_S.S._ ‘_Janet Nicoll_,’ _off Peru Island_, _Kingsmills Group_,
_July_ 13_th_, ’90.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—I am moved to write to you in the matter of the end
papers. I am somewhat tempted to begin them again. Follow the reasons
_pro_ and _con_:—
1st. I must say I feel as if something in the nature of the end paper
were a desirable finish to the number, and that the substitutes of
occasional essays by occasional contributors somehow fail to fill the
bill. Should you differ with me on this point, no more is to be said.
And what follows must be regarded as lost words.
2nd. I am rather taken with the idea of continuing the work. For
instance, should you have no distaste for papers of the class called
_Random Memories_, I should enjoy continuing them (of course at
intervals), and when they were done I have an idea they might make a
readable book. On the other hand, I believe a greater freedom of choice
might be taken, the subjects more varied and more briefly treated, in
somewhat approaching the manner of Andrew Lang in the _Sign of the Ship_;
it being well understood that the broken sticks {187} method is one not
very suitable (as Colonel Burke would say) to my genius, and not very
likely to be pushed far in my practice. Upon this point I wish you to
condense your massive brain. In the last lot I was promised, and I
fondly expected to receive, a vast amount of assistance from intelligent
and genial correspondents. I assure you, I never had a scratch of a pen
from any one above the level of a village idiot, except once, when a lady
sowed my head full of grey hairs by announcing that she was going to
direct her life in future by my counsels. Will the correspondents be
more copious and less irrelevant in the future? Suppose that to be the
case, will they be of any use to me in my place of exile? Is it possible
for a man in Samoa to be in touch with the great heart of the People?
And is it not perhaps a mere folly to attempt, from so hopeless a
distance, anything so delicate as a series of papers? Upon these points,
perpend, and give me the results of your perpensions.
3rd. The emolument would be agreeable to your humble servant.
I have now stated all the _pros_, and the most of the _cons_ are come in
by the way. There follows, however, one immense Con (with a capital
‘C’), which I beg you to consider particularly. I fear that, to be of
any use for your magazine, these papers should begin with the beginning
of a volume. Even supposing my hands were free, this would be now
impossible for next year. You have to consider whether, supposing you
have no other objection, it would be worth while to begin the series in
the middle of a volume, or desirable to delay the whole matter until the
beginning of another year.
Now supposing that the _cons_ have it, and you refuse my offer, let me
make another proposal, which you will be very inclined to refuse at the
first off-go, but which I really believe might in time come to something.
You know how the penny papers have their answers to correspondents. Why
not do something of the same kind for the ‘culchawed’? Why not get men
like Stimson, Brownell, Professor James, Goldwin Smith, and others who
will occur to you more readily than to me, to put and to answer a series
of questions of intellectual and general interest, until at last you
should have established a certain standard of matter to be discussed in
this part of the Magazine?
I want you to get me bound volumes of the Magazine from its start. The
Lord knows I have had enough copies; where they are I know not. A
wandering author gathers no magazines.
_The Wrecker_ is in no forrader state than in last reports. I have
indeed got to a period when I cannot well go on until I can refresh
myself on the proofs of the beginning. My respected collaborator, who
handles the machine which is now addressing you, has indeed carried his
labours farther, but not, I am led to understand, with what we used to
call a blessing; at least, I have been refused a sight of his latest
labours. However, there is plenty of time ahead, and I feel no anxiety
about the tale, except that it may meet with your approval.
All this voyage I have been busy over my _Travels_, which, given a very
high temperature and the saloon of a steamer usually going before the
wind, and with the cabins in front of the engines, has come very near to
prostrating me altogether. You will therefore understand that there are
no more poems. I wonder whether there are already enough, and whether
you think that such a volume would be worth the publishing? I shall hope
to find in Sydney some expression of your opinion on this point. Living
as I do among—not the most cultured of mankind (‘splendidly educated and
perfect gentlemen when sober’)—I attach a growing importance to friendly
criticisms from yourself.
I believe that this is the most of our business. As for my health, I got
over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of late. To my
unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started again. I find the
heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying in these latitudes, and I
am inclined to think the superior expedition rather dearly paid for.
Still, the fact that one does not even remark the coming of a squall, nor
feel relief on its departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without
gratitude. The rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both
seem less run down than they were on the _Equator_, and Mrs. Stevenson
very much less so. We have now been three months away, have visited
about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some
extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and pleasant to
revisit. In the meantime, we have really a capital time aboard ship, in
the most pleasant and interesting society, and with (considering the
length and nature of the voyage) an excellent table. Please remember us
all to Mr. Scribner, the young chieftain of the house, and the lady,
whose health I trust is better. To Mrs. Burlingame we all desire to be
remembered, and I hope you will give our news to Low, St. Gaudens, Faxon,
and others of the faithful in the city. I shall probably return to Samoa
direct, having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the
meanwhile. There, on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six months
ago from a blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address me until
further notice. The name of the ancestral acres is going to be Vailima;
but as at the present moment nobody else knows the name, except myself
and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less ambitious, to address R.
L. S., Apia, Samoa. The ancestral acres run to upwards of three hundred;
they enjoy the ministrations of five streams, whence the name. They are
all at the present moment under a trackless covering of magnificent
forest, which would be worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway
terminus. To me, as it stands, it represents a handsome deficit.
Obliging natives from the Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my
expense. You would be able to run your magazine to much greater
advantage if the terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my
cannibals. We have also a house about the size of a manufacturer’s
lodge. ’Tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which
on paper Mrs. Stevenson and I have already shed real tears; what it will
be when it comes to paying for it, I leave you to imagine. But if it can
only be built as now intended, it will be with genuine satisfaction and a
growunded pride that I shall welcome you at the steps of my Old Colonial
Home, when you land from the steamer on a long-merited holiday. I speak
much at my ease; yet I do not know, I may be now an outlaw, a bankrupt,
the abhorred of all good men. I do not know, you probably do. Has Hyde
{190} turned upon me? Have I fallen, like Danvers Carew?
It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my future
society. Three consuls, all at logger-heads with one another, or at the
best in a clique of two against one; three different sects of
missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and the Catholics and
Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-feeling as to whether a
wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten to announce the time of
school. The native population, very genteel, very songful, very
agreeable, very good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a
circumstance not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace).
As for the white population of (technically, ‘The Beach’), I don’t
suppose it is possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the
South Seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its
grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all
degrees of respectability and the reverse. The paper, of which I must
really send you a copy—if yours were really a live magazine, you would
have an exchange with the editor: I assure you, it has of late contained
a great deal of matter about one of your contributors—rejoices in the
name of _Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser_. The advertisements in
the _Advertiser_ are permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence.
A dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various
residents, who are rather fond of recurring to one another’s antecedents.
But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and
I don’t know that Apia is very much worse than half a hundred towns that
I could name.