Letters from The Raven
BEING THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
Lafcadio Hearn with
Henry Watkin
WITH INTRODUCTION AND
CRITICAL COMMENT BY THE EDITOR
MILTON BRONNER
NEW YORK
Brentano's
1907
To
My Sweethearts Three
Marian, May
and
Motherkin
Contents
INTRODUCTION
LETTERS FROM THE RAVEN
LETTERS TO A LADY
LETTERS OF OZIAS MIDWINTER
Introduction
It is felt that no apology is necessary for offering to the interested
public, even though it be a limited one, the letters and extracts from
letters which appear in this little volume. In a day when the letters
of Aubrey Beardsley--who was a draughtsman rather than a writer--are
gravely offered to possible readers by a great publishing house, it is
surely allowable to present for the first time epistles of a really
great author. No excuse was offered for printing such things as:
"Thank you so much. It was very good of you to call." If this tells us
anything concerning the unfortunate young master of white and black,
I am unable to discern it. I feel quite sure that no one can make the
same objection to the correspondence herewith given. It tells us many
things concerning Hearn's life and moods and aspirations that otherwise
would have been unknown to us. He wrote to Mr. Henry Watkin as to his
dearest friend. In his letters, we get what we do not find elsewhere.
We have here facts without which his future biographer would be at a
loss.
If there be any repetitions in the sections which follow, the
indulgence of the reader is craved. Such as they are, they were
written at widely separated intervals in the hope that material might
be finally gathered for a "Life and Letters of Hearn." This hope has so
far been frustrated, but it is felt that much is here offered that will
lead to a better understanding and appreciation of this famous writer.
The endeavor of the editor has been so far as possible to let Hearn
tell his own story, giving only enough comment to make clear what Hearn
himself had to say.
In writing of their beloved R. L. S., enthusiasts tell us Stevenson is
endeared to mankind not only because of his writings, but also because
of his dauntless cheerfulness in the face of incurable disease. Hearn,
in another field, was equally charming in his work and, in the face of
another danger, equally dauntless. From the first he was confronted
by the possible fate of the sightless. At best he had but a pearly
vision of the world. The mere labor of writing was a physical task
with him, demanding hours for the composition of a single letter. Yet
he accomplished almost two score volumes, none of which is carelessly
written. Seeing as through a ghostly vapor, in his books he revelled
in color as few writers of our day have been able to do. How he
managed to see, or rather to comprehend, all the things he so vividly
described, was one of his secrets.
The best work of his life was commenced at the age of forty, when he
arrived in Japan. He had many qualifications for his chosen field.
During the long, lazy two years in Martinique he had literally soaked
his mind, as it were, with Oriental philosophy. When he came to Japan
he was weary of wandering, and the courtesy, gentleness and kindliness
of the natives soon convinced him that they were the best people in the
world among whom to live. A small man physically, he felt at home in a
nation of small men. It pleased his shy, sensitive nature to think that
he was often mistaken for a Japanese.
To his studies and his work he brought a prodigious curiosity, a
perfect sympathy, and an admirable style. He had an eye that observed
everything in this delightful Nippon, from the manner in which the
women threaded their needles to the effect of Shinto and Buddhism
upon the national character, religion, art, and literature. Japanese
folk-lore, Japanese street songs and sayings, the home life of the
people,--everything appealed to him, and the farther removed from
modern days and from Christianity, the stronger the appeal.
Zangwill has acutely said, in speaking of Loti's famous story of Japan,
"Instead of looking for the soul of a people, Pierre Loti was simply
looking for a woman."
Hearn did not fail to tell us of many women, but his most particular
search was for just that soul of a people which Loti ignored; and in
the hunt for that soul, he became more and more impressed by that
Buddhism which enabled him the better to comprehend the people. His
whole religious life had been a wandering away from the Christianity
to which he was born and a finding of a faith compounded of Buddhism
modified by paganism, and a leaven of the scientific beliefs of
agnostics such as Spencer and Huxley, whom he never wearied of reading
and quoting. In all his writings this tendency is displayed. In one of
the letters we see him an avowed agnostic, or perhaps "pantheist" would
be the better word. In his little-known story of 1889, published in
_Lippincott's,_ with the Buddhist title of "Karma," there is a curious
tribute to a fair, pure woman. It shows the hold the theory of heredity
and evolution and the belief in reincarnation already had upon him:
"In her beauty is the resurrection of the fairest past;--in her youth,
the perfection of the present;--in her girl dreams, the promise of
the To-Be.... A million lives have been consumed that hers should be
made admirable; countless minds have planned and toiled and agonized
that thought might reach a higher and purer power in her delicate
brain;--countless hearts have been burned out by suffering that hers
might pulse for joy;--innumerable eyes have lost their light that hers
might be filled with witchery;--innumerable lips have prayed that hers
might be kissed." On his first day in the Orient he visited a temple
and made an offering, recording the following conversation, which gives
an admirable insight into his religious beliefs:[1]
"'Are you a Christian?'
"And I answered truthfully,'No.'
"'Are you a Buddhist?'
"'Not exactly.'
"'Why do you make offerings if you do not believe in Buddha?'
"'I revere the beauty of his teaching, and the faith of those who follow
it.'"
From this by degrees he reached to a pure Buddhism, tempered, however,
by a strange, romantic half belief, half love for the old pagan gods,
feeling himself at heart a pagan, too:
"For these quaint Gods of Roads and Gods of Earth are really living
still, though so worn and mossed and feebly worshipped. In this brief
moment, at least, I am really in the Elder World,--perhaps just at that
epoch of it when the primal faith is growing a little old-fashioned,
crumbling slowly before the corrosive influence of a new philosophy;
and I know myself a pagan still, loving these simple old gods, these
gods of a people's childhood. And they need some love, these naïf,
innocent, ugly gods. The beautiful divinities will live forever by that
sweetness of womanhood idealized in the Buddhist art of them: eternal
are Kwannon and Benten; they need no help of man; they will compel
reverence when the great temples shall all have become voiceless and
priestless as this shrine of Koshin is. But these kind, queer, artless,
mouldering gods, who have given ease to so many troubled minds, who
have gladdened so many simple hearts, who have heard so many innocent
prayers,--how gladly would I prolong their beneficent lives in spite
of the so-called 'laws of progress' and the irrefutable philosophy of
evolution."
It is the combination of the various beliefs here shadowed that
explains the unique note he brought into our literature. The man who
was at once a follower of Spencer and of Buddha, with a large sympathy
for the old folk-religion, brought forth an embodied thought entirely
new to the world. Nothing like it had ever been produced before. Its
like may never be produced again. He endeavored to reconcile the
evolutional theory of inherited tendencies with the Buddhist belief in
reincarnation,--one lengthening chain of lives,--and with the worship
of the dead as seen in pure Shinto, for "is not every action indeed the
work of the Dead who dwell within us?"
It was this queer combination that gave a strange charm, a moving
magic, to various passages in his books. For the rest, his work and
method of labor, may best be described in his own words when speaking
of Japanese artists. He writes:
"The foreign artist will give you realistic reflections of what he
sees; but he will give you nothing more. The Japanese artist gives you
that which he feels,--the mood of a season, the precise sensation of
an hour and place; his work is qualified by a power of suggestiveness
rarely found in the art of the West. The Occidental painter renders
minute detail; he satisfies the imagination he evokes. But his Oriental
brother either suppresses or idealizes detail,--steeps his distances
in mist, bands his landscapes with cloud, makes of his experience a
memory in which only the strange and the beautiful survive, with their
sensations. He surpasses imagination, excites it, leaves it hungry with
the hunger of charm perceived in glimpses only. Nevertheless in such
glimpses he is able to convey the feeling of a time, the character
of a place, after a fashion that seems magical. He is a painter of
recollections and sensations rather than of clear-cut realities; and in
this lies the secret of his amazing power."
It has often been asked, "These books are beautiful as prose, but do
they give us Japan?" Some have said he saw Japan with the eyes of a
lover and was thus deceived. Captain F. Brinkley, an authority on
Oriental matters and for years editor of the most important English
paper in the Orient, has expressed, to the present writer, his
skepticism concerning the entire verity of some of Hearn's pictures.
On the other hand, here is what two Japanese writers say: Mr. Yone
Noguchi, himself a poet of no mean abilities, writes of Hearn: "I like
to vindicate Hearn from the criticism that his writing is about one
third Japanese and two thirds Hearn. Fortunately his two thirds Hearn
is also Japanese."
This is heartily seconded by Mr. Adachi Kinnosuke: "So truly did he
write of us and of our land, that the West, which is always delighted
to fall in love with counterfeits in preference to the genuine, did not
believe him; made merry at his expense, told him that he was a dreamer,
that his accounts were too rose-colored. We of the soil only marvelled.
Of him we have said that he is more of Nippon than ourselves."
No fitter close to this introduction may be given than Noguchi's prose
elegy sent to America from Tokio several days after Hearn's interment:
"Truly he was a delicate, easily broken Japanese vase, old as the
world, beautiful as a cherry blossom. Alas! that wonderful vase was
broken. He is no more with us. Surely we could better lose two or three
battle-ships at Port Arthur than Lafcadio Hearn."
[Footnote 1: This and several other extracts are from that delightful
book, _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan_, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.]
Letters from The Raven
Take up any book written by Lafcadio Hearn concerning Japan, and you
will find the most delicate interpretation of the life of the people,
their religion, their folk-songs, their customs, expressed in English
that it is a delight to read. Upon further examination you will notice
the calm, the serenity, the self-poise of the writer. It is as though,
miraculously finding utterance, he were one of those stone Buddhas
erected along the Japanese highways. He seems to have every attribute
of a great writer save humor. There is hardly a smile in any of his
books on Japan. One would say that the author was a man who never knew
what gaiety was. One would judge that his life had lain in quiet places
always, without any singular sorrow or suffering, without any struggle
for existence. Judged by what Hearn told the world at large, the
impression would be a correct one.
He was shy by nature. He did not take the world into his confidence. He
was not one to harp on his own troubles and ask the world to sympathize
with him. The world had dealt him some very hard blows,--blows which
hurt sorely,--and so, while he gave the public his books, he kept
himself to himself. He transferred the aroma of Japan to his writings.
He did not sell the reader snap-shots of his own personality. To one
man only perhaps in the whole world did the little Greek-Irishman
reveal his inner thoughts, and he was one who thirty-eight years ago
opened his heart and his home to the travel-stained, poverty-burdened
lad of nineteen, who had run away from a monastery in Wales and who
still had part of his monk's garb for clothing when he reached America.
Hearn never discussed his family affairs very extensively, but made
it clear that his father was a surgeon in the crack Seventy-sixth
Regiment of British Infantry, and his mother a Greek woman of Cherigo
in the Ionian Islands. The social circle to which his father belonged
frowned on the _mesalliance_, and when the wife and children arrived in
England, after the father's death, the aristocratic relatives soon made
the strangers feel that they were anything but welcome.
The young Lafcadio was chosen for the priesthood, and after receiving
his education partly in France and partly in England, he was sent to
a monastery in Wales. As he related afterwards, he was in bad odor
there from the first. Even as a boy he had the skeptical notions
about things religious that were to abide with him for long years
after and change him to an ardent materialist until he fell under the
influence of Buddhism. One day, after a dispute with the priests, and
in disgust with the course in life that had been mapped out for him,
the boy took what money he could get and made off to America. After
sundry adventures, concerning which he was always silent, he arrived
in Cincinnati in 1869, hungry, tired, unkempt,--a boy without a trade,
without friends, without money. In some way he made the acquaintance
of a Scotch printer, and this man in turn introduced him to Henry
Watkin, an Englishman, largely self-educated, of broad culture and wide
reading, of singular liberality of views, and a lover of his kind.
Watkin at this time ran a printing shop.
Left alone with the lad, who had come across the seas to be as far away
as possible from his father's people, the man of forty-five surveyed
the boy of nineteen and said, "Well, my young man, how do you expect to
earn a living?"
"I don't know."
"Have you any trade?"
"No, sir."
"Can you do anything at all?"
"Yes, sir; I might write," was the eager reply.
"Umph!" said Watkin; "better learn some bread-winning trade and put off
writing until later."
After this Hearn was installed as errand boy and helper. He was not
goodly to look upon. His body was unusually puny and under-sized.
The softness of his tread had something feline and feminine in it.
His head, covered with long black hair, was full and intellectual,
save for two defects, a weak chin and an eye of the variety known as
"pearl,"--large and white and bulbous, so that it repelled people upon
a first acquaintance.
Hearn felt deeply the effect his shyness, his puny body, and his
unsightly eye had upon people, and this feeling served to make him even
more diffident and more melancholy than he was by nature. However, as
with many melancholy-natured souls, he had an element of fun in him,
which came out afterwards upon his longer acquaintance with the first
man who had given him a helping hand.
Hearn swept the floor of the printing shop and tried to learn the
printer's craft, but failed, He slept in a little room back of the
shop and ate his meals in the place with Mr. Watkin. He availed
himself of his benefactor's library, and read Poe and volumes on free
thought, delighted to find a kindred spirit in the older man. Together
they often crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky to hear lectures on
spiritualism and laugh about them. Their companionship was not broken
when Mr. Watkin secured for the boy a position with a Captain Barney,
who edited and published a commercial, paper, for which Hearn solicited
advertisements and to which he began also to contribute articles. One
of these--a singular composition for such a paper--was a proposal to
cross the Atlantic in a balloon anchored to a floating buoy. It was
later in the year that he secured a position as a reporter on the
_Enquirer_, through some "feature" articles he shyly deposited upon the
editor's desk, making his escape before the great man had caught him in
the act. It was not long before the latent talent in the youth began to
make itself manifest. He was not a rapid writer. On the contrary, he
was exceedingly slow, but his product was written in English that no
reporter then working in Cincinnati approached. His fellow reporters
soon became jealous of him. They were, moreover, repelled by his
personal appearance and chilled by his steady refusal to see the fun of
getting drunk. Finding lack of congeniality among the young men of his
own age and occupation, among whom he was to work for seven more years,
his friendship with Mr. Watkin became all the stronger, so that he came
to look upon the latter as the one person in Cincinnati upon whom he
could count for unselfish companionship and sincere advice. Hearn's
Cincinnati experiences ended with his service on the _Enquirer._ Before
that he had been proofreader to a publishing house and secretary to
Cincinnati's public librarian. He was also for a time on the staff of
the _Commercial._ It was while on the _Enquirer_ that he accomplished
several journalistic feats that are still referred to in gatherings
of oldtime newspaper men of Cincinnati. One was a grisly description
of the charred body of a murdered man, the screed being evidently
inspired by recollections of Poe. The other was an article describing
Cincinnati as seen from the top of a high church steeple, the joke
of it being that Hearn, by reason of his defective vision, could see
nothing even after he had made his perilous climb. It was in the last
days of his stay in Cincinnati that he, with H. F. Farny, the painter,
issued a short-lived weekly known as _Giglampz_. Farny, not yet famous
as an Indian painter, contributed the drawings, and Hearn the bulk of
the letter press for the journal, which modestly announced that it
was going to eclipse _Punch_ and all the other famous comic weeklies.
Hearn, always sensitive, practically withdrew from the magazine when
Farny took the very excusable liberty of changing the title of one
of the essays of the former. Farny thought the title offensive to
people of good taste, and said so. Hearn apparently acquiesced, but
brooded over the "slight," and never again contributed to the weekly.
Shortly afterwards it died. It is doubtful whether there are any copies
in existence. Many Cincinnati collectors have made rounds of the
second-hand book-shops in a vain search for stray numbers.
Early in their acquaintance Watkin and Hearn called each other by
endearing names which were adhered to throughout the long years of
their correspondence. Mr. Watkin, with his leonine head, was familiarly
addressed as "Old Man" or "Dad;" while the boy, by virtue of his dark
hair and coloring, the gloomy cast of his thoughts, and his deep love
for Poe, was known as "The Raven," a name which caught his fancy.
Indeed, a simple little drawing of the bird stood for many years in
place of a signature to anything he chanced to write to Mr. Watkin. In
spite of their varying lines of work, the two were often together. When
"The Raven" was prowling the city for news, he was often accompanied by
his "Dad." Not infrequently, when the younger man had no especial task,
he would come to Mr. Watkin's office and read some books there. One of
these, whose title and author Mr. Watkin has forgotten, fascinated at
the same time that it repelled Hearn by its grim and ghastly stories of
battle, murder, and sudden death. One night Mr. Watkin left him reading
in the office. When he opened the place the next morning he found this
note from Hearn:
"10 P.M. These stories are positively so horrible that even a
materialist feels rather unpleasantly situated when left alone with
the thoughts conjured up by this dreamer of fantastic dreams. The
brain-chambers of fancy become thronged with goblins. I think I shall
go home."
For signature there was appended a very black and a very
thoughtful-looking raven.
It was also in these days that Hearn indulged in his little
pleasantries with Mr. Watkin. Hardly a day passed without a visit to
the printing office. When he did not find his friend, he usually left
a card for him, on which was some little drawing, Hearn having quite a
talent in this direction,-a talent that he never afterward developed.
Of course some of the cards were just as nonsensical as the nonsense
verses friends often write to each other. They are merely quoted to
show Hearn's fund of animal spirits at the time.
[Illustration: A PENCIL SKETCH BY HEARN LEFT AT MR. WATKIN's SHOP AT
THE BEGINNING OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP]
Mr. Watkin one day left a card for possible customers: "Gone to supper.
H. W." Hearn passed by and wrote on the opposite side of the card:
"Gone to get my sable plumage plucked." The inevitable raven followed
as signature. It was Hearn's way of saying he had come to see Mr.
Watkin and had then gone to a barber shop to have his hair cut. Once he
omitted the raven and signed his note, "Kaw."
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF THE CARDS HEARN LEFT AT MR. WATKIN'S
SHOP]
On another occasion when Mr. Watkin came to the office he found a
note informing him that he was "a flabbergasted ichthyosaurus and an
antediluvian alligator" for not being on hand.
The influence of Poe was strong upon him even in this nonsense. Hearn
waited for his friend one night until a late hour. The shop was quite
lonely, as it was the only open one in a big building on a more or less
deserted street. The quiet became oppressive, and the little man left
because "these chambers are cursed with the Curse of Silence. And the
night, which is the Shadow of God, waneth."
Mr. Watkin had a dog. Hearn did not like the animal, and it seemed
to reciprocate the feeling. One of Hearn's notes was largely devoted
to the little beast. When he so chose Hearn could make a fairly good
drawing. This particular note was adorned with rude pictures of an
animal supposed to be a dog. The teeth were made the most prominent
feature. The pictures were purposely made in a childish style, and used
for the word "dog."
"DEAR NASTY CROSS OLD MAN!
"I tried to find you last night.
"You were not in apparently.
"I shook the door long and violently, and listened.
"I did not hear the [dog] bark.
"Perhaps you were not aware that the night you got so infernally mad I
slipped a cooked beefsteak strongly seasoned with Strychnine under the
door.
"I was glad that the [dog] did not bark.
"I suspect the [dog] will not bark ANY MORE!
"I think the [dog] must have gone to that Bourne from which NO
TRAVELLER RETURNETH.
"I hope the [dog] is DEAD."
The note is signed with the usual drawing of a raven. On still another
occasion he wrote the following farrago:
"I came to see you--to thank you--to remonstrate with you--to
demonstrate matters syllogistically and phlebotomically. GONE!!! Then
I departed, wandering among the tombs of Memory, where the Ghouls of
the Present gnaw the black bones of the Past. Then I returned and crept
to the door and listened to see if I could hear the beating of your
hideous heart."
These little notes are not presented here for any intrinsic merit; they
are given simply to show how different was the real Hearn from the shy,
silent, uncommunicative, grave, little reporter.
His notes were but precursors to the letters in which he was most
truly to reveal himself. Unlike the epistles of great writers that
so frequently find their way into print, Hearn's letters were not
written with an eye to publication. They were written solely for the
interest of their recipient. They were in the highest form of the true
letter,--written talks with the favorite friend, couched usually in
the best language the writer knew how to employ. They tell their own
story,--the only story of Hearn's life,--a story often of hopeless
search for bread-winning work; of bitter glooms and hysterical
pleasures; of deep enjoyment of Louisiana autumns and West Indian and
Japanese scenes; of savage hatred of Cincinnati and New Orleans, the
two American cities in which he had worked as a newspaper man and in
which he had been made to realize that he had many enemies and but few
friends. Everything is told in these letters to Mr. Watkin, to whom he
poured out his thoughts and feelings without reserve. Hearn's first
step towards bettering himself followed when he became weary of the
drudgery of work on the Cincinnati papers, and decided, after much
discussion with Mr. Watkin, to resign his position and go South, the
Crescent City being his objective point.
It was in October, 1877, that Hearn set out from Cincinnati on his way
to New Orleans, going by rail to Memphis, whence he took the steamboat
_Thompson Dean_ down the Mississippi River to his destination. While
in Memphis, impatiently waiting for his steamer to arrive, and
afterwards in New Orleans, Hearn kept himself in touch with his friend
in Cincinnati by means of a series of messages hastily scribbled on
postal cards. Many of these reflected the animal spirits of the young
man of twenty-seven, who had still preserved a goodly quantity of
his boyishness, though he felt, as he said, as old as the moon. But
not all of the little messages were gay. The tendency to despondency
and morbidity, which had partially led Mr. Watkin to dub Hearn "The
Raven," now showed itself. The first of these cards, which Mr. Watkin
has preserved, was sent from Memphis on October 28, 1877. It bears two
drawings of a raven. In one the eyes are very thoughtful. The raven
is scratching its head with its claws, and below is the legend, "In a
dilemma at Memphis." The other raven is merely labelled, "Remorseful."
The next was sent on October 29. Hearn had begun to worry. He wrote:
"DEAR O. M. [Old Man]: Did not stop at Louisville. Could n't find
out anything about train. Am stuck at Memphis for a week waiting for
a boat. Getting d--d poor. New Orleans far off. Five hundred miles
to Vicksburg. Board two dollars per day. Trouble and confusion.
Flabbergasted. Mixed up. Knocked into a cocked hat."
The raven, used as the signature, wears a troubled countenance. On the
same day, perhaps in the evening, Hearn sent still another card:
"DEAR O. M.: Have succeeded with enormous difficulty in securing
accommodations at one dollar per diem, including a bed in a haunted
room. Very blue. Here is the mosquito of these parts, natural size.
[Hearn gives a vivid pencil drawing of one, two thirds of an inch
long.] I spend my nights in making war upon him and my days in watching
the murmuring current of the Mississippi and the most wonderful sunsets
on the Arkansaw side that I ever saw. Don't think I should like to
swim the Mississippi at this point. Perhaps the _Dean_ may be here on
Wednesday. I don't like Memphis at all, but cannot express my opinion
in a postal card. They have a pretty fountain here--much better than
that old brass candlestick in Cincinnati."
The next postal card was mailed on October 30, and contains one of the
cleverest drawings of the series. Hearn says: "It has been raining all
day, and I have had nothing to do but look at it. Half wish was back in
Cincinnati."
Then follows a rude sketch of part of the Ohio River and its confluence
with the Mississippi. A huddle of buildings represents Cincinnati.
Another huddle represents Memphis. There stands the raven, his eyes
bulging out of his head, looking at some object in the distance. The
object is a huge snail which is leaving New Orleans and is labelled the
_Thompson Dean._
One of the finest of all the letters he wrote to Mr. Watkin was from
Memphis. It is dated October 31, 1877. In this he made a prediction
which afterwards came literally true. He seemed to foresee that, while
in his loneliness he would write often to Mr. Watkin, once he became
engrossed in his work and saw new sights and new faces, his letters
would be written at greater intervals.
"DEAR OLD DAD: I am writing in a great big, dreary room of this great,
dreary house. It overlooks the Mississippi. I hear the puffing and the
panting of the cotton boats and the deep calls of the river traffic;
but I neither hear nor see the _Thompson Dean._ She will not be here
this week, I am afraid, as she only left New Orleans to-day.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A POSTAL CARD SENT FROM MEMPHIS]
"My room is carpetless and much larger than your office. Old blocked-up
stairways come up here and there through the floor or down through
the ceiling, and they suddenly disappear. There is a great red daub on
one wall as though made by a bloody hand when somebody was staggering
down the stairway. There are only a few panes of glass in the windows.
I am the first tenant of the room for fifteen years. Spiders are busy
spinning their dusty tapestries in every corner, and between the
bannisters of the old stairways. The planks of the floor are sprung,
and when I walk along the room at night it sounds as though Something
or Somebody was following me in the dark. And then being in the third
story makes it much more ghostly.
"I had hard work to get a washstand and towel put in this great, dreary
room; for the landlord had not washed his face for more than a quarter
of a century, and regarded washing as an expensive luxury. At last I
succeeded with the assistance of the barkeeper, who has taken a liking
to me.
"Perhaps you have seen by the paper that General N. B. Forrest died
here night before last. To-day they are burying him. I see troops of
men in grey uniforms parading the streets, and the business of the city
is suspended in honor of the dead. And they are firing weary, dreary
minute guns.
"I am terribly tired of this dirty, dusty, ugly town,---a city only
forty years old, but looking old as the ragged, fissured bluffs on
which it stands. It is full of great houses, which were once grand, but
are now as waste and dreary within and without as the huge building
in which I am lodging for the sum of twenty-five cents a night. I am
obliged to leave my things in the barkeeper's care at night for fear of
their being stolen; and he thinks me a little reckless because I sleep
with my money under my pillow. You see the doors of my room--there are
three of them--lock badly.... They are ringing those dead bells every
moment,--it is a very unpleasant sound. I suppose you will not laugh if
I tell you that I have been crying a good deal of nights,--just like I
used to do when a college boy returned from vacation. It is a lonely
feeling, this of finding oneself alone in a strange city, where you
never meet a face that you know; and when all the faces you did know
seem to have been dead faces, disappeared for an indefinite time. I
have not travelled enough the last eight years, I suppose: it does not
do to become attached insensibly to places and persons.... I suppose
you have had some postal cards from me; and you are beginning to think
I am writing quite often. I suppose I am, and you know the reason why;
and perhaps you are thinking to yourself: 'He feels a little blue now,
and is accordingly very affectionate, &c.; but by and by he will be
quite forgetful, and perhaps will not write so often as at present.'
"Well, I suppose you are right. I live in and by extremes and am on
an extreme now. I write extremely often, because I feel alone and
extremely alone. By and by, if I get well, I shall write only by weeks;
and with time perhaps only by months; and when at last comes the rush
of business and busy newspaper work, only by years,--until the times
and places of old friendship are forgotten, and old faces have become
dim as dreams, and these little spider-threads of attachments will
finally yield to the long strain of a thousand miles."
Apostal card of November 3 says: "Will leave Memphis Tuesday next,
PERHAPS. Am beginning to doubt the existence of the _Thompson Dean._"
November 13, 1877, finds Hearn overjoyed to be in New Orleans. The
postal card bears in the left-hand corner a drawing of a door labelled
"228." In a window at the side of the door sits the raven. On the
other side is the legend:
_Raven liveth at_
228 _Baronne St._
_New Orleans_
_Care Mrs. Bustellos_
Then comes another raven, with the doggerel:
_Indite him an epistle._
_Don't give him particular H_--.
And finally the remarks:
_Pretty Louisiana! Nice Louisiana!_
Hearn began to send letters to one of the Cincinnati papers, but
was soon in a terrible plight, as his postal card of December 9
demonstrates:
"I am in a very desperate fix here,--having no credit. If you can help
me a little within the next few days, please try. I fear I must ask
you to ask Davie to sell all my books except the French ones. The need
of money has placed me in so humiliating a position that I cannot play
the part of correspondent any longer. The _Commercial_ has not sent me
anything, and I cannot even get stamps. I landed in New Orleans with a
fraction over twenty dollars, which I paid out in advance."
_[Illustration]_
Mr. Watkin was unable to make the reply he desired, and was even
prevented by other matters from answering in any way until weeks later.
It was this silence which caused Hearn to mail a postal card, on
January 13, 1878, which contained one of his cleverest drawings. In the
background is shown the sky with a crescent moon. In the foreground,
upright from a grass-grown, grave, stands a tombstone, bearing the
inscription:
H. W.
DIED
NOV. 29
_1877_
Perched on top of the stone is a particularly ragged and particularly
black raven. It was the last gleam of fun that was to come from him
for some time. He was to experience some of the bitterest moments of
his life, moments which explained his hatred of New Orleans, as the
slanders of the newspapermen of Cincinnati embittered him against that
city.
The following seems to be the first, or one of the first, letters
written by him after his arrival in New Orleans. As usual, it is
undated:
"DEAR OLD FRIEND: I cannot say how glad I was to hear from you. I did
not--unfortunately--get your letter at Memphis; it would have cheered
me up. I am slowly, very slowly, getting better.
[Illustration: DRAWING ON A POSTAL CARD SENT TO WATKIN TO REMIND HIM HE
HAD NOT WRITTEN]
"The wealth of a world is here,--unworked gold in the ore, one might
say; the paradise of the South is here, deserted and half in ruins.
I never beheld anything so beautiful and so sad. When I saw it
first--sunrise over Louisiana--the tears sprang to my eyes. It was like
young death,--a dead bride crowned with orange flowers,--a dead face
that asked for a kiss. I cannot say how fair and rich and beautiful
this dead South is. It has fascinated me. I have resolved to live in
it; I could not leave it for that chill and damp Northern life again.
Yes; I think you could make it pay to come here. One can do much here
with very little capital. The great thing is, of course, the sugar-cane
business. Everybody who goes into it almost does well. Some make half a
million a year at it. The capital required to build a sugar mill, &c.,
is of course enormous; but men often begin with a few acres and become
well-to-do in a few years. Louisiana thirsts for emigrants as a dry
land for water. I was thinking of writing to tell you that I think you
could do something in the way of the fruit business to make it worth
your while to comedown,--oranges, bananas, and tropical plants sell
here at fabulously low prices. Bananas are of course perishable freight
when ripe; but oranges are not, and I hear they sell at fifty cents
a hundred, and even less than that a short distance from the city.
So there are many other things here one could speculate in. I think
with one partner North and one South, a firm could make money in the
fruit business here. But there, you know I don't know anything about
business. What's the good of asking ME about business?
"If you come here, you can live for almost nothing. Food is
ridiculously cheap,--that is, cheap food. Then there are first-class
restaurants here, where the charge is three dollars for dinner. But
board and lodging is very cheap....
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ENVELOPE ADDRESSED TO MR. WATKIN BY HEARN]
"I have written twice to the _Commercial_, but have only seen one of my
letters,--the Forrest letter. I have a copy. I fear the other letters
will not be published. Too enthusiastic, you know. But I could not
write coolly about beautiful Louisiana....
"Oh, you must come to New Orleans sometime,--no nasty chill, no coughs
and cold. The healthiest climate in the world. Eternal summer.
"It is damp at nights however, and fires are lit of evenings to dry the
rooms. You know the land is marshy. Even the dead are unburied,--they
are only vaulted up. The cemeteries are vaults, not graveyards. Only
the Jews bury their dead; and their dead are buried in water. It is
water three--yes, two--feet underground.
"I like the people, especially the French; but of course I might yet
have reason to change my opinion....
"Would you be surprised to hear that I have been visiting my UNCLE?
Would you be astonished to learn that I was on the verge of poverty?
No. Then, forsooth, I will be discreet. One can live here for twenty
cents a day--what's the odds? ...
"Yours truly,
"THE PRODIGAL SON"
On the reverse side of an application for a money order, Hearn wrote to
Watkin in 1878, some considerable time after his arrival in New Orleans:
"I see the Cincinnati _Commercial_ once in a while, and do not find any
difference in it. My departure affecteth its columns not at all. In
sooth a man on a daily newspaper is as a grain of mustard seed. Hope
I may do better in New Orleans. It is time for a fellow to get out of
Cincinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of America. But there
are some worse places than Cincinnati. There is Memphis, for example."
At one period, early during his stay in New Orleans, when Hearn began
to look back upon what he had accomplished, or rather had failed to
accomplish, in his life, he sank into the depths of despair. As was his
wont, he wrote from his heart to his sole friend, depending upon him
not only for cheer, but for advice. Mr. Watkin refused to take this
long letter seriously, teased him about it rather, and advised him not
to go to England, but to remain here in this country and persist in one
line of work. The Hearn letter, which follows, belongs to the month of
February, 1878:
"DEAR OLD MAN: I shall be twenty-eight years old in a few days,--a
very few days more; and I am frightened to think how few they are.
I am afraid to look at the almanac to find out what day The Day
falls upon,--it might fall upon a Friday,--and I can't shake off a
superstition about it,--a superstition always outlives a religion.
Looking back at the file of these twenty-eight years, which grow more
shadowy in receding, I can remember and distinguish the features of
at least twenty. There is an alarming similarity of misery in all
their faces; and however misty the face, the outlines of misery are
remarkably perceptible. Each, too, seems to be a record of similar
events,--thwarting of will and desire in every natural way, ill success
in every aim, denial of almost every special wish, compulsion to ad
upon the principle that everything agreeable was wrong and everything
disagreeable right, unpleasant recognition of selfweakness and
inability to win success by individual force,--not to mention enormous
addenda in the line of novel and wholly unexpected disappointments.
Somehow or other, whenever I succeeded in an undertaking, the fruit
acquired seemed tasteless and vapid; but usually, when one step
more would have been victory, some extraordinary and unanticipated
obstacle rose up in impassability. I must acknowledge, however,
that, as a general rule, the unexpected obstacle was usually erected
by myself;--some loss of temper, impatience, extra-sensitiveness,
betrayed and indulged instead of concealed, might be credited with a
large majority of failures.
"Without a renovation of individuality, however, I really can see no
prospect, beyond the twenty-eighth year, of better years--the years
seem to grow worse in regular succession. As to the renovation,--it is
hardly possible: don't you think so? Sometimes I think small people
without great wills and great energies have no business trying to
do much in this wonderful country; the successful men all appear to
have gigantic shoulders and preponderant deportments. When I look
into the private histories of the young men who achieved success in
the special line I have been vainly endeavoring to follow to some
termination, I find they generally hanged themselves or starved to
death, while their publishers made enormous fortunes and world-wide
reputations after their unfortunate and idealistic customers were
dead. There were a few exceptions, but these exceptions were cases of
extraordinary personal vigor and vital force. So while my whole nature
urges me to continue as I have begun, I see nothing in prospect: except
starvation, sickness, artificial wants, which I shall never be wealthy
enough to even partially gratify, and perhaps utter despair at the
end. Then again, while I have not yet lost all confidence in myself,
I feel strongly doubtful whether I shall ever have means or leisure
to develop the latent (possible) ability within me to do something
decently meritorious. Perhaps, had I not been constrained to ambition
by necessity, I should never have had any such yearnings about the
unattainable and iridescent bubbles of literary success. But that has
nothing to do with the question. Such is the proposition now: how can I
get out of hell when I have got halfway down to the bottom of it? Can
I carry on any kind of business? I can fancy that I see you throw back
your head and wag your beard with a hearty laugh at the mere idea, the
preposterous idea!
"Can I keep any single situation for any great length of time? You
know I can't,--couldn't stand it; hate the mere idea of it,--something
horribly disagreeable would be sure to happen. Then again, I can't
even stay in one place for any healthy period of time. I can't stay
anywhere without getting in trouble. And my heart always feels like a
bird, fluttering impatiently for the migrating season. I think I could
be quite happy if I were a swallow and could have a summer nest in the
ear of an Egyptian colossus or a broken capital of the Parthenon.
"I know just exactly what I should like to do,--to wander forever here
and there until I got very old and apish and grey, and died,--just to
wander where I pleased and keep myself to myself, and never bother
anybody. But that I can't do. Then what in the name of the Nine
Incarnations of Vishnu, can I do? Please try to tell me.
"Shall I, in spite of myopia, seek for a passage on some tropical
vessel, and sail hither and thither on the main, like the ghost of
Gawain on a wandering wind, till I have learned all the ropes and spars
by heart, and know by sight the various rigging of all the navies of
the world?
"Shall I try to go back to England at once, instead of waiting to be
a millionaire? (This is a seaport, remember: that is why I dread to
leave it for further inland towns. I feel as if I could almost catch a
distant glimpse of the mighty dome of St. Paul's from the levee of New
Orleans.)
"Shall I begin to eat opium, and enjoy in fancy all that reality
refuses, and may forever refuse me?
"Shall I go to Texas and start a cheap bean-house--(hideous
occupation!) with my pact, who wants me to go there?
"Shall I cease to worry over fate and facts, and go right to hell on a
2.40, till I get tired even of hell and blow my highly sensitive and
exquisitely delicate brains out?
"Shall I try to get acquainted with Yellow Jack and the Charity
Hospital,--or try to get to St. Louis on the next boat? Honestly, I'd
like to know. I'm so tired,--so awfully, fearfully, disgustingly tired
of wasting my life without being able to help it. Don't tell me I could
have helped it,--I know better. No man could have helped doing anything
already done. I hate the gilded slavery of newspaper work,--the
starvation of Bohemianism,--the bore of waiting for a chance to become
an insurance agent or a magazine writer,--and oh, venerable friend, I
hate a thousand times worst of all to work for somebody else. I hoped
to become independent when I came down here,--to work for myself; and
I have made a most damnable failure of it. In addition to the rest, my
horrid eye is bad yet. I had lost nearly half the field of vision from
congestion of the retina when I wrote you the rather frantic epistles
which you would not answer. Now I see only in patches, but am getting
along better and hope to be quite well in time,--certainly much better.
You see I can write a pretty long letter to while away Sunday idleness."
Hearn had reached New Orleans at the time the yellow fever was raging
there, and in April, 1878, he wrote reassuring his old friend that his
health was not endangered:
"DEAR OLD MAN: Yellow Jack has not caught me; and since I was laid up
with the dengue or break-bone fever, I believe I am acclimated.... They
sprinkle the streets here with watering-carts filled with carbolic
acid, pour lime in the gutters, and make all the preparations against
fever possible, except the only sensible one of cleaning the stinking
gutters and stopping up the pest-holes. Politicians make devilish bad
health officers. When I tell you that all of our gutters are haunted by
eels whose bite is certain death, you can imagine how vile they are....
Nobody works here in summer. The population would starve to death
anywhere else. Neither does anybody think of working in the sun if they
can help it. That is why we have no sunstroke. The horses usually wear
hats."
After a seven months' hunt for work Hearn saw some of the hardest times
of his life in New Orleans. The situation, as he described in his
letter to Mr. Watkin, could not have been worse than when, as a waif,
he wandered the streets of London. It was postmarked June 14, 1878.
"DEAR OLD MAN: Wish you would tell me something wise and serviceable.
I'm completely and hopelessly busted up and flattened out, but I
don't write this because I have any desire to ask you for pecuniary
assistance,--have asked for that elsewhere. Have been here seven
months and never made one cent in the city. No possible prospect of
doing anything in this town now or within twenty-five years. Books and
clothes all gone, shirt sticking through seat of my pants,--literary
work rejected East,--get a five-cent meal once in two days,--don't know
one night where I'm going to sleep next,--and am d--d sick with climate
into the bargain. Yellow fever supposed to be in the city. Newspapers
expected to bust up. Twenty dollars per month is a good living here;
but it's simply impossible to make even ten. Have been cheated and
swindled considerably; and have cheated and swindled others in
retaliation. We are about even. D--n New Orleans!--wish I'd never seen
it. I am thinking of going to Texas. How do you like the idea?--to
Dallas or Waco. Eyes about played out, I guess. Have a sort of idea
that I can be wonderfully economical if I get any more good luck. Can
save fifteen out of twenty dollars a month--under new conditions (?).
Have no regular place of residence now. Can't you drop a line to P. O.
next week, letting shining drops of wisdom drip from the end of your
pen?"
It was right after this in the same month, when his fortunes were
at the lowest ebb, that things took a turn for the better, as is
indicated by the following, in which in jest he proposes to engage in a
"get-rich-quick" scheme: