to James Payn

February 4th, 1890, SS. ‘Lübeck.’

MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,—In virtue of confessions in your last, you would at the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and I will ask you to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write.  Excuse a plain seaman if he regards with scorn the likes of you pore land-lubbers ashore now.  (Reference to nautical ditty.)  Which I may however be allowed to add that when eight months’ mail was laid by my side one evening in Apia, and my wife and I sat up the most of the night to peruse the same—(precious indisposed we were next day in consequence)—no letter, out of so many, more appealed to our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud, land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James Payn.  Thank you for it; my wife says, ‘Can’t I see him when we get back to London?’  I have told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of practical politix.  (Why can’t I spell and write like an honest, sober, god-fearing litry gent?  I think it’s the motion of the ship.)  Here I was interrupted to play chess with the chief engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the ‘athletic sport of cribbage,’ of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been reading in your delightful Literary Recollections.  How you skim along, you and Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out loud.  I joke wi’ deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I am, Mrs. Oliphant says I’m vulgar, and somebody else says (in Latin) that I’m a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for: I shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s. shocker.

My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign sanity.  Sometime in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten man, evidently of seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending his way between the Athenæum Club and Waterloo Place.  Arrived off No. 17, he shall be observed to bring his head sharply to the wind, and tack into the outer haven.  ‘Captain Payn in the harbour?’—‘Ay, ay, sir.  What ship?’—‘Barquentin R. L. S., nine hundred and odd days out from the port of Bournemouth, homeward bound, with yarns and curiosities.’

Who was it said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t speak of it!’ about Scott and his tears?  He knew what he was saying.  The fear of that hour is the skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime and the livelihood go together; and—I am getting hard of hearing myself; a pore young child of forty, but new come frae my Mammy, O!

Excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my regards.—Yours affectionately,

R. L. Stevenson.