_Newport_, _R. I. U.S.A._ [_September_ 1887].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—So long it went excellent well, and I had a time I am
glad to have had; really enjoying my life. There is nothing like being
at sea, after all. And O, why have I allowed myself to rot so long on
land? But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have not yet got over it.
My reception here was idiotic to the last degree. . . . It is very
silly, and not pleasant, except where humour enters; and I confess the
poor interviewer lads pleased me. They are too good for their trade;
avoided anything I asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their
reports than they could help. I liked the lads.
O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions. She rolled
heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, and I think
a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it would be hard to
imagine. But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but Fanny; and even she
perhaps a little. When we got in, we had run out of beer, stout, cocoa,
soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit. But it was a
thousandfold pleasanter than a great big Birmingham liner like a new
hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the
quartermasters, and I (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we
carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat.
The passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no
drunkard, no gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than
one would have asked of poor human nature. Apes, stallions, cows,
matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came successfully to
land.—Yours ever,