HONOLULU, April 6th, 1889.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—The family seems to say I am the man, or rather,
mine is the voice; for as to gratitude, we are all in a concatenation.
Nobody writes a better letter than my gamekeeper; so gay, so pleasant,
so engagingly particular, answering (by some delicate instinct) all
the questions she suggests. It is a shame you should get such a poor
return as I can make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable
of the art epistolary. I would let the paper-cutter take my place;
but I am sorry to say, the little wooden seaman did after the manner
of seamen, and deserted in the Societies. The place he seems to have
stayed at—seems, for his absence was not observed till we were near the
Equator—was Tautira, and, I assure you, he displayed good taste, Tautira
being as 'nigh hand heaven' as a paper-cutter or anybody has a right to
expect.
I think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the
grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly—we are not coming home for
another year. My mother returns next month. Fanny, Lloyd, and I push
on again among the islands on a trading schooner, _The Equator_—first
for the Gilbert group, which we shall have an opportunity to explore
thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the Marshalls and Carolines;
and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, and back to Tahiti. I own
we are deserters, but we have excuses. You cannot conceive how these
climates agree with the wretched house-plant of Skerryvore; he wonders
to find himself sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose, like a
grown-up person. They agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from
her rheumatism, and with Lloyd also. And the interest of the islands
is endless, and the sea, though I own it is a fearsome place, is very
delightful. We had applied for places in the American missionary ship,
the _Morning Star_, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea,
giving us more time and a thousand-fold more liberty; so we determined
to cut off the missionaries with a shilling.
The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very much; we live here,
oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in the future.
But it would surprise you if you came out to-night from Honolulu (all
shining with electric lights, and all in a bustle from the arrival of
the mail, which is to carry you these lines) and crossed the long wooden
causeway along the beach, and came out on the road through Kapiolani
park, and seeing a gate in the palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the
wayside, entered casually in. The buildings stand in these groups by the
edge of the beach, where an angry little spitfire sea continually spirts
and thrashes with impotent irascibility; the big seas breaking further
out upon the reef. The first is a small house, with a very large summer
parlour, or _lanai_, as they call it here, roofed, but practically open.
There you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting about the
table, dinner just done; my mother, my wife, Lloyd, Bell, my wife's
daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest.
All about the walls our South Sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl
shells, stone axes, etc., and the walls are only a small part of a
lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space.
You will see there no sign of the Squire, however; and being a person of
a humane disposition, you will only glance in over the balcony railing
at the merry-makers in the summer parlour, and proceed further afield
after the Exile. You look round, there is beautiful green turf, many
trees of an outlandish sort that drop thorns—look out if your feet are
bare; but I beg your pardon, you have not been long enough in the South
Seas—and many oleanders in full flower. The next group of buildings
is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out a coach-house door, and
look in—only some cocoanuts; you try round to the left and come to the
sea front, where Venus and the moon are making luminous tracks on the
water, and a great swell rolls and shines on the outer reef, and here
is another door—all these places open from the outside—and you go in,
and find photography, tubs of water, negatives steeping, a tap, and
a chair and an inkbottle, where my wife is supposed to write; round a
little further, a third door, entering which you find a picture upon the
easel and a table sticky with paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort
of court, where there is a hen sitting—I believe on a fallacious egg.
No sign of the Squire in all this. But right opposite the studio door
you have observed a third little house, from whose open door lamplight
streams and makes hay of the strong moonlight shadows. You had supposed
it made no part of the grounds, for a fence runs round it lined with
oleander; but as the Squire is nowhere else, is it not just possible
he may be here? It is a grim little wooden shanty; cobwebs bedeck it;
friendly mice inhabit its recesses; the mailed cockroach walks upon
the wall; so also, I regret to say, the scorpion. Herein are two pallet
beds, two mosquito curtains, strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two
tables laden with books and manuscripts, three chairs, and, in one of
the beds, the Squire busy writing to yourself, as it chances, and just
at this moment somewhat bitten by mosquitoes. He has just set fire to
the insect powder, and will be all right in no time; but just now he
contemplates large white blisters, and would like to scratch them, but
knows better. The house is not bare; it has been inhabited by Kanakas,
and—you know what children are!—the bare wood walls are pasted over with
pages from the _Graphic_, _Harper's Weekly_, etc. The floor is matted,
and I am bound to say the matting is filthy. There are two windows and
two doors, one of which is condemned; on the panels of that last a sheet
of paper is pinned up, and covered with writing. I cull a few plums:—
'A duck hammock for each person.
A patent organ like the commandant's at Taiahae.
Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
Revolvers.
Permanganate of potass.
Liniment for the head and sulphur.