A LETTER TO HENRY JAMES
VAILIMA, (SAMOA), July 7th, 1894
DEAR HENRY JAMES, -- I am going to try and
dictate to you a letter or a note, and begin
the same without any spark of hope, my mind
being entirely in abeyance. This malady is
very bitter on the literary man. I have had
it now coming on for a month, and it seems
to get worse instead of better. If it should
prove to be softening of the brain, a melancholy
interest will attach to the present document.
I heard a great deal about you from my mother
and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that
you could take a First in any Samoan subject.
If that be so, I should like to hear you on
the theory of the constitution. Also to
consult you on the force of the particles
o lo' o and ua, which are the subject of a
dispute among local pundits. You might, if
you ever answer this, give me your opinion
on the origin of the Samoan race, just to
complete the favour.
They both say that you are looking well, and
I suppose I may conclude from that that you
are feeling passably. I wish I was. Do not
suppose from this that I am ill in body; it
is the numskull that I complain of. And when
that is wrong, as you must be very keenly
aware, you begin every day with a smarting
disappointment, which is not good for the
temper. I am in one of the humours when a man
wonders how any one can be such an ass as to
embrace the profession of letters, and not get
apprenticed to a barber or keep a baked-potato
stall. But I have no doubt in the course of
a week, or perhaps to-morrow, things will look
better.
We have at present in port the model warship
of Great Britain. She is called the Curacoa,
and has the nicest set of officers and men
conceivable. They, the officers, are all very
intimate with us, and the front verandah is
known as the Curacoa Club, and the road up to
Vailima is known as the Curacoa Track. It was
rather a surprise to me; many naval officers
have I known, and somehow had not learned to
think entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes
ask myself a little uneasily how that kind of
men could do great actions? and behold! the
answer comes to me, and I see a ship that I
would guarantee to go anywhere it was possible
for men to go, and accomplish anything it was
permitted man to attempt. I had a cruise on
board of her not long ago to Manu'a, and was
delighted. The goodwill of all on board; the
grim playfulness of -- quarters, with the
wounded falling down at the word; the ambulances
hastening up and carrying them away; the Captain
suddenly crying, "Fire in the ward-room!" and
the squad hastening forward with the hose; and
last and most curious spectacle of all, all the
men in their dust-coloured fatigue clothes, at
a note of the bugle, falling simultaneously
flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its
prostrate crew -- quasi to ram an enemy; our
dinner at night in a wild open anchorage, the
ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing
us alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and
then the wild broken cliffy palm-crested shores
of the island with the surf thundering and
leaping close aboard. We had the ward-room mess
on deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody, of
course, in uniform but myself, and the first
lieutenant (who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped
in a boat cloak. Gradually the sunset faded
out, the island disappeared from the eye,
though it remained menacingly present to the
ear with the voice of the surf; and then the
captain turned on the searchlight and gave us
the coast, the beach, the trees, the native
houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of daylight,
a kind of deliberate lightning. About which
time, I suppose, we must have come as far as
the dessert, and were probably drinking our
first glass of port to Her Majesty. We stayed
two days at the island, and had, in addition,
a very picturesque snapshot at the native life.
The three islands of Manu'a are independent,
and are ruled over by a little slip of a
half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all
day in a pink gown, in a little white European
house with about a quarter of an acre of roses
in front of it, looking at the palm-trees on
the village street, and listening to the surf.
This, so far as I could discover, was all she
had to do. "This is a very dull place," she
said. It appears she could go to no other
village for fear of raising the jealousy of
her own people in the capital. And as for
going about "tapatafaoing," as we say here,
its cost was too enormous. A strong able-bodied
native must walk in front of her and blow the
conch shell continuously from the moment she
leaves one house until the moment she enters
another. Did you ever blow the conch shell?
I presume not; but the sweat literally hailed
off that man, and I expected every moment to
see him burst a blood-vessel. We were
entertained to kava in the guest-house with
some very original features. The young men
who run for the kava have a right to misconduct
themselves ad libitum on the way back; and
though they were told to restrain themselves
on the occasion of our visit, there was a
strange hurly-burly at their return, when
they came beating the trees and the posts of
the houses, leaping, shouting, and yelling
like Bacchants.
I tasted on that occasion what it is to be
great. My name was called next after the
captain's, and several chiefs (a thing quite
new to me, and not at all Samoan practice)
drank to me by name.
And now, if you are not sick of the Curacoa
and Manu'a, I am, at least on paper. And I
decline any longer to give you examples of
how not to write.
By the by, you sent me long ago a work by
Anatole France, which I confess I did not
taste. Since then I have made the acquaintance
of the Abbe Coignard, and have become a
faithful adorer. I don't think a better
book was ever written.
And I have no idea what I have said, and I
have no idea what I ought to have said, and
I am a total ass, but my heart is in the
right place, and I am, my dear Henry James,
yours,
R. L. S.
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