_February_ 4_th_, 1890, _SS._ ‘_Lübeck_.’
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—In virtue of confessions in your last, you would at
the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and I will ask you
to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write. Excuse a plain seaman
if he regards with scorn the likes of you pore land-lubbers ashore now.
(Reference to nautical ditty.) Which I may however be allowed to add
that when eight months’ mail was laid by my side one evening in Apia, and
my wife and I sat up the most of the night to peruse the same—(precious
indisposed we were next day in consequence)—no letter, out of so many,
more appealed to our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud,
land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James Payn. Thank you for
it; my wife says, ‘Can’t I see him when we get back to London?’ I have
told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of practical politix.
(Why can’t I spell and write like an honest, sober, god-fearing litry
gent? I think it’s the motion of the ship.) Here I was interrupted to
play chess with the chief engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the ‘athletic
sport of cribbage,’ of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been
reading in your delightful _Literary Recollections_. How you skim along,
you and Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can
keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out loud.
I joke wi’ deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I am, Mrs.
Oliphant says I’m vulgar, and somebody else says (in Latin) that I’m a
whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for: I shall stick to weepers;
a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s. shocker.
My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign sanity.
Sometime in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten man, evidently of
seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending his way between the
Athenæum Club and Waterloo Place. Arrived off No. 17, he shall be
observed to bring his head sharply to the wind, and tack into the outer
haven. ‘Captain Payn in the harbour?’—‘Ay, ay, sir. What
ship?’—‘Barquentin R. L. S., nine hundred and odd days out from the port
of Bournemouth, homeward bound, with yarns and curiosities.’
Who was it said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t speak of it!’ about Scott and his
tears? He knew what he was saying. The fear of that hour is the
skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime and the
livelihood go together; and—I am getting hard of hearing myself; a pore
young child of forty, but new come frae my Mammy, O!
Excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my regards.—Yours
affectionately,