e place.

Our dearest love to you all.

FANNY.]

TO HENRY JAMES

_Honolulu [March 1889]._

MY DEAR JAMES,--Yes--I own up--I am untrue to friendship and (what is
less, but still considerable) to civilisation. I am not coming home for
another year. There it is, cold and bald, and now you won't believe in
me at all, and serve me right (says you) and the devil take me. But look
here, and judge me tenderly. I have had more fun and pleasure of my life
these past months than ever before, and more health than any time in ten
long years. And even here in Honolulu I have withered in the cold; and
this precious deep is filled with islands, which we may still visit; and
though the sea is a deathful place, I like to be there, and like
squalls (when they are over); and to draw near to a new island, I cannot
say how much I like. In short, I take another year of this sort of life,
and mean to try to work down among the poisoned arrows, and mean (if it
may be) to come back again when the thing is through, and converse with
Henry James as heretofore; and in the meanwhile issue directions to H.
J. to write to me once more. Let him address here at Honolulu, for my
views are vague; and if it is sent here it will follow and find me, if I
am to be found; and if I am not to be found, the man James will have
done his duty, and we shall be at the bottom of the sea, where no
post-office clerk can be expected to discover us, or languishing on a
coral island, the philosophic drudges of some barbarian potentate:
perchance, of an American Missionary. My wife has just sent to Mrs.
Sitwell a translation (_tant bien que mal_) of a letter I have had from
my chief friend in this part of the world: go and see her, and get a
hearing of it; it will do you good; it is a better method of
correspondence than even Henry James's. I jest, but seriously it is a
strange thing for a tough, sick, middle-aged scrivener like R. L. S. to
receive a letter so conceived from a man fifty years old, a leading
politician, a crack orator, and the great wit of his village: boldly
say, "the highly popular M.P. of Tautira." My nineteenth century strikes
here, and lies alongside of something beautiful and ancient. I think the
receipt of such a letter might humble, shall I say even ----? and for
me, I would rather have received it than written _Redgauntlet_ or the
sixth _AEneid_. All told, if my books have enabled or helped me to make
this voyage, to know Rui