As I said once before, "it is an
absurdity to speak of married people being one." Here we are an
indefinite number; and no jealousy, no ambitious exclusiveness,
mars the happiness of all. This is the Higher Life about which we
used ignorantly to talk. Here the gross temporal necessities are
satisfied with a breadfruit, a roasted fish, and a few pandanus
flowers. The rest is all climate and the affections.
Conceive, my dear Dean, the undisturbed felicity of life without
newspapers! Empires may fall, perhaps have fallen, since I left
Fleet Street; Alan Dunlop may be a ditcher in good earnest on an
estate no longer his; but here we fleet the time carelessly, as in
the golden world. And you ask me to join a raucous political
association for an object you detest in your heart, merely because
you want to swim with the turbid democratic current! You are an
historian, Maitland: did you ever know this policy succeed? Did
you ever know the respectables prosper when they allied themselves
with the vulgar? Ah, keep out of your second-hand revolutions.
Keep your hands clean, whether you keep your head on your shoulders
or not. You will never, I fear, be Bishop of Winkum, with all your
historical handbooks and all your Oxford Liberalism.
But I am losing my temper, for the first time since I discovered
Te-a-Iti. This must not be.--Yours regretfully,
PAUL RONDELET.
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