_Vailima_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_ [_August_ 11, 1894].
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—I hear from Lang that you are unwell, and it reminds
me of two circumstances: First, that it is a very long time since you had
the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and second, that I have been
very often unwell myself, and sometimes had to thank you for a grateful
anodyne.
They are not good, the circumstances, to write an anodyne letter. The
hills and my house at less than (boom) a minute’s interval quake with
thunder; and though I cannot hear that part of it, shells are falling
thick into the fort of Luatuanu’u (boom). It is my friends of the
_Curaçoa_, the _Falke_, and the _Bussard_ bombarding (after all
these—boom—months) the rebels of Atua. (Boom-boom.) It is most
distracting in itself; and the thought of the poor devils in their fort
(boom) with their bits of rifles far from pleasant. (Boom-boom.) You
can see how quick it goes, and I’ll say no more about Mr. Bow-wow, only
you must understand the perpetual accompaniment of this discomfortable
sound, and make allowances for the value of my copy. It is odd, though,
I can well remember, when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I was in
Eilean Earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest cannonade, I
could _hear_ the shots fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a man
struck. It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the
heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for
agony. And now, when I can hear the actual concussion of the air and
hills, when I _know_ personally the people who stand exposed to it, I am
able to go on _tant bien que mal_ with a letter to James Payn! The
blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. I have heard a
great deal of them since I came into the world, and now that I begin to
taste of them—Well! But this is one, that people do get cured of the
excess of sensibility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as
myself—or almost, for then I should have some of the fun, such as it is.
You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gallery room, shaken
by these continual spasms of cannon, and with my eye more or less singly
fixed on the imaginary figure of my dear James Payn. I try to see him in
bed; no go. I see him instead jumping up in his room in Waterloo Place
(where _ex hypothesi_ he is not), sitting on the table, drawing out a
very black briar-root pipe, and beginning to talk to a slim and
ill-dressed visitor in a voice that is good to hear and with a smile that
is pleasant to see. (After a little more than half an hour, the voice
that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade is over.) And I am
thinking how I can get an answering smile wafted over so many leagues of
land and water, and can find no way.
I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one of the sick I
visited was W. E. Henley, which did not make very tedious visits, so I’ll
not get off much purgatory for them. That was in the Edinburgh
Infirmary, the old one, the true one, with Georgius Secundus standing and
pointing his toe in a niche of the façade; and a mighty fine building it
was! And I remember one winter’s afternoon, in that place of misery,
that Henley and I chanced to fall in talk about James Payn himself. I am
wishing you could have heard that talk! I think that would make you
smile. We had mixed you up with John Payne, for one thing, and stood
amazed at your extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another,
we found ourselves each students so well prepared for examinations on the
novels of the real Mackay. Perhaps, after all, this is worth something
in life—to have given so much pleasure to a pair so different in every
way as were Henley and I, and to be talked of with so much interest by
two such (beg pardon) clever lads!
The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you;
so, I’m sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations.
I can’t say, ‘Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!’
when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, ‘But it is my leg
that is broken.’ This is a pity. But there are consolations. You are
an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been
made C.B.; your hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you
did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an æsthete;
you never contributed to —_’s Journal_; your name is not Jabez Balfour;
you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I
understand you to have lived within your income—why, cheer up! here are
many legitimate causes of congratulation. I seem to be writing an
obituary notice. _Absit omen_! But I feel very sure that these
considerations will have done you more good than medicine.
By the by, did you ever play piquet? I have fallen a victim to this
debilitating game. It is supposed to be scientific; God save the mark,
what self-deceivers men are! It is distinctly less so than cribbage.
But how fascinating! There is such material opulence about it, such vast
ambitions may be realised—and are not; it may be called the Monte Cristo
of games. And the thrill with which you take five cards partakes of the
nature of lust—and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and
nine of a suit that you discarded, and O! but the world is a desert! You
may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to piquet! There
has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or two ago I
was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have been anything
from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two hundred astern. If
I have a sixième, my beast of a partner has a septième; and if I have
three aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves (excuse the
slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of tens!—I remain, my dear
James Payn, your sincere and obliged friend—old friend let me say,