A LETTER TO ADELAIDE BOODLE
HONOLULU, APRIL 6th, 1889
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, -- Nobody writes a better
letter than my Gamekeeper: so gay, so pleasant,
so engagingly particular, answering (by some
delicate instinct) all the questions she suggests.
It is a shame you should get such a poor return
as I can make, from a mind essentially and
originally incapable of the art epistolary. I
would let the paper-cutter take my place; but I
am sorry to say the little wooden seaman did
after the manner of seamen, and deserted in the
Societies. The place he seems to have stayed
at -- seems, for his absence was not observed
till we were near the Equator -- was Tautira,
and, I assure you, he displayed good taste,
Tautira being as "nigh hand heaven" as a
paper-cutter or anybody has a right to expect.
I think all our friends will be very angry with
us, and I give the grounds of their probable
displeasure bluntly -- we are not coming home
for another year. My mother returns next month.
Fanny, Lloyd, and I push on again among the
islands on a trading schooner, the Equator --
first for the Gilbert group, which we shall have
an opportunity to explore thoroughly; then, if
occasion serve, to the Marshalls and Carolines;
and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, and
back to Tahiti. I own we are deserters, but we
have excuses. You cannot conceive how these
climates agree with the wretched house-plant
of Skerryvore: he wonders to find himself
sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose,
like a grown-up person. They agree with Fanny
too, who does not suffer from her rheumatism,
and with Lloyd also. And the interest of the
islands is endless; and the sea, though I own
it is a fearsome place, is very delightful.
We had applied for places in the American
missionary ship, the Morning Star, but this
trading schooner is a far preferable idea,
giving us more time and a thousandfold more
liberty; so we determined to cut off the
missionaries with a shilling.
The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very
much; we live here, oppressed with civilisation,
and look for good things in the future. But
it would surprise you if you came out to-night
from Honolulu (all shining with electric lights,
and all in a bustle from the arrival of the
mail, which is to carry you these lines) and
crossed the long wooden causeway along the
beach, and came out on the road through Kapiolani
park, and seeing a gate in the palings, with a
tub of gold-fish by the wayside, entered
casually in. The buildings stand in three
groups by the edge of the beach, where an angry
little spitfire sea continually spirts and
thrashes with impotent irascibility, the big
seas breaking further out upon the reef. The
first is a small house, with a very large summer
parlour, or lanai, as they call it here, roofed,
but practically open. There you will find the
lamps burning and the family sitting about the
table, dinner just done: my mother, my wife,
Lloyd, Belle, my wife's daughter, Austin her
child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest.
All about the walls our South Sea curiosities,
war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes,
etc.; and the walls are only a small part of
a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed
windows, or mere open space. You will see
there no sign of the Squire, however; and
being a person of a humane disposition, you
will only glance in over the balcony railing
at the merry-makers in the summer parlour, and
proceed further afield after the Exile. You
look round, there is beautiful green turf,
many trees of an outlandish sort that drop
thorns -- look out if your feet are bare;
but I beg your pardon, you have not been long
enough in the South Seas -- and many oleanders
in full flower. The next group of buildings
is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out
a coach-house door, and look in -- only some
cocoanuts; you try round to the left and come
to the sea front, where Venus and the moon
are making luminous tracks on the water, and
a great swell rolls and shines on the outer
reef; and here is another door -- all these
places open from the outside -- and you go
in, and find photography, tubs of water,
negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and
an inkbottle, where my wife is supposed to
write; round a little further, a third door,
entering which you find a picture upon the
easel and a table sticky with paints; a
fourth door admits you to a sort of court,
where there is a hen sitting -- I believe
on a fallacious egg. No sign of the Squire
in all this. But right opposite the studio
door you have observed a third little house,
from whose open door lamplight streams and
makes hay of the strong moonlight shadows.
You had supposed it made no part of the
grounds, for a fence runs round it lined
with oleander; but as the Squire is nowhere
else, is it not just possible he may be
here? It is a grim little wooden shanty;
cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit
its recesses; the mailed cockroach walks
upon the wall; so also, I regret to say,
the scorpion. Herein are two pallet beds,
two mosquito curtains, strung to the
pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden
with books and manuscripts, three chairs,
and, in one of the beds, the Squire busy
writing to yourself, as it chances, and just
at this moment somewhat bitten by mosquitoes.
He has just set fire to the insect powder,
and will be all right in no time; but just
now he contemplates large white blisters,
and would like to scratch them, but knows
better. The house is not bare; it has been
inhabited by Kanakas, and -- you know what
children are! -- the bare wood walls are
pasted over with pages from the Graphic,
Harper's Weekly, etc. The floor is matted,
and I am bound to say the matting is filthy.
There are two windows and two doors, one
of which is condemned; on the panels of
that last a sheet of paper is pinned up,
and covered with writing. I cull a few plums:--
"A duck-hammock for each person.
A patent organ like the commandant's at Taiohae.
Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
Revolvers.
Permanganate of potass.
Liniment for the head and sulphur.
Fine tooth-comb."
What do you think this is? Simply life
in the South Seas foreshortened. These
are a few of our desiderata for the next
trip, which we jot down as they occur.
There, I have really done my best and tried
to send something like a letter -- one letter
in return for all your dozens. Pray remember
us all to yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and the rest
of your house. I do hope your mother will be
better when this comes. I shall write and
give you a new address when I have made up
my mind as to the most probable, and I do
beg you will continue to write from time to
time and give us airs from home. To-morrow
-- think of it -- I must be off by a quarter
to eight to drive into the palace and breakfast
with his Hawaiian Majesty at 8.30: I shall
be dead indeed. Please give my news to Scott,
I trust he is better; give him my warm regards.
To you we all send all kinds of things, and
I am the absentee Squire,
Robert Louis Stevenson
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