SUNDAY, SEPT. 5 (?), 1891.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Yours from Lochinver has just come. You ask me if I am ever homesick for the Highlands and the Isles.
Conceive that for the last month I have been living there between 1786 and 1850, in my grandfather's diaries and letters. I HAD to take a rest; no use talking; so I put in a month over my LIVES OF THE STEVENSONS with great pleasure and profit and some advance; one chapter and a part drafted. The whole promises well Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter II.
The Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A Family of Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas Stevenson. My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. A SCOTTISH FAMILY, A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS, NORTHERN LIGHTS, THE ENGINEERS OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS: A FAMILY HISTORY. Advise; but it will take long.
Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, and the Wells of the Pentland Firth; I could have wept.
Now for politics. I am much less alarmed; I believe the MALO (=RAJ, government) will collapse and cease like an overlain infant, without a shot fired. They have now been months here on their big salaries - and Cedarcrantz, whom I specially like as a man, has done nearly nothing, and the Baron, who is well-meaning, has done worse. They have these large salaries, and they have all the taxes; they have made scarce a foot of road; they have not given a single native a position - all to white men; they have scarce laid out a penny on Apia, and scarce a penny on the King; they have forgot they were in Samoa, or that such a thing as Samoans existed, and had eyes and some intelligence. The Chief Justice has refused to pay his customs! The President proposed to have an expensive house built for himself, while the King, his master, has none! I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, above all, a silent subject, up to then; but now I snap my fingers at their MALO. It is damned, and I'm damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last 'WAINIU,' when I sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news that the Chief Justice is going to Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. I showed my way of thought to his guest, Count Wachtmeister, whom I have sent to you with a letter - he will tell you all the news. Well, the Chief Justice stayed, but they said he was to leave yesterday. I had intended to go down, and see and warn him! But the President's house had come up in the meanwhile, and I let them go to their doom, which I am only anxious to see swiftly and (if it may be) bloodlessly fall.
Thus I have in a way withdrawn my unrewarded loyalty. Lloyd is down to-day with Moors to call on Mataafa; the news of the excursion made a considerable row in Apia, and both the German and the English consuls besought Lloyd not to go. But he stuck to his purpose, and with my approval. It's a poor thing if people are to give up a pleasure party for a MALO that has never done anything for us but draw taxes, and is going to go pop, and leave us at the mercy of the identical Mataafa, whom I have not visited for more than a year, and who is probably furious.
The sense of my helplessness here has been rather bitter; I feel it wretched to see this dance of folly and injustice and unconscious rapacity go forward from day to day, and to be impotent. I was not consulted - or only by one man, and that on particular points; I did not choose to volunteer advice till some pressing occasion; I have not even a vote, for I am not a member of the municipality.
What ails you, miserable man, to talk of saving material? I have a whole world in my head, a whole new society to work, but I am in no hurry; you will shortly make the acquaintance of the Island of Ulufanua, on which I mean to lay several stories; the BLOODY WEDDING, possibly the HIGH WOODS - (O, it's so good, the High Woods, but the story is craziness; that's the trouble,) - a political story, the LABOUR SLAVE, etc. Ulufanua is an imaginary island; the name is a beautiful Samoan word for the TOP of a forest; ulu - leaves or hair, fanua=land. The ground or country of the leaves.
'Ulufanua the isle of the sea,' read that verse dactylically and you get the beat; the u's are like our double oo; did ever you hear a prettier word?
I do not feel inclined to make a volume of Essays, but if I did, and perhaps the idea is good - and any idea is better than South Seas - here would be my choice of the Scribner articles: DREAMS, BEGGARS, LANTERN-BEARERS, RANDOM MEMORIES.
There was a paper called the OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL in Fraser, in Tulloch's time, which had merit; there were two on Fontainebleau in the MAGAZINE OF ART in Henley's time. I have no idea if they're any good; then there's the EMIGRANT TRAIN. PULVIS ET UMBRA is in a different key, and wouldn't hang on with the rest.
I have just interrupted my letter and read through the chapter of the HIGH WOODS that is written, a chapter and a bit, some sixteen pages, really very fetching, but what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so steep, so silly - it's a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never did a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily TRUE; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence.