Vailima Letters Part 15

CHAPTER XXIV

_Dec._ 1_st_.

MY DEAR COLVIN,-Another grimy little odd and end of paper, for which you shall be this month repaid in kind, and serve you jolly well right. . . .

The new house is roofed; it will be a braw house, and what is better, I have my yearly bill in, and I find I can pay for it. For all which mercies, etc. I must have made close on 4,000 this year all told; but, what is not so pleasant, I seem to have come near to spending them. I have been in great alarm, with this new house on the cards, all summer, and came very near to taking in sail, but I live here so entirely on credit, that I determined to hang on.

_Dec._ 1_st_.

I was saying yesterday that my life was strange and did not think how well I spoke. Yesterday evening I was briefed to defend a political prisoner before the Deputy Commissioner. What do you think of that for a vicissitude?

_Dec._ 3_rd_.

Now for a confession. When I heard you and Ca.s.sells had decided to print _The Bottle Imp_ along with _Falesa_, I was too much disappointed to answer. _The Bottle Imp_ was the _piece de resistance_ for my volume, _Island Nights' Entertainments_. However, that volume might have never got done; and I send you two others in case they should be in time.

First have the _Beach of Falesa_.

Then a fresh false t.i.tle: ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS; and then

_The Bottle Imp_: a cue from an old melodrama.

_The Isle of Voices_.

_The Waif Woman_; a cue from a _saga_.

Of course these two others are not up to the mark of _The Bottle Imp_; but they each have a certain merit, and they fit in style. By saying 'a cue from an old melodrama' after the B. I., you can get rid of my note.

If this is in time, it will be splendid, and will make quite a volume.

Should you and Ca.s.sells prefer, you can call the whole volume _I. N.

E._-though the _Beach of Falesa_ is the child of a quite different inspiration. They all have a queer realism, even the most extravagant, even the _Isle of Voices_; the manners are exact.

Should they come too late, have them type-written, and return to me here the type-written copies.

_Sunday_, _Dec._ 4_th_.

3rd start,-But now more humbly and with the aid of an Amanuensis. First one word about page 2. My wife protests against the Waif-woman and I am instructed to report the same to you. . . .

_Dec._ 5_th_.

A horrid alarm rises that our October mail was burned crossing the Plains. If so, you lost a beautiful long letter-I am sure it was beautiful though I remember nothing about it-and I must say I think it serves you properly well. That I should continue writing to you at such length is simply a vicious habit for which I blush. At the same time, please communicate at once with Charles Baxter whether you have or have not received a letter posted here Oct. 12th, as he is going to cable me the fate of my mail.

Now to conclude my news. The German Firm have taken my book like angels, and the result is that Lloyd and I were down there at dinner on Sat.u.r.day, where we partook of fifteen several dishes and eight distinct forms of intoxicating drink. To the credit of Germany, I must say there was not a shadow of a headache the next morning. I seem to have done as well as my neighbours, for I hear one of the clerks expressed the next morning a gratified surprise that Mr. Stevenson stood his drink so well. It is a strange thing that any race can still find joy in such athletic exercises. I may remark in pa.s.sing that the mail is due and you have had far more than you deserve.

R. L. S.

CHAPTER XXV

_January_ 1893.

MY DEAR COLVIN,-You are properly paid at last, and it is like you will have but a shadow of a letter. I have been pretty thoroughly out of kilter; first a fever that would neither come on nor go off, then acute dyspepsia, in the weakening grasp of which I get wandering between the waking state and one of nightmare. Why the devil does no one send me _Atalanta_? And why are there no proofs of D. Balfour? Sure I should have had the whole, at least the half, of them by now; and it would be all for the advantage of the Atalantans. I have written to Ca.s.sell & Co.

(matter of _Falesa_) 'you will please arrange with him' (meaning you).

'What he may decide I shall abide.' So consider your hand free, and act for me without fear or favour. I am greatly pleased with the ill.u.s.trations. It is very strange to a South-Seayer to see Hawaiian women dressed like Samoans, but I guess that's all one to you in Middles.e.x. It's about the same as if London city men were shown going to the Stock Exchange as _pifferari_; but no matter, none will sleep worse for it. I have accepted Ca.s.sell's proposal as an amendment to one of mine; that _D. B._ is to be brought out first under the t.i.tle _Catriona_ without pictures; and, when the hour strikes, _Kidnapped_ and _Catriona_ are to form vols. I. and II. of the heavily ill.u.s.trated 'Adventures of David Balfour' at 7s. 6d. each, sold separately.

-'s letter was vastly sly and dry and shy. I am not afraid now. Two attempts have been made, both have failed, and I imagine these failures strengthen me. Above all this is true of the last, where my weak point was attempted. On every other, I am strong. Only force can dislodge me, for public opinion is wholly on my side. All races and degrees are united in heartfelt opposition to the Men of Mulinuu. The news of the fighting was of no concern to mortal man; it was made much of because men love talk of battles, and because the Government pray G.o.d daily for some scandal not their own; but it was only a brisk episode in a clan fight which has grown apparently endemic in the west of Tutuila. At the best it was a twopenny affair, and never occupied my mind five minutes.

I am so weary of reports that are without foundation and threats that go without fulfilment, and so much occupied besides by the raging troubles of my own wame, that I have been very slack on politics, as I have been in literature. With incredible labour, I have rewritten the First Chapter of the Justice Clerk; it took me about ten days, and requires another athletic dressing after all. And that is my story for the month.

The rest is grunting and grutching.

Consideranda for _The Beach_:-

I. Whether to add one or both the tales I sent you?

II. Whether to call the whole volume 'Island Nights Entertainments'?

III. Whether, having waited so long, it would not be better to give me another mail, in case I could add another member to the volume and a little better justify the name?

If I possibly can draw up another story, I will. What annoyed me about the use of _The Bottle Imp_ was that I had always meant it for the centre-piece of a volume of _Marchen_ which I was slowly to elaborate.

You always had an idea that I depreciated the B. I; I can't think wherefore; I always particularly liked it-one of my best works, and ill to equal; and that was why I loved to keep it in portfolio till I had time to grow up to some other fruit of the same _venue_. However, that is disposed of now, and we must just do the best we can.

I am not aware that there is anything to add; the weather is h.e.l.lish, waterspouts, mists, chills, the foul fiend's own weather, following on a week of expurgated heaven; so it goes at this bewildering season. I write in the upper floor of my new house, of which I will send you some day a plan to measure. 'Tis an elegant structure, surely, and the proid of me oi. Was asked to pay for it just now, and genteelly refused, and then agreed, in view of general good-will, to pay a half of what is still due.

24_th_ _January_ 1893.

This ought to have gone last mail and was forgotten. My best excuse is that I was engaged in starting an influenza, to which cla.s.s of exploit our household has been since then entirely dedicated. We had eight cases, one of them very bad, and one-mine-complicated with my old friend Bluidy Jack. Luckily neither f.a.n.n.y, Lloyd or Belle took the confounded thing, and they were able to run the household and nurse the sick to admiration.

Some of our boys behaved like real trumps. Perhaps the prettiest performance was that of our excellent Henry Simele, or, as we sometimes call him, Davy Balfour. Henry, I maun premeese, is a chief; the humblest Samoan recoils from emptying slops as you would from cheating at cards; now the last nights of our bad time when we had seven down together, it was enough to have made anybody laugh or cry to see Henry going the rounds with a slop-bucket and going inside the mosquito net of each of the sick, Protestant and Catholic alike, to pray with them.

I must tell you that in my sickness I had a huge alleviation and began a new story. This I am writing by dictation, and really think it is an art I can manage to acquire. The relief is beyond description; it is just like a school-treat to me and the amanuensis bears up extraordinar'. The story is to be called _St. Ives_; I give you your choice whether or not it should bear the subt.i.tle, 'Experiences of a French prisoner in England.' We were just getting on splendidly with it, when this cursed mail arrived and requires to be attended to. It looks to me very like as if St. Ives would be ready before any of the others, but you know me and how impossible it is I should predict. The Amanuensis has her head quite turned and believes herself to be the author of this novel (and is to some extent)-and as the creature (!) has not been wholly useless in the matter (I told you so! A.M.) I propose to foster her vanity by a little commemoration gift! The name of the hero is Anne de St. Yves-he Englishes his name to St. Ives during his escape. It is my idea to get a ring made which shall either represent _Anne_ or A. S. Y. A., of course, would be Amethyst and S. Sapphire, which is my favourite stone anyway and was my father's before me. But what would the ex-Slade professor do about the letter Y? Or suppose he took the other version, how would he meet the case, the two N.'s? These things are beyond my knowledge, which it would perhaps be more descriptive to call ignorance. But I place the matter in the meanwhile under your consideration and beg to hear your views. I shall tell you on some other occasion and when the A.M. is out of hearing how _very_ much I propose to invest in this testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I intend it to be cheap, sir, d.a.m.ned cheap! My idea of running amanuenses is by praise, not pudding, flattery and not coins! I shall send you when the time is ripe a ring to measure by.

To resume our sad tale. After the other seven were almost wholly recovered Henry lay down to influenza on his own account. He is but just better and it looks as though f.a.n.n.y were about to bring up the rear. As for me, I am all right, though I _was_ reduced to dictating _Anne_ in the deaf and dumb alphabet, which I think you will admit is a _comble_.

Politics leave me extraordinary cold. It seems that so much of my purpose has come off, and Cedarcrantz and Pilsach are sacked. The rest of it has all gone to water. The triple-headed a.s.s at home, in his plenitude of ignorance, prefers to collect the taxes and scatter the Mataafas by force or the threat of force. It may succeed, and I suppose it will. It is none the less for that expensive, harsh, unpopular and unsettling. I am young enough to have been annoyed, and altogether eject and renegate the whole idea of political affairs. Success in that field appears to be the organisation of failure enlivened with defamation of character; and, much as I love pickles and hot water (in your true phrase) I shall take my pickles in future from Crosse and Blackwell and my hot water with a dose of good Glenlivat.