_Vailima_, _Upolu_ [_Undated_, _but written in_ 1891].
MY DEAR BAILDON,—This is a real disappointment. It was so long since we
had met, I was anxious to see where time had carried and stranded us.
Last time we saw each other—it must have been all ten years ago, as we
were new to the thirties—it was only for a moment, and now we’re in the
forties, and before very long we shall be in our graves. Sick and well,
I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little—and
then only some little corners of misconduct for which I deserve hanging,
and must infallibly be damned—and, take it all over, damnation and all,
would hardly change with any man of my time, unless perhaps it were
Gordon or our friend Chalmers: a man I admire for his virtues, love for
his faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has, with everything
heart—my heart, I mean—could wish. It is curious to think you will read
this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, east-windy day into the
Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as it did of yore: I met Satan
there. And then go and stand by the cross, and remember the other
one—him that went down—my brother, Robert Fergusson. It is a pity you
had not made me out, and seen me as patriarch and planter. I shall look
forward to some record of your time with Chalmers: you can’t weary me of
that fellow, he is as big as a house and far bigger than any church,
where no man warms his hands. Do you know anything of Thomson? Of A—,
B—, C—, D—, E—, F—, at all? As I write C.’s name mustard rises my nose;
I have never forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little trick he played me
when I could ill afford it: I mean that whenever I think of it, some of
the old wrath kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if I got the
world with it. And Old X—? Is he still afloat? Harmless bark! I
gather you ain’t married yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be
remembered, goes with you. Did you see a silly tale, _John Nicholson’s
Predicament_, {220} or some such name, in which I made free with your
home at Murrayfield? There is precious little sense in it, but it might
amuse. Cassell’s published it in a thing called _Yule-Tide_ years ago,
and nobody that ever I heard of read or has ever seen _Yule-Tide_. It is
addressed to a class we never met—readers of Cassell’s series and that
class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don’t recall
that it was conscientious. Only, there’s the house at Murrayfield and a
dead body in it. Glad the _Ballads_ amused you. They failed to
entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much account
by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know how to tell
a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. _Rahero_ is for its length a
perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality,
ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the
politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned some
of his A B C. But the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he
is sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale like that of
_Rahero_ falls on his ears inarticulate. The _Spectator_ said there was
no psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother (as I used
to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair one) cannot
so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when it is put
before it. I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it; the tale
seized me one-third because of its picturesque features, two-thirds
because of its astonishing psychology, and the _Spectator_ says there’s
none. I am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge
of a new world, ‘a new created world’ and new men; and I am sure my
income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of comprehension is
death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the dull.
I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as you
deserve nothing. I give you my warm _talofa_ (‘my love to you,’ Samoan
salutation). Write me again when the spirit moves you. And some day, if
I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob-a-nob with our grey
pows on my verandah.—Yours sincerely,