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.