MY DEAR COLVIN, - Since I last laid down my pen, I have
written and rewritten THE BEACH OF FALESA; something like
sixty thousand words of sterling domestic fiction (the story,
you will understand, is only half that length); and now I
don't want to write any more again for ever, or feel so; and
I've got to overhaul it once again to my sorrow. I was all
yesterday revising, and found a lot of slacknesses and (what
is worse in this kind of thing) some literaryisms. One of
the puzzles is this: It is a first person story - a trader
telling his own adventure in an island. When I began I
allowed myself a few liberties, because I was afraid of the
end; now the end proved quite easy, and could be done in the
pace; so the beginning remains about a quarter tone out (in
places); but I have rather decided to let it stay so. The
problem is always delicate; it is the only thing that worries
me in first person tales, which otherwise (quo' Alan) 'set
better wi' my genius.' There is a vast deal of fact in the
story, and some pretty good comedy. It is the first
realistic South Sea story; I mean with real South Sea
character and details of life. Everybody else who has tried,
that I have seen, got carried away by the romance, and ended
in a kind of sugar-candy sham epic, and the whole effect was
lost - there was no etching, no human grin, consequently no
conviction. Now I have got the smell and look of the thing a
good deal. You will know more about the South Seas after you
have read my little tale than if you had read a library. As
to whether any one else will read it, I have no guess. I am
in an off time, but there is just the possibility it might
make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic, and there