weakness endures—I love him. This is a thing
I would despise in anybody else; but he is so jolly insidious and
ingratiating! No, sir, I can’t dislike him; but if I don’t make hay of
him, it shall not be for want of trying.
Yesterday, we had two Germans and a young American boy to lunch; and in
the afternoon, Vailima was in a state of siege; ten white people on the
front verandah, at least as many brown in the cook house, and countless
blacks to see the black boy Arrick.
Which reminds me, Arrick was sent Friday was a week to the German Firm
with a note, and was not home on time. Lloyd and I were going bedward,
it was late with a bright moon—ah, poor dog, you know no such moons as
these!—when home came Arrick with his head in a white bandage and his
eyes shining. He had had a fight with other blacks, Malaita boys; many
against one, and one with a knife: ‘I KNICKED ’EM DOWN, three four!’ he
cried; and had himself to be taken to the doctor’s and bandaged. Next
day, he could not work, glory of battle swelled too high in his
threadpaper breast; he had made a one-stringed harp for Austin, borrowed
it, came to Fanny’s room, and sang war-songs and danced a war dance in
honour of his victory. And it appears, by subsequent advices, that it
was a serious victory enough; four of his assailants went to hospital,
and one is thought in danger. All Vailima rejoiced at this news.
Five more chapters of David, 22 to 27, go to Baxter. All love affair;
seems pretty good to me. Will it do for the young person? I don’t know:
since the Beach, I know nothing, except that men are fools and
hypocrites, and I know less of them than I was fond enough to fancy.