_Union Club_, _Sydney_, _August_ 1890.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—Kipling is too clever to live. The _Bête Humaine_ I
had already perused in Noumea, listening the while to the strains of the
convict band. He a Beast; but not human, and, to be frank, not very
interesting. ‘Nervous maladies: the homicidal ward,’ would be the better
name: O, this game gets very tedious.
Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar
sickbed. So has a book called _The Bondman_, by Hall Caine; I wish you
would look at it. I am not half-way through yet. Read the book, and
communicate your views. Hall Caine, by the way, appears to take Hugo’s
view of History and Chronology. (_Later_; the book doesn’t keep up; it
gets very wild.)
I must tell you plainly—I can’t tell Colvin—I do not think I shall come
to England more than once, and then it’ll be to die. Health I enjoy in
the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come
only to catch cold. I have not been out since my arrival; live here in a
nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry
James, and send out to get his _Tragic Muse_, only to be told they can’t
be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time. But I can’t
go out! The thermometer was nearly down to 50° the other day—no
temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England? I fear not at
all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight people in
England, and one or two in the States. And outside of that, I simply
prefer Samoa. These are the words of honesty and soberness. (I am
fasting from all but sin, coughing, _The Bondman_, a couple of eggs and a
cup of tea.) I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems)
civilisation. Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is
technically called) God’s green earth. The sea, islands, the islanders,
the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. These last
two years I have been much at sea, and I have _never wearied_; sometimes
I have indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often I was
sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose
my fidelity to blue water and a ship. It is plain, then, that for me my
exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense regarded
as a calamity.
Good-bye just now: I must take a turn at my proofs.
_N.B._—Even my wife has weakened about the sea. She wearied, the last
time we were ashore, to get afloat again.—Yours ever,