hundred and four thousand dollars, you will not think I have made no
progress. But I have put all, or all that I could reasonably do, in my
wife's name. The future looks very black. The reaction against foreign
influence is strong; and I feel more and more every day that I shall
have to leave Japan eventually, at least for some years. When I first
met you I was--nineteen. I am now forty-four! Well, I suppose I must
have lots more trouble before I go to Nirvana.
"Effie says you do not see my writings. My book will be out by the
time you get this letter,--that is, my first book on Japan.[1] Effie
can read bits of it to you. And I figure in the _Atlantic_ every few
months. Cheap fame;--the amazing fortune I once expected does n't
turn up at all. I have been obliged to learn the fact that I am not a
genius, and that I must be content with the crumbs from the table of
Dives.
"But this is all Egotism. I am guilty of it only because you asked
for a small quantity. About yourself and all who love you my letter
rather ought to be. Speak always well of me to John Chamberlain [a
journalist]. I liked him well. Do you remember the long walks over
the Ohio, in the evening, among the fireflies and grasshoppers, to
hear lectures upon spiritual things? If I were near you now, I could
saturate you with Oriental spiritualism,--Buddhism,--everything you
would like, but after a totally novel fashion. When one has lived
alone five years in a Buddhist atmosphere, one naturally becomes
penetrated by the thoughts that hover in it; my whole thinking, I
must acknowledge, has been changed, in spite of my long studies of
Spencer and of Schopenhauer. I do not mean that I am a Buddhist, but
I mean that the inherited ancestral feelings about the universe--the
Occidental ideas every Englishman has--have been totally transformed.
"There is yet no fixity, however: the changes continue,--and I really
do not know how I shall feel about the universe later on. What a
pity that Western education and Western ideas only corrupt and spoil
the Japanese,--and that the Japanese peasant is now superior to the
Japanese noble!
"You have heard of the war. The Japanese are a fighting race; and I
think they will win all the battles. But to conquer a Chinese army
is not the same thing as to conquer the Chinese government. The war
makes us all uneasy. Japan's weakness is financial. A country where it
costs a dollar a month to live, and where the population is only forty
million, is not really strong enough for such an enormous job. Our hope
is that science and rapidity of movement may compensate for smallness
of resources.
"I am almost sure I shall have to seek America again. If that happens,
I shall see you or die. All now is doubt and confusion. But in this
little house all is love to you. We have your picture;... we all know
you, as if you were an old acquaintance.
"I wish we could be together somewhere for a pleasant evening chat,
hearing in the intervals the office clock, like the sound of a
long-legged walker. I wish we could talk over all the hopes and dreams
of ideal societies, and the reasons of the failure to realize them. I
wish I could tell you about the ideas of Western civilization which are
produced by a long sojourn in the Orient. How pleasant to take country
walks again! that is, if there be any country left around Cincinnati.
How pleasant to read to you strange stories and theories from the Far
East! Still, I have become so accustomed to Japanese life that a return
to Western ways would not be altogether easy at first. What a pity I
did not reach Japan ten years sooner!
"Tell me, if you write again, all pleasant news about old friends. Love
to you always, and believe me ever,
"Your extremely bad and ungrateful
"Grey-headed boy,
"LAFCADIO HEARN"
[Footnote 1: _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan._]
Shortly after this long letter came the one written by Hearn's Japanese
wife, accompanied by this note:
"DEAR MISS EFFIE: Here is my wife's answer to your most kind letter.
She thanks you very much for writing,--says that she knows your papa
well, by looking at his photograph, and by hearing me talk of him; she
apologizes for not being able to write or speak English; she hopes to
see you some day, and to be shown by you some of the wonders of the
Western world, about which she knows nothing; she tells you about our
little son; and finally says that if she ever comes to America she will
bring you some curious memento from Japan. It is all written in the
old style of high Japanese courtesy, in which your letter is called
'jewel-pen letter.' Best regards and kindest love for your papa. We are
going to leave Kumamoto. Will write again soon.
"LAFCADIO HEARN"
In 1895 an accident befell Mr. Watkin, and, upon his request, Mrs.
Watkin wrote a letter to the distant friend. Mrs. Watkin was rather
timid about it and was dubious about receiving a reply. However,
despite this feeling, she enclosed some little verses of hers upon a
spiritual theme. In a short time she received the following reply:
_"Kobe;--shimoyamatedori, Shichome_
"7 _Feb._ 28, 1895
"DEAR MRS. WATKIN: Your kind, sweet letter reached me by last
American mail, and gave me all the pleasure you could have desired.
But why have you even dreamed of apologizing for writing to me, who
love you all, and for whom everything is comprehensible even if not
wholly comprehended? All love and good wishes to you. I received the
little poem, and liked it. Those mysteries in which you appear to be
interested are scarcely mysteries in the Far East: the immaterial world
counts here for more than the visible. Perhaps some day I may suddenly
drop in upon you all, and talk ghostliness to you,--a new ghostliness,
which you may like. Some hints of it appear in a little book of mine,
to be issued about the time this letter reaches you,--'Out of the East.'
"I really think I may see you and my dear old Dad again. I may be
obliged erelong to return, at least temporarily, to America, to make
some money, though my home must be in Japan till my boy grows up a
little. He seems to be very strong and bright, and queerly enough he is
fair. I have two souls now, which is troublesome; for his every word
and cry stirs strange ripples in my own life, and the freedom of being
responsible only for oneself is over forever for me. Whether this be
for the worse or the better in the eternal order of things, the Gods
must decide.
"I should like to see your new home. The other one was very cosy;
but perhaps this is even better. What I also want to see is No. _16_
Longworth Street, and to hear the ticking of the old clock that used to
sound like the steps of a long-legged man walking on pavement. Effie
wrote me a dear, pretty letter. Thank her for me. It is just about
seven years now since I saw Dad. I suppose he looks now more like
Homer than ever. .1 have become somewhat grey, and have crow's-feet
around my eyes. Also I have become fat, and disinclined for violent
exercise. In other words, I'm getting down the shady side of the
hill,--and the horizon before me is already darkening, and the winds
blowing out of it, cold. And I am not in the least concerned about the
enigmas,--except that I wonder what my boy will do if I don't live to
be nearly as old as Dad. Ever with all affectionate regards to him and
yourself and Effie,
"LAFCADIO HEARN"
In 1896 Mr. Watkin, partially recovered from his injuries, wrote
Hearn a letter, and received a last one from him,--a reply in which
the writer finally placed the seal upon the finest friendship in
his history. Unlike some of his other attempts at prophecy, Hearn's
predictions in this last letter failed to come true. He never saw his
old friend again, and the old gentleman, at the age of eighty-two, now
occupies a room in the Old Men's Home in Cincinnati, counting among his
chief treasures the letters which have been here presented.
"_Kobe_
"_Nakayamatedori_
_"7-chome_
_"Bangai_ 16
_"May_ 23,'96
"DEAR OLD DAD: How nice to get so dear a letter from you! I know the
cost to you of writing it, and my dear old father must not imagine
that I do not understand why he cannot write often. With his little
grey boy it is much the same now: he finds it hard to write letters,
and he has very few correspondents. Why, indeed, should he have many?
True men are few; and the autograph-hunters, and the scheming class
of small publishers, and the people, who want gratis information
about commercial matters in Japan are not considered by him as
correspondents. They never get any answers. I have two or three dear
friends in this world: is not that enough?--you being oldest and
dearest. To feel that one has them is much.
"But I must ask many pardons. I fear Miss Effie will not forgive me
for not acknowledging ere now the receipt of a photograph, which
surprised as much as it pleased me. To think of the little girl having
so developed into the fine serious woman! How old it makes me feel!
for I remember Miss Effie when she was so little. Please ask her to
forgive me. I was away when the photograph came (in Kyoto), and when I
returned, lazily put off writing from day to day. There was, however,
some excuse for my laziness. I have been very sick with inflammation
of the lungs, and am getting well very slowly. But all danger is
practically over.
"I see from the kind letter of protest bearing your initials that
the idealism which makes love has never gone out of your heart when
you think of me. It is all much more real than any materialism; see,
you always predicted that I should be able to do something, while
extremely practical, materialistic people predicted that I should end
in jail or at the termination of a rope. And your prediction seems
to have been wiser,--for at last, at last I am attracting a little
attention in England.... Also I see (what I did not know before) that
some people have been writing horrid things about me. I expected it,
sooner or later, as I have been an open enemy of the missionaries; and,
besides, the least success in this world must be atoned for. The price
is heavy. Those who ignore you when you are nobody find it necessary
to hate you when you disappoint their expectations. But if I keep my
health I need not care very much. The incident only brought out some of
the honey in dear old Dad's heart.
"You ask about my boy. I can best respond by sending his last
photo,--nearly three years old now. If I can educate him in France or
Italy, it would be better for him, I think. He is very sensitive; and I
am afraid of American or English school training for him. I only pray
the Gods will spare me till he is eighteen or twenty. I am watching to
see what he will develop; if he have any natural gift, I shall try to
cultivate only that gift. Ornamental education is a wicked, farcical
waste of time. It left me incapacitated to do anything; and I still
feel the sorrow of the sin of having dissipated ten years in Latin and
Greek, and stuff,... when a knowledge of some one practical thing, and
of a modern language or two, would have been of so much service. As it
is, I am only self-taught; for everything I learned in school I have
since had to unlearn. You helped me with some of the unlearning, dear
old Dad!
"I really expect to see you. You are only seventy-two, and hale, and I
trust you have long years before you, and that we shall meet. About the
business depression, I hear that it is passing and that 'flush times'
are in store for the West. This, I trust, will be. Oh, no! I shall not
have to look for you 'in the old men's home,'--no, I shall see you in
your own home,--and talk queer talk to you.
"For the time being (indeed, for two years) I have lived altogether by
literary work, without breaking my little reserves, and it is likely
that better things are in store for me. I am anxious for success,--for
the boy's sake above all. To have the future of others to make--to feel
the responsibilities--certainly changes the face of life. I am always
frightened, of course; but I work and hope. That is the best, is it
not? Remember me to all kind friends. Ask Effie to forgive my rude
silence, and all yours to believe my love and constant remembrance.
"LAFCADIO HEARN
"I am a Japanese citizen now (Y. Koizumi),--adopted into the family
of my wife. This settles all legal question as to property as well
as marriage under Japanese law; and if I die, the Consul can't touch
anything belonging to my people."
The rest is silence.
Letters to a Lady
Herewith are presented letters that were the outgrowth of a friendship
that probably meant a great deal to Lafcadio Hearn at the time. In
speaking of them, one inevitably thinks of Prosper Mérimée's "Lettres à
une inconnue.". The later missives, too, must for years to come remain
"letters to an unknown,"--unknown to all save a few persons. It was
only recently that the natural course of events made it at all possible
to include them in this collection. Even now the ban of silence is
placed on many things we would like to know.
The letters were written during the memorable year 1876, marked by
exciting political conventions and an even more exciting national
election, and finally by the great Centennial Exposition. At this time
Hearn was in his twenty-sixth year. He had been in the United States
for nearly six years, and was at the time employed as a reporter on Mr.
Murat Halstead's Cincinnati _Commercial._ Although he did not like this
country and was at this time dreaming of returning some day to Europe,
he had been trying for years to make a thoroughly competent newspaper
reporter of himself. However, we gather from remarks in his letters
that he was still regarded as only a minor member of the staff.
Among men his chief friend remained Mr. Watkin. If he had any friends
among young women, he has left no record of them. He seems to have
been more or less solitary always. He is constantly telling of his
constraint in social gatherings, of his inability to appear otherwise
than cold to those around him. Life was indeed to him always a curious
carnival, in which one must be careful to keep on the mask, to guard
the tongue lest one say something redounding to one's injury or
discredit.
With such characteristics, we are therefore at a loss to learn how his
intimacy with the unknown began. It may have had its origin when some
assignment in the line of newspaper duty took him to her home. One
fancies the unknown must have had a keen eye for character and ability
to discern anything unusual, anything love-worthy, in the ill-dressed,
somewhat ill-featured, shy, timid, little youth Hearn was at that time.
It had not heretofore been his good fortune to attract. However that
may be, the established fact of the friendship remains.
The identity of the unknown is a secret. We are told that she was a
woman of culture and refinement; that she was possessed of some wealth;
and, finally, that she was many years older than Hearn.
Mérimée has been referred to. The reference is forced upon us by Hearn
himself. He mentions those famous "Lettres," and says he feels toward
his "Dear Lady" as Mérimée did toward his "inconnue." The comparison
is not exact. Indeed, it is rather a case of contrast. Like Mérimée,
Hearn's motto seems to have been, with very rare exceptions, "Remember
to distrust;" but, unlike Mérimée, Hearn was not a man of wealth and
prominence and influence in his native land; unlike Mérimée, Hearn had
not had all the advantages wealth and culture can give; unlike Mérimée,
he had known, and was still destined to know, hard and bitter years.
With Mérimée, the French stylist _par excellence_, impersonality was
a passion. His was an impersonality that was broken down only in the
famous "Lettres." Hearn, on the other hand, could not help injecting
much of himself into his books. Nor does the contrast end there.
"For her first thoughts," as Walter Pater well says of the "Lettres"
and the author's attitude toward the woman in the case, "Mérimée is
always pleading, but always complaining that he gets only her second
thoughts,--the thoughts, that is, of a reserved, self-limiting nature."
In the present collection of letters, the rôles are reversed. We gather
from the letters that it was Hearn who never let himself go, who always
kept himself under cautious restraint, and that it was the woman who
resented these second thoughts, these promptings of careful meditations
rather than of fresh, warm impulses.
In Mérimée the ardent lover alternated with the severe critic. He
quarrelled with the unknown and then had reconciliations, until at
last the old love passed away into a form of calm friendship. In the
meantime he packed his letters with keen criticisms of books, society,
politics, archæology, noted people,--everything that interested a
citizen of the world.
In Hearn we have the lonely little egotist, writing mainly about
himself. In his appreciation of a woman's friendship and his pride in
her cordial admiration, he expands and reveals some part of his own
thoughts, beliefs, studies. For the rest, the connection, on his side
at least, seems to have been one of platonic friendship. The lady was
more or less existing, Hearn being constantly occupied in explaining
away what she was quick to fancy were slights.
She would seem to have been even more sensitive than he. To speak
plainly, too, there is a note of evasion in his letters; despite his
appreciation of her, he seems to have seized upon his newspaper work
as an excuse for preventing their friendship becoming something more
intimate. He kept things--at least in his letters--upon a very formal
plane. He was to the recipient, one fancies, provokingly distant in his
"Dear Lady" form of address. There was an ominous sign in the constant
reference to letters returned or unopened. Indeed, there finally came
the breach that in the nature of things was inevitable, and then all
his letters were returned to him.
The young man did not destroy them. Shortly afterwards he departed for
the South. It is not a little strange that in all the years in New
Orleans that followed--lean years and fat, years of bitter poverty
and of comparative prosperity--Hearn preserved this batch of letters
intact. When nearing the age of forty and close to that period when he
was to sail for Japan, the more or less matured man passed judgment
upon the letters of his youth, found them good, and placed them in the
keeping of his friend. He told Mr. Watkin to do with the faded missives
what he deemed best. In some fashion he would seem to have felt that he
was yet destined to accomplish something in the world of literature,
and to have proudly thought that some day even these boyish screeds
would be eagerly read.
As for these letters, as with most of Hearn's missives, they were for
the most part undated,--written hurriedly on any kind of paper, often
on mere scraps.
He places himself before us as the "Oriental by birth and half by
blood;" as a lad destined for Catholicism, and, instead of that,
savagely attacking the religion of his mother. We have hints of the
hard measure the world had dealt him and how he felt like a barbarian
beyond the pale of polite society. He confesses himself ill at ease
among the cultivated classes, and we dimly feel that there were in
those years, before he came to Cincinnati, days so bitter that they
left a permanent mark. Without religious faith, going to the boyish
extreme of lightly attacking Christianity, he imagined himself ready
to become a sort of æsthetic pagan, worshipping Venus and the other
gods of the antique world. As antagonistic to accepted pulpit teaching,
he read Darwin, and pompously and not a little solemnly announced, "I
accept Darwin fully."
Perhaps no inconsiderable portion of this paganism was caused by his
youthful worship of Swinburne. All young men in the late sixties and
early seventies, with an ear for verbal music and magic, were swearing
allegiance to the bard of the famous "Poems and Ballads." Indeed, one
feels that Hearn would have been a poet himself, had he but been gifted
with the faculty of rhyme. Much of the other equipment of the poet was
his in abundant measure,--the love of beauty, the love of lovely words,
the joy in the manifold things of nature and art.
Speaking of Swinburne brings us to his reading, and we catch a glimpse
of that little shelf of treasured books,--Balzacand Gautier and
Rabelais in the French; Poe, to be sure; and--strange choice--the poems
of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
In these "Letters to a Lady" there is comparatively little discussion
of literary subjects, save the mention of the fact that he is reading,
always reading. Of literary criticism there is but little. In one
letter, indeed, we do get a reference to the character of the Sultana
of Aldrich's "Cloth of Gold," but this is a moral rather than a
literary discussion. The sign that he was ranging far afield among
other men's works, and also the hint of the writer that was to be,
is given in little sentences dropped half unconsciously here and
there,--sentences that to the student of Hearn's letters seem to be
characteristic of his ways of thought, as when he says, "Somehow the
ghosts of the letters I write by night laugh in my face by day;" or
when he speaks of his horror of crowds and compares it to the terror
of the desert camel being urged toward the white walls and shining
minarets of the city beyond the desert; or when, curiously enough, he
speaks of himself as seeming like a lizard in the July sun, a very
similar turn of thought having been employed by Flaubert in one of his
letters, which Hearn had probably never read, even though he did once
plan a translation from that author.
It is only necessary in conclusion to call attention to one more letter
in this section. As a matter of plain prose it would seem that the lady
had complained of the coldness and the dubious tone of some of Hearn's
letters and had returned them to him. In response he wrote to her a
fable of a Sultan and a neighboring Sultana. He told how the Sultana
complained of the Sultan's messengers, and how the Sultan committed
them to death by fire. The lady was supposed, from this pretty fable,
to draw the conclusion that Hearn's letters had been destroyed by their
author. From the collection herewith appended, it can be seen that the
fabulist availed himself of poetic license.
I
DEAR FRIEND: Your last kind letter makes me in some sort ashamed of my
diffidence and coldness. Yet you must be aware how peculiarly I feel
myself situated,--constrained, watched everywhere by a hundred eyes
that know me, hemmed in with conventionalities of which I only know the
value sufficiently to have my nerves on a perpetual strain through fear
of breaking them. I am not by nature cold,--quite the reverse, indeed,
as many a bitter experience taught me; and I beg you to attribute my
manner rather to overcaution than to indifference to the feelings of
others. Why, do not we all wear masks in this great carnival mummery
of life, in which we all dance and smile disguisedly, until the
midnight of our allotted pleasure time comes; and the King-Skeleton
commands, "Masks off--show your skulls"? I am afraid you do not
understand [me]; or rather, I feel sure you do not wholly,--for you
have had little opportunity. You have only seen me on my best behavior;
perhaps you might think less of me under other circumstances, but never
think me a chilly phantom, though you may occasionally see me only as
the Shadow of that which I really am. Have I been rude? Try to forgive
my rudeness. It was involuntary.... I think I understood your letters;
and I did not form any opinion therefrom, I feel sure, which you would
not have liked. I wish I could be less strained and conventional in
company. Will try my best to do better. Sincerely,
L. HEARN
II
DEAR FRIEND AND LADY (if I may so call you): Do not suppose that
when I delay answering one of your kind letters, the tardiness is
attributable to neglect: or forgetfulness or inappreciation of your
favor. I thoroughly feel--and feel keenly--every kind word or thought
you have expressed or felt forme; I have never rendered you, it is
true, a single compliment worthy of those I have received,--but only
because I was sure that you understood my feelings better than if I had
expressed them; I never write altogether as I think, partly because I
am not naturally demonstrative, and while capable of more than ordinary
sensitive feeling, I have a kind of reluctance to take off what I might
term my little mask. Don't hesitate to scold me, as you threaten,
should you think I deserve it....