Transcriber's Note
Footnotes have been placed at the end of each paragraph in which they
are referenced.
There are several captioned photographs, which are indicated as
[Illustration: Caption]. Hearn also included in his letters small
sketches. Their approximate positions are indicated with [Illustration].
Any handwritten text in those sketches is included here as captions.
Italic text is denoted with underscores as _italic_.
The occasional superscript is simply left inline (e.g., 'nth'). The use
of subscripts is limited to a single instance. The underscore character
indicates this: L_3 H_9 NG_4.
Some corrections were made where printer's errors were most likely,
as described in the Note at the end of the text. Other than those
corrections, no changes to spelling have been made. Hyphenation of
words at line or page breaks are removed if other instances of the word
warrant it.
This book was published in two volumes, of which this is the first.
The second volume was released as Project Gutenberg ebook #42313,
available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42313.
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| By Lafcadio Hearn |
| |
| THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY, AND OTHER STUDIES AND |
| STORIES. 12mo, gilt top, $1.25 _net._ Postage |
| extra. |
| |
| KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. With |
| two Japanese Illustrations. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. |
| |
| GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. |
| |
| KOKORO. Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life. 16mo, |
| gilt top, $1.25. |
| |
| OUT OF THE EAST. Reveries and Studies in New Japan. |
| 16mo, $1.25. |
| |
| GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt |
| top, $4.00. |
| |
| STRAY LEAVES FROM STRANGE LITERATURE. 16mo, $1.50. |
| |
| |
| HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. |
| BOSTON AND NEW YORK. |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
VOLUME I
[Illustration: Lafcadio Hearn]
THE LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
LAFCADIO HEARN
BY
ELIZABETH BISLAND
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
[Illustration: The Riverside Press]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ELIZABETH BISLAND WETMORE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published December 1906_
PREFACE
In the course of the preparation of these volumes there was gradually
accumulated so great a number of the letters written by Lafcadio Hearn
during twenty-five years of his life, and these letters proved of so
interesting a nature, that eventually the plan of the whole work was
altered. The original intention was that they should serve only to
illuminate the general text of the biography, but as their number and
value became more apparent it was evident that to reproduce them in full
would make the book both more readable and more illustrative of the
character of the man than anything that could possibly be related of
him.
No biographer could have so vividly pictured the modesty and
tender-heartedness, the humour and genius of the man as he has
unconsciously revealed these qualities in unstudied communications to
his friends. Happily--in these days when the preservation of letters is
a rare thing--almost every one to whom he wrote appeared instinctively
to treasure--even when he was still unknown--every one of his
communications, though here and there regrettable gaps occur, owing to
the accidents of changes of residence, three of which, as every one
knows, are more destructive of such treasures than a fire. To all of his
correspondents who have so generously contributed their treasured
letters I wish to express my sincere thanks. Especially is gratitude due
to Professor Masanubo Otani, of the Shinshu University of Tōkyō, for the
painstaking accuracy and fulness of the information he contributed as to
the whole course of Hearn's life in Japan.
The seven fragments of autobiographical reminiscence, discovered after
Hearn's death, added to the letters, narrowed my task to little more
than the recording of dates and such brief comments and explanations as
were required for the better comprehension of his own contributions to
the book.
Naturally some editing of the letters has been necessary. Such parts as
related purely to matters of business have been deleted as uninteresting
to the general public; many personalities, usually both witty and
trenchant, have been omitted, not only because such personalities are
matters of confidence between the writer and his correspondent, a
confidence which death does not render less inviolable, but also because
the dignity and privacy of the living have every claim to respect.
Robert Browning's just resentment at the indiscreet editing of the
FitzGerald Letters is a warning that should be heeded, and it is
moreover certain that Lafcadio Hearn himself would have been profoundly
unwilling to have any casual criticism of either the living or the dead
given public record. Of those who had been his friends he always spoke
with tenderness and respect, and I am but following what I know to be
his wishes in omitting all references to his enemies.
That such a definite and eccentric person as he should make enemies was
of course unavoidable. If any of these retain their enmity to one who
has passed into the sacred helplessness of death, and are inclined to
think that the mere outline sketch of the man contained in the following
pages lacks the veracity of shadow, my answer is this: In the first
place, I have taken heed of the opinion he himself has expressed in one
of his letters: "I believe we ought not to speak of the weaknesses of
very great men"--and the intention of such part of this book as is my
own is to give a history of the circumstances under which a great man
developed his genius. I have purposely ignored all such episodes as
seemed impertinent to this end, as from my point of view there seems a
sort of gross curiosity in raking among such details of a man's life as
he himself would wish ignored. These I gladly leave to those who enjoy
such labours.
In the second place, there is no art more difficult than that of making
a portrait satisfactory to every one, for the limner of a man, whether
he use pen or pigments, can--if he be honest--only transfer to the
canvas the lineaments as he himself sees them. _How_ he sees them
depends not only upon his own temperament, but also upon the aspect
which the subject of the picture would naturally turn towards such a
temperament. For every one of us is aware of a certain chameleon-like
quality within ourselves which causes us to take on a protective
colouring assimilative to our surroundings, and we all, like the husband
in Browning's verse,
"Boast two soul-sides," ...
which is the explanation, no doubt, of the apparently irreconcilable
impressions carried away by a man's acquaintances.
Which soul-side was the real man must finally resolve itself into a
matter of opinion. Henley, probably, honestly believed the real
Stevenson to be as he represented him, but the greater number of those
who knew and loved the artist will continue to form their estimate of
the man from his letters and books, and to them Henley's diatribe will
continue to seem but the outbreak of a mean jealousy, which could not
tolerate the lifting up of a companion for the world's admiration.
Of the subject of this memoir there certainly exists more than one
impression, but the writer can but depict the man as he revealed himself
throughout twenty years of intimate acquaintance, and for confirmation
of this opinion can only refer to the work he has left for all the world
to judge him by, and to the intimate revelations of thoughts, opinions,
and feelings contained in his letters.
E. B.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH
I. BOYHOOD 3
II. THE ARTIST'S APPRENTICESHIP 40
III. THE MASTER WORKMAN 103
IV. THE LAST STAGE 136
LETTERS 165
ILLUSTRATIONS
LAFCADIO HEARN (photogravure) _Frontispiece_
From a photograph taken about 1900.
LAFCADIO HEARN 50
From a photograph taken about 1873.
LAFCADIO HEARN AND MITCHELL MCDONALD 110
LAFCADIO HEARN 198
From a photograph taken in the '70's.
FACSIMILE OF MR. HEARN'S EARLIER HANDWRITING 340
SAINT-PIERRE AND MT. PELÉE 410
From a photograph in the possession of
Dr. T. A. Jaggar, Jr.
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH
CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD
Lafcadio Hearn was born on the twenty-seventh of June, in the year 1850.
He was a native of the Ionian Isles, the place of his birth being the
Island of Santa Maura, which is commonly called in modern Greek Levkas,
or Lefcada, a corruption of the name of the old Leucadia, which was
famous as the place of Sappho's self-destruction. This island is
separated from the western coast of Greece by a narrow strait; the neck
of land which joined it to the mainland having been cut through by the
Corinthians seven centuries before Christ. To this day it remains deeply
wooded, and scantily populated, with sparse vineyards and olive groves
clinging to the steep sides of the mountains overlooking the blue Ionian
sea. The child Lafcadio may have played in his early years among the
high-set, half-obliterated ruins of the Temple of Apollo, from whence
offenders were cast down with multitudes of birds tied to their limbs,
that perchance the beating of a thousand wings might break the violence
of the fall, and so rescue them from the last penalty of expiation.
In this place of old tragedies and romance the child was born into a
life always to be shadowed by tragedy and romance to an extent almost
fantastic in our modern workaday world. This wild, bold background,
swimming in the half-tropical blue of Greek sea and sky, against which
the boy first discerned the vague outlines of his conscious life, seems
to have silhouetted itself behind all his later memories and
prepossessions, and through whatever dark or squalid scenes his
wanderings led, his heart was always filled by dreams and longings for
soaring outlines, and the blue, "which is the colour of the idea of the
divine, the colour pantheistic, the colour ethical."
Long years afterward, in the "Dream of a Summer Day," he says:--
"I have memory of a place and a magical time, in which the sun and the
moon were larger and brighter than now. Whether it was of this life or
of some life before, I cannot tell, but I know the sky was very much
more blue, and nearer to the world--almost as it seems to become above
the masts of a steamer steaming into equatorial summer.... The sea was
alive and used to talk--and the Wind made me cry out for joy when it
touched me. Once or twice during other years, in divine days lived among
the peaks, I have dreamed for a moment the same wind was blowing--but it
was only a remembrance.
"Also in that place the clouds were wonderful and of colours for which
there are no names at all,--colours that used to make me hungry and
thirsty. I remember, too, that the days were ever so much longer than
these days,--and every day there were new pleasures and new wonders for
me. And all that country and time were softly ruled by One who thought
only of ways to make me happy.... When day was done, and there fell the
great hush of light before moonrise, she would tell me stories that made
me tingle from head to foot with pleasure. I have never heard any other
stories half so beautiful. And when the pleasure became too great, she
would sing a weird little song which always brought sleep. At last there
came a parting day; and she wept and told me of a charm she had given
that I must never, never lose, because it would keep me young, and give
me power to return. But I never returned. And the years went; and one
day I knew that I had lost the charm, and had become ridiculously old."
A strange mingling of events and of race-forces had brought the boy into
being.
Surgeon-Major Charles Bush Hearn, of the 76th Foot, came of an old
Dorsetshire family in which there was a tradition of gipsy blood--a
tradition too dim and ancient now to be verified, though Hearn is an old
Romany name in the west of England, and the boy Lafcadio bore in his
hand all his life that curious "thumb-print" upon the palm, which is
said to be the invariable mark of Romany descent. The first of the
Hearns to pass over into Ireland went as private chaplain to the Lord
Lieutenant in 1693, and being later appointed Dean of Cashel, settled
permanently in West Meath. From the ecclesiastical loins there appears
to have sprung a numerous race of soldiers, for Dr. Hearn's father and
seven uncles served under Wellington in Spain. The grandfather of
Lafcadio rose during the Peninsula Campaign to the position of
lieutenant-colonel of the 43d regiment, and commanded his regiment in
the battle of Vittoria. Later he married Elizabeth Holmes, a kinswoman
of Sir Robert Holmes, and of Edmund Holmes the poet, another member of
her family being Rice Holmes, the historian of the Indian Mutiny. Dr.
Charles Hearn, the father of Lafcadio, was her eldest son, and another
son was Richard, who was one of the Barbizon painters and an intimate
friend of Jean François Millet.
It was in the late '40's, when England still held the Ionian Isles, that
the 76th Foot was ordered to Greece, and Surgeon-Major Hearn accompanied
his regiment to do garrison duty on the island of Cerigo. Apparently not
long after his arrival he made the acquaintance of Rosa Cerigote, whose
family is said to have been of old and honourable Greek descent.
Photographs of the young surgeon represent him as a handsome man, with
the flowing side-whiskers so valued at that period, and with a bold
profile and delicate waist. A passionate love affair ensued between the
beautiful Greek girl and the handsome Irishman, but the connection was
violently opposed by the girl's brothers, the native bitterness toward
the English garrison being as intense as was the sentiment in the South
against the Northern army of occupation immediately after the American
Civil War. The legend goes that the Cerigote men--there was hot blood in
the family veins--waylaid and stabbed the Irishman, leaving him for
dead. The girl, it is said, with the aid of a servant, concealed him in
a barn and nursed him back to life, and after his recovery eloped with
her grateful lover and married him by the Greek rites in Santa Maura.
The first child died immediately after birth, and the boy, Lafcadio, was
the second child; taking his name from the Greek name of the island,
Lefcada. Another son, James, three years later in Cephalonia, was the
fruit of this marriage, so romantically begun and destined to end so
tragically.
When England ceded the Ionian Isles to Greece Dr. Hearn returned with
his family to Dublin, pausing, perhaps, for a while at Malta, for in a
letter written during the last years of his life Lafcadio says: "I am
almost sure of having been in Malta as a child. My father told me queer
things about the old palaces of the knights, and a story of a monk who
on the coming of the French had the presence of mind to paint the gold
chancel railing with green paint."
The two boys were at this time aged six and three. It was inevitable, no
doubt, that the young wife, who had never mastered the English tongue,
though she spoke, as did the children, Italian and Romaic, should have
regretted the change from her sunlit island to the dripping Irish skies
and grey streets of Dublin, nor can it be wondered at that, an exile
among aliens in race, speech, and faith, there should have soon grown up
misunderstandings and disputes. The unhappy details have died into
silence with the passage of time, but the wife seems to have believed
herself repudiated and betrayed, and the marriage being eventually
annulled, she fled to Smyrna with a Greek cousin who had come at her
call, leaving the two children with the father. This cousin she
afterwards married and her children knew her no more. The father also
married again, and the boy Lafcadio being adopted by Dr. Hearn's aunt, a
Mrs. Brenane, and removing with her to Wales, never again saw either his
father or his brother.[1]
[1] The following version of the story is reproduced from a letter
written by Mrs. Hearn in reply to a request for any knowledge
she might have gained on this subject from her husband's
conversations with her during their life together in Japan. Its
poignant simplicity is heightened by the transmutations through
two languages.
"Mama San--When about four years old I did very rude things. Mama
gave me a struck on my cheek with her palm. It was very strong. I
got angry and gazed on my Mama's face, which I never forget. Thus
I remember my Mama's face. She was of a little stature, with black
hair and black eyes, like a Japanese woman. How pitiable Mama San
she was. Unhappy Mama San; pitiable indeed! Think of that--Think:
you are my wife, and I take you with Kazuo and Iwao to my native
country: you do not know the language spoken there, nor have any
friend. You have your husband only, who prove not very kind. You
must be so very unhappy then. And then if I happened to love some
native lady and say 'Sayonara' to you, how you would trouble your
heart! That was the case with my Mama. I have not such cruel
heart. But only to think of such thing makes me sad. To see your
face troubled just now my heart aches. Let us drop such subject
from our talk."
"Papa San--It is only once that I remember I felt glad with my
papa. Yes, on that occasion! Perhaps I was then a boy like Iwao or
Kiyoshi. I was playing with my nurse. Many a sound of
'gallop-trop' came from behind. The nurse laughed and lifted me
high up. I observed my papa pass; I called him with my tiny
hand--now such a big hand. Papa took me from the hands of nurse. I
was on horseback. As I looked behind a great number of soldiers
followed on horseback with 'gallop-trop.' I imagined myself that I
was a general then. It was only on that time that I thought how
good papa he was."
The emotions are not hard to guess at of a passionate, sensitive boy of
seven, suddenly flung by the stormy emotions of his elders out of the
small warm circle of his narrow sphere. To a young child the relations
of its parents and the circle of the home seem as fundamental and
eternal as the globe itself, and the sudden ravishment of all the bases
of his life make his footing amid the ties and affections of the world
forever after timid and uncertain.
A boy of less sensitive fibre might in time have forgotten these shocks,
but the eldest son of Charles Hearn and Rosa Cerigote was destined to
suffer always because of the violent rending of their ties. From this
period seems to have dated his strange distrusts, his unconquerable
terror of the potentialities which he suspected as lurking beneath the
frankest exterior, and his constant, morbid dread of betrayal and
abandonment by even his closest friends.
Whatever of fault there may have been on his mother's part, his vague
memories of her were always tender and full of yearning affection.
To the brother he never saw he wrote, when he was a man, "And you do not
remember that dark and beautiful face--with large, brown eyes like a
wild deer's--that used to bend above your cradle? You do not remember
the voice which told you each night to cross your fingers after the old
Greek orthodox fashion, and utter the words--Ἔν τὸ ὄνομα τοὺ Πατρὸς καὶ
τοὺ Υιοῦ καὶ τοῦ Ἀγίου Πνεύματος, 'In the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost'? She made, or had made, three little wounds
upon you when a baby--to place you, according to her childish faith,
under the protection of those three powers, but specially that of Him
for whom alone the Nineteenth Century still feels some reverence--_the
Lord and Giver of Life_.... We were all very dark as children, very
passionate, very odd-looking, and wore gold rings in our ears. Have you
not the marks yet?...
"When I saw your photograph I felt all my blood stir,--and I thought,
'Here is this unknown being, in whom the soul of my mother lives,--who
must have known the same strange impulses, the same longings, the same
resolves as I! Will he tell me of them?' There was another Self,--would
that Self interpret This?
"For This has always been mysterious. Were I to use the word 'Soul' in
its limited and superannuated sense as the spirit of the individual
instead of the ghost of a race,--I should say it had always seemed to me
as if I had two souls: each pulling in different ways. One of these
represented the spirit of mutiny--impatience of all restraint, hatred of
all control, weariness of everything methodical and regular, impulses to
love or hate without a thought of consequences. The other represented
pride and persistence;--it had little power to use the reins before I
was thirty.... Whatever there is of good in me came from that dark
race-soul of which we know so little. My love of right, my hate of
wrong;--my admiration for what is beautiful or true;--my capacity for
faith in man or woman;--my sensitiveness to artistic things which gives
me whatever little success I have,--even that language-power whose
physical sign is in the large eyes of both of us,--came from Her.... It
is the mother who makes us,--makes at least all that makes the nobler
man: not his strength or powers of calculation, but his heart and power
to love. And I would rather have her portrait than a fortune."
Mrs. Brenane, into whose hands the child thus passed, was the widow of a
wealthy Irishman, by whom she had been converted to Romanism, and like
all converts she was "more loyal than the King." The divorce and
remarriage of her nephew incurred her bitterest resentment; she not only
insisted upon a complete separation from the child, but did not hesitate
to speak her mind fully to the boy, who always retained the impressions
thus early instilled. In one of his letters he speaks of his father's
"rigid face, and steel-steady eyes," and says: "I can remember seeing
father only five times. He was rather taciturn, I think. I remember he
wrote me a long letter from India--all about serpents and tigers and
elephants--printed in Roman letters with a pen, so that I could read it
easily.... I remember my father taking me up on horseback when coming
into the town with his regiment. I remember being at a dinner with a
number of men in red coats, and crawling about under the table among
their legs." And elsewhere he declares, "I think there is nothing of him
in me, either physically or mentally." A mistake of prejudice this; the
Hearns of the second marriage bearing the most striking likeness to the
elder half-brother, having the same dark skins, delicate, aquiline
profiles, eyes deeply set in arched orbits, and short, supple, well-knit
figures. The family type is unusual and distinctive, with some racial
alignment not easy to define except by the indefinite term "exotic;"
showing no trace of either its English origin or Irish residence.
Of the next twelve years of Lafcadio Hearn's life there exists but
meagre record. The little dark-eyed, dark-faced, passionate boy with the
wound in his heart and the gold rings in his ears--speaking English but
stammeringly, mingled with Italian and Romaic--seems to have been
removed at about his seventh year to Wales, and from this time to have
visited Ireland but occasionally. Of his surroundings during the most
impressionable period of his life it is impossible to reconstruct other
than shadowy outlines. Mrs. Brenane was old; was wealthy; and lived
surrounded by eager priests and passionate converts.
In "Kwaidan" there is a little story called "Hi-Mawari," which seems a
glimpse of this period:--
On the wooded hill behind the house Robert and I are looking for
fairy-rings. Robert is eight years old, comely, and very wise;--I am a
little more than seven,--and I reverence Robert. It is a glowing,
glorious August day; and the warm air is filled with sharp, sweet
scents of resin.
We do not find any fairy-rings; but we find a great many pine-cones in
the high grass.... I tell Robert the old Welsh story of the man who
went to sleep, unawares, inside of a fairy-ring, and so disappeared
for seven years, and would never eat or speak after his friends had
delivered him from the enchantment.
"They eat nothing but the points of needles, you know," says Robert.
"Who?" I ask.
"Goblins," Robert answers.
This revelation leaves me dumb with astonishment and awe.... But
Robert suddenly cries out:--
"There is a harper!--he is coming to the house!"
And down the hill we run to hear the harper.... But what a harper! Not
like the hoary minstrels of the picture-books. A swarthy, sturdy,
unkempt vagabond, with bold black eyes under scowling brows. More like
a brick-layer than a bard,--and his garments are corduroy!
"Wonder if he is going to sing in Welsh?" murmurs Robert.
I feel too much disappointed to make any remarks. The harper poses his
harp--a huge instrument--upon our doorstep, sets all the strings
ringing with a sweep of his grimy fingers, clears his throat with a
sort of angry growl, and begins,--
"_Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day_ ..."
The accent, the attitude, the voice, all fill me with repulsion
unutterable,--shock me with a new sensation of formidable vulgarity. I
want to cry out loud, "You have no right to sing that song!" for I
have heard it sung by the lips of the dearest and fairest being in my
little world;--and that this rude, coarse man should dare to sing it
vexes me like a mockery,--angers me like an insolence. But only for a
moment!... With the utterance of the syllables "to-day," that deep,
grim voice suddenly breaks into a quivering tenderness indescribable;
then, marvellously changing, it mellows into tones sonorous and rich
as the bass of a great organ,--while a sensation unlike anything ever
felt before takes me by the throat.... What witchcraft has he
learned--this scowling man of the road?... Oh! is there anybody else
in the whole world who can sing like that?... And the form of the
singer flickers and dims;--and the house, and the lawn, and all
visible shapes of things tremble and swim before me. Yet instinctively
I fear that man;--I almost hate him; and I feel myself flushing with
anger and shame because of his power to move me thus....
"He made you cry," Robert compassionately observes, to my further
confusion,--as the harper strides away, richer by a gift of sixpence
taken without thanks.... "But I think he must be a gipsy. Gipsies are
bad people--and they are wizards.... Let us go back to the wood."
We climb again to the pines, and there squat down upon the sun-flecked
grass, and look over town and sea. But we do not play as before: the
spell of the wizard is strong upon us both.... "Perhaps he is a
goblin," I venture at last, "or a fairy?" "No," says Robert--"only a
gipsy. But that is nearly as bad. They steal children, you know."
"What shall we do if he comes up here?" I gasp, in sudden terror at
the lonesomeness of our situation.
"Oh, he wouldn't dare," answers Robert--"not by daylight, you know."
[Only yesterday, near the village of Takata, I noticed a flower which
the Japanese call by nearly the same name as we do, _Himawari_, "The
Sunward-turning," and over the space of forty years there thrilled
back to me the voice of that wandering harper.... Again I saw the
sun-flecked shadows on that far Welsh hill; and Robert for a moment
again stood beside me, with his girl's face and his curls of gold.]
Recorded in this artless story are the most vivid suggestions of the
nature of the boy who was to be father of the man Lafcadio Hearn, the
minute observation, the quivering sensitiveness to tones, to
expressions, to colours and odours; profound passions of tenderness;
and--more than all--his nascent interest in the ghostly and the weird.
How great a part this latter had already assumed in his young life one
gathers from one of the autobiographic papers found after his
death--half a dozen fragments of recollection, done exquisitely in his
small beautiful handwriting, and enclosed each in fine Japanese
envelopes. Characteristically they concern themselves but little with
what are called "facts"--though he would have been the last to believe
that emotions produced by events were not after all the most salient of
human facts.
These records of impressions left upon his nature by the conditions
surrounding his early years open a strange tremulous light upon the
inner life of the lonely, ardent child, and from the shadows created by
that light one can reconstruct perhaps more clearly the shapes about him
by which those shadows were cast than would have been possible with more
direct vision of them.
The first of the fragments is called
MY GUARDIAN ANGEL
"Weh! weh!
Du hast sie zerstört,
Die schöne Welt!"--FAUST.
What I am going to relate must have happened when I was nearly six years
old--at which time I knew a great deal about ghosts, and very little
about gods.
For the best of possible reasons I then believed in ghosts and in
goblins,--because I saw them, both by day and by night. Before going to
sleep I would always cover up my head to prevent them from looking at
me; and I used to scream when I felt them pulling at the bedclothes. And
I could not understand why I had been forbidden to talk about these
experiences.
But of religion I knew almost nothing. The old lady who had adopted me
intended that I should be brought up a Roman Catholic; but she had not
yet attempted to give me any definite religious instruction. I had been
taught to say a few prayers; but I repeated them only as a parrot might
have done. I had been taken, without knowing why, to church; and I had
been given many small pictures edged with paper lace,--French religious
prints,--of which I did not understand the meaning. To the wall of the
room in which I slept there was suspended a Greek icon,--a miniature
painting in oil of the Virgin and Child, warmly coloured, and protected
by a casing of fine metal that left exposed only the olive-brown faces
and hands and feet of the figures. But I fancied that the brown Virgin
represented my mother--whom I had almost completely forgotten--and the
large-eyed Child, myself. I had been taught to pronounce the invocation,
_In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost_;--but
I did not know what the words signified. One of the appellations,
however, seriously interested me: and the first religious question that
I remember asking was a question about the _Holy Ghost_. It was the word
"Ghost," of course, that had excited my curiosity; and I put the
question with fear and trembling because it appeared to relate to a
forbidden subject. The answer I cannot clearly recollect;--but it gave
me an idea that the Holy Ghost was a _white_ ghost, and not in the habit
of making faces at small people after dusk. Nevertheless the name filled
me with vague suspicion, especially after I had learned to spell it
correctly, in a prayer-book; and I discovered a mystery and an awfulness
unspeakable in the capital G. Even now the aspect of that formidable
letter will sometimes revive those dim and fearsome imaginings of
childhood.
I suppose that I had been allowed to remain so long in happy ignorance
of dogma because I was a nervous child. Certainly it was for no other
reason that those about me had been ordered not to tell me either
ghost-stories or fairy-tales, and that I had been strictly forbidden to
speak of ghosts. But in spite of such injunctions I was doomed to learn,
quite unexpectedly, something about goblins much grimmer than any which
had been haunting me. This undesirable information was given to me by a
friend of the family,--a visitor.
Our visitors were few; and their visits, as a rule, were brief. But we
had one privileged visitor who came regularly each autumn to remain
until the following spring,--a convert,--a tall girl who looked like
some of the long angels in my French pictures. At that time I must have
been incapable of forming certain abstract conceptions; but she gave me
the idea of Sorrow as a dim something that she personally represented.
She was not a relation; but I was told to call her "Cousin Jane." For
the rest of the household she was simply "Miss Jane;" and the room that
she used to occupy, upon the third floor, was always referred to as
"Miss Jane's room." I heard it said that she passed her summers in some
convent, and that she wanted to become a nun. I asked why she did not
become a nun; and I was told that I was too young to understand.
She seldom smiled; and I never heard her laugh; she had some secret
grief of which only my aged protector knew the nature. Although
handsome, young, and rich, she was always severely dressed in black. Her
face, notwithstanding its constant look of sadness, was beautiful; her
hair, a dark chestnut, was so curly that, however smoothed or braided,
it always seemed to ripple; and her eyes, rather deeply-set, were large
and black. Also I remember that her voice, though musical, had a
peculiar metallic tone which I did not like.
Yet she could make that voice surprisingly tender when speaking to me.
Usually I found her kind,--often more than kind; but there were times
when she became so silent and sombre that I feared to approach her. And
even in her most affectionate moods--even when caressing me--she
remained strangely solemn. In such moments she talked to me about being
good, about being truthful, about being obedient, about trying "to
please God." I detested these exhortations. My old relative had never
talked to me in that way. I did not fully understand; I only knew that I
was being found fault with, and I suspected that I was being pitied.
And one morning (I remember that it was a gloomy winter
morning),--losing patience at last during one of these tiresome
admonitions, I boldly asked Cousin Jane to tell me why I should try to
please God more than to please anybody else. I was then sitting on a
little stool at her feet. Never can I forget the look that darkened her
features as I put the question. At once she caught me up, placed me upon
her lap, and fixed her black eyes upon my face with a piercing
earnestness that terrified me, as she exclaimed:--
"My child!--is it possible that you do not know who God is?"
"No," I answered in a choking whisper.
"God!--God who made you!--God who made the sun and the moon and the
sky,--and the trees and the beautiful flowers,--everything!... You do
not know?"
I was too much alarmed by her manner to reply.
"You do not know," she went on, "that God made you and me?--that God
made your father and your mother and everybody?... You do not know about
Heaven and Hell?"
I do not remember all the rest of her words; I can recall with
distinctness only the following:--"and send you down to Hell to burn
alive in fire for ever and ever!... Think of it!--always burning,
burning, burning!--screaming and burning! screaming and burning!--never
to be saved from that pain of fire!... You remember when you burned your
finger at the lamp?--Think of your whole body burning,--always, always,
always burning!--for ever and ever!"
I can still see her face as in the instant of that utterance,--the
horror upon it, and the pain.... Then she suddenly burst into tears, and
kissed me, and left the room.
From that time I detested Cousin Jane,--because she had made me unhappy
in a new and irreparable way. I did not doubt what she had said; but I
hated her for having said it,--perhaps especially for the hideous way in
which she had said it. Even now her memory revives the dull pain of the
childish hypocrisy with which I endeavoured to conceal my resentment.
When she left us in the spring, I hoped that she would soon die,--so
that I might never see her face again.
But I was fated to meet her again under strange circumstances. I am not
sure whether it was in the latter part of the summer that I next saw
her, or early in the autumn; I remember only that it was in the evening
and that the weather was still pleasantly warm. The sun had set; but
there was a clear twilight, full of soft colour; and in that
twilight-time I happened to be on the lobby of the third floor,--all by
myself.
... I do not know why I had gone up there alone;--perhaps I was looking
for some toy. At all events I was standing in the lobby, close to the
head of the stairs, when I noticed that the door of Cousin Jane's room
seemed to be ajar. Then I saw it slowly opening. The fact surprised me
because that door--the farthest one of three opening upon the lobby--was
usually locked. Almost at the same moment Cousin Jane herself, robed in
her familiar black dress came out of the room, and advanced towards
me--but with her head turned upwards and sidewards, as if she were
looking at something on the lobby-wall, close to the ceiling. I cried
out in astonishment, "Cousin Jane!"--but she did not seem to hear. She
approached slowly, still with her head so thrown back that I could see
nothing of her face above the chin; then she walked directly past me
into the room nearest the stairway,--a bedroom of which the door was
always left open by day. Even as she passed I did not see her
face,--only her white throat and chin, and the gathered mass of her
beautiful hair. Into the bedroom I ran after her, calling out, "Cousin
Jane! Cousin Jane!" I saw her pass round the foot of a great
four-pillared bed, as if to approach the window beyond it; and I
followed her to the other side of the bed. Then, as if first aware of my
presence, she turned; and I looked up, expecting to meet her smile....
She had no face. There was only a pale blur instead of a face. And even
as I stared, the figure vanished. It did not fade; it simply ceased to
be,--like the shape of a flame blown out. I was alone in that darkening
room,--and afraid, as I had never before been afraid. I did not scream;
I was much too frightened to scream;--I only struggled to the head of
the stairs, and stumbled, and fell,--rolling over and over down to the
next lobby. I do not remember being hurt; the stair-carpets were soft
and very thick. The noise of my tumble brought immediate succour and
sympathy. But I did not say a word about what I had seen; I knew that I
should be punished if I spoke of it....
Now some weeks or months later, at the beginning of the cold season, the
real Cousin Jane came back one morning to occupy that room upon the
third floor. She seemed delighted to meet me again; and she caressed me
so fondly that I felt ashamed of my secret dismay at her return. On the
very same day she took me out with her for a walk, and bought me cakes,
toys, pictures,--a multitude of things,--carrying all the packages
herself. I ought to have been grateful, if not happy. But the generous
shame that her caresses had awakened was already gone; and that memory
of which I could speak to no one--least of all to her--again darkened
my thoughts as we walked together. This Cousin Jane who was buying me
toys, and smiling, and chatting, was only, perhaps, the husk of another
Cousin Jane that had no face.... Before the brilliant shops, among the
crowds of happy people, I had nothing to fear. But afterwards--after
dark--might not the Inner disengage herself from the other, and leave
her room, and glide to mine with chin upturned, as if staring at the
ceiling?... Twilight fell before we reached home; and Cousin Jane had
ceased to speak or smile. No doubt she was tired. But I noticed that her
silence and her sternness had begun with the gathering of the dusk,--and
a chill crept over me.
Nevertheless, I passed a merry evening with my new toys,--which looked
very beautiful under the lamplight. Cousin Jane played with me until
bed-time. Next morning she did not appear at the breakfast-table--I was
told that she had taken a bad cold, and could not leave her bed. She
never again left it alive; and I saw her no more,--except in dreams.
Owing to the dangerous nature of the consumption that had attacked her,
I was not allowed even to approach her room.... She left her money to
somebody in the convent which she used to visit, and her books to me.
If, at that time, I could have dared to speak of the other Cousin Jane,
somebody might have thought proper--in view of the strange sequel--to
tell me the natural history of such apparitions. But I could not have
believed the explanation. I understood only that I had seen; and because
I had seen I was afraid.
And the memory of that seeing disturbed me more than ever, after the
coffin of Cousin Jane had been carried away. The knowledge of her death
had filled me, not with sorrow, but with terror. Once I had wished that
she were dead. And the wish had been fulfilled--but the punishment was
yet to come! Dim thoughts, dim fears--enormously older than the
creed of Cousin Jane--awakened within me, as from some prenatal
sleep,--especially a horror of the dead as evil beings, hating
mankind.... Such horror exists in savage minds, accompanied by the vague
notion that character is totally transformed or stripped by death,--that
those departed, who once caressed and smiled and loved, now menace and
gibber and hate.... What power, I asked myself in dismay, could protect
me from her visits? I had not yet ceased to believe in the God of Cousin
Jane; but I doubted whether he would or could do anything for me.
Moreover, my creed had been greatly shaken by the suspicion that Cousin
Jane had always lied. How often had she not assured me that I could not
see ghosts or evil spirits! Yet the Thing that I had seen was assuredly
her inside-self,--the ghost of the goblin of her,--and utterly evil.
Evidently she hated me: she had lured me into a lonesome room for the
sole purpose of making me hideously afraid.... And why had she hated me
thus before she died?--was it because she knew that I hated her,--that I
had wished her to die? Yet how did she know?--could the ghost of her
see, through blood and flesh and bone, into the miserable little ghost
of myself?
... Anyhow, she had lied.... Perhaps everybody else had lied. Were all
the people that I knew--the warm people, who walked and laughed in the
light--so much afraid of the Things of the Night that they dared not
tell the truth?... To none of these questions could I find a reply. And
there began for me a second period of black faith,--a faith of
unutterable horror, mingled with unutterable doubt.
I was not then old enough to read serious books: it was only in after
years that I could learn the worth of Cousin Jane's bequest,--which
included a full set of the "Waverley Novels;" the works of Miss
Edgeworth; Martin's Milton--a beautiful copy, in tree-calf; Langhorne's
Plutarch; Pope's "Iliad" and "Odyssey;" Byron's "Corsair" and
"Lara,"--in the old red-covered Murray editions; some quaint
translations of the "Arabian Nights," and Locke's "Essay on the Human
Understanding"! I cannot recall half of the titles; but I remember one
fact that gratefully surprised me: there was not a single religious book
in the collection.... Cousin Jane was a convert: her literary tastes, at
least, were not of Rome.
Those who knew her history are dust.... How often have I tried to
reproach myself for hating her. But even now in my heart a voice cries
bitterly to the ghost of her: "_Woe! woe!--thou didst destroy it,--the
beautiful world!_"
* * * * *
In the paper entitled "Idolatry" he reveals, as by some passing
reflection in a mirror, how his little pagan Greek soul was hardening
itself thus early against the strong fingers endeavouring to shape the
tendencies of his thought into forms entirely alien to it.
IDOLATRY
"Ah, Psyché, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!"
The early Church did not teach that the gods of the heathen were merely
brass and stone. On the contrary she accepted them as real and
formidable personalities--demons who had assumed divinity to lure their
worshippers to destruction. It was in reading the legends of that
Church, and the lives of her saints, that I obtained my first vague
notions of the pagan gods.
I then imagined those gods to resemble in some sort the fairies and the
goblins of my nursery-tales, or the fairies in the ballads of Sir Walter
Scott. Goblins and their kindred interested me much more than the ugly
Saints of the Pictorial Church History,--much more than even the slender
angels of my French religious prints, who unpleasantly reminded me of
Cousin Jane. Besides, I could not help suspecting all the friends of
Cousin Jane's God, and feeling a natural sympathy with his
enemies,--whether devils, goblins, fairies, witches, or heathen deities.
To the devils indeed--because I supposed them stronger than the rest--I
had often prayed for help and friendship; very humbly at first, and in
great fear of being too grimly answered,--but afterwards with words of
reproach on finding that my condescensions had been ignored.
But in spite of their indifference, my sympathy with the enemies of
Cousin Jane's God steadily strengthened; and my interest in all the
spirits that the Church History called evil, especially the heathen
gods, continued to grow. And at last one day I discovered, in one
unexplored corner of our library, several beautiful books about
art,--great folio books containing figures of gods and of demi-gods,
athletes and heroes, nymphs and fauns and nereids, and all the charming
monsters--half-man, half-animal--of Greek mythology.
How my heart leaped and fluttered on that happy day! Breathless I gazed;
and the longer that I gazed the more unspeakably lovely those faces and
forms appeared. Figure after figure dazzled, astounded, bewitched me.
And this new delight was in itself a wonder,--also a fear. Something
seemed to be thrilling out of those pictured pages,--something invisible
that made me afraid. I remembered stories of the infernal magic that
informed the work of the pagan statuaries. But this superstitious fear
presently yielded to a conviction, or rather intuition--which I could
not possibly have explained--that the gods had been belied _because_
they were beautiful.
... (Blindly and gropingly I had touched a truth,--the ugly truth that
beauty of the highest order, whether mental, or moral, or physical, must
ever be hated by the many and loved only by the few!).... And these had
been called devils! I adored them!--I loved them!--I promised to detest
forever all who refused them reverence!... Oh! the contrast between that
immortal loveliness and the squalor of the saints and the patriarchs and
the prophets of my religious pictures!--a contrast indeed as of heaven
and hell.... In that hour the mediæval creed seemed to me the very
religion of ugliness and of hate. And as it had been taught to me, in
the weakness of my sickly childhood, it certainly was. And even to-day,
in spite of larger knowledge, the words "heathen" and "pagan"--however
ignorantly used in scorn--revive within me old sensations of light and
beauty, of freedom and joy.
* * * * *
Only with much effort can I recall these scattered memories of boyhood;
and in telling them I am well aware that a later and much more
artificial Self is constantly trying to speak in the place of the Self
that was,--thus producing obvious incongruities. Before trying to relate
anything more concerning the experiences of the earlier Self, I may as
well here allow the Interrupter an opportunity to talk.
The first perception of beauty ideal is never a cognition, but a
_recognition_. No mathematical or geometrical theory of æsthetics will
ever interpret the delicious shock that follows upon the boy's first
vision of beauty supreme. He himself could not even try to explain why
the newly-seen form appears to him lovelier than aught upon earth. He
only feels the sudden power that the vision exerts upon the mystery of
his own life,--and that feeling is but dim deep memory,--a
blood-remembrance.
Many do not remember, and therefore cannot see--at any period of life.
There are myriad minds no more capable of perceiving the higher beauty
than the blind wan fish of caves--offspring of generations that swam in
total darkness--is capable of feeling the gladness of light. Probably
the race producing minds like these had no experience of higher
things,--never beheld the happier vanished world of immortal art and
thought. Or perhaps in such minds the higher knowledge has been effaced
or blurred by long dull superimposition of barbarian inheritance.
But he who receives in one sudden vision the revelation of the antique
beauty,--he who knows the thrill divine that follows after,--the
unutterable mingling of delight and sadness,--he _remembers_! Somewhere,
at some time, in the ages of a finer humanity, he must have lived with
beauty. Three thousand--four thousand years ago: it matters not; what
thrills him now is the shadowing of what has been, the phantom of
rapture forgotten. Without inherited sense of the meaning of beauty as
power, of the worth of it to life and love, never could the ghost in him
perceive, however dimly, the presence of the gods.
Now I think that something of the ghostliness in this present shell of
me must have belonged to the vanished world of beauty,--must have
mingled freely with the best of its youth and grace and force,--must
have known the worth of long light limbs on the course of glory, and
the pride of the winner in contests, and the praise of maidens stately
as that young sapling of a palm, which Odysseus beheld, springing by the
altar in Delos.... All this I am able to believe, because I could feel,
while yet a boy, the divine humanity of the ancient gods....
But this new-found delight soon became for me the source of new sorrows.
I was placed with all my small belongings under religious tutelage; and
then, of course, my reading was subjected to severe examination. One day
the beautiful books disappeared; and I was afraid to ask what had become
of them. After many weeks they were returned to their former place; and
my joy at seeing them again was of brief duration. All of them had been
unmercifully revised. My censors had been offended by the nakedness of
the gods, and had undertaken to correct that impropriety. Parts of many
figures, dryads, naiads, graces, muses had been found too charming and
erased with a pen-knife;--I can still recall one beautiful seated
figure, whose breasts had been thus excised. Evidently "the breasts of
the nymphs in the brake" had been found too charming: dryads, naiads,
graces and muses--all had been rendered breastless. And, in most cases,
_drawers_ had been put upon the gods--even upon the tiny Loves--large
baggy bathing-drawers, woven with cross-strokes of a quill-pen, so
designed as to conceal all curves of beauty,--especially the lines of
the long fine thighs.... However, in my case, this barbarism proved of
some educational value. It furnished me with many problems of
restoration; and I often tried very hard to reproduce in pencil-drawing
the obliterated or the hidden line. In this I was not successful; but,
in spite of the amazing thoroughness with which every mutilation or
effacement had been accomplished, my patient study of the methods of
attack enabled me--long before I knew Winckelmann--to understand how
Greek artists had idealized the human figure.... Perhaps that is why, in
after years, few modern representations of the nude could interest me
for any length of time. However graceful at first sight the image might
appear, something commonplace would presently begin to reveal itself in
the lines of those very forms against which my early tutors had waged
such implacable war.
Is it not almost invariably true that the modern naked figure, as
chiselled or painted, shadows something of the modern living
model,--something, therefore, of individual imperfection? Only the
antique work of the grand era is superindividual,--reflecting the
ideal-supreme in the soul of a race.... Many, I know, deny this;--but do
we not remain, to some degree, barbarians still? Even the good and great
Ruskin, on the topic of Greek art, spake often like a Goth. Did he not
call the Medicean Venus "an uninteresting little person"?
* * * * *
Now after I had learned to know and to love the elder gods, the world
again began to glow about me. Glooms that had brooded over it slowly
thinned away. The terror was not yet gone; but I now wanted only
reasons to disbelieve all that I feared and hated. In the sunshine, in
the green of the fields, in the blue of the sky, I found a gladness
before unknown. Within myself new thoughts, new imaginings, dim longings
for I knew not what were quickening and thrilling. I looked for beauty,
and everywhere found it: in passing faces--in attitudes and motions,--in
the poise of plants and trees,--in long white clouds,--in faint-blue
lines of far-off hills. At moments the simple pleasure of life would
quicken to a joy so large, so deep, that it frightened me. But at other
times there would come to me a new and strange sadness,--a shadowy and
inexplicable pain.
I had entered into my Renaissance.
* * * * *
Already must have begun the inevitable fissure between himself and his
pious protectress, and one may imagine the emotions of his spiritual
pastors and masters aroused by such an incident as this--related in one
of his letters of later years:--
"This again reminds me of something. When I was a boy I had to go to
confession, and my confessions were honest ones. One day I told the
ghostly father that I had been guilty of desiring that the devil would
come to me in the shape of the beautiful women in which he came to the
anchorites in the desert, and that I thought I should yield to such
temptations. He was a grim man who rarely showed emotion, my confessor,
but on that occasion he actually rose to his feet in anger.
"'Let me warn you!' he cried, 'let me warn you! Of all things never wish
that! You might be more sorry for it than you can possibly believe!'
"His earnestness filled me with a fearful joy;--for I thought the
temptation might actually be realized--so serious he looked ... but the
pretty _succubi_ all continued to remain in hell."
From these indications the belief is unavoidable that there was never
the slightest foundation for the assertion that an endeavour was made to
train him for the priesthood. In a letter to his brother he distinctly
denies it. He says:--
"You were misinformed as to Grand-aunt educating your brother for the
priesthood. He had the misfortune to pass some years in Catholic
colleges, where the educational system chiefly consists in keeping the
pupils as ignorant as possible. He was not even a Catholic."
Indeed his bitterness against the Roman Church eventually crystallized
into something like an obsession, aroused perhaps by inherited
tendencies, by the essential character of his mind, and by those in
authority over him in his boyhood driving him, by too great an
insistence, to revolt. He was profoundly convinced that the Church, with
its persistent memory and far-reaching hand, had never forgotten his
apostasy, nor failed to remind him of the fact from time to time. This
conviction remained a dim and threatening shadow in the background of
his whole life; to all remonstrance on the subject his only reply was,
"You don't know the Church as I do;" and several curious coincidences in
crises of his career seemed to him to justify and confirm this belief.
Of the course and character of his education but little is known. He is
said to have spent two years in a Jesuit college in the north of France,
where he probably acquired his intimate and accurate knowledge of the
French tongue. He was also for a time at Ushaw, the Roman Catholic
college at Durham,[2] and here occurred one of the greatest misfortunes
of his life. In playing the game known as "The Giant's Stride" he was
accidentally blinded in one eye by the knotted end of a rope suddenly
released from the hand of one of his companions. In consequence of this
the work thrown upon the other eye by the enormous labours of his later
years kept him in constant terror of complete loss of sight. In writing
and reading he used a glass so large and heavy as to oblige him to have
it mounted in a handle and to hold it to his eye like a lorgnette, and
for distant observation he carried a small folding telescope.
[2] A cousin writes of him at this period: "I remember him a boy
with a great taste for drawing. Very near-sighted, but so
tender and careful of me as a little child. He was at a
priest's college where I was taken by my grand-aunt (who had
adopted him), to see him. I remember his taking me upstairs to
look at the school-room, and on the way bidding me bow to an
image of the Virgin, which I refused to do. He became very much
excited and begged me to tell him the reason of my refusal. He
always seemed very much in earnest, and to have a very
sensitive nature."
A fellow-pupil at Ushaw says of him:--
"My acquaintance with him began at Ushaw college, near Durham.
Discovering that we had some tastes in common, we chummed a good
deal, discussing our favourite authors, which in Lafcadio's case
were chiefly poets, though he also took considerable interest in
books of travel and adventure. Even then his style was remarkable
for graphic power, combined with graceful expression.... He was of
a very speculative turn of mind, and I have a lively recollection
of the shock it occasioned to several of us when he one day
announced his disbelief in the Bible. I am of opinion, however,
that he was then only posing as an _esprit fort_, for a few days
afterwards, during a walk with the class in the country, he
returned to this subject in discussion with a master, and I
inferred from what he said to me that he was quite satisfied with
the evidences of the truth of the Scriptures. It is interesting in
connection with this to recall his subsequent adoption of
Buddhism. I am rather inclined to think that in either 1864 or
1865 Lafcadio devoted more attention to general literature than to
his school studies, as (if my memory does not play me false) he
was 'turned back' on our class moving into 'Grammar.'...
"Longfellow was one of his favourite poets, his beautiful imagery
and felicity of expression appealing with peculiar force to a
kindred soul. He was fond of repeating scraps of poetry
descriptive of heroic combats, feats of arms, or of the prowess of
the Baresarks, or Berserkers, as described in Norse sagas.... He
used to dwell with peculiar satisfaction on the line:--
'Like Thor's hammer, huge and dinted, was his horny hand.'
Lafcadio was proud of his biceps, and on repeating this line he
would bend his right arm and grasp the muscle with his left hand.
I often addressed him as 'The Man of Gigantic Muscle.' After he
went to America I had little communication with him beyond, I
think, one letter. We then drifted different ways. He was a very
lovable character, extremely sympathetic and sincere."
The slight disfigurement, too,--it was never great,--was a source of
perpetual distress. He imagined that others, more particularly women,
found him disgusting and repugnant in consequence of the film that
clouded the iris.
This accident seems to have ended his career at Ushaw, for his name
appears upon the rolls for 1865, when he was in his sixteenth year, and
in a letter written in Japan to one of his pupils, whom he reproves for
discouragement because of an interruption of his studies caused by
illness, he says:--
"A little bodily sickness may come to any one. Many students die, many
go mad, many do foolish things and ruin themselves for life. You are
good at your studies, and mentally in sound health, and steady in your
habits--three conditions which ought to mean success. You have good eyes
and a clear brain. How many thousands fail for want of these?
"When I was a boy of sixteen, although my blood relations were--some of
them--very rich, no one would pay anything to help me finish my
education. I had to become what you never have had to become--a servant.
I partly lost my sight. I had two years of sickness in bed. I had no one
to help me. And I had to educate myself in spite of all difficulties.
Yet I was brought up in a rich home, surrounded with every luxury of
Western life.
"So, my dear boy, do not lie there in your bed and fret, and try to
persuade yourself that you are unfortunate."
This is the only light to be found upon those three dark years between
his leaving Ushaw and his arrival in America. The rupture with his
grand-aunt was complete. Among the fanatic converts were not wanting
those to widen the breach made by the pagan fancies of the boy. Her
property, which he had been encouraged to look upon as his inheritance,
was dribbling away in the hands of those whose only claim to business
ability was their religious convictions, and a few years after their
separation her death put an end to any efforts at reconciliation and
showed what great financial sacrifices she had made in the interests of
her faith. Some provision was made for him in her will, but he put
forward no claims, and the property was found practically to have
vanished.
To what straits the boy was driven at this time in his friendlessness
there is no means of knowing. One of his companions at Ushaw says:--
"In 1866 I left Ushaw, and I am unable to recall now whether he was
there at that time. I had several letters from him subsequently, at a
time when he was suffering the _peine forte et dure_ of direct penury in
London. In some evil quarter by the Thames poverty obliged him to take
refuge in the workhouse. In a letter received from him while living in
that dreadful place, he described the sights and sounds of horror which
even then preferred the shade of night--of windows thrown violently
open, or shattered to pieces, shrieks of agony, or cries of murder,
followed by a heavy plunge in the river."
The reference in the Japanese letter mentioned above is the only one to
be found in his correspondence, and in even the most intimate talk with
friends he avoided reference to this period as one too painful for
confidence. Another fragment of the autobiography--"Stars"--can,
however, be guessed to refer to an experience of this cruel time.
"I take off my clothes,--few and thin,--and roll them up into a bundle,
to serve me for a pillow: then I creep naked into the hay.... Oh, the
delight of my hay-bed--the first bed of any sort for many a long
night!--oh, the pleasure of the sense of rest! The sweet scent of the
hay!... Overhead, through a skylight, I see stars--sharply shining:
there is frost in the air.
"The horses, below, stir heavily at moments, and paw. I hear them
breathe; and their breath comes up to me in steam. The warmth of their
great bodies fills the building, penetrates the hay, quickens my
blood;--their life is my fire.
"So contentedly they breathe!... They must be aware that I am
here--nestling in their hay. But they do not mind;--and for that I am
grateful. Grateful, too, for the warmth of their breath, the warmth of
their pure bodies, the warmth of their good hay,--grateful even for
those stirrings which they make in their rest, filling the dark with
assurance of large dumb tolerant companionship.... I wish I could tell
them how thankful I am,--how much I like them,--what pleasure I feel in
the power that proceeds from them, in the sense of force and life that
they spread through the silence, like a large warm Soul....
"It is better that they cannot understand. For they earn their good food
and lodging;--they earn the care that keeps them glossy and
beautiful;--they are of use in the world. And of what use in the world
am I?...
"Those sharply shining stars are suns,--enormous suns. They must be
giving light to multitudes unthinkable of other worlds.... In some of
those other worlds there must be cities, and creatures resembling
horses, and stables for them, and hay, and small things--somewhat like
rats or mice--hiding in the hay.... I know that there are a hundred
millions of suns. The horses do not know. But, nevertheless, they are
worth, I have been told, fifteen hundred dollars each: they are superior
beings! How much am I worth?...
"To-morrow, after they have been fed, I also shall be fed--by kindly
stealth;--and I shall not have earned the feeding, in spite of the fact
that I know there are hundreds of millions of suns!"
* * * * *
Sometime during the year 1869--the exact date cannot be
ascertained--Lafcadio Hearn, nineteen years old, penniless, delicate,
half-blind, and without a friend, found himself in the streets of New
York.