_Honolulu_, _April_ 6_th_, 1889.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—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 thousandfold 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 three 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, Belle, 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 Taiohae.
Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
Revolvers.
Permanganate of potass.
Liniment for the head and sulphur.
Fine tooth-comb.’
What do you think this is? Simply life in the South Seas foreshortened.
These are a few of our desiderata for the next trip, which we jot down as
they occur.
There, I have really done my best and tried to send something like a
letter—one letter in return for all your dozens. Pray remember us all to
yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and the rest of your house. I do hope your mother
will be better when this comes. I shall write and give you a new address
when I have made up my mind as to the most probable, and I do beg you
will continue to write from time to time and give us airs from home.
To-morrow—think of it—I must be off by a quarter to eight to drive in to
the palace and breakfast with his Hawaiian Majesty at 8.30: I shall be
dead indeed. Please give my news to Scott, I trust he is better; give
him my warm regards. To you we all send all kinds of things, and I am
the absentee Squire,