[The following was written to his old friend of Cornhill Magazine days,
Mr. James Payn, on receiving in Hawaii ill news of that gentleman's
health.]
HONOLULU, H. I., June 13th, 1889.
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I get sad news of you here at my offsetting for
further voyages; I wish I could say what I feel. Since there was never
any man less deserved this calamity; for I have heard you speak time and
again, and I remember nothing that was unkind, nothing that was untrue,
nothing that was not helpful, from your lips. It is the ill-talkers that
should hear no more. God knows, I know no word of consolation; but I do
feel your trouble. You are the more open to letters now; let me talk to
you for two pages; I have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may
bless God you are a man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness
of your calamity) I can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed
and secure of sympathy. It is a good thing to be a good man, whether
deaf or whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they
count a jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty
and kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the
finest hearing. We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all
conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a
report so good. My good news is a health astonishingly reinstated. This
climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking
from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of
squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives,—the whole tale of my
life is better to me than any poem. I am fresh just now from the leper
settlement of Molokai, playing croquet with seven leper girls, sitting
and yarning with old, blind, leper beach-combers in the hospital,
sickened with the spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation
amongst the patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and
effective virtues in their helpers: no stranger time have I ever had,
nor any so moving; I do not think it a little thing to be deaf, God
knows, and God defend me from the same!—but to be a leper, or one of
the self-condemned, how much more awful! and yet there's a way there
also. 'There are Molokais everywhere,' said Mr. Dutton, Father Damien's
dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my dear and kind adviser,
I wish you, with all my soul, that patience and courage which you will
require. Think of me meanwhile on a trading schooner, bound for the
Gilbert Islands, thereafter for the Marshalls, with a diet of fish and
cocoanut before me; bound on a cruise of—well, of investigation to what
islands we can reach, and to get (some day or other) to Sydney, where
a letter addressed to the care of R. Towns & Co. will find me sooner
or later; and if it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or
the courage with which you bear the contrary, will do me good.—Yours
affectionately (although so near a stranger),