to Charles Baxter

Honolulu, 8th March 1889.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—At last I have the accounts: the Doer has done excellently, and in the words of —, ‘I reciprocate every step of your behaviour.’ . .  I send a letter for Bob in your care, as I don’t know his Liverpool address, by which (for he is to show you part of it) you will see we have got out of this adventure—or hope to have—with wonderful fortune.  I have the retrospective horrors on me when I think of the liabilities I incurred; but, thank God, I think I’m in port again, and I have found one climate in which I can enjoy life.  Even Honolulu is too cold for me; but the south isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir, catarrhal party like Johns’one.  We think, as Tahiti is too complete a banishment, to try Madeira.  It’s only a week from England, good communications, and I suspect in climate and scenery not unlike our dear islands; in people, alas! there can be no comparison.  But friends could go, and I could come in summer, so I should not be quite cut off.

Lloyd and I have finished a story, The Wrong Box.  If it is not funny, I am sure I do not know what is.  I have split over writing it.  Since I have been here, I have been toiling like a galley slave: three numbers of The Master to rewrite, five chapters of the Wrong Box to write and rewrite, and about five hundred lines of a narrative poem to write, rewrite, and re-rewrite.  Now I have The Master waiting me for its continuation, two numbers more; when that’s done, I shall breathe.  This spasm of activity has been chequered with champagne parties: Happy and Glorious, Hawaii Ponoi paua: kou moi—(Native Hawaiians, dote upon your monarch!) Hawaiian God save the King.  (In addition to my other labours, I am learning the language with a native moonshee.)  Kalakaua is a terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to him, he thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for dinner.  You should see a photograph of our party after an afternoon with H. H. M.: my! what a crew!—Yours ever affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.