_Vailima_, _July_ 13, 1894.
MY DEAR BARRIE,—This is the last effort of an ulcerated conscience. I
have been so long owing you a letter, I have heard so much of you, fresh
from the press, from my mother and Graham Balfour, that I have to write a
letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame. But the deuce of it
is, my dear fellow, that you write such a very good letter that I am
ashamed to exhibit myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in
the light of the dreary idiot I feel. Understand that there will be
nothing funny in the following pages. If I can manage to be rationally
coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.
In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown that
photograph of your mother. It bears evident traces of the hand of an
amateur. How is it that amateurs invariably take better photographs than
professionals? I must qualify invariably. My own negatives have always
represented a province of chaos and old night in which you might dimly
perceive fleecy spots of twilight, representing nothing; so that, if I am
right in supposing the portrait of your mother to be yours, I must salute
you as my superior. Is that your mother’s breakfast? Or is it only
afternoon tea? If the first, do let me recommend to Mrs. Barrie to add
an egg to her ordinary. Which, if you please, I will ask her to eat to
the honour of her son, and I am sure she will live much longer for it, to
enjoy his fresh successes. I never in my life saw anything more
deliciously characteristic. I declare I can hear her speak. I wonder my
mother could resist the temptation of your proposed visit to Kirriemuir,
which it was like your kindness to propose. By the way, I was twice in
Kirriemuir, I believe in the year ’71, when I was going on a visit to
Glenogil. It was Kirriemuir, was it not? I have a distinct recollection
of an inn at the end—I think the upper end—of an irregular open place or
square, in which I always see your characters evolve. But, indeed, I did
not pay much attention; being all bent upon my visit to a shooting-box,
where I should fish a real trout-stream, and I believe preserved. I did,
too, and it was a charming stream, clear as crystal, without a trace of
peat—a strange thing in Scotland—and alive with trout; the name of it I
cannot remember, it was something like the Queen’s River, and in some
hazy way connected with memories of Mary Queen of Scots. It formed an
epoch in my life, being the end of all my trout-fishing. I had always
been accustomed to pause and very laboriously to kill every fish as I
took it. But in the Queen’s River I took so good a basket that I forgot
these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower, under a bank,
to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold, there was the basketful
of trouts still kicking in their agony. I had a very unpleasant
conversation with my conscience. All that afternoon I persevered in
fishing, brought home my basket in triumph, and sometime that night, ‘in
the wee sma’ hours ayont the twal,’ I finally forswore the gentle craft
of fishing. I dare say your local knowledge may identify this historic
river; I wish it could go farther and identify also that particular Free
kirk in which I sat and groaned on Sunday. While my hand is in I must
tell you a story. At that antique epoch you must not fall into the
vulgar error that I was myself ancient. I was, on the contrary, very
young, very green, and (what you will appreciate, Mr. Barrie) very shy.
There came one day to lunch at the house two very formidable old
ladies—or one very formidable, and the other what you please—answering to
the honoured and historic name of the Miss C— A—’s of Balnamoon. At
table I was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales of
geese and bubbly-jocks. I was great in the expression of my terror for
these bipeds, and suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly
old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in
silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. ‘You give me
very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!’ I had very nearly left
two vices behind me at Glenogil—fishing and jesting at table. And of one
thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more opened at that meal.
_July_ 29_th_
No, Barrie, ’tis in vain they try to alarm me with their bulletins. No
doubt, you’re ill, and unco ill, I believe; but I have been so often in
the same case that I know pleurisy and pneumonia are in vain against
Scotsmen who can write, (I once could.) You cannot imagine probably how
near me this common calamity brings you. _Ce que j’ai toussé dans ma
vie_! How often and how long have I been on the rack at night and
learned to appreciate that noble passage in the Psalms when somebody or
other is said to be more set on something than they ‘who dig for hid
treasures—yea, than those who long for the morning’—for all the world, as
you have been racked and you have longed. Keep your heart up, and you’ll
do. Tell that to your mother, if you are still in any danger or
suffering. And by the way, if you are at all like me—and I tell myself
you are very like me—be sure there is only one thing good for you, and
that is the sea in hot climates. Mount, sir, into ‘a little frigot’ of
5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the tropics; and what if the
ancient mariner, who guides your frigot, should startle the silence of
the ocean with the cry of land ho!—say, when the day is dawning—and you
should see the turquoise mountain tops of Upolu coming hand over fist
above the horizon? Mr. Barrie, sir, ’tis then there would be larks! And
though I cannot be certain that our climate would suit you (for it does
not suit some), I am sure as death the voyage would do you good—would do
you _Best_—and if Samoa didn’t do, you needn’t stay beyond the month, and
I should have had another pleasure in my life, which is a serious
consideration for me. I take this as the hand of the Lord preparing your
way to Vailima—in the desert, certainly—in the desert of Cough and by the
ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever—but whither that way points there can be
no question—and there will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers
in spite of fate, fortune, and the Devil. _Absit omen_!
My dear Barrie, I am a little in the dark about this new work of yours
{347}: what is to become of me afterwards? You say carefully—methought
anxiously—that I was no longer me when I grew up? I cannot bear this
suspense: what is it? It’s no forgery? And AM I HANGIT? These are the
elements of a very pretty lawsuit which you had better come to Samoa to
compromise. I am enjoying a great pleasure that I had long looked
forward to, reading Orme’s _History of Indostan_; I had been looking out
for it everywhere; but at last, in four volumes, large quarto, beautiful
type and page, and with a delectable set of maps and plans, and all the
names of the places wrongly spelled—it came to Samoa, little Barrie. I
tell you frankly, you had better come soon. I am sair failed a’ready;
and what I may be if you continue to dally, I dread to conceive. I may
be speechless; already, or at least for a month or so, I’m little better
than a teetoller—I beg pardon, a teetotaller. It is not exactly
physical, for I am in good health, working four or five hours a day in my
plantation, and intending to ride a paper-chase next Sunday—ay, man,
that’s a fact, and I havena had the hert to breathe it to my mother
yet—the obligation’s poleetical, for I am trying every means to live well
with my German neighbours—and, O Barrie, but it’s no easy! To be sure,
there are many exceptions. And the whole of the above must be regarded
as private—strictly private. Breathe it not in Kirriemuir: tell it not
to the daughters of Dundee! What a nice extract this would make for the
daily papers! and how it would facilitate my position here! . . .
_August_ 5_th_.
This is Sunday, the Lord’s Day. ‘The hour of attack approaches.’ And it
is a singular consideration what I risk; I may yet be the subject of a
tract, and a good tract too—such as one which I remember reading with
recreant awe and rising hair in my youth, of a boy who was a very good
boy, and went to Sunday Schule, and one day kipped from it, and went and
actually bathed, and was dashed over a waterfall, and he was the only son
of his mother, and she was a widow. A dangerous trade, that, and one
that I have to practise. I’ll put in a word when I get home again, to
tell you whether I’m killed or not. ‘Accident in the (Paper) Hunting
Field: death of a notorious author. We deeply regret to announce the
death of the most unpopular man in Samoa, who broke his neck at the
descent of Magagi, from the misconduct of his little raving lunatic of an
old beast of a pony. It is proposed to commemorate the incident by the
erection of a suitable pile. The design (by our local architect, Mr.
Walker) is highly artificial, with a rich and voluminous Crockett at each
corner, a small but impervious Barrièer at the entrance, an arch at the
top, an Archer of a pleasing but solid character at the bottom; the
colour will be genuine William-Black; and Lang, lang may the ladies sit
wi’ their fans in their hands.’ Well, well, they may sit as they sat for
me, and little they’ll reck, the ungrateful jauds! Muckle they cared
about Tusitala when they had him! But now ye can see the difference;
now, leddies, ye can repent, when ower late, o’ your former cauldness and
what ye’ll perhaps allow me to ca’ your _tepeedity_! He was beautiful as
the day, but his day is done! And perhaps, as he was maybe gettin’ a wee
thing fly-blawn, it’s nane too shüne.
_Monday_, _August_ 6_th_.
Well, sir, I have escaped the dangerous conjunction of the widow’s only
son and the Sabbath Day. We had a most enjoyable time, and Lloyd and I
were 3 and 4 to arrive; I will not tell here what interval had elapsed
between our arrival and the arrival of 1 and 2; the question, sir, is
otiose and malign; it deserves, it shall have no answer. And now without
further delay to the main purpose of this hasty note. We received and we
have already in fact distributed the gorgeous fahbrics of Kirriemuir.
Whether from the splendour of the robes themselves, or from the direct
nature of the compliments with which you had directed us to accompany the
presentations, one young lady blushed as she received the proofs of your
munificence. . . . Bad ink, and the dregs of it at that, but the heart in
the right place. Still very cordially interested in my Barrie and
wishing him well through his sickness, which is of the body, and long
defended from mine, which is of the head, and by the impolite might be
described as idiocy. The whole head is useless, and the whole sitting
part painful: reason, the recent Paper Chase.
There was racing and chasing in Vailile plantation,
And vastly we enjoyed it,
But, alas! for the state of my foundation,
For it wholly has destroyed it.
Come, my mind is looking up. The above is wholly impromptu.—On oath,