Union Club, Sydney, 1st September 1890.

MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—I find you have been behaving very ill: been very ill, in fact. I find this hard to forgive; probably should not forgive it at all if Robin Lewison had not been sick himself and a wretched sick-room prisoner in this club for near a month. Well, the best and bravest sometimes fail. But who is Miss Green? Don’t know her! I knew a lady of an exceedingly generous and perfervid nature—worthy to be suspected of Scotch blood for the pertervidness—equipped with a couple—perhaps a brace sounds better English—of perfervid eyes—with a certain graceful gaucherie of manner, almost like a child’s, and that is at once the highest point of gaucherie and grace—a friend everybody I ever saw was delighted to see come and sorry to see go. Yes, I knew that lady, and can see her now. But who was Miss Green? There is something amiss here. Either the Robin Lewisons have been very shabbily treated, or—and this is the serious part of the affair—somebody unknown to me has been entrusted with the key of the Skerryvore garret. This may go as far as the Old Bailey, ma’am.

But why should I gird at you or anybody, when the truth is we are the most miserable sinners in the world? For we are not coming home, I dare not. Even coming to Sydney has made me quite ill, and back I go to Samoa, whither please address—Apia, Samoa—(and remember it is Sámó-a, a spondee to begin with, or Sahmoa, if you prefer that writing)—back I and my wife go to Samoa to live on our landed estate with four black labour boys in a kind of a sort of house, which Lloyd will describe to you. For he has gone to England: receive him like a favour and a piece of cake; he is our greeting to friends.

I paused here to put in the date on the first page. I am precious nearly through my fortieth year, thinks I to myself. Must be nearly as old as Miss Green, thinks I. O, come! I exclaimed, not as bad as that! Some lees of youth about the old remnant yet.

My amiable Miss Green, I beg you to give me news of your health, and if it may be good news. And when you shall have seen Lloyd, to tell me how his reports of the South Seas and our new circumstances strike such an awfully old person as yourself, and to tell me if you ever received a letter I sent you from Hawaii. I remember thinking—or remember remembering rather—it was (for me) quite a long respectable communication. Also, you might tell me if you got my war-whoop and scalping-knife assault on le nommé Hyde.

I ought not to forget to say your tale fetched me (Miss Green) by its really vile probability. If we had met that man in Honolulu he would have done it, and Miss Green would have done it. Only, alas! there is no completed novel lying in the garret: would there were! It should be out to-morrow with the name to it, and relieve a kind of tightness in the money market much deplored in our immediate circle. To be sure (now I come to think of it) there are some seven chapters of The Great North Road; three, I think, of Robin Run the Hedge, given up when some nefarious person pre-empted the name; and either there—or somewhere else—likely New York—one chapter of David Balfour, and five or six of the Memoirs of Henry Shovel. That’s all. But Lloyd and I have one-half of The Wrecker in type, and a good part of The Pearl Fisher (O, a great and grisly tale that!) in MS. And I have a projected, entirely planned love-story—everybody will think it dreadfully improper, I’m afraid—called Cannonmills. And I’ve a vague, rosy haze before me—a love-story too, but not improper—called The Rising Sun. (It’s the name of the wayside inn where the story, or much of the story, runs; but it’s a kind of a pun: it means the stirring up of a boy by falling in love, and how he rises in the estimation of a girl who despised him, though she liked him, and had befriended him; I really scarce see beyond their childhood yet, but I want to go beyond, and make each out-top the other by successions: it should be pretty and true if I could do it.) Also I have my big book, The South Seas, always with me, and a sair handfu’—if I may be allowed to speak Scotch to Miss Green—a sair handfu’ it is likely to be. All this literary gossip I bestow upon you entre confrères, Miss Green, which is little more than fair, Miss Green.

Allow me to remark that it is now half-past twelve o’clock of the living night; I should certainly be ashamed of myself, and you also; for this is no time of the night for Miss Green to be colloguing with a comparatively young gentleman of forty. So with all the kindest wishes to yourself, and all at Lostock, and all friends in Hants, or over the borders in Dorset, I bring my folly to an end. Please believe, even when I am silent, in my real affection; I need not say the same for Fanny, more obdurately silent, not less affectionate than I.—Your friend,

Robert—Robin Lewison.

(Nearly had it wrong—force of habit.)

To Mrs. Charles Fairchild

Union Club, Sydney [September 1890].

MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,—I began a letter to you on board the Janet Nicoll on my last cruise, wrote, I believe, two sheets, and ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash. Your last has given me great pleasure and some pain, for it increased the consciousness of my neglect. Now, this must go to you, whatever it is like.

... It is always harshness that one regrets.... I regret also my letter to Dr. Hyde. Yes, I do; I think it was barbarously harsh; if I did it now, I would defend Damien no less well, and give less pain to those who are alive. These promptings of good-humour are not all sound; the three times three, cheer boys cheer, and general amiability business rests on a sneaking love of popularity, the most insidious enemy of virtue. On the whole, it was virtuous to defend Damien; but it was harsh to strike so hard at Dr. Hyde. When I wrote the letter, I believed he would bring an action, in which case I knew I could be beggared. And as yet there has come no action; the injured Doctor has contented himself up to now with the (truly innocuous) vengeance of calling me a “Bohemian Crank,” and I have deeply wounded one of his colleagues whom I esteemed and liked.

Well, such is life. You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of the globe. O, unhappy!—there is a big word and a false—continue to be not nearly—by about twenty per cent.—so happy as they might be: that would be nearer the mark.

When—observe that word, which I will write again and larger—WHEN you come to see us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a healthy and happy people.

You see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made, and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is undeniable that you must come—must is the word; that is the way in which I speak to ladies. You and Fairchild, anyway—perhaps my friend Blair—we’ll arrange details in good time. It will be the salvation of your souls, and make you willing to die.

Let me tell you this: In ’74 or 5 there came to stay with my father and mother a certain Mr. Seed, a prime minister or something of New Zealand. He spotted what my complaint was; told me that I had no business to stay in Europe; that I should find all I cared for, and all that was good for me, in the Navigator Islands; sat up till four in the morning persuading me, demolishing my scruples. And I resisted: I refused to go so far from my father and mother. O, it was virtuous, and O, wasn’t it silly! But my father, who was always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in 1890, I (or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator Islands. God go with us! It is but a Pisgah sight when all is said; I go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you will see it is a fair place for the purpose.

Flaubert38 has not turned up; I hope he will soon; I knew of him only through Maxime Descamps.—With kindest messages to yourself and all of yours, I remain

Robert Louis Stevenson.

END OF VOL. XXIV.

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