CHAPTER II

THE ARTIST'S APPRENTICESHIP

It is more than doubtful if any individual amid the hurrying multitudes

swarming in the streets of New York in 1869 and 1870 ever noticed with

interest--though many of them must have seen--the shy, shabby boy,

Lafcadio Hearn. He was thin to attenuation, for his meals were scant and

uncertain; his dress was threadbare, for in all the two years he never

possessed enough money to renew the garments he had worn upon landing,

and his shabbiness must have been extreme, for he had during the greater

part of that period no home other than a carpenter's shop, where a

friendly Irish workman allowed him to sleep on the shavings and cook his

meals upon the small stove, in return for a little rough book-keeping

and running of errands. Yet a few may have turned for a second glance at

the dark face and eagle profile of the emaciated, unkempt boy, though

unsuspecting that this was one--few in each generation--of those who

have dreamed the Dream, and seen the Vision, that here was one of those

whom Socrates termed "dæmonic." One who had looked in secret places,

face to face, upon the magic countenance of the Muse, and was thereafter

vowed to the quest of the Holy Cup wherein glows the essential blood of

beauty. One who must follow forever in poverty hard after the Dream,

leaving untouched on either hand the goods for which his fellows strove;

falling at times into the mire, torn by the thorns that others evade,

lost often, and often overtaken by the night of discouragement and

despair, but rising again from besmirchments and defacings to follow the

vision to the end. It is hard for those who have never laboured wearily

after the glimmering feet of the bearer of the Cup, who have never

touched even the hem of her garment, to understand the spiritual

_possession_ of one under the vow. To them in such a career will be

visible only the fantastic or squalid episodes of the quest.

What were the boy's thoughts at this period; what his hopes, his aims,

or his intentions it is now impossible to know. Merely to keep life in

his body taxed his powers, and while much of his time was spent in the

refuge of the public libraries he was often so faint from inanition as

to be unable to benefit by the books he sought.

The fourth fragment of the autobiography appears to refer to this

unhappy period.

INTUITION

I was nineteen years old, and a stranger in the great strange world of

America, and grievously tormented by grim realities. As I did not know

how to face those realities, I tried to forget them as much as

possible; and romantic dreams, daily nourished at a public library,

helped me to forget. Next to this unpaid luxury of reading, my chief

pleasure was to wander about the streets of the town, trying to find

in passing faces--faces of girls--some realization of certain ideals.

And I found an almost equal pleasure in looking at the photographs

placed on display at the doors of photographers' shops,--called, in

that place and time, "galleries." Picture-galleries they were indeed

for me, during many, many penniless months.

One day, in a by-street, I discovered a new photographer's shop; and

in a glass case, at the entrance, I beheld a face the first sight of

which left me breathless with wonder and delight,--a face incomparably

surpassing all my dreams. It was the face of a young woman wearing,

for head-dress, something that looked like an embroidered scarf; and

this extraordinary head-dress might have been devised for the purpose

of displaying, to artistic advantage, the singular beauty of the

features. The gaze of the large dark eyes was piercing and calm; the

aquiline curve of the nose was clear as the curve of a sword; the

mouth was fine, but firm;--and, in spite of the sensitive delicacy of

this face, there was a something accipitrine about it,--something

sinister and superb, that made me think of a falcon.... For a long,

long time I stood looking at it, and the more I looked, the more the

splendid wonder of it seemed to grow--like a fascination. I thought

that I would suffer much--ever so much!--for the privilege of

worshipping the real woman. But who was she? I dared not ask the owner

of the "gallery;" and I could not think of any other means of finding

out.

I had one friend in those days,--the only fellow countryman whom I

knew in that American town,--a man who had preceded me into exile by

nearly forty years,--and to him I went. With all of my boyish

enthusiasms he used to feel an amused sympathy; and when I told him

about my discovery, he at once proposed to go with me to the

photograph-shop.

For several moments he studied the picture in silence, knitting his

grey brows with a puzzled expression. Then he exclaimed

emphatically,--

"That is not an American."

"What do you think of the face?" I queried, anxiously.

"It is a wonderful face," he answered,--"a very wonderful face. But it

is not an American, nor an English face."

"Spanish?" I suggested. "Or Italian?"

"No, no," he returned, very positively. "It is not a European face at

all."

"Perhaps a Jewess?"--I ventured.

"No; there are very beautiful Jewish faces,--but none like that."

"Then what can it be?"

"I do not know;--there is some strange blood there."

"How can you tell?" I protested.

"Why, I feel it;--I am quite sure of it.... But wait here a moment!--I

know this photographer, and I shall ask him."

And, to my delight, he went in.... Alas! the riddle was not to be

solved so quickly as we had hoped. The owner of the picture said that

he did not know whose portrait it was. He had bought it, with a

number of other "stock-photographs," from a wholesale dealer in

photographic wares. It had been taken in Paris; but the card upon

which it was now mounted did not bear the name of the French

photographer.

Now my friend was a wanderer whose ties with England had been broken

before I was born;--he knew the most surprising things about weird

places and strange peoples, but had long ceased to feel any interest

in the life of the mother country. For that reason, probably, the

picture proved not less of a riddle to him than to me. The

photographer was a young man who had never left his native state; and

his stock-in-trade had been obtained, of course, through an agency. As

for myself, I was hopelessly separated, by iron circumstances, from

that ordered society which seeks its pleasures in art and music and

drama. Otherwise, how easily might I have learned the name of the

marvellous being who had cast that shadow! But many long years went by

before I learned it.

I had then forgotten all about the picture. I was in a Southern city,

hundreds of miles away; and I happened to be leaning on the counter of

a druggist's shop, talking to the druggist, when I suddenly perceived,

in a glass case at my elbow, the very same enigmatic photograph. It

had been pasted, as a label, on the lid of some box of cosmetic. And

again there tingled, through all my blood, the same thrill of wonder

and delight that I had felt as a boy, at the door of that

photographer....

"Excuse me for interrupting you a moment," I exclaimed;--"please tell

me whose face is that."

The druggist glanced at the photograph, and then smiled--as people

smile at silly questions.

"Is it possible that you do not know?" he responded.

"I do not," I said. "Years ago I saw that photograph and I could not

find out whose picture it was."

"You are joking!"

"Really I am not," I said;--"and I very much want to know."

Then he told me--but I need not repeat the name of the great

tragédienne.... At once flashed back to me the memory of my old

friend's declaration:--"_There is some strange blood there._" After

all, he was right! In the veins of that wonderful woman ran the blood

of Indian kings.

* * * * *

What drove him at the end of the two years to endeavour to reach

Cincinnati, Ohio, is not clear. The only light to be gathered upon the

subject is from the fifth part of the autobiographical fragments, which

suggests that he made the journey in an emigrant train and had not money

for food upon the way. After thirty years, the clearest memory of that

dolorous pilgrimage was of the distress of being misunderstood by the

friendly girl who pitied his sufferings. The record of it bears the

title of

MY FIRST ROMANCE

There has been sent to me, across the world, a little book stamped, on

its yellow cover, with names of Scandinavian publishers,--names

sounding of storm and strand and surge. And the sight of those names,

worthy of Frost-Giants, evokes the vision of a face,--simply because

that face has long been associated, in my imagination, with legends

and stories of the North--especially, I think, with the wonderful

stories of Björnstjerne Björnson.

It is the face of a Norwegian peasant-girl of nineteen summers,--fair

and ruddy and strong. She wears her national costume: her eyes are

grey like the sea, and her bright braided hair is tied with a blue

ribbon. She is tall; and there is an appearance of strong grace about

her, for which I can find no word. Her name I never learned, and never

shall be able to learn;--and now it does not matter. By this time she

may have grandchildren not a few. But for me she will always be the

maiden of nineteen summers,--fair and fresh from the land of the

_Hrimthursar_,--a daughter of gods and Vikings. From the moment of

seeing her I wanted to die for her; and I dreamed of _Valkyrja_ and of

_Vala_-maids, of _Freyja_ and of _Gerda_....

* * * * *

--She is seated, facing me, in an American railroad-car,--a

third-class car, full of people whose forms have become

indistinguishably dim in memory. She alone remains luminous, vivid:

the rest have faded into shadow,--all except a man, sitting beside me,

whose dark Jewish face, homely and kindly, is still visible in

profile. Through the window on our right she watches the strange new

world through which we are passing: there is a trembling beneath us,

and a rhythm of thunder, while the train sways like a ship in a storm.

An emigrant-train it is; and she, and I, and all those dim people are

rushing westward, ever westward,--through days and nights that seem

preternaturally large,--over distances that are monstrous. The light

is of a summer day; and shadows slant to the east.

The man beside me says:--

"She must leave us to-morrow;--she goes to Redwing, Minnesota.... You

like her very much?--yes, she's a fine girl. I think you wish that you

were also going to Redwing, Minnesota?"

I do not answer. I am angry that he should know what I wish. And it is

very rude of him, I think, to let me know that he knows.

Mischievously, he continues:--

"If you like her so much, why don't you talk to her? Tell me what you

would like to say to her; and I'll interpret for you.... Bah! you must

not be afraid of the girls!"

Oh!--the idea of telling _him_ what I should like to say to her!...

Yet it is not possible to see him smile, and to remain vexed with him.

Anyhow, I do not feel inclined to talk. For thirty-eight hours I have

not eaten anything; and my romantic dreams, nourished with

tobacco-smoke only, are frequently interrupted by a sudden inner

aching that makes me wonder how long I shall be able to remain without

food. Three more days of railroad travel--and no money!... My

neighbour yesterday asked me why I did not eat;--how quickly he

changed the subject when I told him! Certainly I have no right to

complain: there is no reason why he should feed me. And I reflect upon

the folly of improvidence.

Then my reflection is interrupted by the apparition of a white hand

holding out to me a very, very large slice of brown bread, with an

inch-thick cut of yellow cheese thereon; and I look up, hesitating,

into the face of the Norwegian girl. Smiling, she says to me, in

English, with a pretty childish accent:

"Take it, and eat it."

I take it, and devour it. Never before nor since did brown bread and

cheese seem to me so good. Only after swallowing the very last crumb

do I suddenly become aware that, in my surprise and hunger, I forgot

to thank her. Impulsively, and at the wrong moment, I try to say some

grateful words.

Instantly, and up to the roots of her hair, she flushes crimson: then,

bending forward, she puts some question in a clear sharp tone that

fills me with fear and shame. I do not understand the question: I

understand only that she is angry; and for one cowering moment my

instinct divines the power and the depth of Northern anger. My face

burns; and her grey eyes, watching it burn, are grey steel; and her

smile is the smile of a daughter of men who laugh when they are angry.

And I wish myself under the train,--under the earth,--utterly out of

sight forever. But my dark neighbour makes some low-voiced

protest,--assures her that I had only tried to thank her. Whereat the

level brows relax, and she turns away, without a word, to watch the

flying landscape; and the splendid flush fades from her cheek as

swiftly as it came. But no one speaks: the train rushes into the dusk

of five and thirty years ago ... and that is all!

* * * * *

... What _can_ she have imagined that I said?... My swarthy comrade

would not tell me. Even now my face burns again at the thought of

having caused a moment's anger to the kind heart that pitied

me,--brought a blush to the cheek of the being for whose sake I would

so gladly have given my life.... But the shadow, the golden shadow of

her, is always with me; and, because of her, even the name of the land

from which she came is very, very dear to me.

* * * * *

In Cincinnati Hearn eventually found work that enabled him to live,

though this did not come immediately, as is proved by an anecdote,

related by himself, of his early days there. A Syrian peddler employed

him to help dispose of some accumulated wares, sending him out with a

consignment of small mirrors. Certainly no human being was more unfitted

by nature for successful peddling than Lafcadio Hearn, and at the end of

the day he returned to the Syrian with the consignment intact. Setting

down his burden to apologize for his failure he put his foot

accidentally upon one of the mirrors, and thrown into a panic by the

sound of the splintering glass, he fled incontinently, and never saw the

merchant again, nor ever again attempted mercantile pursuits.

The first regular work he obtained was as a type-setter and proof-reader

in the Robert Clarke Company, where--as he mentions in one of his

letters--he endeavoured to introduce reforms in the American methods of

punctuation, and assimilate it more closely to the English standards,

but without, as he confesses, any success. It was from some of these

struggles for typographical changes, undertaken with hot-headed

enthusiasm for perfection, that he derived his nickname of "Old

Semicolon," given him in amiable derision by his fellows. Mechanical

work of this character could not satisfy him long, though the experience

was useful to the young artist in words beginning his laborious

self-training in the use of his tools. Punctuation and typographical

form remained for him always a matter of profound importance, and in one

of his letters he declared that he would rather abandon all the

royalties to his publisher than be deprived of the privilege of

correcting his own proofs; corrections which in their amplitude often

devoured in printer's charges the bulk of his profits.

[Illustration: LAFCADIO HEARN

_About 1873_]

Later he secured, for a brief period, a position as private secretary to

Thomas Vickers, at that time librarian of the public library of

Cincinnati, and here again he found food for his desires in a free

access to the recondite matters to which already his genius was tending;

but again he was driven by poverty and circumstance into broader fields,

and early in 1874 he was working as a general reporter on the Cincinnati

_Enquirer_. His work was of a kind that gave him at first no scope

for his talents and must have been peculiarly unsympathetic, consisting

of daily market reports, until chance opened the eyes of his employers

to his capacity for better things. A peculiarly atrocious crime, still

known in Cincinnati annals as the "Tan-yard Murder," had been

communicated to the office of the _Enquirer_ at a moment when all the

members of the staff, usually detailed to cover such assignments, were

absent. The editor calling upon the indifferent gods for some one

instantly to take up the matter, was surprised by a timid request from

the shy cub-reporter who turned in daily market "stuff," to be allowed

to deal with this tragedy, and after some demur, he consented to accept

what appeared an inadequate answer from the adjured deities. The "copy"

submitted some hours later caused astonished eyebrows, was considered

worthy of "scare-heads," and for the nine succeeding days of the life of

the wonder, Cincinnati sought ardently the Hoffmannesque story whose

poignantly chosen phrases set before them a grim picture that caused the

flesh to crawl upon their bones. It was realized at once that the

cub-reporter had unsuspected capacities and his talents were allowed

expansion in the direction of descriptive stories. One of the most

admired of these was a record of a visit to the top of the spire of St.

Peter's Cathedral, where hauled in ropes by a steeple-jack to the arms

of the cross which crowned it, he obtained a lofty view of the city and

returned to write an article that enabled all the town to see the great

panorama through his myopic eyes, which yet could bear testimony to

colour and detail not obvious to clearer vision.

It was in this year that some trusting person was found willing to

advance a small sum of money for the publication of an amorphous little

Sunday sheet, professedly comic and satiric, entitled _Ye Giglampz_. H.

F. Farny contributed the cartoons, and Lafcadio Hearn the bulk of the

text. On June 21st of that year the first number appeared, with the

announcement that it was to be "published daily, except week days," and

was to be "devoted to art, literature, and satire." The first page was

adorned with a Dicky Doylish picture of Herr Kladderadatsch presenting

Mr. Giglampz to an enthusiastic public, which showed decided talent, but

the full page cartoon, though it may have been amusing when published,

is satire turned dry and dusty after the lapse of thirty-two years, and

it may be only vaguely discerned now to refer in some way to the

question of a third term for President Grant.

The pictures are easily preferable to the text, though no doubt it too

has suffered from the desiccation of time, but Lafcadio Hearn was at no

time, one might infer, better fitted for satire than for peddling; _Ye

Giglampz_ plainly "jooks wi' deefeculty," and the young journalist's

views upon art and politics are such as might be expected from a boy of

twenty-four.

The prohibition question, the Chicago fire, a local river disaster, and

the Beecher scandal are all dealt with by pen and pencil, much clipping

from _Punch_ and some translations from the comic journals of Paris

fill the columns, and after nine weeks _Ye Giglampz_ met an early and

well-deserved death. The only copies of the paper now known to be in

existence are contained in a bound volume belonging to Mr. Farny,

discovered by him in a second-hand bookshop, with some pencil notes in

the margin in Hearn's handwriting. One of these notes records that an

advertisement--there were but three in the first number--was never paid

for, so presumably this volume, monument of an unfortunate juvenile

exploit, was once in Hearn's meagre library, but was discarded when he

left Cincinnati.

In the following year Hearn had left the _Enquirer_ and was recording

the Exposition of 1876 for the _Gazette_, and in the latter part of that

year he was a regular reporter for the _Commercial_.

In 1895--writing to Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain--Hearn speaks of

John Cockerill, then visiting Japan, and draws an astonishingly vivid

picture of the editor who was in command of the Cincinnati _Enquirer_ in

the '70's. These occasional trenchant, accurate sketches from life, to

be found here and there in his correspondence, show a shrewdness of

judgement and coolness of observation which his companions never

suspected. He says:--

"I began daily newspaper work in 1874, in the city of Cincinnati, on a

paper called the _Enquirer_ edited by a sort of furious young man named

Cockerill. He was a hard master, a tremendous worker, and a born

journalist. I think none of us liked him, but we all admired his ability

to run things. He used to swear at us, work us half to death (never

sparing himself), and he had a rough skill in sarcasm that we were all

afraid of. He was fresh from the army, and full of army talk. In a few

years he had forced up the circulation of the paper to a very large

figure and made a fortune for the proprietor, who got jealous of him and

got rid of him.... He afterwards took hold of a St. Louis paper,--then

of a New York daily, the _World_.... He ran the circulation up to nearly

a quarter of a million, and again had the proprietor's jealousy to

settle with.... He also built up the _Advertiser_, but getting tired,

sold out, and went travelling. Finally, Bennett of the _Herald_ sends

him to Japan at, I believe, $10,000 a year.

"I met him here to-day and talked over old times. He has become much

gentler and more pleasant, and seems to be very kindly. He is also a

little grey. What I have said about him shows that he is no very common

person. The man who can make three or four fortunes for other men,

without doing the same thing for himself, seldom is. He is not a

literary man, nor a well-read man, nor a scholar,--but has immense

common sense, and a large experience of life,--besides being, in a

Mark-Twainish way, much of a humourist."

Those who knew John Cockerill will find in this portrait not one line

omitted which would make for truth and sympathy. One of Hearn's

associates of this period, Joseph Tunison, says of his work:--

"In Cincinnati such work was much harder than now, because more and

better work was demanded of a man for his weekly stipend than at

present.... Had he been then on a New York daily his articles would have

attracted bidding from rival managements, but in Cincinnati there was

little, if any, encouragement for such brilliant powers as his. The

_Commercial_ took him on at twenty dollars a week.... Though he worked

hard for a pittance he never slighted anything he had to do.... He was

never known to shirk hardship or danger in filling an assignment.... His

employers kept him at the most arduous work of a daily morning

paper--the night stations--for in that field developed the most

sensational events, and he was strongest in the unusual and the

startling."

For two years more this was the routine of his daily life. He formed, in

spite of his shyness, some ties of intimacy; especially with Joseph

Tunison, a man of unusual classical learning, with H. F. Farny, the

artist, and with the now well-known musical critic and lecturer, H. E.

Krehbiel. Into these companionships he threw all the ardour of a very

young man; an ardour increased beyond even the usual intensity of young

friendships, by the natural warmth of his feelings and the loneliness of

his life, bereft of all those ties of family common to happier fates. In

their company he developed a quality of bonhomie that underlay the

natural seriousness of his temperament, and is frequently visible in his

letters, breaking through the gravity of his usual trend of thought.

Absence and time diminished but little his original enthusiasm, as the

letters included in this volume will bear testimony, though in later

years one by one his early friendships were chilled and abandoned. One

of the charges frequently brought against Lafcadio Hearn by his critics

in after years was that he was inconstant in his relations with his

friends. Mr. Tunison says of him:--

"He had a fashion of dropping his friends one by one, or of letting them

drop him, which comes to the same thing. Whether indifference or

suspicion was at the bottom of this habit would be hard to say, but he

never spoke ill of them afterwards. He seemed to forget all about them,

though two or three acquaintances of his early years of struggle and

privation were always after spoken of with the tenderest regard, and

their companionship was eagerly sought whenever this was possible."

The charge of inconstancy is, to those who knew Lafcadio Hearn well, of

a sufficiently serious nature to warrant some analysis at this point,

while dealing with the subject of his first intimacies, for up to this

period he appears to have had no ties other than those, so bitterly

ruptured, with the people of his own blood, or the mere passing amities

of school-boy life. That many of his closest friendships were either

broken abruptly or sank into abeyance is quite true, but the reason for

this was explicable in several ways. The first and most comprehensible

cause was his inherent shyness of nature and an abnormal sensitiveness,

which his early experiences intensified to a point not easily understood

by those of a naturally self-confident temperament unqualified by

blighting childish impressions. A look, a word, which to the ordinary

robust nature would have had no meaning of importance, touched the

quivering sensibilities of the man like a searing acid, and stung him to

an anguish of resentment and bitterness which nearly always seemed

fantastically out of proportion to the offender, and this bitterness was

usually misjudged and resented. Only those cursed with similar

sensibilities--"as tender as the horns of cockled snails"--could

understand and forgive such an idiosyncrasy. It must be remembered that

all qualities have their synchronous defects. The nature which is as

reflective as water to the subtlest shades of the colour and form of

life must of its essential character be subject to rufflement by the

lightest breath of harshness or misconception.

Professor Chamberlain, who himself suffered from this tendency to

unwarranted estrangement, has dealt with another phase of the matter

with a noble sympathy too rare among Hearn's friends. He says, in a

letter to the biographer:--

"The second point was his attitude toward his friends,--his quondam

friends,--all of whom he gradually dropped, with but very few

exceptions. Some I know who were deeply and permanently irritated by

this neglect, or ingratitude, as they termed it. I never could share

such a feeling, though of course I lamented the severance of connection

with one so gifted, and made two or three attempts at a renewal of

intercourse, which were met at first by cold politeness, afterwards with

complete silence, causing me to desist from further endeavours. The

reason I could not resent this was because Lafcadio's dropping of his

friends seemed to me to have its roots in that very quality which made

the chief charm of his works. I mean his idealism. Friends, when he

first made them, were for him more than mere mortal men, they stood

endowed with every perfection. He painted them in the beautiful colours

of his own fancy, and worshipped them, pouring out at their feet all the

passionate emotionalism of his Greek nature. But Lafcadio was not

emotional merely; another side of his mind had the keen insight of a man

of science. Thus he soon came to see that his idols had feet of clay,

and--being so purely subjective in his judgements--he was indignant with

them for having, as he thought, deceived him. Add to this that the rigid

character of his philosophical opinions made him perforce despise, as

intellectual weaklings, all those who did not share them, or shared them

only in a lukewarm manner,--and his disillusionment with a series of

friends in whom he had once thought to find intellectual sympathy is

seen to have been inevitable. For no man living, except himself,

idolized Herbert Spencer in his peculiar way; turning Spencer's

scientific speculations into a kind of mysticism. This mysticism became

a religion to him. The slightest cavil raised against it was resented by

him as a sacrilege. Thus it was hardly possible for him to retain old

ties of friendship except with a few men whom he met on the plane of

every-day life apart from the higher intellectual interests. Lafcadio

himself was a greater sufferer from all this than any one else; for he

possessed the affectionate disposition of a child, and suffered

poignantly when sympathy was withdrawn, or--what amounted to the

same--when he himself withdrew it. He was much to be pitied,--always

wishing to love, and discovering each time that his love had been

misplaced."

To put the matter in its simplest form, he loved with a completeness and

tenderness extremely rare among human beings. When he discovered--as all

who love in this fashion eventually do--that the objects of his

affection had no such tenderness to give in return, he felt himself both

deceived and betrayed and allowed the relation to pass into the silence

of oblivion.

There is still another facet of this subject which is made clear by some

of the letters written in the last years of his life, when he had

withdrawn himself almost wholly from intercourse with all save his

immediate family. Failing strength warned him that not many more years

remained in which to complete his self-imposed task, and like a man who

nears his goal with shortening breath and labouring pulse, he let slip

one by one every burden, and cast from him his dearest possessions, lest

even the weight of one love should hold him back from the final grasp

upon the ideal he had so long pursued with avid heart. This matter has

been dwelt upon at some length, and somewhat out of due place, but the

charge of disloyalty to friendship is a serious one, and a full

understanding of the facts upon which it rested is important to a

comprehension of the man.

In these early days in Cincinnati, however, no blight had yet come upon

his young friendships, and they proved a source of great delight.

Krehbiel was already deeply immersed in studies of folk-songs and

folk-music,--his collection of which has since become famous,--and

Lafcadio threw himself with enthusiasm into similar studies, his natural

love for exotic lore rendering them peculiarly sympathetic to his

genius. Together they ransacked the libraries for discoveries, and

sought knowledge at first hand from wandering minstrels in Chinese

laundries, or from the exiles of many lands who gathered in the polyglot

slums along the river-banks. In the dedication of "Some Chinese Ghosts"

is recorded an echo of one of these experiences, when Krehbiel opened

the heart of a reserved Oriental to give up to them all his knowledge,

by proving that he himself could play their strange instruments and sing

their century-old songs. The dedication runs thus:--

TO MY FRIEND,

HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL,

THE MUSICIAN,

WHO, SPEAKING THE SPEECH OF MELODY UNTO THE

CHILDREN OF TEN-HIA,--

UNTO THE WANDERING TSING-JIN, WHOSE SKINS

HAVE THE COLOUR OF GOLD,--

MOVED THEM TO MAKE STRANGE SOUNDS UPON THE

SERPENT-BELLIED SAN-HIEN;

PERSUADED THEM TO PLAY FOR ME UPON THE

SHRIEKING YA-HIEN;

PREVAILED ON THEM TO SING ME A SONG OF THEIR

NATIVE LAND,--

THE SONG OF MOHLI-WA.

THE SONG OF THE JASMINE-FLOWER.

This dedication is of peculiar interest; "Chinese Ghosts" has been long

out of print, and of the few copies issued--nearly the whole edition was

destroyed--but a handful still exist. It gives a typical example of the

musical, rhythmic prose which the young reporter was endeavouring to

master. He had fallen under the spell of the French Romantic school and

of their passion for _le mot juste_, of their love for exotic words, of

their research for the grotesque, the fantastic, the bizarre. Already

out of his tiny income he was extracting what others in like case spent

upon comforts or pleasures, to buy dictionaries and thesauri, and was

denying himself food and clothes to purchase rare books. The works of

Théophile Gautier were his daily companions, in which he saturated his

mind with fantasies of the Orient, Spain, and Egypt, refreshing himself

after the dull routine of the day's work with endeavours to

transliterate into English the strange and monstrous tales of his model,

those abnormal imaginations whose alien aroma almost defied transference

into a less supple tongue.

His friend Tunison, writing of Hearn at this period, says:--

"But it was impossible for even this slavery of journalism to crush

out of him his determination to advance and excel. In the small hours of

the morning, into broad daylight, after the rough work of the police

rounds and the writing of columns in his inimitable style, he could be

seen, under merely a poor jet of gas, with his one useful eye close to

book and manuscript, translating from Gautier."

These translations--including "Clarimonde," "Arria Marcella," and "King

Candaule"--with three others were published in 1882 under the title of

the initial tale, "One of Cleopatra's Nights," having been gathered from

the "Nouvelles," and the "Romans et Contes." The preface concludes thus:

"It is the artist who must judge of Gautier's creations. To the lovers

of the loveliness of the antique world, to the lovers of physical beauty

and artistic truth,--of the charm of youthful dreams and young passion

in its blossoming,--of poetic ambitions and the sweet pantheism that

finds all Nature vitalized by the Spirit of the Beautiful,--to such the

first English version of these graceful phantasies is offered in the

hope that it may not be found wholly unworthy of the original."

Up to this time no translation into English of Gautier's "Contes" had

been attempted, and the manuscript sought a publisher in vain for half a

dozen years. Later, when the little volume had reached a small but

appreciative audience, another English version was attempted by Andrew

Lang, but proved an unsuccessful rival, lacking the warmth and fidelity

of its predecessor.

Other attempts in the same direction met with no better success,

partly, in some cases, because of the reluctance any Anglo-Saxon

publisher inevitably feels in issuing works which would encounter no

barriers of rigid decorum between themselves and the world of French

readers. The youthful artist working in any medium is prone to be

impatient of the prejudices of Anglo-Saxon pudency. The beautiful is to

him always its own justification for being, and his inexperience makes

him unafraid of the nudities of art. The refusal to deal freely with any

form of beauty seems to him as bloodlessly pietistic as the priest's

excision of "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." Yet many years

after, when the boy had himself become the father of a boy and began to

think of his son's future, he said: "What shall I do with him? ... send

him to grim Puritans that he may be taught the Way of the Lord?--I am

beginning to think that really much of the ecclesiastical education (bad

and cruel as I used to imagine it) is founded on the best experience of

man under civilization; and I understand lots of things I used to think

superstitious bosh, and now think solid wisdom."

This unavailing struggle to find an outlet for the expression of

something more worthy of his abilities than the sensational side of

journalism caused him the deepest discouragement and depression; and his

youthful ardour, denied a safe channel for its forces, turned to less

healthful instincts. The years in Cincinnati were at times marred by

experiments and outbursts, undertaken with bitter enthusiasm for

fantastic ethical codes, and finally caused severance of his ties with

his employers and the town itself. The tendency of his tastes toward the

study of strange peoples and civilizations made him find much that was

attractive in "the indolent, sensuous life of the negro race, and led

him to steep them in a sense of romance that he alone could extract from

the study,"--says Joseph Tunison,--"things that were common to these

people in their every-day life his vivid imagination transformed into

romance."

This led him eventually into impossible experiments, and brought upon

him the resentment of his friends. Many years after, in Japan, he

referred to this matter in a letter to one of his pupils, and the letter

is so illuminative of this matter as to make it desirable to insert it

here, though rightly it should be included in the volume dealing with

his life in Japan.

DEAR OCHIAI,--I was very happy to get your kind letter, and the

pleasant news it conveyed....

And now that all your trouble is over, perhaps you will sometimes find

it hard not to feel angry with those who ostracized you for so long.

It would at least be natural that you should feel angry with them, or

with some at least. But I hope you will not allow yourself to feel

anger towards them, even in your heart. Because the real truth is that

it was not really your schoolmates who were offended: it only appeared

so. The real feeling against you was what is called a _national_

sentiment,--that jealous love of country with which every man is born,

and which you, quite unknowingly, turned against you for a little

while. So I hope you will love all your schoolmates none the

less,--even though they treated you distantly for so long.

When I was a young man in my twenties, I had an experience very like

yours. I resolved to take the part of some people who were much

disliked in the place where I lived. I thought that those who

disliked them were morally wrong,--so I argued boldly for them and

went over to their side. Then all the rest of the people stopped

speaking to me, and I hated them for it. But I was too young then to

understand. There were other moral questions, much larger than those I

had been arguing about, which really caused the whole trouble. The

people did not know how to express them very well; they only _felt_

them. After some years I discovered that I was quite mistaken--that I

was under a delusion. I had been opposing a great national and social

principle without knowing it. And if my best friends had not got angry

with me, I could not have learned the truth so well,--because there

are many things that are hard to explain and can only be taught by

experience....

Ever very affectionately,

Your old teacher,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, March 27, 1894.

Sick, unhappy, and unpopular, flight to other scenes naturally suggested

itself. Mr. Tunison thus describes the influences determining the move

to New Orleans, which occurred in 1877:--

"As Hearn advanced in his power to write, the sense of the discomforts

of his situation in Cincinnati grew upon him. His body and mind longed

for Southern air and scenes. One morning, after the usual hard work of

an unusually nasty winter night in Cincinnati, in a leisure hour of

conversation he heard an associate on the paper describe a scene in the

Gulf State. It was something about an old mansion of an ante-bellum

cotton prince, with its white columns, its beautiful avenue of trees;

the whitewashed negro quarters stretching away in the background; the

cypress and live-oaks hung with moss, the odours from the blossoming

magnolias, the songs of the mocking-birds in the early sunlight."

Hearn took in every word of this with great keenness of interest, as was

shown by the usual dilation of his nostrils when excited, though he had

little to say at the time. It was as though he could see, and hear, and

smell the delights of the scene. Not long after on leaving for New

Orleans he remarked:--

"I had to go, sooner or later, but it was your description of the

sunlight, and melodies, and fragrance, and all the delights with which

the South appeals to the senses that determined me. I shall feel better

in the South, and I believe I shall do better."

Though nostalgia for Southern warmth had given a purpose to his

wanderings, the immediate cause of his leaving the paper on which he was

employed in Cincinnati was his assignment to deal with a story of

hydrophobia, in which he suspected he had been given some misleading

information by his superiors; and though his suspicions were possibly

unjust, he announced that he had lost his loyalty to the paper and

abruptly quitted it.

It is said that he went first to Memphis on leaving Cincinnati, but no

proof of this remains save an anecdote he once related, placing the

scene of it in Tennessee.

The question of essential wrong and right being under discussion, his

companion advanced the theory that morals varied so much with localities

and conditions that it was impossible to decide that there was any act

of which one might say that it was essentially wrong or essentially

right. After thinking this over in his brooding manner, he said:--

"Yes, there is one thing that is always wrong, profoundly wrong under

any conditions."

"And that?" he was asked.

"To cause pain to a helpless creature for one's own pleasure," was his

answer; and then, in illustration, continued: "Once I was walking along

a road in Tennessee, and I saw a man who seemed intoxicated with

rage--for what cause I don't know. A kitten was crossing the road at the

moment. It got under the man's feet and tripped him. He caught it up and

blinded it and flung it from him with a laugh. The act seemed to soothe

his rage. I was not near enough to stop him, but I had a pistol in my

pocket--I always carried one then--and I fired four times at him; but,

you know my sight is so bad, I missed him." After a few moments he

added, "It has always been one of the regrets of my life that I missed."

Sometime in 1877--the time of the year is uncertain--Hearn arrived in

New Orleans, and from this date the work of a biographer becomes almost

superfluous, for then was begun the admirable series of letters to H. E.

Krehbiel, which record the occupations and interests of his life for the

next twelve years, setting forth, as no one less gifted than himself

could, the impressions he received, the development of his mind, the

trend of his studies, the infinite labour by which he slowly built up

his mastery of the English tongue and the methods of work which made him

eventually one of the great stylists of the Nineteenth Century. These

letters make clear, as no comment could adequately do, how unflinchingly

he pursued his purpose to become an artist, through long discouragement,

through poverty and self-sacrifice; make clear how the Dream never

failed to lead him, and how broad a foundation of study and discipline

he laid during his apprenticeship for the structure he was later to rear

for his own monument. They also disclose, as again no comment could do,

the modesty of his self-appreciation, and the essentially enthusiastic

and affectionate nature of his character.

The first work he secured in New Orleans was on the staff of the _Daily

Item_, one of the minor journals, where he read proof, clipped

exchanges, wrote editorials, and occasionally contributed a translation,

or some bit of original work in the shape of what came to be known as

his "Fantastics." Meanwhile he was rejoicing in the change of residence,

for the old, dusty, unpaved squalid New Orleans of the '70's--the city

crushed into inanition by war, poverty, pestilence, and the frenzy of

carpet-bagger misrule--was far more sympathetic to his tastes than the

prosperous growing town he had abandoned.

The gaunt, melancholy great houses where he lodged in abandoned,

crumbling apartments,--still decorated with the tattered splendours of a

prosperous past,--where he was served by timid unhappy gentlewomen, or

their ex-servants; the dim flower-hung courts behind the blank,

mouldering walls; the street-cries; the night-songs of wanderers--all

the colourful, polyglot, half-tropical life of the town was a constant

appeal to the romantic side of the young man's nature. Of disease and

danger--arising out of the conditions of the unhappy city--he took no

thought till after the great epidemic of yellow fever which desolated

New Orleans the following summer, during which he suffered severely from

_dengue_, a lighter form of the disease. But even the cruelties of his

new home were of value to him. In the grim closing chapter of "Chita"

the anguish of a death by yellow fever is set forth with a quivering

reality which only a personal knowledge of some phases of the disease

could have made possible.

Always pursued by a desire to free himself of the harness of daily

journalism, he plunged into experiments in economy, reducing at one time

his expenses for food to but two dollars a week; trusting his hardly

gathered savings to a sharper who owned a restaurant, and who ran away

when the enterprise proved a failure. On another occasion he put by

everything beyond his bare necessities in one of the mushroom

building-loan societies which sprang up all over the country at that

time, and with the collapse of this investment he finally and forever

abandoned further financial enterprises, regarding them with an

absolutely comic distrust, though for some years he continued to dwell

now and then on the possibility of starting second-hand bookshops in

hopelessly impossible places--such as the then moribund town of St.

Augustine, Florida--and would suggest, with lovably absurd naïveté, that

a _shrewd_ man could do well there.

Meanwhile his gluttony for rare books on recondite matters kept him

constantly poor, but proved a far better investment, as tools of trade,

than his other and more speculative expenditures. Eventually he gathered

a library of several hundred volumes and of considerable value, together

with an interesting series of scrapbooks containing his earlier essays

in literary journalism, and other clippings showing his characteristic

_flair_ for the exotic and the strange.

In 1881 he, by great good fortune, was brought into contact with the

newly consolidated _Times-Democrat_, a journal whose birth marked one of

the earliest impulses towards the regeneration of the long depressed

community, and whose staff included men, such as Charles Whitney, Honoré

Burthe, and John Augustin, who represented the best impulses toward new

growth among both the American and Creole members of the city's

population. Of Page M. Baker, the editor-in-chief, he drew in after

years this faithful pen-picture:--

"You say my friend writes nicely. He is about the most lovable man I

ever met,--an old-time Southerner, very tall and slight, with a singular

face. He is so exactly the ideal Mephistopheles that he would never get

his photograph taken. The face does not altogether belie the

character,--but the mockery is very tender play, and queerly original.

It never offends. The real Mephistopheles appears only when there are

ugly obstacles to overcome. Then the diabolic keenness with which

motives are read and disclosed, and the lightning moves by which a plot

is checkmated, or a net made for the plotter himself, usually startle

people. He is a man of immense force,--it takes such a one to rule in

that community,--but as a gentleman I never saw his superior in grace or

consideration. I always loved him--but like all whom I like could never

get quite enough of his company for myself."

It was an unusual and delightful coterie of men with whom chance had

associated him. Men peculiarly fitted to value his special gifts. Honoré

Burthe was the ideal of the "beau sabreur" of romantic French tradition,

personally beautiful, brave to absurdity; a soldier of fortune under

many flags; withal the pink of gentle courtesy, and a scholar. John

Augustin--with less of the "panache"--inherited also the beauty,

courage, and breeding of those picturesque ancestors, who had made the

French gentleman-adventurers the most ornamental colonists of North

America. Charles Whitney, by contrast, had fallen heir to all the

shrewd, humorous, amiable vigour of the rival race which had struggled

successfully for possession of the great inheritance of America, and

which finally met and fused with the Latins in Louisiana.

Among these four rather uncommon types of journalists Lafcadio Hearn

found ready sympathy and appreciation, and a chance to develop in the

direction of his talents and desires. He was treated by them with

courtesy and an indulgent consideration of his idiosyncrasies new in

his experience, and was allowed to expand along the natural line of his

tastes and capacities, with the result that he soon began to attract

attention, and was finally able to find his outlet in the direction to

which his preparatory labours and inherent genius were urging him.

He was astonishingly fortunate to have found such companions and such an

opportunity. At that period the new journalism was dominant almost

everywhere, and perhaps nowhere in the United States, except in New

Orleans,--with its large French population and its residuum of the

ante-bellum leisurely cultivation of taste, and love of lordly beauties

of style,--could he have found an audience and a daily newspaper which

eagerly sought, and rewarded to the best of its ability, a type of

belles-lettres which was caviare to the general. His first work

consisted of a weekly translation from some French writer--Théophile

Gautier, Guy de Maupassant, or Pierre Loti, whose books he was one of

the first to introduce to English readers, and for whose beautiful

literary manner he always retained the most enthusiastic admiration.

Long years afterward in Japan he spoke of one of the worst afflictions

of a recent illness as having been the fear that he should die without

having finished Loti's "L'Inde sans les Anglais," which he was reading

when seized by the malady. These translations were usually

accompanied--in another part of the paper--by an editorial, elucidatory

of either the character and method of the author, or the subject of the

paper itself, and these editorials were often vehicles of much curious

research on a multitude of odd subjects, such as the famous swordsmen of

history, Oriental dances and songs, muezzin calls, African music,

historic lovers, Talmudic legends, monstrous literary exploits, and the

like; echoes of which studies appear frequently in the Krehbiel and

O'Connor letters in this volume.

From time to time he added transferences, and adaptations, or original

papers, unsigned, which found a small but appreciative audience, some of

whom were sufficiently interested to enquire the identity of the author,

and who grew into a local clientèle which always thereafter followed the

growth of his fame with warm interest. Among these "Fantastics" and

translations was published the whole contents of his three early

books--"One of Cleopatra's Nights," "Stray Leaves from Strange

Literature," and "Some Chinese Ghosts"--but these books were made only

of such selections as an ever increasing severity of taste considered

worthy of reproduction. Much delightful matter which failed quite to

reach this standard lapsed into extinction in the files of the journal.

Among these was one which has been recovered by chance from his later

correspondence. Replying to a criticism by a friend of the use of the

phrase "lentor inexpressible" in a manuscript submitted for judgement,

he promises to delete it, speaks of it as a "trick phrase" of his, and

encloses the old clipping to show where he had first used it, and adds

"please burn or tear up after reading ... this essay belongs to the

Period of Gush."

Fortunately his correspondent--as did most of those to whom he

wrote--treasured everything in his handwriting, and the fragment which

bore--my impression is--the title of "A Dead Love" (the clipping lacks

its caption) remains to give an example of some of the work that bears

the flaws of his 'prentice hand, before he used his tools with the

assured skill of a master:--

... No rest he knew because of her. Even in the night his heart was

ever startled from slumber as by the echo of her footfall; and dreams

mocked him with tepid fancies of her lips; and when he sought

forgetfulness in strange kisses her memory ever came shadowing

between.... So that, weary of his life, he yielded it up at last in

the fevered summer of a tropical city,--dying with her name upon his

lips. And his face was no more seen in the palm-shadowed streets, ...

but the sun rose and sank even as before.

And that vague Something which lingers a little while within the tomb

where the body moulders, lingered and dreamed within the long dark

resting-place where they had laid him with the pious hope--_Que en paz

descanse_!...

Yet so weary of his life had the Wanderer been, that the repose of the

dead was not for him. And while the body shrank and sank into dust,

the phantom man found no rest in the darkness, and thought dimly to

himself: "I am even too weary to find peace!"

There was a thin crevice in the ancient wall of the tomb. And through

it, and through the meshes of the web that a spider had woven athwart

it, the dead looked and beheld the amethystine blaze of the summer

sky,--and pliant palms bending in the warm wind,--and the opaline glow

of the horizon,--and fair pools bearing images of cypresses

inverted,--and the birds that flitted from tomb to tomb and sang,--and

flowers in the shadow of the sepulchres.... And the vast bright world

seemed to him not so hateful as before.

Likewise the sounds of life assailed the faint senses of the dead

through the thin crevice in the wall of the tomb:--always the far-off

drowsy murmur made by the toiling of the city's heart; sometimes

sounds of passing converse and steps,--echoes of music and of

laughter,--chanting and chattering of children at play,--and the

liquid babble of the beautiful brown women.... So that the dead man

dreamed of life and strength and joy, and the litheness of limbs to be

loved: also of that which had been, and of that which might have been,

and of that which now could never be. And he longed at last to live

again--seeing that there was no rest in the tomb.

But the gold-born days died in golden fire; and blue nights unnumbered

filled the land with indigo shadows; and the perfume of the summer

passed like a breath of incense ... and the dead within the sepulchre

could not wholly die.

Stars in their courses peered down through the crevices of the tomb,

and twinkled, and passed on; winds of the sea shrieked to him through

the widening crannies of the tomb; birds sang above him and flew to

other lands; the bright lizards that ran noiselessly over his bed of

stone, as noiselessly departed; the spider at last ceased to repair

her web of silk; years came and went with lentor inexpressible; but

for the dead there was no rest!

And after many tropical moons had waxed and waned, and the summer was

deepening in the land, filling the golden air with tender drowsiness

and passional perfume, it strangely came to pass that _She_ whose name

had been murmured by his lips when the Shadow of Death fell upon him,

came to that city of palms, and even unto the ancient place of

sepulture, and unto the tomb that bore his name.

And he knew the whisper of her raiment--knew the sweetness of her

presence--and the pallid hearts of the blossoms of a plant whose blind

roots had found food within the crevice of the tomb, changed and

flushed, and flamed incarnadine....

But she--perceiving it not--passed by; and the sound of her footstep

died away forever.

To his own, and perhaps other middle-aged taste "A Dead Love" may seem

negligible, but to those still young enough, as he himself then was, to

credit passion with a potency not only to survive "the gradual furnace

of the world" but even to blossom in the dust of graves, this

stigmatization as "Gush" will seem as unfeeling as always does to the

young the dry and sapless wisdom of granddams. To them any version of

the Orphic myth is tinglingly credible. Yearningly desirous that the

brief flower of life may never fade, such a cry finds an echo in the

very roots of their inexperienced hearts. The smouldering ardour of its

style, which a chastened judgement rejected, was perhaps less faulty

than its author believed it to be in later years.

It was to my juvenile admiration for this particular bit of work that I

owed the privilege of meeting Lafcadio Hearn, in the winter of 1882, and

of laying the foundation of a close friendship which lasted without a

break until the day of his death.

He was at this time a most unusual and memorable person. About five feet

three inches in height, with unusually broad and powerful shoulders for

such a stature, there was an almost feminine grace and lightness in his

step and movements. His feet were small and well shaped, but he wore

invariably the most clumsy and neglected shoes, and his whole dress was

peculiar. His favourite coat, both winter and summer, was a heavy

double-breasted "reefer," while the size of his wide-brimmed,

soft-crowned hat was a standing joke among his friends. The rest of his

garments were apparently purchased for the sake of durability rather

than beauty, with the exception of his linen, which, even in days of the

direst poverty, was always fresh and good. Indeed a peculiar physical

cleanliness was characteristic of him--that cleanliness of

uncontaminated savages and wild animals, which has the air of being so

essential and innate as to make the best-groomed men and domesticated

beasts seem almost frowzy by contrast. His hands were very delicate and

supple, with quick timid movements that were yet full of charm, and his

voice was musical and very soft. He spoke always in short sentences, and

the manner of his speech was very modest and deferential. His head was

quite remarkably beautiful; the profile both bold and delicate, with

admirable modelling of the nose, lips and chin. The brow was square, and

full above the eyes, and the complexion a clear smooth olive. The

enormous work which he demanded of his vision had enlarged beyond its

natural size the eye upon which he depended for sight, but originally,

before the accident,--whose disfiguring effect he magnified and was

exaggeratedly sensitive about,--his eyes must have been handsome, for

they were large, of a dark liquid brown, and heavily lashed. In

conversation he frequently, almost instinctively, placed his hand over

the injured eye to conceal it from his companion.

Though he was abnormally shy, particularly with strangers and women,

this was not obvious in any awkwardness of manner; he was composed and

dignified, though extremely silent and reserved until his confidence was

obtained. With those whom he loved and trusted his voice and mental

attitude were caressing, affectionate, and confiding, though with even

these some chance look or tone or gesture would alarm him into sudden

and silent flight, after which he might be invisible for days or weeks,

appearing again as silently and suddenly, with no explanation of his

having so abruptly taken wing. In spite of his limited sight he appeared

to have the power to divine by some extra sense the slightest change of

expression in the faces of those with whom he talked, and no object or

tint escaped his observation. One of his habits while talking was to

walk about, touching softly the furnishings of the room, or the flowers

of the garden, picking up small objects for study with his pocket-glass,

and meantime pouring out a stream of brilliant talk in a soft,

half-apologetic tone, with constant deference to the opinions of his

companions. Any idea advanced he received with respect, however much he

might differ, and if a phrase or suggestion appealed to him his face lit

with a most delightful irradiation of pleasure, and he never forgot it.

A more delightful or--at times--more fantastically witty companion it

would be impossible to imagine, but it is equally impossible to attempt

to convey his astounding sensitiveness. To remain on good terms with him

it was necessary to be as patient and wary as one who stalks the hermit

thrush to its nest. Any expression of anger or harshness to any one

drove him to flight, any story of moral or physical pain sent him

quivering away, and a look of ennui or resentment, even if but a passing

emotion, and indulged in while his back was turned, was immediately

conveyed to his consciousness in some occult fashion and he was off in

an instant. Any attempt to detain or explain only increased the length

of his absence. A description of his eccentricities of manner would be

misleading if the result were to convey an impression of neurotic

debility, for with this extreme sensitiveness was combined vigour of

mind and body to an unusual degree--the delicacy was only of the

spirit.

Mrs. Lylie Harris of New Orleans, one of his intimate friends at this

time, in an article written after his death, speaks of his friendship

with the children of her family, with whom he was an affectionate

playfellow, and with whom he was entirely confident and at his ease. An

equally friendly and confident relation existed between himself and the

old negro woman who cared for his rooms (as clean and plain as a

soldier's), and indeed all his life he was happiest with the young and

the simple, who never perplexed or disturbed him by the complexities of

modern civilization, which all his life he distrusted and feared.

Among those attracted by his work in the _Times-Democrat_ was W. D.

O'Connor, in the marine service of the government, who wrote to enquire

the name of the author of an article on Gustave Doré. From this grew a

correspondence extending over several years. Jerome A. Hart, of San

Francisco, was another correspondent attracted by his work, to whom he

wrote from time to time, even after his residence in Japan had begun.

Mr. Hart in contributing his letters says that this correspondence began

in 1882, through the following reference in the pages of the _Argonaut_

to "One of Cleopatra's Nights":--

"Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, a talented writer on the staff of the New Orleans

_Times-Democrat_, has just translated some of Gautier's fantastic

romances, under the name of 'One of Cleopatra's Nights.' The book

comprises six fascinating stories--the one which gives the title,

'Clarimonde,' 'Arria Marcella, a Souvenir of Pompeii,' 'The Mummy's

Foot,' 'Omphale, a Rococo Story,' and 'King Candaule.' Mr. Hearn has few

equals in this country as regards translation, and the stories lose

nothing of their artistic unity in his hands. But his hobby is

literalism. For instance, of the epitaph in 'Clarimonde,'--

'Ici-gît Clarimonde,

Qui fut de son vivant

La plus belle du monde,'

he remarks: 'The broken beauty of the lines is but inadequately rendered

thus:--

'Here lies Clarimonde,

Who was famed in her lifetime

As the fairest of women.'

Very true--it is inadequate. But why not vary it? For example:--

Here lieth Clarimonde,

Who was, what time she lived,

The loveliest in the land.

The fleeting archaic flavour of the original is not entirely lost here,

and the lines are broken, yet metrical. But this is only a suggestion,

and a kindly one."

This book--his first--travelled far before finding a publisher, and then

only at the cost of the author bearing half the expense of publication.

Other notices had been less kind. The _Observer_, as he quotes in a

letter to Mr. Hart, had declared that it was a collection of "stories of

unbridled lust without the apology of natural passion," and that "the

translation reeked with the miasma of the brothel." The _Critic_ had

wasted no time upon the translator, confining itself to depreciation of

Gautier, and this Hearn resented more than severity to himself, for at

this period Gautier and his style were his passionate delight, as

witness the following note which accompanied a loan of a volume

containing a selection from the Frenchman's poems:--

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I venture to try to give you a little novel

pleasure by introducing you to the "Emaux et Camées." As you have told

me you never read them, I feel sure you will experience a literary

surprise. You will find in Gautier a perfection of melody, a warmth of

word-colouring, a voluptuous delicacy which no English poet has ever

approached and which reveal, I think, a certain capacity of artistic

expression no Northern tongue can boast. What the Latin tongues yield

in to Northern languages is strength; but the themes in which the

Latin poets excel are usually soft and exquisite. Still you will find

in the "Rondalla" some fine specimens of violence. It is the song of

the Toreador Juan.

These "Emaux et Camées" constitute Gautier's own pet selection from

his works. I have seen nothing in Hugo's works to equal some of

them.... I won't presume to offer you this copy: it is too shabby, has

travelled about with me in all sorts of places for eight years. But if

you are charmed by this "parfait magicien des lettres françaises" (as

Baudelaire called him) I hope to have the pleasure of offering you a

nicer copy....

Mr. John Albee wrote to him in connection with the book, and also the

Reverend Wayland D. Ball.

"Stray Leaves from Strange Literature"--published by James R. Osgood and

Company of Boston--followed in 1884 and was more kindly treated by the

critics, though it brought fewer letters from private admirers, and was

not very profitable--save to his reputation. In 1885 a tiny volume was

issued under the title of "Gombo Zhêbes," being a collection of 350

Creole proverbs which he had made while studying the patois of the

Louisiana negro--a patois of which the local name is "Gombo." These

laborious studies of the grammar and oral literature of a tongue spoken

only by and to negro servants in Louisiana seemed rather a work of

supererogation at the time, but later during his life in the West Indies

they proved of incalculable value to him in his intercourse with the

inhabitants. There the patois--not having been subjected as in New

Orleans to that all-absorbing solvent of the English tongue--continued

to hold its own alongside the pure French of the educated Creoles, and

his book would have been impossible had he not had command of the

universal speech of the common people.

"Some Chinese Ghosts" had set out on its travels in search of a

publisher sometime earlier, and after several rejections was finally, in

the following year, accepted by Roberts Brothers. In regard to some

corrections which they desired made in the text this reference has been

found in a letter to his friend Krehbiel, a letter in which, however,

time and the ruthless appetite of bookworms have made havoc with words

here and there:--

1886.

DEAR K.,--In Promethean agony I write.

Roberts Brothers, Boston, have written me that they want to publish

"Chinese Ghosts;" but want me to cut out a multitude of Japanese,

Sanscrit, Chinese, and Buddhist terms.

Thereupon unto them I despatched a colossal document of supplication

and prayer,--citing Southey, Moore, Flaubert, Edwin Arnold, Gautier,

"Hiawatha," and multitudinous singers and multitudinous songs, and the

rights of prose poetry, and the supremacy of Form.

And no answer have I yet received.

How shall I sacrifice Orientalism, seeing that this my work was

inspired by [fragment of a Greek word] by the Holy Spirit, by the Vast

... [probably Blue Soul] of the Universe ... but one of the facets of

that million-faceted Rose-diamond which flasheth back the light of the

Universal Sun? And even as Apocalyptic John I hold--

"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this

prophecy God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out

of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

Thy brother in the Holy Ghost of Art wisheth thee many benisons and

victories, and the Grace that cometh as luminous rain and the Wind of

Inspiration perfumed with musk and the flowers of Paradise.

Lafcadio.

This suggestion was peculiarly afflicting because of his love of exotic

words, not only for their own sake, but for the colour they lent to the

general scheme of decoration of his style. It was as if a painter of an

Oriental picture had been asked to omit all reproduction of Eastern

costumes, all representation of the architecture or utensils germane to

his scene. To eliminate these foreign terms was like asking a modern

actor to play "Julius Caesar" in a full-bottomed wig.

At about this period a friendship formed with Lieutenant Oscar Crosby

exerted a most profound and far-reaching influence upon Hearn--an

influence which continued to grow until his whole life and manner of

thought were coloured by it.

Lieutenant Crosby was a young Louisianian, educated at West Point, and

then stationed in New Orleans, a person of very unusual abilities, and

Hearn found him a suggestive and inspiring companion. In a letter

written to Ernest Crosby from Japan in 1904, but a month before his

death, he says:--

"A namesake of yours, a young lieutenant in the United States Army,

first taught me, about twenty years ago, how to study Herbert Spencer.

To that Crosby I shall always feel a very reverence of gratitude, and I

shall always find myself inclined to seek the good opinion of any man

bearing the name of Crosby."

To Mr. Krehbiel in the same year that he began the study of "The

Principles of Ethics" he wrote:--

"Talking of change in opinions, I am really astonished at myself. You

know what my fantastic metaphysics were. A friend disciplined me to read

Herbert Spencer. I suddenly discovered what a waste of time all my

Oriental metaphysics had been. I also discovered for the first time how

to apply the little general knowledge I possessed. I also found

unspeakable comfort in the sudden, and for me eternal reopening of the

Great Doubt, which renders pessimism ridiculous, and teaches a new

reverence for all forms of faith. In short, from the day when I finished

the 'First Principles,' a totally new intellectual life opened for me;

and I hope during the next few years to devour the rest of this oceanic

philosophy."

He seems not, in these positive assertions, to have overestimated the

great change that had come upon his mental attitude. The strong breath

of the great thinker had blown from off his mind the froth and ferment

of youth, leaving the wine clear and strong beneath. From this time

becomes evident a new seriousness in his manner, and beauty became to

him not only the mere grace of form but the meaning and truth which that

form was to embody.

The next book bearing his name shows the effect of this change, and the

immediate success of the book demonstrated that, while his love for the

exotic was to remain ingrained, he had learned to bring the exotic into

vital touch with the normal.

"Chita: A Story of Last Island" had its origin in a visit paid in the

summer of 1884 to Grande Isle, one of the islands lying in the Gulf of

Mexico, near the mouth of the Mississippi River in the Bay of

Barataria. A letter written to Page Baker while there may be inserted at

this point to give some idea of the place.

[Illustration: Gentlemen's bathing houses]

DEAR PAGE,--I wish you were here; for I am sure that the enjoyment

would do you a great deal of good. I had not been in sea-water for

fifteen years, and you can scarcely imagine how I rejoice in it,--in

fact I don't like to get out of it at all. I suppose you have not been

at Grande Isle--or at least not been here for so long that you have

forgotten what it looks like. It makes a curious impression on me: the

old plantation cabins, standing in rows like village-streets, and

neatly remodelled for more cultivated inhabitants, have a delightfully

rural aspect under their shadowing trees; and there is a veritable

country calm by day and night. Grande Isle has suggestions in it of

several old country fishing villages I remember, but it is even still

more charmingly provincial. The hotel proper, where the tables are

laid,--formerly, I fancy, a sugar-house or something of that

sort,--reminds one of nothing so much as one of those big English or

Western barn-buildings prepared for a holiday festival or a

wedding-party feast. The only distinctively American feature is the

inevitable Southern gallery with white wooden pillars. An absolutely

ancient purity of morals appears to prevail here:--no one thinks of

bolts or locks or keys, everything is left open and nothing is ever

touched. Nobody has ever been robbed on the island. There is no

iniquity. It is like a resurrection of the days of good King Alfred,

when, if a man were to drop his purse on the highway, he might return

six months later to find it untouched. At least that is what I am

told. Still I would not _like_ to leave one thousand golden dinars on

the beach or in the middle of the village. I am still a little

suspicious--having been so long a dweller in wicked cities.

I was in hopes that I had made a very important discovery; viz.--a

flock of really tame and innocuous cows; but the innocent appearance

of the beasts is, I have just learned, a disguise for the most fearful

ferocity. So far I have escaped unharmed; and Marion has offered to

lend me his large stick, which will, I have no doubt, considerably aid

me in preserving my life.

Couldn't you manage to let me stay down here until after the

Exposition is over, doing no work and nevertheless drawing my salary

regularly?... By the way, one could save money by a residence at

Grande Isle. There are no temptations--except the perpetual and

delicious temptation of the sea.

The insects here are many; but I have seen no frogs,--they have

probably found that the sea can outroar them and have gone away

jealous. But in Marion's room there is a beam, and against that beam

there is the nest of a "mud-dauber." Did you ever see a mud-dauber? It

is something like this when flying;--but when it isn't flying I can't

tell you what it looks like, and it has the peculiar power of flying

without noise. I think it is of the wasp-kind, and plasters its mud

nest in all sorts of places. It is afraid of nothing--likes to look at

itself in the glass, and leaves its young in our charge. There is

another sociable creature--hope it isn't a wasp--which has built two

nests under the edge of this table on which I write to you. There are

no specimens here of the _cimex lectularius_; and the mosquitoes are

not at all annoying. They buzz a little, but seldom give evidence of

hunger. Creatures also abound which have the capacity of making noises

of the most singular sort. Up in the tree on my right there is a thing

which keeps saying all day long, quite plainly, "_Kiss, Kiss,

Kiss!_"--referring perhaps to the good young married folks across the

way; and on the road to the bath-house, which we travelled late last

evening in order to gaze at the phosphorescent sea, there dwells

something which exactly imitates the pleasant sound of ice jingling in

a cut-glass tumbler.

[Illustration]

As for the grub, it is superb--solid, nutritious, and without stint.

When I first tasted the butter I was enthusiastic, imagining that

those mild-eyed cows had been instrumental in its production; but I

have since discovered they were not--and the fact astonishes me not at

all now that I have learned more concerning the character of those

cows.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

At some unearthly hour in the morning the camp-meeting quiet of the

place is broken by the tolling of a bell. This means "Jump up,

lazybones; and take a swim before the sun rises." Then the

railroad-car comes for the bathers, passing up the whole line of white

cottages. The distance is short to the beach; Marion and I prefer to

walk; but the car is a great convenience for the women and children

and invalids. It is drawn by a single mule, and always accompanied by

a dog which appears to be the intimate friend of the said mule, and

who jumps up and barks all the grass-grown way. The ladies'

bathing-house is about five minutes' plank-walking from the

men's,--where I am glad to say drawers and bathing-suits are

unnecessary, so that one has the full benefit of sun-bathing as well

as salt-water bathing. There is a man here called Margot or

Margeaux--perhaps some distant relative of Château-Margeaux--who

always goes bathing accompanied by a pet goose. The goose follows him

just like a dog; but is a little afraid of getting into deep water. It

remains in the surf presenting its stern-end to the breakers:--

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The only trouble about the bathing is the ferocious sun. Few people

bathe in the heat of the day, but yesterday we went in four times; and

the sun nearly flayed us. This morning we held a council of war and

decided upon greater moderation. There are three bars, between which

the water is deep. The third bar is, I fear, too "risky" to reach, as

it is nearly a mile from the other, and lies beyond a hundred-foot

depth of water in which sharks are said to disport themselves. I am

almost as afraid of sharks as I am of cows.... Marion made a dash for

a drowning man yesterday, in answer to the cry, "Here, you fellows,

help! help!" and I followed. We had instantaneous visions of a

gold-medal from the Life-Saving Service, and glorious dreams of

newspaper fame under the title "Journalistic Heroism,"--for my part, I

must acknowledge I had also an unpleasant fancy that the drowning man

might twine himself about me, and pull me to the bottom,--so I looked

out carefully to see which way he was heading. But the beatific

Gold-Medal fancies were brutally dissipated by the drowning man's

success in saving himself before we could reach him, and we remain as

obscure as before.

_Interlude_

[Illustration: Miss B. B. through our lorgnette]

[Illustration: Miss Bisland's A No 1. Chaperone]

[Illustration: The Agricultural Editor of the T.D.--pursued by his

family

A No 2

Miss Bisland's Creole Chaperone

A No 3

Miss Bisland's Pickwickian Chaperon

I will now resume the interrupted text of my narration]

The proprietor has found what I have vainly been ransacking the world

for--a civilized hat, showing the highest evolutional development of

the hat as a practically useful article. I am going to make him an

offer for it.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Alas! the time flies too fast. Soon all this will be a dream:--the

white cottages shadowed with leafy green,--the languid rocking-chairs

upon the old-fashioned gallery,--the cows that look into one's window

with the rising sun,--the dog and the mule trotting down the

flower-edged road,--the goose of the ancient Margot,--the muttering

surf upon the bar beyond which the sharks are,--the bath-bell and the

bathing belles,--the air that makes one feel like a boy,--the pleasure

of sleeping with doors and windows open to the sea and its

everlasting song,--the exhilaration of rising with the rim of the

sun.... And then we must return to the dust and the roar of New

Orleans, to hear the rumble of wagons instead of the rumble of

breakers, and to smell the smell of ancient gutters instead of the

sharp sweet scent of pure sea wind. I believe I would rather be old

Margot's goose if I could. Blessed goose! thou knowest nothing about

the literary side of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_; but thou dost

know that thou canst have a good tumble in the sea every day. If I

could live down here I should certainly live to be a hundred years

old. One _lives_ here. In New Orleans one only exists.... And the boat

comes--I must post this incongruous epistle.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Good-bye,--wish you were here, sincerely.

Very truly,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

This jesting letter makes but little reference to the beauties of this

tropical island, which had, however, made a profound impression upon

Hearn, and later they were reproduced with astonishing fidelity in the

book. Some distance to the westward of Grande Isle lies L'Isle Dernière,

or--as it is now commonly called--Last Island, then a mere sandbank,

awash in high tides, but thirty years before that an island of the same

character as Grande Isle, and for half a century a popular summer

resort for the people of New Orleans and the planters of the coast. On

the 10th of August, 1856, a frightful storm swept it bare and

annihilated the numerous summer visitors, only a handful among the

hundreds escaping. The story of the tragedy remained a vivid tradition

along the coast, where hardly a family escaped without the loss of some

relation or friend, and on Hearn's return to New Orleans he embodied a

brief story of the famous storm, with his impressions of the splendours

of the Gulf, under the title of "Torn Letters," purporting to be the

fragments of an old correspondence by one of the survivors. This

story--published in the _Times-Democrat_--was so favourably received

that he was later encouraged to enlarge it into a book, and the Harpers,

who had already published some articles from his pen, issued it as a

serial in their magazine, where it won instant recognition from a large

public that had heretofore been ignorant of, or indifferent to, his

work.

Oscar Wilde once declared that life and nature constantly plagiarized

from art, and would have been pleased with the confirmation of his

suggestion afforded by the fact that nearly twenty years after the

publication of "Chita" a storm, similar to the one described in the

book, swept away in its turn Grande Isle, and Les Chenières, and a girl

child was rescued by Manila fishermen as Hearn had imagined. After

living with one of their families for some time she was finally

recovered by her father (who had believed her lost in the general

catastrophe), under circumstances astoundingly like those invented by

the author so many years before.

The book was dedicated to Dr. Rodolfo Matas, a Spanish physician in New

Orleans, and an intimate friend,--frequently mentioned in the letters to

Dr. George M. Gould of Philadelphia, with whom a correspondence was

begun at about this time.

It was because of the success of "Chita" that Hearn was enabled to

realize his long-nourished dream of penetrating farther into the

tropics, and with a vague commission from the Harpers he left New

Orleans, in 1887, and sailed for the Windward Islands. The journey took

him as far south as British Guiana, the fruit of which was a series of

travel-sketches printed in _Harper's Magazine_. So infatuated with the

Southern world of colour, light, and warmth had he become that--trusting

to the possible profits of his books and the further material he hoped

to gather--two months after his return from this journey, and without

any definite resources, he cast himself back into the arms of the

tropics, for which he suffered a life-long and unappeasable nostalgia.

It was to St. Pierre in the island of Martinique--the place that had

most attracted him on his travels--that he returned. That island of

"gigantic undulations," that town of bright long narrow streets rising

toward a far mass of glowing green ... which looks as if it had slid

down the hill behind it, so strangely do the streets come tumbling to

the port in a cascade of masonry,--with a red billowing of tiled roofs

over all, and enormous palms poking up through it. That town with "a

population fantastic, astonishing,--a population of the Arabian Nights

... many coloured, with a general dominant tint of yellow, like that of

the town itself ... always relieved by the costume colours of

Martinique--brilliant yellow stripings or chequerings which have an

indescribable luminosity, a wonderful power of bringing out the fine

warm tints of tropical flesh ... the hues of those rich costumes Nature

gives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,--her honey-lovers,--her

insects: wasp-colours." Here, under the shadow of Mt. Pelée "coiffed

with purple and lilac cloud ... a magnificent _Madras_, yellow-banded by

the sun," he remained for two years, and from his experiences there

created his next book. "Two Years in the French West Indies" made a

minute and astonishing record of the town and the population, now as

deeply buried and as utterly obliterated as was Pompeii by the lava and

ashes of Vesuvius. Eighteen centuries hence, could some archæologist,

disinterring the almost forgotten town, find this book, what passionate

value would he give to this record of a community of as unique a

character as that of the little Græco-Roman city! What price would be

set to-day upon parchments which reproduced with such vivid fidelity the

world, so long hid in darkness, of that civilization over whose calcined

fragments we now yearningly ponder!

One English commentator upon the work of Lafcadio Hearn speaks of

"Chita" and "Two Years in the French West Indies" with negligent

contempt as of "the orchid and cockatoo type of literature," and passes

on to his Japanese work as the first of considerable importance. Other

critics have been led into the same error, welcoming the cooler tones of

his later pictures as a growth in power and a development of taste. It

is safe to say that the makers of such criticisms have not seen the

lands and peoples of whom these books attempt to reproduce the charm.

Those who have known tropic countries will realize how difficult is the

task of reproducing their multi-coloured glories, and that to bring even

a faint shadow of their splendours back to eyes accustomed to the pale

greys and half tints of Northern lands is a labour not only arduous in

itself, but more than apt to be ungratefully received by those for whom

it is undertaken. A mole would find a butterfly's description of an

August landscape exaggerated to the point of vulgarity, and the average

critic is more likely to find satisfaction in "A Grey Day at Annisquam"

than in the most subtly handled picture of the blaze of noon at Luxor.

"Chita" is marred occasionally by a phrase that suggests the journalism

in which the hand of the writer had been so long submerged, but in "Two

Years in the French West Indies" the artist has at last emancipated his

talent and finished his long apprenticeship. Though the author himself

in later years finds some fault with it, giving as excuse that much of

it was done when he was physically exhausted by fever and anxiety, and

"with but a half-filled stomach," it remains one of his most admirable

achievements.

The risks he had assumed in returning to the tropics proved greater than

he had imagined. Publishers' delays and rigid exactions of all their

part of the writer's pound of flesh left him at times entirely without

means, and had it not been for the generosity and kindliness of the

people of the now vanished city he would not have lived to return. It

was some memory of humble friends there that is recorded in the sixth

part of the autobiographical fragments, written after the disaster at

St. Pierre.

IN VANISHED LIGHT

... A bright long narrow street rising toward a far mass of glowing

green--burning green of lianas: the front of a tropic wood. Not a

street of this age, but of the seventeenth century: a street of yellow

façades, with yellow garden-walls between the façades. In sharp bursts

of blue light the sea appears at intervals,--blue light blazing up

old, old nights of mossy steps descending to the bay. And through

these openings ships are visible, far below, riding in azure.

Walls are lemon-colour;--quaint balconies and lattices are green.

Palm-trees rise from courts and gardens into a warm blue

sky--indescribably blue--that appears almost to touch the feathery

heads of them. And all things, within or without the yellow vista, are

steeped in a sunshine electrically white,--in a radiance so powerful

that it lends even to the pavements of basalt the glitter of silver

ore.

Men wearing only white canvas trousers, and immense hats of

bamboo-grass,--men naked to the waist, and muscled like

sculptures,--pass noiselessly with barefoot stride. Some are very

black; others are of strange and beautiful colours: there are skins of

gold, of brown bronze, and of ruddy bronze. And women pass in robes of

brilliant hue,--women of the colour of fruit: orange-colour,

banana-colour,--women wearing turbans banded with just such burning

yellow as bars the belly of a wasp. The warm thick air is sweet with

scents of sugar and of cinnamon,--with odours of mangoes and of

custard-apples, of guava-jelly and of fresh cocoanut milk.

--Into the amber shadow and cool moist breath of a great archway I

plunge, to reach a court filled with flickering emerald and the

chirrup of leaping water. There a little boy and a little girl run to

meet me, with Creole cries of "_Mi y!_" Each takes one of my

hands;--each holds up a beautiful brown cheek to kiss. In the same

moment a voice, the father's voice--deep and vibrant as the tone of a

great bell--calls from an inner doorway, "_Entrez donc, mon ami!_" And

with the large caress of that voice there comes to me such joy of

sympathy, such sense of perfect peace, as Souls long-tried by fire

might feel when passing the Gateway of Pearl....

But all this was and is not!... Never again will sun or moon shine

upon the streets of that city;--never again will its ways be

trodden;--never again will its gardens blossom ... except in dreams.

He was again in New York in 1889, occupied with the final proofs of

"Chita" before its appearance in book form, preparing the West Indian

book for the press, but in sore distress for money, and making a

translation of Anatole France's "Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard" in a few

weeks by Herculean labour, in order to exist until he could earn

something by his original work. The half-yearly payment of royalties

imposed by publishers bears hardly on the author who must pay daily for

the means to live. For a time he visited Dr. Gould in Philadelphia, but

after his return to New York an arrangement was entered into with Harper

and Brothers to go to Japan for the purpose of writing articles from

there, after the manner of the West Indian articles, later to be made

into a book. An artist was to accompany him to prepare the

illustrations, and their route was by way of the Canadian Pacific

Railway.

His last evening in New York was spent in the company of his dear friend

Mr. Ellwood Hendrick, to whom many of the most valuable letters

contained in the second volume were written, and on May 8, 1890, he left

for the East--never again to return.