_Vailima Plantation_, _Samoan Islands_, _June_ 17_th_, 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—I believe I have neglected a mail in answering
yours. You will be very sorry to hear that my wife was exceedingly ill,
and very glad to hear that she is better. I cannot say that I feel any
more anxiety about her. We shall send you a photograph of her taken in
Sydney in her customary island habit as she walks and gardens and shrilly
drills her brown assistants. She was very ill when she sat for it, which
may a little explain the appearance of the photograph. It reminds me of
a friend of my grandmother’s who used to say when talking to younger
women, ‘Aweel, when I was young, I wasnae just exactly what ye wad call
_bonny_, but I was pale, penetratin’, and interestin’.’ I would not
venture to hint that Fanny is ‘no bonny,’ but there is no doubt but that
in this presentment she is ‘pale, penetratin’, and interesting.’
As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and contending with the
great ones of the earth, not wholly without success. It is, you may be
interested to hear, a dreary and infuriating business. If you can get
the fools to admit one thing, they will always save their face by denying
another. If you can induce them to take a step to the right hand, they
generally indemnify themselves by cutting a caper to the left. I always
held (upon no evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition) that
politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of human
employments. I always held, but now I know it! Fortunately, you have
nothing to do with anything of the kind, and I may spare you the horror
of further details.
I received from you a book by a man by the name of Anatole France. Why
should I disguise it? I have no use for Anatole. He writes very
prettily, and then afterwards? Baron Marbot was a different pair of
shoes. So likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am now perusing
with delight. His escape in 1814 is one of the best pages I remember
anywhere to have read. But Marbot and Vitrolles are dead, and what has
become of the living? It seems as if literature were coming to a stand.
I am sure it is with me; and I am sure everybody will say so when they
have the privilege of reading _The Ebb Tide_. My dear man, the grimness
of that story is not to be depicted in words. There are only four
characters, to be sure, but they are such a troop of swine! And their
behaviour is really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on a
retrospect I wonder I have been able to endure them myself until the yarn
was finished. Well, there is always one thing; it will serve as a
touchstone. If the admirers of Zola admire him for his pertinent
ugliness and pessimism, I think they should admire this; but if, as I
have long suspected, they neither admire nor understand the man’s art,
and only wallow in his rancidness like a hound in offal, then they will
certainly be disappointed in _The Ebb Tide_. _Alas_! poor little tale,
it is not _even_ rancid.
By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at a great rate with my
_History of the Stevensons_, which I hope may prove rather amusing, in
some parts at least. The excess of materials weighs upon me. My
grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and I have to treat him besides
as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure, and at times I lose my
way, and I fear in the end will blur the effect. However, _à la grâce de
Dieu_! I’ll make a spoon or spoil a horn. You see, I have to do the
Building of the Bell Rock by cutting down and packing my grandsire’s
book, which I rather hope I have done, but do not know. And it makes a
huge chunk of a very different style and quality between Chapters II. and
IV. And it can’t be helped! It is just a delightful and exasperating
necessity. You know, the stuff is really excellent narrative: only,
perhaps there’s too much of it! There is the rub. Well, well, it will
be plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be with less. _The
Ebb Tide_ and _Northern Lights_ are a full meal for any plain man.
I have written and ordered your last book, _The Real Thing_, so be sure
and don’t send it. What else are you doing or thinking of doing? News I
have none, and don’t want any. I have had to stop all strong drink and
all tobacco, and am now in a transition state between the two, which
seems to be near madness. You never smoked, I think, so you can never
taste the joys of stopping it. But at least you have drunk, and you can
enter perhaps into my annoyance when I suddenly find a glass of claret or
a brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the next morning. No
mistake about it; drink anything, and there’s your headache. Tobacco
just as bad for me. If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a
white-livered puppy indeed. Actually I am so made, or so twisted, that I
do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table and the
tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire. It doesn’t amuse me from a
distance. I may find it the Garden of Eden when I go in, but I don’t
like the colour of the gate-posts. Suppose somebody said to you, you are
to leave your home, and your books, and your clubs, and go out and camp
in mid-Africa, and command an expedition, you would howl, and kick, and
flee. I think the same of a life without wine and tobacco; and if this
goes on, I’ve got to go and do it, sir, in the living flesh!
I thought Bourget was a friend of yours? And I thought the French were a
polite race? He has taken my dedication with a stately silence that has
surprised me into apoplexy. Did I go and dedicate my book {298a} to the
nasty alien, and the ’norrid Frenchman, and the Bloody Furrineer? Well,
I wouldn’t do it again; and unless his case is susceptible of
explanation, you might perhaps tell him so over the walnuts and the wine,
by way of speeding the gay hours. Sincerely, I thought my dedication
worth a letter.
If anything be worth anything here below! Do you know the story of the
man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter? ‘What do you
call that?’ says he. ‘Well,’ said the waiter, ‘what d’you expect?
Expect to find a gold watch and chain?’ Heavenly apologue, is it not? I
expected (rather) to find a gold watch and chain; I expected to be able
to smoke to excess and drink to comfort all the days of my life; and I am
still indignantly staring on this button! It’s not even a button; it’s a
teetotal badge!—Ever yours,