No. 9 - p. 2

(27 Jan. '95)

done for these Samoans. Obviously that is what he would have liked of his countrymen beyond all the honours, but it is so difficult to make people here take their affairs seriously. They are less real to Englishmen than Alan Breck. They seem to look upon them as a sort of picturesque background to Vailima. Balfour must have seen this when he was here and no doubt you have often discussed it. The news of Louis's death came to me in a telegram to a Cornish village where I have been staying, and was put into my hands just as I had finished some verses to him about his Edinburgh edition, lively verses too. It was a pretty painful shock, & you know how many of us would not believe it. I saw one foolish letter in the papers on the subject, but doubtless written in excitement that gave it a form not intended. In his last letter to me he said that he had finished "St. Ives" but it was short & not important. Of the Justice Clerk he wrote full of hope, & I was glad you told what he had said of it hurriedly on the last day. I am hoping that it is in an advanced state & that you know how it was to go. I suppose you will finish it and probably that would be wiser than to publish it incomplete. But I write too much from the outside to press this view. One thing I feel strongly about is the biography that must come. You who knew his life from day to day at Vailima almost as Powell knew Johnson's, and there are so many letters, the auto-biographical material is so rich, this diary he is said to have posted to Colvin should be so valuable. It seems to me that a really big book of biography is again possible.

If we had come straight to you when we married we should have seen him, and because we did not I missed a great joy for ever. But tho' it has been a sad blow to me, I haven't myself to blame, as I

No. 9 - p. 3 (27 Jn. '95)

should never have hesitated about coming had not the health of my
mother kept me here. And I always realised that something might
happen. I should like to know whether you are all to make your
home in Samoa still. I feel so sorry for your mother & his mother,
it is pitiful that any of us should think of our loss beside theirs.

Yours ever,

J. M. Barrie