THE LAST STAGE
With methods of work such as those of which the foregoing examples give
suggestion, with increasing indifference to the external details of
life, and growing concentration of esoteric thought, it was plain that
literature and journalism would not suffice to sustain a family of
thirteen persons. For Hearn in becoming a Japanese subject had accepted
the Japanese duty of maintaining the elder members of the family into
which he had been adopted, and his household included the ancestors of
his son. He referred to the fact occasionally with amused impatience,
but seems never to have really resented or rebelled against the filial
duties which to the Western point of view might appear excessive. His
eyes, too, began to give warnings that could not be ignored, and with
reluctance he yielded to the necessity of earning a larger income by
reëntering the Government service as a teacher. Professor Chamberlain
again came to his aid and secured for him the position of Professor of
English in the Imperial University of Tōkyō, where his salary was
large compared to anything he had as yet received, and where he was
permitted an admirable liberty as to methods of teaching.
Of his lectures an example is given in the appendix, under the title
"Naked Poetry." This, it is interesting to mention, was taken down in
long-hand during its delivering by Teizaburō Inomata, who possesses
five manuscript volumes of these records, for Hearn transcribed none of
his lectures, delivering them without notes, and had it not been for
this astonishing feat by a member of one of his classes all written
record of his teaching would have been lost. Mr. Inomata is the Ochiai
of the letter given on page 64 of the present volume, and was one of the
pupils of the Jinjō-chūgakkō of Matsue. Another of these Matsue
pupils was Masanobu Ōtani, whom Hearn assisted to pass through the
university by employing him to collect data for many of his books. In
the elaborately painstaking manuscript volume of information which Mr.
Ōtani sent me to assist in the writing of these volumes, he says:--
"Here I want not to forget to add that I had received from him 12 yen (6
dollars) for my work each month. It was too kind of him that a poor
monthly work of mine was paid with the money above mentioned. To speak
frankly, however, it was not very easy for me to pass each month with
the money through the three years of my university course. I had to pay
2 yen and a half as the monthly fee to the university; to pay 6 or 7 yen
for my lodging and eating every month; to buy some necessary text books,
and to pay for some meetings inevitable. So I was forced to make some
more money beside his favour. Each month I contributed to some
newspapers and magazines; I reprinted the four books of Nesfield's
grammar; I published some pamphlets. Thus I could equal the expense of
each month, but I need hardly say that it was by his extraordinary
favour that I could finish my study in the university. I shall never
forget his extreme kindness forever and ever."
A revelation this, confirmatory of the constant references made by Hearn
to the frightful price paid in life and energy by Japan in the endeavour
to assimilate a millennium of Western learning in the brief space of
half a century.
From these notes by Mr. Ōtani, Mrs. Hearn, and Mr. Inomata it is
possible to reconstruct his life in Tōkyō with that minuteness demanded
by the professors of the "scientific school" of biography:--
"When he came to the university he immediately entered the lecture room,
and at the recreation hour he was always seen in a lonely part of the
college garden, smoking, and walking to and fro. No one dared disturb
his meditations. He did not mingle with the other professors....
"Very regular and very diligent in his teaching, he was never absent
unless ill. His hours of teaching being twelve in the week....
"He never used an umbrella....
"He liked to bathe in tepid water....
"He feared cold; his study having a large stove and double doors; he
never, however, used gloves in the coldest weather."...
And so on, to the _nth_ power of fatigue. Personally nothing would
have been so obnoxious to the man as this piling up of unimportant
detail and banal ana about his private life. He was entirely free of
that egotism, frequently afflicting the literary artist, which made the
crowing cocks, the black beetles, and the marital infelicities of the
Carlyles matters of such import as to deserve being solemnly and
meticulously recorded for the benefit of an awestruck world.
At first the change of residence, the necessary interruption of the
heavy work of preparing lectures, the teaching, and its attendant
official duties seem to have broken the train of his inspiration--for
"Gleanings in Buddha-Fields," though published the year after his
arrival in Tōkyō, had been completed while in Kōbe, and he complains
bitterly in his letters that "the Holy Ghost had departed from him," and
was constantly endeavouring to find some means of renewing the fire. In
a letter to his friend Amenomori he says: "But somehow, working is
'against the grain.' I get no thrill, no _frisson_, no sensation. I want
new experiences, perhaps; and Tōkyō is no place for them. Perhaps the
power to feel thrill dies with the approach of a man's fiftieth year.
Perhaps the only land to find the new sensations is in the Past,--floats
blue-peaked under some beautiful dead sun 'in the tropic clime of
youth.' Must I die and be born again to feel the charm of the Far
East;--or will Nobushige Amenomori discover for me some unfamiliar
blossom growing beside the Fountain of Immortality? Alas, I don't know!"
Indeed, in "Exotics and Retrospectives" he returned for part of his
material to old memories of the West Indies, and the next four
volumes--"In Ghostly Japan" (with its monstrous fantasy of the Mountain
of Skulls), "Shadowings," "A Japanese Miscellany," and "Kotto"--show
that the altar still waited for the coal, the contents of these being
merely studies, masterly as they were, such as an artist might make
while waiting for some great idea to form itself, worthy of a broad
canvas.
As the letters show, prodigious care and patience were expended upon
each of these sketches. In advising a friend he explains his own
methods:--
"Now with regard to your own sketch or story. If you are quite
dissatisfied with it, I think this is probably due _not_ to what you
suppose,--imperfection of expression,--but rather to the fact that some
_latent_ thought or emotion has not yet defined itself in your mind with
sufficient sharpness. You feel something and have not been able to
express the feeling--only because you do not yet quite know what it is.
We feel without understanding feeling; and our most powerful emotions
are the most undefinable. This must be so, because they are inherited
accumulations of feeling, and the multiplicity of them--superimposed one
over another--blurs them, and makes them dim, even though enormously
increasing their strength.... _Unconscious_ brain-work is the best to
develop such latent feeling or thought. By quietly writing the thing
over and over again, I find that the emotion or idea often _develops
itself_ in the process,--unconsciously. Again, it is often worth while
to _try_ to analyze the feeling that remains dim. The effort of trying
to understand exactly what it is that moves us sometimes proves
successful.... If you have any feeling--no matter what--strongly latent
in the mind (even only a haunting sadness or a mysterious joy), you may
be sure that it is expressible. Some feelings are, of course, very
difficult to develop. I shall show you one of these days, when we see
each other, a page that I worked at for _months_ before the idea came
clearly.... When the best result comes, it ought to surprise you, for
our best work is out of the Unconscious."
In all these studies the tendency grew constantly more marked to abandon
the earlier richness of his style; a pellucid simplicity was plainly the
aim of his intention. The transparent, shadowy, "weird stories" of
"Kwaidan" were as unlike the splendid floridity of his West Indian
studies as a Shintō shrine is unlike a Gothic cathedral. These
ghostly sketches might have been made by the brush of a Japanese artist;
a grey whirl of water about a phantom fish--a shadow of a pine bough
across the face of a spectral moon--an outline of mountains as filmy as
dreams: brief, almost childishly simple, and yet suggesting things
poignant, things ineffable.
"Ants," the last study in "Kwaidan," was, however, of a very different
character. The old Occidental fire and power was visible again; his
inspiration was reillumined. Then suddenly the broad canvas was spread
for him and he wrote "Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation," one of the
most astonishing reviews of the life and soul of a great nation ever
attempted.
To understand the generation of this book it is necessary to explain the
conditions of the last years of his life in Tōkyō. Of his private
existence at this time Mrs. Hearn's reminiscences furnish again a
delightful and vivid record.
"It was on the 27th Aug., 1896, that we arrived at Tōkyō from Kōbe.
"Having heard of a house to let in Ushigome district, we went to see it.
It was an old house of a pure Japanese style, without an upper story;
and having a spacious garden and a lotus-pond in it, the house resembled
to a Buddhist temple. Very gloomy house it was and I felt a sense of
being haunted. Hearn seemed fond of the house. But we did not borrow it.
"We heard afterward that it was reputed to be haunted by the ghost; and
though the house-rent was very cheap, no one would dare to borrow the
house; and finally it was broken down by its owner. 'Why then did we not
inhabit that house?' Hearn said, with regret, 'It was very interesting
house, I thought at that time!'
"At last we settled at a house at Tomihisa-chō, Ushigome district,
about three miles from the university. The house was situated on a
bluff, with a Buddist temple called Kobu-dera in the neighbourhood.
'Kobu-dera' means 'Knots Temple,' because all the pillars in the
building have knots left, the natural wood having been used without
carpenter's planes. Formerly it was called Hagi-dera on account of many
_hagi_[3] flowers in the garden.
[3] Bush clover.
"Being very fond of a temple, he often went for rambling in Kobu-dera,
so that he became acquainted with a goodly old priest there, with whom
he was pleased to talk on Buddhist subjects, I being always his
interpreter in such a case.
"Almost every morning and every evening he took walk in Kobu-dera.
"The children always said when he was absent, 'Papa is in Kobu-dera.'
"The following is one of his conversations in one of our ramblings
there: 'Can I not live in this temple?' 'I should be very glad to become
a priest--I will make a good priest with large eyes and high nose!'
'Then you become a nun! and Kazuo a little boy priest!--how lovely he
would be! We shall then every day chant the texts. Oh, a happy life!'
'In the next world you shall be born a nun!'
"One day we went to the temple for our usual walk. 'O, O!' he exclaimed
in astonishment. Three large cedars had been lying on the ground. 'Why
have they cut down these trees? I see the temple people seem to be poor.
They are in need of money. Oh, why have they not told me about that? I
should be very much pleased to give them some amount. What a long time
it must have taken to grow so large from the tiny bud! I have become a
little disgusted with that old priest. Pity! he has not money, though.
Poor tree!' He was extremely sad and melancholily walked for home. 'I
feel so sad! I am no more pleasant to-day. Go and ask the people to cut
no more trees,' he said.
"After this he did not go to the temple yard any more.
"Sometime after the old priest was removed to another temple; and the
younger new priest, the head of temple, began cutting trees.
"His desire was to live in a little house, in some lonely suburb, with a
spacious garden full of trees. I looked for several places; at Nishi
Ōkubo _mura_ I found a house of pure Japanese style and even with no
foreign styled house in the neighbourhood, for his desire was to live in
the midst of genuine Japan. That the house stood in a lonely suburb and
that there was a bamboo bush in the rear of house pleased him much and
prompted his immediate decision. Being much afraid of cold winter, he
wanted to have one room furnished with a stove newly built and that the
library should open to the west. His library, with an adjoining room
with a stove, and my sitting room were built. He left all else to my
choice, saying, 'I have only to write; other things I do not care for;
you know better, good Mamma San!'
"It was on the 19th March, 1902, that we removed on new house at
Ōkubo. He used to go to university by a jinrikisha; it took about 40
minutes. Our house was all furnished in Japanese fashion, except the
stove and the glass-screen on account of the stove, instead of a
paper-screen, in regard to that apartment.
"On the day we removed I was helping him arrange books in the library.
Among the bamboo woods were heard the uguisu or warbler's notes through
the stillness of the place. 'How happy!' he said, pleased with the new
abode. 'But my heart is sorry,' he added. 'Why?' I asked. 'To be happy
is a cause of anxiousness to me;' he said, 'I would like to live long
in this house. But I do not know whether I can.'
"He put too much importance to Beauty or Nicety perhaps. He was too
enthusiastic for beauty, for which he wept, and for which he rejoiced,
and for which he was angry. This made him shun social intercourse; this
made him as if he were an eccentric person. To him meditating and
writing were the sole pleasure of life; and for this he disposed of all
things else. I often said: 'You are too secluded in your room. Please go
out when you like and find enjoyment anything you like.' 'You know my
best enjoyment: thinking and writing. When I have things to write upon I
am happy. While writing I forget all cares and anxieties. Therefore give
me subjects to write. Talk to me more,' he said. 'I have talked you all
things. I have no more story to tell you.' 'Therefore you go out, and
when you come back home, tell me all you have seen and heard. Only
reading books is not enough.'
"I used to tell him ghost-stories in dreary evenings, with the lamp
purposely dimly lighted. He seemed always to listen as if he were
withholding breath for fear. His manner, so eagerly attentive and
looking fearful, made me tell the story with more emphasis. Our house
was, as it were, a ghost-house on those times; I began to be haunted
with fearful dreams in the night. I told him about that and he said we
would stop ghost-stories for some time.
"When I tell him stories I always told him at first the mere skeleton of
the story. If it is interesting, he puts it down in his note-book and
makes me repeat and repeat several times.
"And when the story is interesting, he instantly becomes exceedingly
serious; the colour of his face changes; his eyes wear the look of
fearful enthusiasm.
"As I went on as usual the story of Okachinsan [in the begining of
'Kotto'], his face gradually changed pale; his eyes were fixed; I felt a
sudden awe. When I finished the narrative he became a little relaxed and
said it was very interesting. 'O blood!' he repeatedly said; and asked
me several questions regarding the situations, actions, etc., involved
in the story. 'In what manner was "O blood!" exclaimed? In what manner
of voice? What do you think of the sound of "geta" at that time? How was
the night? I think so and so. What do you think? etc.' Thus he consulted
me about various things besides the original story which I told from the
book. If any one happened to see us thus talking from outside, he would
surely think that we were mad.
"'Papa, come down; supper is ready,' three children used to say
altogether to him; then 'All right, sweet boys,' he would say, and come
to the table in a cheerful manner. But when he is very much absorbed in
writing, he would say, 'All right,' very quickly. And whenever his
answer is quick, he would not come very soon. I then go to him and say:
'Papa San! the children are waiting for you. Please come soon, or the
dishes will lose their good flavour.'
"'What?' he asks.
"'The supper is ready, Papa.'
"'I do not want supper. Didn't I already take that? Funny!'
"'Mercy! please awake from your dream. The little child would weep.'
"In such occasion, he is very forgetful; and takes bread only to
himself. And children ask him to break bread for them. And he would take
whiskey for wine or put salt into the cup of coffee. Before meal he took
a very little quantity of whiskey. Later when his health was a little
hurt he took wine.
"But on usual meals we were very pleasant. He tells stories from foreign
papers; I from Japanese newspapers. Kiyoshi would peep from the hole of
sliding-paper screen. The cat comes; the dog come under the window; and
they share some sweets he gives. After meal we used to sing songs
innocently and merrily.
"Often he danced or laughed heartily when he was very happy.
"In one New Year's day it happened that one of the jinrikisha men of our
house died suddenly while drinking _sake_ in a narrow room near the
portal of our house. The dead man was covered with a bed-covering. A
guest came for wishing a happy new year to our home. The guest found
that and said: 'O, a drunkard sleeping on the New Year's day. A happy
fellow!' The rikisha man, who sat near and was watching the dead, said
in his vulgar tone: 'Not a drunkard, but a Buddha!'[4] The guest was
sorely astonished and went out immediately. After some days I told him
this fact; he was interested to imagine the manner the guest made in
astonishment. And he ordered me to repeat the conversation between the
guest and the rikisha man. He often imitated the words of 'Not a
drunkard, but a Buddha,' as being a very natural and simple utterance.
[4] "Hotoke-sama" means the dead.
"Whenever he met with a work of any art suited to his taste, he
expressed an intense admiration, even for a very small work. A man with
a nice and kind heart he was! We often went to see the exhibition of
pictures held occasionally in Tōkyō. If he found any piece of work
very interesting to him, he spoke of it as cheap though very high in
price. 'What do you think of that?' my husband says. 'It is too much
high price,' I say, lest he should immediately buy it quite indifferent
of prices. 'No, I don't mean about prices. I mean about the picture. Do
you think it is very good?' Then I answer: 'Yes, a pretty picture,
indeed, I think.' 'We shall then buy that picture,' he says, 'the price
is however very cheap; let us offer more money for that.' As to our
financial matter, he was entirely trusting to me. Thus, I, the little
treasurer, sometimes suffered on such occasions.
"In those innocent talks of our boys he was pleased to find interesting
things. In fact his utmost pleasure was to be acquainted with a thing of
beauty. How he was glad to hear my stories. Alas! he is no more! though
I sometimes get amusing stories, they are now no use. Formalities were
the things he most disliked. His likes and dislikes were always to the
extreme. When he liked something he liked extremely. He used to wear a
plain cloth; only he was particular about shirts on account of cold.
When he had new suit of cloth made, he wore it after my repeated
entreaties. Being fond of Japanese cloth, he always puts off foreign
cloth when he comes back from without, and, sitting on the cushion so
pleasantly, he smokes. At Aizu in summer, he often wore bathing cloth
and Japanese sandals.
"He always chose the best and excellent quality of any kind of things,
so in purchasing my dress, he often ordered according to his taste.
Sometimes he was like an innocent child. One summer we went to a store
selling cloth for a bathing cloth (_yukata_) which I wear in
summer-time. The man showed us various kinds of designs, all of which he
was so very fond and bought. I said that we need not so many kinds. He
said: 'But think of that. Only one yen and half for a piece. Please put
on various kinds of dress, which only to see is pleasant to me.' He
bought some thirty pieces, to the amazement of the store people.
"He resented in his heart that many Japanese people, forgetting of the
fact that there exist many beautiful points in things Japanese, are
imitating Western style. He regretted that Japan would thus be lost. So
he abhorred the foreign style which Japanese assume. He was glad that
many Waseda professors wore Japanese _haori_ and _hakama_. He disliked
unharmonized foreign dress of Japanese lady and proud girl speaking
English. We one day went to a bazar at Ueno Park. He asked the price of
an article in Japanese. The storekeeper, a girl of new school, replied
in English. He was displeased and drew my dress and turned away. When
he became the professor of Waseda, Dean Takata invited him to his house.
It was very rare that he ever accepted an invitation. At the portal,
Mrs. Takata welcomed him in Japanese language. This reception greatly
pleased him, so he told me when he returned home. In our home,
furnitures and even the manner of maids' hair-dressing were all in
genuine Japanese style. If I happened to buy some articles of foreign
taste, he would say: 'Don't you love Japanese arts?' He wanted our boy
put on Japanese cloths and wear _geta_ instead of shoes. Sometimes in
company with him in usual walks, one of our boys would wear shoes. He
say: 'Mamma San, look at my toes. Don't you mind that our dear
children's toes should become disfigured in such manner as mine?' As
Kazuo's appearance is very much like a foreigner, he taught him English.
Other boys were taught and brought up in Japanese way. We kept no
interpreter since our Matsue days. A Japanese guest would come to our
house in Western style and smoke cigarettes, but the host receives him
in Japanese cloth and does all in Japanese fashion--a curious contrast.
With one glance of his nose-glass which he keeps he catches the whole
appearance of any first visitor even to the smallest details of the
physiognomy. He is extremely near-sighted; and the minute he takes a
glance is the whole time of his observation; still his wonderfully keen
observation often astonished me.
"One day I read the following story to him from a Japanese paper: 'A
certain nobleman's old mother is extremely fond of classical Japanese
ways, absolutely antagonistic to the modern manners. The maids were to
wear _obi_ in old ways. Lamps were not allowed, but paper _andō_ was
used instead. Nor soaps were to be used in this household. So maids and
servants would not endure long.' Hearn was very much delighted to learn
that there still existed such a family. 'How I like that!' he said. 'I
would like to visit them.' One time I said to him in joke: 'You are not
like Westerner, except in regard to your nose.' Then he said: 'What
shall I do with this nose? But I am a Japanese. I love Japan better than
any born Japanese.'
"Indeed, he loved Japan with his whole heart, but his sincere love for
Japan was not very well understood by Japanese.
"When asked anything to him, he would not readily accept that; but
everything he did he did it with his sincere and whole heart!
"One day he said to me: 'Foreign people are very desirous to know of my
whereabouts. Some papers have reported that Hearn disappeared from the
world. What do you think of this? How funny!--disappeared from the
world.' Thus his chief pleasure was only to write, without being
disturbed from without. O, while I thus talk of my dear husband's life,
I feel in myself as if I were being scolded by him why I was thus
talking of him. 'Where is Hearn now? He has disappeared from the world.'
This was his desire--unknown to the rest of the world. But though he
would scold me I wish to tell about him more and more.
"When he was engaged in writing he was so enthusiastically that any
small noise was a great pain to him. So I always tried to keep the house
still in regard to the opening and shutting of doors, the footsteps of
family, etc.; and I always chose to enter his room when necessary as I
heard the sound of his pipes (tobacco-smoking pipes) and his songs in a
high voice. But after removal to Ōkubo, our house was wide enough and
his library was very remote from the children's room and the portal. So
he could enjoy his enjoyment in the world of calmness.
"When writing the story of 'Miminashi Hōïchi,' he was forgetful of the
approach of evening. In the darkness of the evening twilight he was
sitting on the cushion in deep thought. Outside of the paper-screens of
his room, I for a trial called with a low voice, 'Hōïchi! Hōïchi!' 'Yes,
I am a blind man. Who are you?' he replied from within; he had been
imagining as if he himself were Hōïchi with a _biwa_ in his hand.
Whenever he writes he is entirely absorbed with the subject. On those
days I one day went to the city and bought a little doll of blind priest
with a _biwa_. I put it secretly upon his desk. As he found it he was
overjoyed with it and seemed as if he met an expecting friend. When a
rustling noise of fallen leaves in the garden woods he said seriously:
'Listen! the Heike are fallen. They are the sounds of waves at
Dan-no-ura.' And he listened attentively. Indeed sometimes I thought he
was mad, because he seemed too frequently he saw things that were not
and heard things that were not."
His life outside of the university and of his own home he narrowed down
to a point where the public began to create legends about him, so seldom
was he seen. The only person ever able to draw him forth was his friend
Mitchell McDonald, whose sympathy and hospitality he constantly fled
from and constantly yielded to. To Mrs. Fenollosa he wrote:
"My friends are much more dangerous than my enemies. These latter--with
infinite subtlety--spin webs to keep me out of places where I hate to go
... and they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost love
them. They help me to maintain the isolation absolutely essential to
thinking.... Blessed be my enemies, and forever honoured all them that
hate me!
"But my friends!--ah! my friends! They speak so beautifully of my work;
they say they want more of it,--and yet they would destroy it! They do
not know what it costs, and they would break the wings and scatter the
feather-dust, even as the child that only wanted to caress the
butterfly. And they speak of converse and sympathy.... And they
say,--only a day--just an afternoon--but each of them says this thing.
And the sum of the days is a week of work dropped forever into the
Abyss.... I must not even think about people's kind words and faces, but
work, work, work, while the Scythe is sharpening within vision."
Under the strain of constant work his eyesight again began to fail, and
in 1902 he wrote to friends in America asking for aid to find work
there, desiring to consult a specialist, and to bring for instruction
in English his beloved Kazuo--from whom he would never be parted for a
day. He was entitled to his sabbatical year of vacation from the
university, and while he took advantage of it he wished to form other
connections, as intrigues among those inimical to him made him fear for
the tenure of his position. His family had increased by the birth of
another son, and his responsibilities--with weakening lungs and
eyesight--began to weigh heavily on his mind. An arrangement was made
for him to lecture for a season in Cornell University at a salary of
$2500, and these lectures he at once began to prepare. When, however, he
applied for leave it was refused him, and an incident occurring at this
juncture, of the intrusion of an English traveller into his classroom
during one of his lectures--an incident which had its origin in mere
curiosity,--seemed to his exacerbated imagination to have a significance
out of all proportion to its real meaning; and convinced that it was
intended as a slight by the authorities in their purpose to be rid of
him, he resigned. The students--aware that influences were at work to
rob him of his place--made some demonstrations of resentment, but
finally abandoned them at his personal request.
He plunged more deeply, at once, into the preparation of his work for
the American lectures, but shortly before he was to have sailed for
America the authorities at Cornell withdrew from their contract on the
plea that the epidemic of typhoid at Ithaca the previous summer had
depleted the funds at their command.
Vigorous efforts were at once undertaken by his friends in America to
repair this breach of contract by finding him employment elsewhere, with
but partial success, but all these efforts were rendered useless by a
sudden and violent illness, attended by bleeding from the lungs, and
brought on by strain and anxiety. After his recovery the lectures
prepared for Cornell were recast to form a book, but the work proved a
desperate strain upon already weakened forces.
Mrs. Hearn says this:--
"Of his works, 'Japan: an Interpretation' seemed a great labour to him.
So hard a task it was that he said at one occasion: 'It is not difficult
that this book will kill me.' At another time he said: 'You can imagine
how hard it is to write such a big book in so short a time with no
helper.' To write was his life; and all care and difficulties he forgot
while writing. As he had no work of teaching in the university, he
poured forth all his forces in the work of 'Japan.'
"When the manuscripts of 'Japan' were completed, he was very glad and
had them packed in strong shape and wrote addresses upon the cover for
mail. He was eagerly looking forward to see the new volume. A little
before his death he still said that he could imagine that he could hear
the sound of type-work of 'Japan' in America. But he was unable to see
the book in his lifetime."
To me he wrote, in that lassitude always following on the completion of
creative work: "The 'rejected addresses' will shortly appear in book
form. I don't like the work of writing a serious treatise on
sociology.... I ought to keep to the study of birds and cats and insects
and flowers, and queer small things--and leave the subject of the
destiny of empires to men with brains." Despite which verdict he
probably recognized it as the crowning achievement of his long effort to
interpret his adopted country to the world.
Shortly after its completion he accepted the offer of the chair of
English in the Waseda University, founded by Count Okuma, for he was
expecting again to be a father and his pen was unable to meet all the
demands upon his income. Meantime the University of London had entered
into negotiation with him for a series of lectures, and it was suggested
that Oxford also wished to hear him. It had always been the warmest of
his desires to win recognition from his own country, and these offers
were perhaps the greatest satisfaction he had ever known. But his forces
were completely exhausted. The desperate hardships of his youth, the
immense labours of his manhood, had burned away the sources of vitality.
On the 26th of September, 1904--shortly after completing the last letter
included in these volumes, to Captain Fujisaki, who was then serving on
Marshal Ōyama's staff--while walking on the veranda in the twilight
he sank down suddenly as if the whole fabric of life had crumbled
within, and after a little space of speechlessness and pain, his long
quest was over.
In "Kwaidan" he had written: "I should like, when my time comes, to be
laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind, so that my
ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and
the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji. That old cemetery behind
my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with
a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has
been shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living
brain; even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world
forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or magnetism.... Also in
the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens
feelings so strangely far away from all the nineteenth-century part of
me that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid,--deliciously
afraid. Never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a
striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost,--a sensation
as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of
a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of
that bell."
In so far as was possible this was complied with. Though not a Buddhist
he was buried according to Buddhist rites. One who was present at his
funeral thus describes it:--
"The procession left his residence, 266 Nishi Ōkubo, at half past one
and proceeded to the Jitō-in Kobu-dera Temple in Ichigaya.... First
came the bearers of white lanterns and wreaths and great pyramidal
bouquets of asters and chrysanthemums; next, men carrying long poles
from which hung streamers of paper _gohei_; after them two boys in
'rickshas carrying little cages containing birds to be released, symbols
of the soul released from its earthly prison....
"The emblems were all Buddhist. The portable hearse, carried by six men
in blue, was a beautiful object of unpainted, perfectly fresh, white
wood trimmed with blue silk tassels and with gold and silver lotus
flowers at the corners.... Priests carrying food for the dead,
university professors, and a multitude of students formed the end of the
procession.... In the comparative darkness of the temple, against the
background of black lacquer and gold, eight priests chanted a dirge.
Their heads were clean-shaven and they were clothed in white, with
several brilliantly tinted gauze robes imposed. After a period of
chanting punctuated by the tinkling of a bell, the chief Japanese
mourner arose from the other side and led forward the son. Together they
knelt before the hearse, touching their foreheads to the floor, and
placing some grains of incense upon the little brazier burning between
the candles. A delicate perfume filled the air.... The wife next stepped
forward with expressionless face--her hair done in stiff loops like
carved ebony, her only ornament the magnificent white _obi_, reserved
for weddings and funerals. She and the younger sons also burned incense.
The chief mourner and the eldest son again bowed to the ground, and the
ceremony was ended."
The students presented a laurel wreath with the inscription "In memory
of Lafcadio Hearn, whose pen was mightier than the sword of the
victorious nation which he loved and lived among, and whose highest
honour it is to have given him citizenship and, alas, a grave!" The body
was then removed to a crematory, the ashes being interred at the
cemetery of Zōshigaya, his tombstone bearing the inscription "Shōgaku
In-den Jō-ge Hachi-un Koji," which literally translated means:
"Believing Man Similar to Undefiled Flower Blooming like Eight Rising
Clouds, who dwells in Mansion of Right Enlightenment."
Amenomori,--whom he called "the finest type of the Japanese
man,"--writing of him after his death, said: "Like a lotus the man was
in his heart ... a poet, a thinker, loving husband and father, and
sincere friend.... Within that man there burned something pure as the
vestal fire, and in that flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and
poetry out of the dust, and grasped the highest themes of human
thought."
Yone Noguchi wrote: "Surely we could lose two or three battleships at
Port Arthur rather than Lafcadio Hearn."
After his death were issued a few of his last studies of Japan under the
title of "A Romance of the Milky Way," and these, with his
autobiographical fragments included in this volume, conclude his work.
The last of these fragments, three small pages, is named "Illusion":--
"An old, old sea-wall, stretching between two boundless levels, green
and blue;--on the right only rice-fields, reaching to the
sky-line;--on the left only summer-silent sea, where fishing-craft of
curious shapes are riding. Everything is steeped in white sun; and I
am standing on the wall. Along its broad and grass-grown top a boy is
running towards me,--running in sandals of wood,--the sea-breeze
blowing aside the long sleeves of his robe as he runs, and baring his
slender legs to the knee. Very fast he runs, springing upon his
sandals;--and he has in his hands something to show me: a black
dragonfly, which he is holding carefully by the wings, lest it should
hurt itself struggling.... With what sudden incommunicable pang do I
watch the gracious little figure leaping in the light,--between those
summer silences of field and sea!... A delicate boy, with the blended
charm of two races.... And how softly vivid all things under this
milky radiance,--the smiling child-face with lips apart,--the twinkle
of the light quick feet,--the shadows of grasses and of little
stones!...
"But, quickly as he runs, the child will come no nearer to me,--the
slim brown hand will never cling to mine. For this light is the light
of a Japanese sun that set long years ago.... Never, dearest!--never
shall we meet,--not even when the stars are dead!
"And yet,--can it be possible that I shall not remember?--that I shall
not still see, in other million summers, the same sea-wall under the
same white noon,--the same shadows of grasses and of little
stones,--the running of the same little sandalled feet that will
never, never reach my side?"
The compression found necessary in order to yield room for the letters,
which I think will bear comparison with the most famous letters in
literature, has forced me to content myself with depicting the man
merely in profile and giving a bare outline of his work as an artist. It
has obliged me to abandon all temptation to dwell upon his more human
side, his humour, tenderness, sympathy, eccentricity, and the thousand
queer, charming qualities that made up his many-faceted nature. These
omissions are in great part supplied by the letters themselves, where he
turns different sides of his mind to each correspondent, and where one
sees in consequence a shadow of the writers themselves reflected in his
own mental attitude.
In the turbid, shallow flood of the ephemeral books of our time Lafcadio
Hearn's contribution to English letters has been partially obscured. But
day by day, as these sink unfruitfully into the sands of time, more
clearly emerge the stern and exquisite outlines of his patient work.
While still a boy he said playfully, in answer to an appeal to concede
something to the vulgarer taste for the sake of popularity: "I shall
stick to my pedestal of faith in literary possibilities like an Egyptian
Colossus with a broken nose, seated solemnly in the gloom of my own
originality."
To that creed he held through all the bitter permutations of life, and
at the end it may be fitly said of him that "despite perishing
principles and decaying conventions, despite false teaching, false
triumphs, and false taste, there were yet those who strove for the
immemorial grandeur of their calling, who pandered to no temptation from
without or from within, who followed none of the great world-voices,
were dazzled by none of the great world-lights, and used their gift as
stepping-stone to no meaner life; but clear-eyed and patient, neither
elated nor cast down, still lifted the lamp as high as their powers
allowed, still pursued art singly for her own immortal sake."
LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
LETTERS
1877-1889
TO H.E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1877.[5]
DEAR KREHBIEL,--I have just received your second pleasant letter,
enclosing a most interesting article on music. The illustrations
interested me greatly. You could write a far more entertaining series of
essays on the history of musical instruments than that centennial humbug
who, as you say, did little more than merely to describe what he saw.
I have been reading in "Curiosités des Arts"--curious book now out of
print--an article on the musical instruments of the Middle Ages, which
is of deep interest even to such an ignoramus as myself. I would have
translated it for your amusement, but, that my eyes have been so bad as
to cripple me. Let me just give you an extract, and as soon as I feel
better I will send the whole thing if you deem it worth while:--
"The Romans, at the termination of their conquests, had brought to this
country and adopted nearly all the musical instruments they had
discovered among the peoples they had conquered.
[5] Hearn rarely dated his letters, but in most cases internal
evidence makes possible the assignment of a fairly definite
date.
Thus Greece furnished Rome with nearly all the soft instruments of the
family of flutes and of lyres; Germany and the provinces of the North,
inhabited by warlike races, taught their conquerors to acquire a taste
for terrible instruments, of the family of trumpets and of drums; Asia,
and in particular Judæa, which had greatly multiplied the number of
metallic instruments for use in ceremonies of religion, naturalized
among the Romans clashing instruments of the family of bells and
tam-tams; Egypt introduced the sistrum into Italy together with the
worship of Isis; and no sooner had Byzantium invented the first wind
organs than the new religion of Christ adopted them, that she might
consecrate them exclusively to the solemnities of her worship, West and
East.
"All the varieties of instruments in the known world had thus, in some
sort, taken refuge in the capital of the Empire; first at Rome, then at
Byzantium; when the Roman decline marked the last hour of this vast
concert, then, at once ceased the orations of the Emperors in the
Capitol and the festivals of the pagan gods in the temples; then were
silenced and scattered those musical instruments which had taken part in
the pomps of triumphs or of religious celebrations; then disappeared and
became forgotten a vast number of those instruments which pagan
civilization had made use of, but which became useless amidst the ruins
of the antique social system."
Following is the description of an organ,--a wonderful organ,--in a
letter from St. Jerome to Dardanas,--made of fifteen pipes of brass,
two air-reservoirs of elephant's skin, and two forge bellows for the
imitation of the sound of thunder. The writer compiled his essay from
eighteen ancient Latin authors, eight early Italian, about ten early
French, and some Spanish authors--all antiquated and unfamiliar.
* * * * *
As you are kindly interested in what I am doing I shall talk about
EGO,--I shall talk about ME.
I am (this is not for public information) barely making a living here by
my letters to the paper. I think I can make about $40 per month. This
will keep me alive and comfortable. I am determined never to resume
local work on a newspaper. I could not stand the gaslight; and then you
know what a horrid life it is. While acting as correspondent I shall
have time to study, study, study; and to write something better than
police news. I have a lot of work mapped out for magazine essays; and
though I never expect to make much money, I think I shall be able to
make a living. So far I have had a real hard time; but I hope to do
better now, as they send me money more regularly.
I do not intend to leave New Orleans, except for farther South,--the
West Indies, or South America. I am studying Spanish hard and will get
along well with it soon.
I think I can redeem myself socially here. I have got into good society;
and as everybody is poor in the South, my poverty is no drawback.
Yours truly,
Λαρκαδιη.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1877.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I am charmed with your letter,--your paper, and your
exquisite little jocose programme. The "Fantaisie Chinoise" was to me
something that really smacked of a certain famous European art-cenacle
where delightful little parties of this kind were given. That cenacle
was established by the disciples of Victor Hugo,--_les Hugolâtres_, as
they were mockingly but perhaps also nobly named; and the records of its
performances are some of the most delicate things in French literature.
Hector Berlioz was one of the merry crowd,--and Berlioz, by the way, had
written some fine romances as well as fine musical compositions.
There is a touch, a brilliant touch, of real art in all these little
undertakings of yours, which gives me more enjoyment than I could tell
you. Remember I am speaking of the _tout-ensemble_. Were I to make any
musical observations you might rightly think I was talking about
something of which I am disgracefully ignorant. Do you know, however,
that I have never forgotten that pretty Chinese melody I heard at the
club that day; and I sometimes find myself whistling it involuntarily.
I am indeed delighted to know that you have got Char Lee's instruments,
and are soon to receive others. Were there any Indian instruments in use
among the Choctaws here, I could get you some, but they are no longer a
musical people. The sadness that seems peculiar to dying races could not
be more evident than in them. Le Père Rouquette, their missionary,
tells me he has seen them laugh; but that might have been half a century
ago. He is going to take me out to one of their camps on Lake
Pontchartrain soon, and I shall try to pick you up something queer.
As yet I have not received the Chinese Play, etc., but will write when I
do, and return it as promptly as possible.
I am just recovering from a week's sickness--fever and bloody flux--and
I don't believe I weigh ninety pounds. You never saw such a sight as I
am. I have been turned nearly black; and my face is so thin that I can
see every bone as if it had only a piece of parchment drawn over it. And
then all my hair is cut close to the skin. I have had hard work to crawl
out of bed the last few days, but am getting better now. If I were to
get regular yellow fever now I would certainly go to the cemetery; for I
am only a skeleton as it is.
* * * * *
The newspaper generally gives only wages to its employees, and small
wages,--and literary reputation to its capitalists; although in France
the opposite condition exists. There are exceptions, of course, when a
man has exceedingly superior talent; and his employer, knowing its
value, allows its free exercise. That has been your case to a certain
degree; you have not only won a reputation for yourself, but have given
a tone and a standing to the paper which in my opinion has been of
immense value to it.
I have got everything here down to a fine point--three hours' work a
day!
There is but one thing here to compensate for the abominable heat--Figs.
They are remarkably cool, sweet, juicy, and tender. Unfortunately they
are too delicate to bear shipment. The climate is so debilitating that
even energetic _thought_ is out of the question; and unfortunately the
only inspiring hour, the cool night, I cannot utilize on account of
gaslight. When the night comes on here it is not the night of Northern
summers, but that night of which the divine Greek poet wrote,--"O holy
night, how well dost thou harmonize with me; for to me thou art all
eye,--thou art all ear,--thou art all fragrance!"
The infinite gulf of blue above seems a shoreless sea, whose foam is
stars, a myriad million lights are throbbing and flickering and
palpitating, a vast stillness filled with perfume prevails over the
land,--made only more impressive by the voices of the night-birds and
crickets; and all the busy voices of business are dead. The boats are
laid up, cotton presses closed, and the city is half empty. So that the
time is really inspiring. But I must wait to record the inspiration in
some more energetic climate.
Do you get _Mélusine_ yet? You are missing a great deal if you are not.
_Mélusine_ is preserving all those curious peasant songs with their
music,--some of which date back hundreds of years. They would be a
delightful relish to you.
Yours à jamais,
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1877.
"O-ME-TAW-BOODH!"--Have I not indeed been much bewitched by thine exotic
comedy, which hath the mild perfume and yellow beauty of a Chinese rose?
Assuredly I have been enchanted by the Eastern fragrance of thy
many-coloured brochure; for mine head "is not as yellow as mud." In thy
next epistle, however, please to enlighten my soul in regard to the
mystic title-phrase,--"Remodelled from the original English;" for I have
been wearing out the iron shoes of patience in my vain endeavour to
comprehend it. What I most desired, while perusing the play, was that I
might have been able to hear the musical interludes,--the barbaric
beauty of the melodies,--and the plaintive sadness of thy
serpent-skinned instruments. I shall soon return the MSS. to thy hands.
By the bye, did you ever hear a _real_ Chinese gong? I don't mean a d--d
hotel gong, but one of those great moon-disks of yellow metal which have
so terrible a power of utterance. A gentleman in Bangor, North Wales,
who had a private museum of South Pacific and Chinese curiosities,
exhibited one to me. It was hanging amidst Fiji spears beautifully
barbed with shark's teeth, which, together with grotesque New Zealand
clubs of green stone and Sandwich Island paddles wrought with the
baroque visages of the Shark-God, were depending from the walls. Also
there were Indian elephants in ivory, carrying balls in their carven
bellies, each ball containing many other balls inside it. The gong
glimmered pale and huge and yellow, like the moon rising over a Southern
swamp. My friend tapped its ancient face with a muffled drumstick, and
it commenced to sob, like waves upon a low beach. He tapped it again,
and it moaned like the wind in a mighty forest of pines. Again, and it
commenced to roar, and with each tap the roar grew deeper and deeper,
till it seemed like thunder rolling over an abyss in the Cordilleras, or
the crashing of Thor's chariot wheels. It was awful, and astonishing as
awful. I assure you I did not laugh at it at all. It impressed me as
something terrible and mysterious. I vainly sought to understand how
that thin, thin disk of trembling metal could produce so frightful a
vibration. He informed me that it was very expensive, being chiefly made
of the most precious metals,--silver and gold.
Let me give you a description of my new residence. I never knew what the
beauty of an old Creole home was until now. I do not believe one could
find anything more picturesque outside of Venice or Florence. For six
months I had been trying to get a room in one of these curious
buildings; but the rents seemed to me maliciously enormous. However, I
at last obtained one for $3 per week. Yet it is on the third floor, rear
building;--these old princes of the South built always double edifices,
covering an enormous space of ground, with broad wings, courtyards, and
slave quarters.
The building is on St. Louis Street, a street several hundred years old.
I enter by a huge archway about a hundred feet long,--full of rolling
echoes, and commencing to become verdant with a thin growth of bright
moss. At the end, the archway opens into a court. There are a few
graceful bananas here with their giant leaves splitting in ribbons in
the summer sun, so that they look like young palms. Lord! How the
carriages must have thundered under that archway and through the broad
paved court in the old days. The stables are here still; but the blooded
horses are gone, and the family carriage, with its French coat of arms,
has disappeared. There is only a huge wagon left to crumble to pieces. A
hoary dog sleeps like a stone sphinx at a corner of the broad stairway;
and I fancy that in his still slumbers he might be dreaming of a Creole
master who went out with Beauregard or Lee and never came back again.
Wonder if the great greyhound is waiting for him.
The dog never notices me. I am not of his generation, and I creep
quietly by lest I might disturb his dreams of the dead South. I go up
the huge stairway. At every landing a vista of broad archways reëchoes
my steps--archways that once led to rooms worthy of a prince. But the
rooms are now cold and cheerless and vast with emptiness. Tinted in pale
green or yellow, with a ceiling moulded with Renaissance figures in
plaster, the ghost of luxury and wealth seems trying to linger in them.
I pass them by, and taking my way through an archway on the right, find
myself on a broad piazza, at the end of which is my room.
It is vast enough for a Carnival ball. Five windows and glass doors
open flush with the floor and rise to the ceilings. They open on two
sides upon the piazza, whence I have a far view of tropical gardens and
masses of building, half-ruined but still magnificent. The walls are
tinted pale orange colour; green curtains drape the doors and windows;
and the mantelpiece, surmounted by a long oval mirror of Venetian
pattern, is of white marble veined like the bosom of a Naiad. In the
centre of the huge apartment rises a bed as massive as a fortress, with
tremendous columns of carved mahogany supporting a curtained canopy at
the height of sixteen feet. It seems to touch the ceiling, yet it does
not. There is no carpet on the floor, no pictures on the wall,--a
sense of something dead and lost fills the place with a gentle
melancholy;--the breezes play fantastically with the pallid curtains,
and the breath of flowers ascends into the chamber from the verdant
gardens below. Oh, the silence of this house, the perfume, and the
romance of it. A beautiful young Frenchwoman appears once a day in my
neighbourhood to arrange the room; but she comes like a ghost and
disappears too soon in the recesses of the awful house. I would like to
speak with her, for her lips drop honey, and her voice is richly sweet
like the cooing of a dove. "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the
rock, in the secret hiding-places of the stairs, let me see thy face,
let me hear thy voice, for thy voice is sweet and thy countenance is
comely!"
Let me tell thee, O Bard of the Harp of a Thousand Strings, concerning a
Romance of Georgia. I heard of it among the flickering shadow of
steamboat smoke and the flapping of sluggish sails. It has a hero
greater, I think, than Bludso; but his name is lost. At least it is lost
in Southern history; yet perhaps it may be recorded on the pages of a
great book whose leaves never turn yellow with Time, and whose letters
are eternal as the stars. But the reason his name is not known is
because he was a "d--d nigger."
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1878.
MY DEAR MUSICIAN,--I wrote you such a shabby, disjointed letter last
week that I feel I ought to make up for it,--especially after your
newsy, fresh, pleasant letter to me, which came like a cool Northern
breeze speaking of life, energy, success, and strong hopes.
I am very much ashamed that I have not yet been able to keep all my
promises to you. There is that Creole music I had hoped to get copied by
Saturday, and could not succeed in obtaining. But it is only delayed, I
assure you; and New Orleans is going to produce a treat for you soon.
George Cable, a charming writer, some of whose dainty New Orleans
stories you may have read in _Scribner's Monthly_, is writing a work
containing a study of Creole music, in which the songs are given, with
the musical text in footnotes. I have helped Cable a little in
collecting the songs; but he has the advantage of me in being able to
write music by ear. Scribner will publish the volume. This is not, of
course, for publicity.
My new journalistic life may interest you,--it is so different from
anything in the North. I have at last succeeded in getting right into
the fantastic heart of the French quarter, where I hear the antiquated
dialect all day long. Early in the morning I visit a restaurant, where I
devour a plate of figs, a cup of black coffee, a dish of
cream-cheese,--not the Northern stuff, but a delightful cake of pressed
milk floating in cream,--a couple of corn muffins, and an egg. This is a
heavy breakfast here, but costs only about twenty-five cents. Then I
slip down to the office, and rattle off a couple of leaders on literary
or European matters and a few paragraphs based on telegraphic news. This
occupies about an hour. Then the country papers,--half French, half
English,--altogether barbarous, come in from all the wild, untamed
parishes of Louisiana. Madly I seize the scissors and the paste-pot and
construct a column of crop-notes. This occupies about half an hour. Then
the New York dailies make their appearance. I devour their substance and
take notes for the ensuing day's expression of opinion. And then the
work is over, and the long golden afternoon welcomes me forth to enjoy
its perfume and its laziness. It would be a delightful existence for one
without ambition or hope of better things. On Sunday the brackish Lake
Pontchartrain offers the attraction of a long swim, and I like to avail
myself of it. Swimming in the Mississippi is dangerous on account of
great fierce fish, the alligator-gars, which attack a swimmer with
ferocity. An English swimmer was bitten by one only the other day in the
river, and, losing his presence of mind, was swept under a barge and
drowned.
Folks here tell me now that I have been sick I have nothing more to
fear, and will soon be acclimatized. If acclimatization signifies
becoming a bundle of sharp bones and saddle-coloured parchment, I have
no doubt of it at all. It is considered dangerous here to drink much
water in summer. For five cents one can get half a bottle of strong
claret, and this you mix with your drinking water, squeezing a lemon
into it. Limes are better, but harder to get,--you can only buy them
when schooners come in from the Gulf islands. But no one knows how
delicious lemonade can be made until he has tasted lemonade made of
limes.
I saw a really pleasing study for an artist this morning. A friend
accompanied me to the French market, and we bought an enormous quantity
of figs for about fifteen cents. We could not half finish them; and we
sought rest under the cool, waving shadow of a eunuch banana-tree in the
Square. As I munched and munched a half-naked boy ran by,--a fellow that
would have charmed Murillo, with a skin like a new cent in colour, and
heavy masses of hair massed as tastefully as if sculptured in ebony. I
threw a fig at him and hit him in the back. He ate it, and coolly walked
toward us with his little bronze hands turned upward and opened to their
fullest capacity, and a pair of great black eyes flashed a request for
more. You never saw such a pair of eyes,--deep and dark,--a night
without a moon. Spoke to him in English,--no answer; in French,--no
response. My friend bounced him with _Spak-ne Italiano_, or something of
that kind, but it was no good. We asked him by signs where he came from,
and he pointed to a rakish lugger rocking at the Picayune pier. I filled
his little brown hands with figs, but he did not smile. He gravely
thanked us with a flash of the eye like a gleam of a black opal, and
murmured, "Ah, mille gratias, Señor." Why, that boy _was_ Murillo's boy
after all, _propria persona_. He departed to the rakish lugger, and we
dreamed of Moors and gipsies under the emasculated banana.
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1878.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--Your letter took a long week to reach me; perhaps by
reason of the quarantine regulations which interpose some extraordinary
barriers, little Chinese walls, across the country below Memphis. Thus
am I somewhat tardy in responding.
The same sentiment which caused me so much pleasure on reading your
ideas on the future of musical philosophy occasioned something of
sincere regret on reading your words,--"I am not a thoroughly educated
musician," etc. I had hoped (and still hope, and believe with all my
heart, dear Krehbiel) that the Max Müller of Music would be none other
than yourself. Perhaps you will therefore pardon some little
observations from one who knows nothing about music.
I fancy that you have penetrated just so far into the Temple of your Art
that, like one of the initiates of Eleusis, you commence to experience
such awe and reverence for its solemn vastness and its whispers of
mystery as tempt you to forego further research. You suddenly forget how
much farther you have advanced into the holy precincts than most
mortals, who seldom cross the vestibule;--the more you advance the more
seemingly infinite becomes the vastness of the place, the more
interminable its vistas of arches, and the more mysterious its endless
successions of aisles. The Vatican with its sixty thousand rooms is but
a child's toy house compared with but one of the countless wings of
Art's infinite temples; and the outer world, viewing only the entrance,
narrow and low as that of a pyramid, can no more comprehend the
Illimitable that lies beyond it than they can measure the deeps of the
Eternities beyond the fixed stars. I cannot help believing that the
little shadow of despondency visible in your last letter is an evidence
of how thoroughly you have devoted yourself to Music, and a partial
contradiction of your own words. It would be irrational in you to expect
that you could achieve your purposes in the very blush of manhood, as it
were; but you ought not to forget altogether that you already stand in
knowledge on a footing with many grey-haired disciples and apostles of
the art, whose names are familiar in musical literature. I believe you
can become anything musical you desire to become; but in art-study one
must devote one's whole life to self-culture, and can only hope at last
to have climbed a little higher and advanced a little farther than
anybody else. You should feel the determination of those neophytes of
Egypt who were led into subterranean vaults and suddenly abandoned in
darkness and rising water, whence there was no escape save by an iron
ladder. As the fugitive mounted through heights of darkness, each rung
of the quivering stairway gave way immediately he had quitted it, and
fell back into the abyss, echoing; but the least exhibition of fear or
weariness was fatal to the climber.
It seems to me that want of confidence in one's self is not less a curse
than it appears to be a consequence of knowledge. You hesitate to accept
a position on the ground of your own feeling of inadequacy; and the one
who fills it is somebody who does not know the rudiments of his duty.
"Fools rush in," etc., and were you to decline the situation proffered
by Mr. Thomas, merely because you don't think yourself qualified to fill
it, I hope you do not imagine that any better scholar will fill the
bill. On the contrary, I believe that some d--d quack would take the
position, even at a starvation salary, and actually make himself a
reputation on the mere strength of cheek and ignorance. However, you
tell me of many other reasons. Of course, ---- is a vast and varied
ass,--a piebald quack of the sort who makes respectability an apology
for lack of brains; but I fancy that you would be sure to find some
asses at the head of any institution of the sort in this country. The
demand for art of any kind is new, and so long as people cannot tell the
difference between a quack and a scholar, the former, having the cheek
of a mule and a pompous deportment, is bound to get his work in. I don't
think I should care much about the plans and actions of such people, but
content myself, were I in your place, by showing myself superior to
them. There is one thing in regard to a position like that you speak
of,--it would afford you large opportunity for study, and in fact compel
study upon you as a public instructor. At least it seems so to me. Then,
again, remember that your connection with the _Gazette_ leaves you in
the position of the Arabian prince who was marbleized from his loins
down. As an artist you are but half alive there; one half of your
existence is paralyzed; you waste your energies in the creation of works
which are coffined within twelve hours after their birth; your power of
usefulness is absorbed in a direction which can give you no adequate
reward hereafter; and the little time you can devote to your studies and
your really valuable work is too often borrowed from sleep. From the
daily press I think you have obtained about all you will get from it in
the regard of reputation, etc.; and there is no future really worth
seeking in it. Even the most successful editors live a sort of existence
which I certainly do not envy, and I am sure you would soon sicken of.
Do you not think, too, that any situation like that now offered you
might lead to a far better one under far better conditions? It would
certainly introduce you to many whose friendship and appreciation would
be invaluable. I do not believe that Cincinnati is your true field for
future work, and I cannot persuade myself that the city will ever become
a _permanent_ artistic centre; but I am satisfied that you will drift
out of the newspaper drudgery before long, and if you have an
opportunity to obtain a good footing in the East, I would take it.
Thomas ought to be capable of making an Eastern pedestal for you to
light on; for, judging by the admiration expressed for him by the
_Times_, _Tribune_, _World_, _Herald_, _Sun_, etc., he must have some
influence with musical centres. Then Europe would be open to you in a
short time with its extraordinary opportunities of art-study, and its
treasures of musical literature, to be devoured free of cost. Your
researches into the archæology of music, I need hardly say, must be made
in Europe rather than here; and I hope you will before many twelvemonths
be devouring the Musical Department of the British Museum, and the
libraries of Paris and the Eternal City.
However, I do not pretend to be an adviser,--only a _suggester_. I think
your good little wife would be a good adviser; for women seem blessed
with a kind of divine intuition, and I sometimes believe they can see
much farther into the future than men. You must not get disgusted with
my long letter. I could not help telling you what interest your last
excited in me regarding your own prospects.
Let me tell you something that I have been thinking about the bagpipe.
Somewhere or other I have read that the bagpipe was a Roman military
instrument, and was introduced into Scotland by the Roman troops,
together with the "kilt." It must have occurred to you that the Highland
dress bears a ghostly resemblance to that of the Roman private as
exhibited on the Column of Trajan. I cannot remember where I have read
this, but you can doubtless inform me.
I am still well, although I have even had the experience of nursing a
friend sick of yellow fever. The gods are sparing me for some fantastic
reason. I enclose some specimens of the death notices which sprinkle our
town, and send a copy of the last _Item_.
My eyes are eternally played out, and I shall have to abandon newspaper
work altogether before long. Perhaps I shall do better in some little
business. What is eternally rising up before me now like a spectre is
the ?--"Where shall I go?--what shall I do?" Sometimes I think of
Europe, sometimes of the West Indies,--of Florida, France, or the
wilderness of London. The time is not far off when I must go
somewhere,--if it is not to join the "Innumerable Caravan." Whenever I
go down to the wharves, I look at the white-winged ships. O ye
messengers, swift Hermæ of Traffic, ghosts of the infinite ocean,
whither will ye bear me?--what destiny will ye bring me,--what hopes,
what despairs?
Your sincere friend and admirer,
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1878.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I received your admirable little sketch. It pleased
me more than the others,--perhaps because, having to deal with a simpler
subject, you were less hampered by mechanical details and could maintain
your light, gossipy, fresh method of instruction in all its simple
force.
I recognized several of the cuts. That of the uppermost figure at the
right-hand corner was of the god Terminus, a most ancient deity, and his
instrument is of corresponding antiquity perhaps, although in country
districts the Termina were generally characterized by a certain sylvan
rudeness. The earliest Termina were mere blocks of wood or stone. Among
the ancients a circle of ground, or square border--it was set by law in
Rome at two feet wide--surrounded every homestead. This was inviolate to
the gods, and the Termina were placed at intervals along its borders, or
at the corners. At certain days in the year the proprietor made the
circuit, pushing victims before him, and chanting hymns to the god of
boundaries. The same gods existed among the ancient Hindoos, with whom
the Greeks and Romans must have had a close relationship in remote
antiquity. The Greeks called these deities the θεοὶ ὁρίοι. I do not know
whence you got the figure; but I know it is a common one of Terminus;
and such _eau-forte_ engravers as Gessner, who excelled in antique
subjects, delighted to introduce it in sylvan scenes. I have an
engraving by Leopold Flameng,--called _La Satyresse_,--a female satyr
playing on the double flute (charming figure) and old Terminus with his
single flute accompanies her in the background,--smiling from his
pedestal of stone.
The first flute-player on the left-hand side, at the lower corner, is
evidently from a vase, as the treatment of the hair denotes--I should
say a Greek vase; and the second one, with the mouth-bandage, in spite
of the half-Egyptian face, appears to be an Etruscan figure. The
treatment of the eyes and profile looks Etruscan. Some of the flutes in
the upper part of the drawing are much more complicated than I had
supposed any of the antique flutes were.
You will find a charming version of the Medusa story in Kingsley's
"Heroes"--for little ones. Of course he does not tell why Medusa's hair
was turned into snakes. There are several other versions of the legend.
I prefer that in which the sword is substituted for the sickle,--a most
unwarlike weapon, and a utensil, moreover, sacred to the Goddess of
Harvests. The sword given by Hermes to Perseus is said to have been that
wherewith he slew the monster Argus,--a diamond blade. Like the Runic
swords forged by the gnomes under the roots of the hills of Scandinavia,
this weapon slew whenever brandished.
Fever is bad still. I had another attack of dengue, but have got nearly
over it. I find lemon-juice the best remedy. All over town there are
little white notices pasted on the lamp-posts or the pillars of piazzas,
bearing the dismal words:--
Décédé
Ce matin, à 3½ heures
Julien
Natif de ----,
and so on. The death notices are usually surmounted by an atrocious cut
of a weeping widow sitting beneath a weeping willow--with a huge
mausoleum in the background. Yellow fever deaths occur every day close
by. Somebody is advocating firing off cannon as a preventive. This plan
of shooting Yellow Jack was tried in '53 without success. It brings on
rain; but a rainy day always heralds an increase of the plague. You will
see by the _Item's_ tabulated record that there is a curious periodicity
in the increase. It might be described by a line like this--
[Illustration]
You have doubtless seen the records of pulsations made by a certain
instrument, for detecting the rapidity of blood-circulation. The fever
actually appears to have a pulsation of graduated increase like that of
a feverish vein. I think this demonstrates a regularity in the periods
of germ incubation,--affected, of course, more or less by atmospheric
changes.
Hope you will have your musical talks republished in book form. Send us
_Golden Hours_ once in a while. It will always have a warm notice in the
_Item_. Yours in much hurry, with promise of another epistle soon.
L. HEARN.
Regards to all the boys.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1878.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I received yours, with the kind wishes of Mrs.
Krehbiel, which afforded me more pleasure than I can tell you,--also the
_Golden Hours_ with your instructive article on the history of the
piano. It occurs to me that when completed your musical essays would
form a delightful little volume, and ought certainly to find a
first-class publisher. I hope you will entertain the suggestion, if it
has not already occurred to you. I do not know very much about musical
literature; but I fancy that no work in the English tongue has been
published of a character so admirably suited to give young people a
sound knowledge of the romantic history of music instruments as your
essays would constitute, if shaped into a volume. The closing
observations of your essay, markedly original and somewhat startling,
were very entertaining. I have not yet returned your manuscript, because
Robinson is devouring and digesting that Chinese play. He takes a great
interest in what you write.
I send you, not without some qualms of conscience, a copy of our little
journal containing a few personal remarks, written with the idea of
making you known here in musical circles. I have several apologies to
make in regard to the same. Firstly, the _Item_ is only a poor little
sheet, in which I am not able to obtain space sufficient to do you or
your art labour justice; secondly, I beg of you to remember that if I
have spoken too extravagantly from a strictly newspaper standpoint, it
will not be taken malicious advantage of by anybody, as the modest
_Item_ goes no farther north than St. Louis.
The Creole rhymes I sent you were unintelligible chiefly because they
were written phonetically after a fashion which I hold to be an
abomination. The author, Adrien Rouquette, is the last living Indian
missionary of the South,--the last of the Blackrobe Fathers, and is
known to the Choctaws by the name of Charitah-Ima. You may find him
mentioned in the American Encyclopædia published by the firm of
Lippincott & Co. There is nothing very remarkable about his poetry,
except its eccentricity. The "Chant d'un jeune Créole" was simply a
personal compliment,--the author gives something of a sketch of his own
life in it. It was published in _Le Propagateur_, a French Catholic
paper, for the purpose of attracting my attention, as the old man wanted
to see me, and thought the paper might fall under my observation. The
other, the "Moqueur-Chanteur,"--as it ought to have been spelled,--or
"Mocking Singer," otherwise the mocking-bird, has some pretty bits of
onomatopoeia. (This dreamy, sunny State, with its mighty forests of
cedar and pine, and its groves of giant cypress, is the natural home of
the mocking-bird.) These bits of Creole rhyming were adapted to the airs
of some old Creole songs, and the music will, perhaps, be the most
interesting part of them.
I am writing you a detailed account of the Creoles of Louisiana, and
their blending with Creole emigrants from the Canaries, Martinique, and
San Domingo; but it is a subject of great latitude, and I can only
outline it for you. Their characteristics offer an interesting topic,
and the bastard offspring of the miscegenated French and African, or
Spanish and African, dialects called Creole offer pretty peculiarities
worth a volume. I will try to give you an entertaining sketch of the
subject. I must tell you, however, that Creole music is mostly negro
music, although often remodelled by French composers. There could
neither have been Creole patois nor Creole melodies but for the French
and Spanish blooded slaves of Louisiana and the Antilles. The
melancholy, quavering beauty and weirdness of the negro chant are
lightened by the French influence, or subdued and deepened by the
Spanish.
Yes, I _did_ send you that song as something queer. I had only hoped
that the music would own the charming naiveté of the words; but
I have been disappointed. But you must grant the song is pretty and
has a queer simplicity of sentiment. Save it for the words. (Alas!
_Mélusine_--according to information I have just received from Christern
of New York--is dead. Poor, dear, darling _Mélusine_! I sincerely mourn
for her with archæological and philological lament.) L'Orient is in
Brittany, and the chant is that of a Breton fisher village. That it
should be melancholy is not surprising; but that it should be melancholy
without weirdness or sweetness is lamentable. _Mélusine_ for 1877 had a
large collection of Breton songs, with music; and I think I shall avail
myself of Christern's offer to get it. I want it for the legends; you
will want, I am sure, to peep at the music. Your criticism about the
resemblance of the melody to the Irish keening wail does not surprise
me, although it disappointed me; for I believe the Breton peasantry are
of Celtic origin. Your last letter strengthened a strange fancy that has
come to me at intervals since my familiarity with the Chinese
physiognomy,--namely, that there are such strong similarities between
the Mongolian and certain types of the Irish face that one is inclined
to suspect a far-distant origin of the Celts in the East. The Erse and
the Gaelic tongues, you know, are very similar in construction, also the
modern Welsh. I have heard them all, and met Irish people able to
comprehend both Welsh and Gaelic from the resemblance to the Erse. I
suppose you have lots of Welsh music, the music of the Bards, some of
which is said to have had a Druidic origin. Tell me if you have ever
come across any Scandinavian music--the terrible melody of the Berserker
songs, and the Runic chants, so awfully potent to charm; the Raven song
of the Sweyn maidens to which they wove the magic banner; the death-song
of Ragnar Lodbrok, or the songs of the warlocks and Norse priests; the
many sword-songs sung by the Vikings, etc. I suppose you remember
Longfellow's adaptation of the Heimskringla legend:--
"Then the Scald took his harp and sang,
And loud through the music rang
The sound of that shining word;
And the harp-strings a clangor made,
As if they were struck with the blade
Of a sword."
I am delighted to hear that you have got some Finnish music. Nothing in
the world can compare in queerness and all manner of grotesqueness to
Finnish tradition and characteristic superstition. I see an
advertisement of "Le Chant de Roland," price $100, splendidly
illustrated. Wonder if the original music of the Song of Roland has been
preserved. You know the giant Taillefer sang that mighty chant as he
hewed down the Saxons at the battle of Hastings.
With grateful regards to Mrs. Krehbiel, I remain
Yours à jamais,
L. H.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--That I should have been able even by a suggestion to
have been of any use to you is a great pleasure. Your information in
regard to Père Rouquette interested me. The father--the last of the
Blackrobe Fathers--is at present with his beloved Indians at
Ravine-les-Cannes; but I will see him on his return and read your letter
to the good old soul. If the columns of a good periodical were open to
me, I should write the romance of his life--such a wild strange
life--inspired by the magical writings of Châteaubriand in the
commencement; and latterly devoted to a strangely beautiful religion of
his own--not only the poetic religion of _Atala_ and _Les Natchez_, but
that religion of the wilderness which flies to solitude, and hath no
other temple than the vault of Heaven itself, painted with the frescoes
of the clouds, and illuminated by the trembling tapers of God's
everlasting altar, the stars of the firmament.
I have received circular and organ-talk. You are right, I am convinced,
in your quotation of St. Jerome. To-day I send you the book--an old copy
I had considerable difficulty in coaxing from the owner. It will be of
use to you chiefly by reason of the curious list of writers on mediæval
and antique music quoted at the end of the volume.
If you do not make a successful volume of your instructive "Talks,"
something dreadful ought to happen to you,--_especially as Cincinnati
has now a musical school in which children will have to learn something
about music_. You are the professor of musical history at that college.
Your work is a work of instruction for the young. As the professor of
that college, you should be able to make it a success. This is a
suggestion. I know you are not a wire-puller--couldn't be if you tried;
but I want to see those talks put to good use, and made profitable to
the writer, and you have friends who should be able to do what I think.
Your friend is right, no doubt, about the
"Tig, tig, malaboin
La chelema che tango
Redjoum!"
I asked my black nurse what it meant. She only laughed and shook her
head,--"Mais c'est Voudoo, ça; je n'en sais rien!" "Well," said I,
"don't you know anything about Voudoo songs?" "Yes," she answered, "_I
know Voudoo songs; but I can't tell you what they mean_." And she broke
out into the wildest, weirdest ditty I ever heard. I tried to write down
the words; but as I did not know what they meant I had to write by sound
alone, spelling the words according to the French pronunciation:--
"Yo so dan godo
Héru mandé
Yo so dan godo
Héru mandé
Héru mandé.
Tigà la papa,
No Tingodisé
Tigà la papa
Ha Tinguoaiée
Ha Tinguoaiée
Ha Tinguoaiée."
I have undertaken a project which I hardly hope to succeed in, but which
I feel some zeal regarding, viz., to collect the Creole legends,
traditions, and songs of Louisiana. Unfortunately I shall never be able
to do this thoroughly without money,--plenty of money,--but I can do a
good deal, perhaps.
I must also tell you that I find Spanish remarkably easy to acquire; and
believe that at the end of another year I shall be able to master
it,--write it and speak it well. To do the latter, however, I shall be
obliged to spend some time in some part of the Spanish-American
colonies,--whither my thoughts have been turned for some time. With a
good knowledge of three languages, I can prosecute my wanderings over
the face of the earth without timidity,--without fear of starving to
death after each migration.
After all, it has been lucky for me that I was obliged to quit hard
newspaper work; for it has afforded me opportunities for
self-improvement which I could not otherwise have acquired. I should
like, indeed, to make more money; but one must sacrifice something in
order to study, and I must not grumble, as long as I can live while
learning.
I have really given up all hope of creating anything while I remain
here, or, indeed, until my condition shall have altered and my
occupation changed.
What material I can glean here, from this beautiful and legendary
land,--this land of perfume and of dreams,--must be chiselled into shape
elsewhere.
One cannot write of these beautiful things while surrounded by them; and
by an atmosphere, heavy and drowsy as that of a conservatory. It must be
afterward, in times to come, when I shall find myself in some cold,
bleak land where I shall dream regretfully of the graceful palms; the
swamp groves, weird in their ragged robes of moss; the golden ripples of
the cane-fields under the summer wind, and this divine sky--deep and
vast and cloudless as Eternity, with its far-off horizon tint of tender
green.
I do not wonder the South has produced nothing of literary art. Its
beautiful realities fill the imagination to repletion. It is regret and
desire and the Spirit of Unrest that provoketh poetry and romance. It is
the North, with its mists and fogs, and its gloomy sky haunted by a
fantastic and ever-changing panorama of clouds, which is the land of
imagination and poetry.
* * * * *
The fever is dying. A mighty wind, boisterous and cool, lifted the
poisonous air from the city at last.
I cannot describe to you the peculiar effect of the summer upon one
unacclimated. You feel as though you were breathing a drugged
atmosphere. You find the very whites of your eyes turning yellow with
biliousness. The least over-indulgence in eating or drinking prostrates
you. My feeling all through the time of the epidemic was about this: I
have the fever-principle in my blood,--it shows its presence in a
hundred ways,--if the machinery of the body gets the least out of order,
the fever will get me down. I was not afraid of serious consequences,
but I felt conscious that nothing but strict attention to the laws of
health would pull me through. The experience has been valuable. I
believe I could now live in Havana or Vera Cruz without fear of the
terrible fevers which prevail there. Do you know that even here we have
no less than eleven different kinds of fever,--most of which know the
power of killing?
I am very glad winter is coming, to lift the languors of the air and
restore some energy to us. The summer is not like that North. At the
North you have a clear, dry, burning air; here it is clear also, but
dense, heavy, and so moist that it is never so hot as you have it. But
no one dares expose himself to the vertical sun. I have noticed that
even the chickens and the domestic animals, dogs, cats, etc., always
seek shady places. They fear the sun. People with valuable horses will
not work them much in summer. They die very rapidly of sunstroke.
In winter, too, one feels content. There is no nostalgia. But the summer
always brings with it to me--always has, and I suppose always will--a
curious and vague species of homesickness, as if I had friends in some
country far off, where I had not been for so long that I have forgotten
even their names and the appellation of the place where they live. I
hope it will be so next summer that I can go whither the humour leads
me,--the propensity which the author of "The Howadji in Syria" calleth
the Spirit of the Camel.
But this is a land where one can really enjoy the Inner Life. Every one
has an inner life of his own,--which no other eye can see, and the great
secrets of which are never revealed, although occasionally when we
create something beautiful, we betray a faint glimpse of it--sudden and
brief, as of a door opening and shutting in the night. I suppose you
live such a life, too,--a double existence--a dual entity. Are we not
all doppelgängers?--and is not the invisible the only life we really
enjoy?
* * * * *
You may remember I described this house to you as haunted-looking. It is
delicious, therefore, to find out that it is actually a haunted house.
But the ghosts do not trouble me; I have become so much like one of
themselves in my habits. There is one room, however, where no one likes
to be alone; for phantom hands clap, and phantom feet stamp behind them.
"And what does that signify?" I asked a servant. "_Ça veut dire,
Foulez-moi le camp_"--a vulgar expression for "Git!"
* * * * *
There is to be a _literary_ (God save the mark!) newspaper here. I have
been asked to help edit it. As I find that I can easily attend to both
papers I shall scribble and scrawl and sell 'em translations which I
could not otherwise dispose of. Thus I shall soon be making, instead of
$40, about $100 per month. This will enable me to accumulate the means
of flying from American civilization to other horrors which I know not
of--some place where one has to be a good Catholic (in outward
appearance) for fear of having a _navaja_ stuck into you, and where the
whole population is so mixed up that no human being can tell what nation
anybody belongs to. So in the meantime I must study such phrases as:----
¿Tiene V. un leoncito? Have you a small lion?
No señor, pero tengo un fero perro. No: but I've an ugly dog.
¿Tiene V. un muchachona? Have you a big strapping girl?
No: pero tengo un hombrecillo. No: but I've a miserable little man.
May the Gods of the faiths, living and dead, watch over thee, and thy
dreams be made resonant with the sound of mystic and ancient music,
which on waking thou shalt vainly endeavour to recall, and forever
regret with a vague and yet pleasant sorrow; knowing that the gods
permit not mortals to learn their sacred hymns.
L. HEARN.
By the way, let me send you a short translation from Baudelaire. It is
so mystic and sad and beautiful.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1879.
QUERIDO AMIGO,--Your words in regard to my former letter flatter me
considerably, for I feel rather elated at being able to be of the
smallest service to you; and as to your unavoidable delays in writing,
never allow them to trouble you, or permit your correspondence to
encroach upon your study hours for my sake. Indeed, it is a matter of
surprise to me how you are able to spare any time at present in view of
your manifold work.
So _your_ literary career--at least the brilliant portion of
it--commences in January; and mine ends at the same time, without a
single flash of brightness or a solitary result worthy of preservation.
My salary has been raised three times since I heard from
you,--encouraging, perhaps, but I do not suffer myself to indulge in any
literary speculations. Since the close of the sickly season my only
thought has been to free myself from the yoke of dependence on the whims
of employers,--from the harness of journalism. I hired myself a room in
the northern end of the French Quarter (near the Spanish), bought myself
a complete set of cooking utensils and kitchen-ware, and kept house for
myself. I got my expenses down to $2 per week, and kept them at that
(exclusive of rent, of course) although my salary rose to $20. Thus I
learned to cook pretty well; also to save money, and will start a little
business for myself next week. I have an excellent partner,--a Northern
man,--and we expect by spring to clear enough ready money to start
for South America. By that time I shall have finished my Spanish
studies,--all that are necessary and possible in an American city, and
shall--please (not God but) the good old gods--play gipsy for a while in
strange lands. Many unpleasant things may happen; but with good health I
have no fear of failure, and the new life will enable me to recruit my
eyes, fill my pockets, and improve my imagination by many strange
adventures and divers extraordinary archæological pursuits.
[Illustration: LAFCADIO HEARN
_In the '70's_]
How is that for Bohemianism? But I wish I could spend a day with you in
order to recount the many wonderful and mystic adventures I have had in
this quaint and ruinous city. To recount them in a letter is impossible.
But I came here to enjoy romance, and I have had my fill.
Business,--ye Antiquities!--hard, practical, unideal, realistic
business! But what business? Ah, _mi corazon_, I would never dare to
tell you. Not that it is not honourable, respectable, etc., but that it
is so devoid of dreamful illusions. Yet hast thou not said,--"This is no
world for dreaming,"--and divers other horrible things which I shall not
repeat?
Tell me all about your exotic musical instruments, when you have
time,--you know they will interest me; and may not I, too, some day be
able to forward to you various barbaric symbols and sackfuls from
outlandish places?--from the pampas or the llanos,--from some
palm-fringed islands of the Eastern sea, where even Nature dreams
opiated dreams? How knowst thou but that I shall make the Guacho and
llanero, the Peruvian and the Chilian, to contribute right generously to
thy store of musical wealth?
I have not made much progress in the literature most dear to you;
inasmuch as my time has been rather curtailed, and the days have become
provokingly short. But I have been devouring Hoffmann (Emile de la
Bédollière's translation in French--could not get a complete English
one); and I really believe he has no rival as a creator of musical
fantasticalities. "The Organ-Stop," "The Sanatus," "Lawyer Krespel" (a
story of a violin, replete with delightful German mysticism), "A Pupil
of the Great Tartini," "Don Juan,"--and a dozen other stories evidence
an enthusiasm for music and an extraordinary sensitiveness to musical
impressions on the author's part. You probably read these in German,--if
not, I am sure many of them would delight you. The romance of music
must, I fancy, be a vast aid to the study of the art,--it seems to me
like the setting of a jewel, or the frame of a painting. I also have
observed in the New York _Times_ a warm notice of a lady who is an
enthusiast upon the subject of Finnish music, and who has collected a
valuable mass of the quaint music and weird ditties of the North. As you
speak of having a quantity of Finnish music, however, I have no doubt
that you know much more about the young lady than I could tell you.
Prosper Mérimée's "Carmen" has fairly enthralled me,--I am in love with
it. The colour and passion and rapid tragedy of the story is
marvellous. I think I was pretty well prepared to enjoy it, however. I
had read Simpson's "History of the Gipsies," Borro's[6] "Gypsies of
Spain," a volume of Spanish gipsy ballads,--I forget the name of the
translator,--and everything in the way of gipsy romance I could get my
hands on,--by Sheridan Le Fanu, Victor Hugo, Reade, Longfellow, George
Eliot, Balzac, and a brilliant novelist also whose works generally
appear in the _Cornhill Magazine_. Balzac's "Le Succube" gives a curious
picture of the persecution of the Bohemians in mediæval France, founded
upon authentic records. Le Fanu wrote a sweet little story called "The
Bird of Passage," which contained a remarkable variety of information in
regard to gipsy secrets; but it is only within very recent years that a
really good novel on a gipsy theme has been written in English; and I am
sorry that I cannot remember the author's name. I found more romance as
well as information in Borro and Simpson than in all the novels and
poems put together; and I obtained a fair idea of the artistic side of
Spanish gipsy life from Doré's "Spain." Doré is something of a musician
as well as a limner; and his knowledge of the violin enabled him to make
himself at home in the camps of that music-loving people. He played wild
airs to them, and studied their poses and gestures with such success
that his gipsies seem actually to dance in the engravings. I read that
Miss Minnie Hauck plays Carmen in gorgeous costume, which is certainly
out of place, except in one act of the opera. Otherwise from the first
scene of the novel in which she advances "poising herself on her hips,
like a filly from the Cordovan Stud," to the ludicrous episode at
Gibraltar, her attire is described as more nearly resembling that
picturesque rag-blending of colour Doré describes and depicts. If you
see the opera,--please send me your criticism in the _Gazette_.
[6] See page 205.
You may remember some observations I made--based especially on De
Coulanges--as to the derivation of the Roman and Greek tongues from the
Sanscrit. Talking of Borro reminds me that Borro traces the gipsy
dialects to the mother of languages; and Simpson naturally finds the
Romany akin to modern Hindostanee, which succeeded the Sanscrit. Now
here is a curious fact. Rommain is simply Sanscrit for The Husbands,--a
domestic appellation applicable to the gipsy races above all others,
when the ties of blood are stronger than even among the Jewish people;
and Borro asks timidly what is then the original meaning of those mighty
words, "Rome" and the "Romans," of which no scholar (he claims) has yet
ventured to give the definition. Surely all mysteries seem to issue from
the womb of nations,--from the heart of Asia.
I see that the musical critic of the New York _Times_ speaks of certain
airs in the opera of _Carmen_ as Havanese airs,--_Avaneras_. If there be
a music peculiar to Havana, I expect that I shall hear some of it next
summer. If I could only write music, I could collect much interesting
matter for you.
There is a New Orleans story in the last issue of _Scribner's
Monthly_,--"Ninon,"--which I must tell you is a fair exemplification of
how mean French Creoles can be. The great cruelties of the old slave
régime were perpetuated by French planters. Anglo-Saxon blood is not
cruel. If you want to find cruelty, either in ancient or modern history,
it must be sought for among the Latin races of Europe. The Scandinavian
and Teutonic blood was too virile and noble to be cruel; and the science
of torture was never developed among them.
* * * * *
Before I commenced to keep house for myself, I must tell you about a
Chinese restaurant which I used to patronize. No one in the American
part of the city--or at least very few--know even of its existence. The
owner will not advertise, will not hang out a sign, and seems to try to
keep his business a secret. The restaurant is situated in the rear part
of an old Creole house on Dumaine Street,--about the middle of the
French Quarter; and one must pass through a dark alley to get in. I had
heard so much of the filthiness of the Chinese, that I would have been
afraid to enter it, but for the strong recommendations of a Spanish
friend of mine,--now a journalist and a romantic fellow. (By the way, he
killed a stranger here in 1865 one night, and had to fly the country. A
few hot words in a saloon; and the Spanish blood was up. The stranger
fell so quickly and the stab was given so swiftly,--"according to the
_rules_,"--that my friend had left the house before anybody knew what
had happened. Then the killer was stowed away upon a Spanish schooner,
and shipped to Cuba, where he remained for four years. And when he came
back, _there were no witnesses_.)
But about the restaurant. I was surprised to find the bills printed half
in Spanish and half in English; and the room nearly full of Spaniards.
It turned out that my Chinaman was a Manilan,--handsome, swarthy, with a
great shock of black hair, wavy as that of a Malabaress. His movements
were supple, noiseless, leopardine; and the Mongolian blood was scarcely
visible. But his wife was positively attractive;--hair like his own, a
splendid figure, sharp, strongly marked features, and eyes whose very
obliqueness only rendered the face piquant,--as in those agreeable yet
half-sinister faces painted on Japanese lacquerware. The charge for a
meal was only twenty-five cents,--four dishes allowed, with dessert and
coffee, and only five cents for every extra dish one might choose to
order. I generally ordered a nice steak, stewed beef with potatoes,
stewed tongue, a couple of fried eggs, etc. Everything is cooked before
your eyes, the whole interior of the kitchen being visible from the
dining-table; and nothing could be cleaner or nicer. I asked him how
long he had kept the place; he answered, "Seven years;" and I am told he
has been making a fortune even at these prices of five cents per dish.
The cooking is perfection.
* * * * *
There is nothing here which would interest you particularly in the
newspaper line. We have a new French daily, _Le Courrier de la
Louisiane_; but the ablest French editor in Louisiana--Dumez of Le
Meschacébé--was killed by what our local poets are pleased to term "The
March of the Saffron Steed!" The _Item_, beginning on nothing, now
represents a capital, and I would have a fine prospect should I be able
to content my restless soul in this town. The _Democrat_ is in a death
struggle with the gigantic lottery monopoly; and cannot live long.
Howard is king of New Orleans, and can crush every paper or clique that
opposes him. He was once blackballed by the Old Jockey Club, who had a
splendid race-course at Métairie. "By God," said Howard, "I'll make a
graveyard of their d----d race-course." He did it. The Métairie cemetery
now occupies the site of the old race-course; and the new Jockey Club is
Howard's own organization.
It just occurs to me that the name of the gypsy novel written by the
Cornhill writer is "Zelda's Fortune," and that I spelled the name Borrow
wrong. It has a "w." Mérimée refers to B_a_rrow, which is also wrong.
Longfellow borrowed (excuse the involuntary pun) nearly all the gypsy
songs in his "Spanish Student" from Borrow. I remember, for instance,
the songs commencing,----
"Upon a mountain's tip I stand,
With a crown of red gold in my hand;"
also,
"Loud sang the Spanish cavalier
And thus his ditty ran:
God send the gypsy lassie here,
And not the gipsy man."
(I have been spelling "gipsy" and "gypsy"--don't know which I like
best.) I wonder why Longfellow did not borrow the forge-song, quoted
by Borrow,--_Las Muchis_, "The Sparks":----
"More than a hundred lovely daughters I see produced at one time,
fiery as roses, in one moment they expire, gracefully
circumvolving."
Is it not beautiful, this gipsy poetry? The sparks are compared to
daughters, but they are _gitanas_ "_fiery_ as roses;" and in the words,
"I see them expire, gracefully _circumvolving_," we have the figure of
the gypsy dance,--the Romalis, with its wild bounds and pirouettes.
* * * * *
My letter is too long. I fear it will try your patience; but I cannot
say half I should wish to say. You will soon hear from me again; for le
père Rouquette hath returned; I must see him, and show him your letter.
A villainous wind from your boreal region has overcast the sky with a
cope of lead, and filled the sunny city with gloom. From my dovecot
shaped windows I can see only wet roofs and dripping gable-ends. The
nights are now starless, and haunted by fogs. Sometimes, in the day
there is no more than a suggestion of daylight,--a gloaming. Sometimes
in the darkness I hear hideous cries of murder from beyond the boundary
of sharp gables and fantastic dormers. But murders are so common here
that nobody troubles himself about them. So I draw my chair closer to
the fire, light up my pipe _de terre Gambièse_, and in the flickering
glow weave fancies of palm-trees and ghostly reefs and tepid winds, and
a Voice from the far tropics calls to me across the darkness.
Adios, hermano mio,
Forever yours,
LAFCADIO HEARN.
TO H.E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1879.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I regret very much that I could not reply until now;
overstudy obliged me to quit reading and writing for several days; I am
just in that peculiar condition of convalescence when one cannot tell
how to regulate the strain upon his eyes.
It pleased me very much to hear from you just before you entered upon
your duties as a professor of the beautiful art you have devoted
yourself to;--that letter informed me of many things more than its
written words directly expressed,--especially that you felt I was really
and deeply interested in every step you were taking, and that I would on
receiving your letter experience that very thrill of indescribable
anxiety and hope, timidity and confidence, and a thousand intermingled
sensations,--which ever besets one standing on the verge of uncertainty
ere taking the first plunge into a new life.
I read your lecture with intense interest, and felt happy in observing
that your paper did you the justice to publish the essay entire. Still,
I fancy that you may have interpolated its delivery with a variety of
unpublished comments and verbal notes,--such as I have heard you often
deliver when reading from print or MSS. These I should much have wished
to hear,--if they were uttered.
Your lecture was in its entirety a vast mass of knowledge wonderfully
condensed into a very small compass. That condensation, which I would
regret if applied to certain phases of your whole plan, could not have
been avoided in its inception; and only gave to the whole an
encyclopædic character which must have astonished many of your hearers.
To present so infinite a subject in so small a frame was a gigantic task
of itself; and nevertheless it was accomplished symmetrically and
harmoniously,--the thread of one instructive idea never being broken. I
certainly think you need harbour no further fears as to success in the
lecture-room, and far beyond it.
The idea of religion as the conservator of Romanticism, as the promoter
of musical development, seemed to me very novel and peculiar. I cannot
doubt its correctness, although I believe some might take issue with you
in regard to the Romantic idea,--because the discussions in regard to
romantic truth are interminable and will never cease. Religion is beyond
any question the mother of all civilizations, arts, and laws; and no
archæologic research has given us any record of any social system, any
art, any law, antique or modern, which was not begotten and nurtured by
an ethical idea. You know that I have no faith in any "faiths" or
dogmas; I regard thought as a mechanical process, and individual life as
a particle of that eternal force of which we know so little: but the
true philosophers who _hold_ these doctrines to-day (I cannot say
originated them, for they are old as Buddhism) are also those who best
comprehend the necessity of the religious idea for the maintenance of
the social system which it cemented together and developed. The name of
a religion has little to do with this truth; the law of progress has
been everywhere the same. The art of the Egyptian, the culture of the
Greeks, the successful policy of Rome, the fantastic beauty of Arabic
architecture, were the creations of various religious ideas; and passed
away only when the faiths which nourished them weakened or were
forgotten. So I believe with you that the musical art of antiquity was
born of the antique religions, and varied according to the character of
that religion. But I have also an inclination to believe that
Romanticism itself was engendered by religious conservation. The amorous
Provençal ditties which excited the horror of the mediæval church were
certainly engendered by the mental reactions against religious
conservatism in Provence; and I fancy that the same reaction everywhere
produced similar results, whether in ancient or modern history. This is
your idea, is it not; or is it your idea carried perhaps to the extreme
of attributing the birth of Romanticism to conservatism, Pallas-Athene
springing in white beauty from the head of Zeus?
There is one thing which I will venture to criticize in the
lecture,--not positively, however. I cannot help believing that the
deity whose name you spell _Schiva_ (probably after a German writer) is
the same spelled Seeva, Siva, or Shiva, according to various English and
French authors. If I am right, then I fear you were wrong in calling
Schiva the _goddess_ of fire and destruction. The god, yes; but although
many of these Hindoo deities, including Siva, are bi-sexual and
self-engendering, as the embodiment of any force, they are masculine.
Now Siva is the third person of the Hindoo trinity,--Brahma, the
Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; Siva, the Destroyer. Siva signifies the
wrath of God. Fire is sacred to him, as it is an emblem of the Christian
Siva, the _Holy Ghost_. Siva is the Holy Ghost of the Hindoo trinity;
and as sins against the Holy Ghost are unforgiven, so are sins against
Siva unforgiven. There is an awful legend that Brahma and Vishnu were
once disputing as to greatness, when Siva suddenly towered between them
as a pillar of fire. Brahma flew upward for ten myriads of years vainly
striving to reach the flaming capital of that fiery column; Vishnu flew
downward for ten thousand years without being able to reach its base.
And the gods trembled. But this legend, symbolic and awful, signifies
only that the height and depth of the vengeance of God is immeasurable
even by himself. I think the _wife_ of Siva is Parvati. See if I am
right. I have no works here to which I can refer on the subject.
There is to my mind a most fearful symbolism in the origin of five tones
from the head of Siva. I cannot explain the idea; but it is a terrible
one, and may symbolize a strange truth. All this Brahminism is half
true; it conflicts not with any doctrine of science; its symbolism is
only a monstrously-figured veil wrought to hide from the ignorant truths
they cannot understand; and those elephant-headed or hundred-armed gods
do but represent tremendous facts.
On the subject of Romanticism, I send you a translation from an article
by Baudelaire. The last part of the chapter, applying wholly to
romanticism in form and colour, hardly touches the subject in which you
are most interested. His criticism of Raphael is very severe; that of
Rembrandt enthusiastic. "The South," he says, is "brutal and positive
in its conception of beauty, like a sculptor;" and he remarks that
sculpture in the North is always rather picturesque than realistic.
Winckelmann and Lessing long since pointed out, however, that antique
art was never realistic; it was only a dream of human beauty deified
and immortalized, and the ancients were true Romanticists in their
day. I wonder what Baudelaire would have thought of our modern
Pre-Raphaelites,--Rossetti, _et als_. Surely they are true Romanticists
also; but I must not tire you with Romanticism.
Do you not think that outside of the religio-musical system of Egyptian
worship, there may have been a considerable development of the art in
certain directions--judging from the wonderful variety of
instruments,--harps, flutes, tamborines, sistrums, drums, cymbals, etc.,
discovered in the tombs or pictured forth upon the walls? Your remarks
on the subject were exceedingly interesting.
* * * * *
I fear my letters will bore you,--however, they are long only because I
must write as I would talk to you were it possible. I am disappointed in
regard to several musical researches I have been undertaking; and can
tell you little of interest. The work of Cable is not yet in
press--yellow fever killed half his family. Rouquette has been doing
nothing but writing mad essays on the beauties of chastity, so that I
can get nothing from him in the way of music until his crazy fit is
over. Several persons to whom I applied for information became
suspicious and refused point-blank to do anything. I traced one source
of musical lore to its beginning, and discovered that the individual had
been subsidized by another collector to say nothing. Speaking of Pacific
Island music, you have probably seen Wilkins' "Voyages," 5 vols., with
strange music therein. I have many ditties in my head, but I cannot
write them down....
Thine, O Minnesinger,
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1880.
DEAR KREHBIEL,--I was so glad to hear from you.
Your letter gave me much amusement. I wish I could have been present at
that Chinese concert. It must have been the funniest thing of the kind
ever heard of in Cincinnati.
It gives me malicious pleasure to inform you that my vile and improper
book will probably be published in a few months. Also that the wickedest
story of the lot--"King Candaule"--is being published as a serial in one
of the New Orleans papers, with delightful results of shocking people. I
will send you copies of them when complete.
I am interested in your study of Assyrian archæology. It is a pity there
are so few good works on the subject. Layard's _unabridged_ works are
very extensive; but I do not remember seeing them in the Cincinnati
library. Rawlinson, I think, is more interesting in style and more
thorough in research. The French are making fine explorations in this
direction.
I find frequent reference made to Overbeck's "Pompeii," a German work,
as containing valuable information on antique music, drawn from
discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii, also to Mazois, a great French
writer upon the same subject. I have not seen them; but I fancy you
would find some valuable information in them regarding musical
instruments. I suppose you have read Sir William Gell's "Pompeiana,"--at
least the abridged form of it. You know the double flutes, etc., of the
ancients are preserved in the museum of Naples. In the Cincinnati
library is a splendid copy of the work on Egyptian antiquities prepared
under Napoleon I, wherein you will find coloured prints--from
photographs--of the musical instruments found in the catacombs and
hypogæa. But I do not think there are many good books on the subject of
Assyrian antiquities there. Vickers could put you in the way of getting
better works on the subject than any one in the library, I believe.
You will master these things much more thoroughly than ever I
shall--although I love them. I have only attempted, however, to
photograph the _rapports_ of the antiquities in my mind, like memories
of a panoramic procession; while to you, the procession will not be one
of shadows, but of splendid facts, with the sound of strangely ancient
music and the harmonious tread of sacrificial bands,--all preserved for
you through the night of ages. And the life of vanished cities and the
pageantry of dead faiths will have a far more charming reality for
you,--the Musician,--than ever for me,--the Dreamer.
I can't see well enough yet to do much work. I have written an essay
upon luxury and art in the time of Elagabalus; but now that I read it
over again, I am not satisfied with it, and fear it will not be
published. And by the way--I request, and beg, and entreat, and
supplicate, and petition, and pray that you will not forget about
Mephistopheles. Here, in the sweet perfume-laden air, and summer of
undying flowers, I feel myself moved to write the musical romance
whereof I spake unto you in the days that were.
I can't say that things look very bright here otherwise. The prospect is
dark as that of stormy summer night, with feverish pulses of lightning
in the far sky-border,--the lightning signifying hopes and fantasies.
But I shall stick to my pedestal of faith in literary possibilities like
an Egyptian colossus with a broken nose, seated solemnly in the gloom of
its own originality.
Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been
buried under a lava-flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so
that it has become only a study for archæologists. Its condition is so
bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will
believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in
sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole State of Ohio.
Once in a while I feel the spirit of restlessness upon me, when the
Spanish ships come in from Costa Rica and the islands of the West
Indies. I fancy that some day, I shall wander down to the levee, and
creep on board, and sail away to God knows where. I am so hungry to see
those quaint cities of the Conquistadores and to hear the sandalled
sentinels crying through the night--_Sereño alerto!--sereño
alerto!_--just as they did two hundred years ago.
I send you a little bit of prettiness I cut out of a paper. Ah!--_that_
is style, is it not?--and fancy and strength and height and depth. It is
just in the style of Richter's "Titan."
Major sends his compliments. I must go to see the Carnival nuisance.
Remember me to anybody who cares about it, and believe me always
Faithfully yours,
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1880.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--Pray remember that your ancestors were the very Goths
and Vandals who destroyed the marvels of Greek art which even Roman
ignorance and ferocity had spared; and I perceive by your last letter
that you possess still traces of that Gothic spirit which detests all
beauty that is not beautiful with the fantastic and unearthly beauty
that is Gothic.
You cannot make a Goth out of a Greek, nor can you change the blood in
my veins by speaking to me of a something vague and gnostic and mystic
which you deem superior to all that any Latin mind could conceive.
I grant the existence and the weird charm of the beauty that Gothic
minds conceived; but I do not see less beauty in what was conceived by
the passion and poetry of other races of mankind. This is a cosmopolitan
art era: and you must not judge everything which claims art-merit by a
Gothic standard.
Let me also tell you that you do not as yet know anything of the Spirit
of Greek Art,--or the sources which inspired its miraculous
compositions; and that to do so you would have to study the climate, the
history, the ethnological record, the religion, the society of the
country which produced it. My own knowledge is, I regret to say, very
imperfect,--but it is sufficient to give me the right to tell you that
you were wrong to accuse me of abandoning Greek ideals, or to lecture
me upon what is and what is not art in matters of form and colour and
literature. I might say the same thing in regard to your judgment of
French writers: you confound Naturalism with Romanticism, and _vice
versa_.
Again, do not suppose that I am insensible to other forms of beauty. You
judge all art, I fear, by inductions from that in which you are a
master; but the process in your case is false;--nor will you be able to
judge the artistic soul of a people adequately by its musical
productions, until you have passed another quarter of a century in the
study of the music of different races and ages and civilizations. Then
it is possible that you may find that secret key; but you cannot
possibly do it now, learned as you are, nor do I believe there are a
dozen men in the world who could do it.
Now I am with the Latin; I live in a Latin city;--I seldom hear the
English tongue except when I enter the office for a few brief hours. I
eat and drink and converse with members of the races you detest like the
son of Odin that you are. I see beauty here all around me,--a strange,
tropical, intoxicating beauty. I consider it my artistic duty to let
myself be absorbed into this new life, and study its form and colour and
passion. And my impressions I occasionally put into the form of the
little fantastics which disgust you so much, because they are not of the
Æsir and Jötunheim. Were I able to live in Norway, I should try also to
intoxicate myself with the Spirit of the Land, and I might write of the
Saga singers--
"From whose lips in music rolled
The Hamavel of Odin old,
With sounds mysterious as the roar
Of ocean on a storm-beat shore."
The law of true art, even according to the Greek idea, is to seek beauty
wherever it is to be found, and separate it from the dross of life as
gold from ore. You do not see beauty in animal passion;--yet passion was
the inspiring breath of Greek art and the mother of language; and its
gratification is the act of a creator, and the divinest rite of Nature's
temple.
* * * * *
... And writing to you as a friend, I write of my thoughts and fancies,
of my wishes and disappointments, of my frailties and follies and
failures and successes,--even as I would write to a brother. So that
sometimes what might not seem strange in words, appears very strange
upon paper. And it may come to pass that I shall have stranger things to
tell you; for this is a land of magical moons and of witches and of
warlocks; and were I to tell you all that I have seen and heard in these
years in this enchanted City of Dreams you would verily deem me mad
rather than morbid.
Affectionately yours,
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, 1880.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--Your letter delighted me. I always felt sure that you
would unshackle yourself--sooner or later; but I hardly expected it
would come so soon.
The great advantage of your new position, I think, will be the leisure
it will afford you to study, and that too while you are still in the
flush of youth and ambition, and before your energies are impaired by
excess of newspaper drudgery. I think your future is secure now beyond
any doubt;--for any man with such talent and knowledge, such real love
for art, and such a total absence of vices should find the road before
an easy one. It is true that you have a prodigious work to achieve; but
the path is well oiled, like those level highways along which the
Egyptians moved their colossi of granite. I congratulate you; I rejoice
with you; and I envy you with the purest envy possible. Still more,
however, I envy your youth, your strength, and that something which is
partly hope and partly force and love for the beautiful which I have
lost, and which, having passed away with the summer of life, can never
be recalled. When a man commences to feel what it is to be young, he is
beginning to grow old. You have not felt that yet. I hope you will not
for many years. But I do; and my hair is turning grey at thirty!
I liked your letter very much also in regard to our discussion. It is
just and pleasant to read. I thought your first reproaches much too
violent. But I am still sure you are not correct in speaking of the
Greeks as chaste. You will not learn what the Greeks were in the time of
the glory of their republics either from Homer or Plato or Gladstone or
Mahaffy. Perhaps the best English writer I could refer you to--without
mentioning historians proper--is John Addington Symonds, author of
"Studies of the Greek Poets," and "Studies and Sketches in Southern
Europe." His works would charm you. The Greeks were brave, intelligent,
men of genius, men who wrote miracles--_un peuple des demi-dieux_, as a
French poet terms them; but the character of their thought, as reflected
in their mythology, their literature, their art, and their history
certainly does not indicate the least conception of chastity in the
modern signification of the word. No: you will not go down to your grave
with the conception you have made of them,--unless you should be
determined not to investigate the contrary.
I would like to discuss the other affair, also; but I have so little
time that I must forego the pleasure.
As to the fantastics, you greatly overestimate me if you think me
capable of doing something much more "worthy of my talents," as you
express it. I am conscious they are only trivial; but I am condemned to
move around in a sphere of triviality until the end. I am no longer able
to study as I wish to, and, being able to work only a few hours a day,
cannot do anything outside of my regular occupation. My hope is to
perfect myself in Spanish and French; and, if possible, to study Italian
next summer. With a knowledge of the Latin tongues, I may have a better
chance hereafter. But I fancy the idea of the fantastics is artistic.
They are my impressions of the strange life of New Orleans. They are
dreams of a tropical city. There is one twin-idea running through them
all--Love and Death. And these figures embody the story of life here, as
it impresses me. I hope to be able to take a trip to Mexico in the
summer just to obtain literary material, sun-paint, tropical colour,
etc. There are tropical lilies which are venomous, but they are more
beautiful than the frail and icy-white lilies of the North. Tell me if
you received a fantastic founded upon the story of Ponce de Leon. I
think I sent it since my last letter. I have not written any fantastics
since except one,--inspired by Tennyson's fancy,----
"My heart would hear her and beat
Had it lain for a century dead----
Would start and tremble under her feet----
And blossom in purple and red."
Jerry, Krehbiel, Ed Miller, Feldwisch! All gone! It is a little strange.
But it will always be so. Looking around the table at home at which are
gathered wanderers from all nations and all skies, the certainty of
separation for all societies and coteries is very impressive. We are all
friends. In six months probably there will not be one left. Dissolution
of little societies in this city is more rapid than with you. In the
tropics all things decay more speedily, or mummify. And I think that in
such cities there is no real friendship. There is no time for it. Only
passion for women, a brief acquaintance for men. And it is only when I
meet some fair-haired Northern stranger here, rough and open like a wind
from the great lakes, that I begin to realize I once lived in a city
whose heart was not a cemetery two centuries old, and where people who
hated did not kiss each other, and where men did not mock at all that
youth and faith hold to be sacred.
Your sincere friend,
L. HEARN.
Read Bergerat's article on Offenbach--the long one. I think you will
like it.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, February, 1881.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--A pleasant manner, indeed, of breaking thy silence,
vast and vague, illuminating my darkness of doubt!--the vision of a
sunny-haired baby-girl, inheriting, I hope, those great soft grey eyes
of yours, and the artist dream of her artist father. I should think you
would feel a sweet and terrible responsibility--like one of those
traditional guardian-angels entrusted for the first time with the care
of a new life....
I have not much to tell you about myself. I am living in a ruined Creole
house; damp brick walls green with age, zig-zag cracks running down the
façade, a great yard with plants and cacti in it; a quixotic horse, four
cats, two rabbits, three dogs, five geese, and a seraglio of hens,--all
living together in harmony. A fortune-teller occupies the lower floor.
She has a fantastic apartment kept dark all day, except for the light of
two little tapers burning before two human skulls in one corner of the
room. It is a very mysterious house indeed.... But I am growing very
weary of the Creole quarter, and think I shall pull up stakes and fly to
the garden district where the orange-trees are, but where Latin tongues
are not spoken. It is very hard to accustom one's self to live with
Americans, however, after one has lived for three years among these
strange types. I am swindled all the time and I know it, and still I
find it hard to summon up resolution to forsake these antiquated streets
for the commonplace and practical American districts....
Very affectionately,
L. HEARN.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
NEW ORLEANS, February, 1881.
MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--Your letter rises before me as I write like a tablet
of white stone bearing a dead name. I see you standing beside me. I look
into your eyes and press your hand and say nothing....
Remember me kindly to Mrs. Krehbiel. I am sure you will soon have made a
cosy little home in the metropolis. In my last letter I forgot to
acknowledge receipt of the musical articles, which do you the greatest
credit, and which interested me much, although I know nothing about
music further than a narrow theatrical experience and a natural
sensibility to its simpler forms of beauty enable me to do. I see your
name also in the programme of _The Studio_, and hope to see the first
number of that periodical containing your opening article. I should like
one of these days to talk with you about the possibility of
contributing a romantic--not musical--series of little sketches upon the
Creole songs and coloured Creoles of New Orleans to some New York
periodical. Until the summer comes, however, it will be difficult for me
to undertake such a thing; the days here are much shorter than they are
in your northern latitudes, the weather has been gloomy as Tartarus, and
my poor imagination cannot rise on dampened wings in this heavy and
murky atmosphere. This has been a hideous winter,--incessant rain,
sickening weight of foul air, and a sky grey as the face of Melancholy.
The city is half under water. The lake and the bayous have burst their
bonds, and the streets are Venetian canals. Boats are moving over the
sidewalks, and moccasin snakes swarm in the old stonework of the
gutters. Several children have been bitten.