and I shudder at the thought of entering a crowd at all times, just
as the desert camel shudders when his driver urges him toward the
white walls and the shining minarets of a city sparkling beyond the
verge of the silent yellow waste. Consequently I was not able to write
till late; and even now I am not in a good writing humor. One's skull
becomes peopled with Dreams and Fantastic Things just before daybreak;
and if you notice aught foolish or absurd in these lines, please
attribute them to that weird influence which comes on us all--
_"in the dead vast and middle of the night."_
I must make one more visit to the Central Police Station ere
cockcrow,--poetically speaking.
Sincerely,
LAF. HEARN
III
_Cincinnati, Thursday_, 27, 1876
DEAR LADY: I return by mail the very interesting letters which you
kindly left for my perusal; also, the list of Mr.'s collection, whereof
I have taken a copy. The other collectors are so slow in preparing
their lists that I fear I shall not be able to publish a full account
of their contributions to the World's Exposition for several days
yet.... I am very thankful for your assistance in obtaining information
regarding these things.
As an English subject, and one who feels a kind of home interest in
European news, you may feel assured that the letters from beyond the
"great water" interested me extremely.
The author gives a pleasant, realistic, and entertaining picture of
the brilliant social affair whereof her letter treats; and her account
would have done credit to most foreign newspaper correspondents,
speaking from a journalistic point of view....
Believe me very respectfully yours,
L. HEARN
IV
There is a fragment in which is taken up the matter of invitations he
has refused. It is chiefly interesting because of his expressed desire
to return to Europe:
"I daily receive and pay no attention whatever to other invitations,
because I know my presence is only desired for journalistic favors;
but with you I regret to be unable to accept them quite as much as
you could. In speaking of impulses, I refer merely to sudden actions
without preparation,--such as your first note of yesterday; or your
action on fancying that I had been talking too much; or your becoming
vexed at me for what I could not help. You ought to know that I would
do anything in my power to please you or to accommodate you....
"Let me also take this opportunity of thanking you for those books
again. I have been very much fascinated by one of them and have not
only read but re-read it. It is seemingly by some strange fatuity that
your little invitations have latterly fallen on busy days. Last week
it was all work; and this week I have had a very easy time of it. You
looked at me yesterday as if I had done you some injury, and you hated
to see me. If you go to Europe, my best wishes go with you. I hope to
return there, and leave this country forever some day in the remote
future.
"Do not be offended at my letter.
"L. H."
V
In a letter dated "Thursday p. m., 1876" we find him apologizing for
some breach of etiquette. He then, as usual, complains of the newspaper
man's lot:
"This afternoon I received your kind note. One of the misfortunes of a
journalistic existence is the inability of a newspaper man to fulfil
an appointment, meet an engagement, or definitely accept an invitation
not immediately connected with his round of regular duty, as he may at
any moment be ordered to the most outlandish places in the pursuit of
news. I think, however, that I may safely accept your kind invitation
to dine with you on Sunday at one o'clock p. m., and also to ride
out to Avondale. Nothing could give me greater pleasure; the more
so as Sunday is an inordinately dull day in the newspaper sphere. I
will certainly be on hand unless something very extraordinary should
intervene to prevent; and in such event I shall endeavor to inform you
beforehand, so as not to cause you any trouble.
"I remain, dear Lady,
"Very respectfully,
"L. HEARN"
VI
_Cincinnati, Friday_, 1876 DEAR LADY: I very much regret that I should
have inadvertently worded my last note in so clumsy a manner as to make
it appear that in accepting your kind invitation I was prospectively
interested in nothing but "items" and thankful only for the opportunity
of obtaining news. In mentioning that I was especially glad to accept
your invitation on Sunday, "as it is an especially dull day for news,"
I simply meant that I would find more leisure time on Sunday than
upon any other day in the week; and would thus feel more pleasure in
making a call without being worried by office business. I hope you will
therefore consider my rudeness the result of hurried writing and clumsy
phraseology rather than of deliberate ignorance.
If it be agreeable to you, I will call upon you at 1 p. m. on Sunday
as per invitation. I cannot definitely say, however, what I could do
in the way of writing an account of other collections than what have
already been spoken of, inasmuch as I am, you know, only a reporter in
the office, and subject to orders from the City Editor.
As I have not written any letters except of a business character for
several years, please to excuse any apparent lack of courtesy in my
note. I am apt to say something malapropos without intending. I remain,
Very respectfully yours,
LAFCADIO HEARN
VII
DEAR LADY: Excuse my tardiness in replying to your kind and, may I
say, too complimentary letter; for I scarcely deserve the courteous
interest you have expressed in regard to myself. Also let me assure
you that you are very much mistaken in fancying that I am so used to
all kinds of people as to feel no pleasure in such introductions as
that of Sunday evening. The fact is that I was very much pleased; but
am so poor a hand at compliments that I feared even to express to
Miss ---- the pleasure I felt in her songs and playing, to wish you
many happy returns of your birthday, or to hint how well I enjoyed
the conversation of your lady sister. I have not visited out since I
was sixteen,--nine years ago; have led a very hard and extraordinary
life previous to my connection with the press,--became a species of
clumsy barbarian,--and in short for various reasons considered myself
ostracized, tabooed, outlawed. These facts should be sufficient to
explain to you that I am not used to all sorts of people,--not to the
cultivated class of people at all, and feel all the greater pleasure in
such a visit as that referred to....
I have not had time yet to conclude the entertaining volume of travel
you kindly sent me, but have read sufficient to interest me extremely.
I find a vast number of novel and hitherto unpublished facts,--the
results of more than ordinarily keen observation in the work. If I were
reviewing the book, I might feel inclined to take issue with the author
in respect: to his views concerning the work of the missionaries in
Tahiti,--who have been, you know, most severely criticised by radically
minded observers; but the writer's pictures are clearly defined,
realistic, and powerfully drawn. I must not waste your time, however,
with further gossip just now.
Believe me, dear Lady,
Very respectfully yours,
L. HEARN
VIII
DEAR LADY: I am not so insusceptible to such pretty flattery as yours,
even though I think it undeserved, as to feel otherwise than pleased.
Of course I am vain enough to be gratified at anything good said of
me by you or your friends. In regard to enjoying music and flowers,
I would only say that I love everything beautiful, and can only look
at the social, ethical, or natural world with the eyes of a pagan
rather than a Christian, revering the heathen philosophy of æsthetic
sense; and surely so must all who truly love the antique loveliness
of the Antique World, which deified all fair things and worshipped
only those beauties of form and sense whereof it brought forth the
highest types. But to speak truly, I am afraid of parties; one's
nerves are ever on a painful strain in the effort to be agreeable,
in the fear of doing something gauche, and in the awful perplexity
of searching for compliments which must fall on the ear as vapid and
commonplace,--vanity and vexation of spirit. Indeed, I much enjoyed the
little party the other night, because it was a home circle; and I did
not feel as though people were scrutinizing my face, my manners, my
dress, or criticising my words with severe mental criticism, or making
the awful discovery that I "had hands" and did not know what to do with
them.
I did not tell you when my vacation should commence, because I did
not know myself; indeed, I do not yet know. Our vacations generally
commence about June, when each one in turn takes a couple or three
weeks' travel and rest; but as I am the youngest and freshest (in the
sense of inexperience) of the staff, I suppose I will have to wait
my turn until the others have decided. Some like to escape the hot
weather. I love hot weather,--the hotter the better. I feel always like
a lizard in the July sun; and when the juice of the poison plants is
thickest and the venomous reptiles most active, then I, too, feel life
most enjoyable, as "Elsie Venner" did. Therefore I may have to wait for
my vacation till the golden autumn cometh; but I will endeavor to get
away so soon as I can, and will let you know just so soon as I know
myself.
Very respectfully yours, dear Lady,
LAFCADIO HEARN
IX
_Cincinnati_, _May_ 9, 1876
DEAR LADY: I am at once gratified and surprised to find that my little
article should have given you so much pleasure. Had I not been very
busy with a mass of matter-of-fact work last evening, I should have
done better justice to Mr.----'s splendid collection. That was a very
unfortunate mistake of mine in regard to his name, but I shall try to
correct it.
In regard to mentioning Mr.----'s name,
I desire to say to you, in strict confidence, that I purposely
omitted it for prudential reasons. Newspapers are very jealous of
their employés in the matter of giving compliments; and I feared
that further mention just at this time might render it all the more
difficult for me to do you a reportorial kindness on some future
occasion. This may seem odd; but one outside the newspaper circle can
have no idea how particular newspaper proprietors are.
With regard to my article, dear Lady, I would say, in reply to your
kind query, that you are welcome to use it as you please. I only-regret
the lack of time to have improved it before it appeared in the
_Commercial._ My love for things Oriental need not surprise you, as I
happen to be an Oriental by birth and half by blood.
I cannot definitely answer you in regard to the prospective country
visit, so courteously proposed, until I see you again or hear from
you. I fear I shall have to postpone the pleasure until the regular
reporters' vacation time,--that is, if it should necessitate absence
from duty for any considerable length of time. However, you can explain
further when I again have the pleasure of seeing you; and if I can
possibly get away, I will be only too glad of so pleasant a holiday.
Very respectfully and gratefully,
L. HEARN
X
DEAR LADY: If I disappointed you last evening, be sure that I myself
was much more disappointed, especially as I had to pass within a
stone's throw of your house without going in. I believe that if you
only knew how frightfully busy we all are, you would have postponed the
invitation until next week, when I shall have some leisure and hope to
see you. I had expected up to the last moment to be able to call, if
only for an hour; but a sudden appointment put it out of my power. The
convention is keeping us all as busy as men can be.
I see you returned my letter. I know it was not a satisfactory one.
Somehow the ghosts of the letters I write by night laugh in my face
by day. I either talk too freely or write too hurriedly. I will
not certainly give your books away, for I prize them highly and am
delighted with them. I had thought they were only lent. They now nestle
on my book-shelf along with a copy of Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques,"
illustrated by Doré, Gautier's most Pre-Raphael and wickedest work,
Swinburne, Edgar Poe, Rabelais, Aldrich, and some other odd books which
form my library. I generally read a little before going to bed.
I hope to visit your farm indeed, but the journalist is a creature who
sells himself for a salary. He is a slave to his master, and must await
the course of events.
No; you must not pity me or feel sorry for me. What would you do if I
were to write you some of my up-and-down experiences and absurdities?
And you cannot be of service to me except I were suddenly to lose
everything and not know where to turn. Now I am doing very well, and
would be doing better but for an escapade....
Of course I will write you in P--; I should like nothing better,
feeling towards you like Prosper Mérimée to his "inconnue." I wish I
could make my letters equally interesting.
I do not think that I am unfortunate in life, and yet I have done
everything to make me so. If you only knew some of my follies, you
would cease perhaps to like me. Some day I will confide some of my
oddities to you. But don't think me unfortunate because I am a skeptic.
Skepticism is hereditary on my father's side. My mother, a Greek woman,
was rather reverential; she believed in the Oriental Catholicism,--the
Byzantine fashion of Christianity which produced such hideous madonnas
and idiotic-looking saints in stained glass. I think being skeptical
enables one to enjoy life better,--to live like the ancients without
thought of the Shadow of Death. I was once a Catholic,--at least, my
guardians tried to make me so, but only succeeded in making me dream
of all priests as monsters and hypocrites, of nuns as goblins in black
robes, of religion as epidemic insanity, useful only in inculcating
ethics in coarse minds by main force. Afterwards it often delighted me
to force a controversy upon some priest, deny his basis of belief, and
find him startled to discover that he could not attempt to establish it
logically.
You say, "What else is there" but faith to make life pleasant? Why, the
majority of things that faith despises. I fancy if one will only try
to analyze the amount of comfort derived from Christianity by himself,
he will find the candid answer. Whence come all our arts, our loves,
our luxuries, our best literature, our sense of manhood to do and dare,
our reverence or respect: for Woman, our sense of beauty, our sense
of humanity? Never from Christianity. From the antique faiths, the
dead civilizations, the lost Greece and Rome, the warrior-creed of
Scandinavia, the Viking's manhood and reverence for woman,--his creator
and goddess. Yet all faiths surely have their ends in shaping and
perfecting this electrical machine of the human mind, and preparing the
field of humanity for a wider harvest of future generations, long after
the worms, fed from our own lives, have ceased to writhe about us, as
the serpents writhe among the grinning masks of stone on the columns of
Persepolis.
How you must be bored by so long a letter!
[_The letter is signed by a drawing of the raven, familiar in the
letters to Mr. Watkin._]
XI
DEAR LADY: There once lived an Eastern Sultan who reigned over a city
fairer than far Samarcand. He dwelt in a gorgeous palace of the most
bizarre and fantastically beautiful Saracenic design,--columns of
chalcedony and gold-veined quartz, of onyx and sardonyx, of porphyry
and jasper, upheld fretted arches of a fashion lovelier than the arches
of the Mosque of Cordova There were colonnades upon colonnades, domes
rising above courts where silver fountains sang the songs of the
Water-Spirit; here were minarets whose gilded crescents kissed the
azure heaven; there were eunuchs, officers, executioners, viziers,
odalisques, women graceful of form as undulating flame.
In a neighboring kingdom dwelt a sultry-eyed Sultana,--a daughter
of sunrise, shaped of fire and snow, impulsive, generous, and far
more potent than the Sultan. Either desired to become the friend of
the other, but either feared to cross the line of purple hills which
separated the kingdom. But they held communication by messengers.
The Sultana's messengers always spoke the truth, yet scarcely spoke
plainly, having great faith in diplomatic suggestion rather than
in blunt and forcible utterance. The Sultan's messengers, on the
other hand, only spoke half of the truth, being fearful lest their
words should be overheard by the keen ears of men who desired that
no courtesies should be exchanged between their mistress and her
neighboring brother. At last the Sultana became wroth with a great
wrath at the messengers, forasmuch as they conversed only in enigmas,
the Sultana being apparently quite unable to imagine why they should
so speak. Therefore the Sultana bound the messengers, stripped them
naked, and, placing them in bags, despatched them by a camel caravan to
the Sultan, expressing much anger at the conduct of the messengers. The
Sultan, being alarmed at the detention of his messengers, knowing their
proverbial loquacity, and fearing they had turned traitors, thanked
Allah for their return, and swore by the Beard of his Father that ere
sunrise they should die the death of cravens, inasmuch as they had
not fulfilled their duty satisfactorily. He decided that they should
be burnt with fire, and their ashes cast into the waters of the great
river--
_"sweeping down_
_Past carven pillars, under tamarisk groves_
_To where the broad sea sparkled."_
"Kara-Mustapha," exclaimed the Sultan to his trusty vizier, "I desire
the death of these dogs. May their fathers' graves be everlastingly
defiled! Let them be burnt even as we burn the bones of the unclean
beast. Let them be consumed in the furnaces of thy kitchen, that my
viands may partake of a sweeter flavor." And so they died.
Meanwhile the Sultana repented of her wrath against the messengers,
and despatched a sable eunuch in all haste to save them. But the eunuch
arrived before midday, while the prince was yet in his harem dreaming
of satiny-skinned houris and the flowers of the valley of Nourjahad,
the fruits of the golden-leaved vines of Paradise, and the honeyed lips
of the daughters of the prophet, which make mad those who kiss them
with the madness of furious love. And the prince, being aroused by his
favorite odalisque, lifted up his eyes and beheld the eunuch there
standing with a message from the Sultana. And reading the message he
fell from the tapestried couch upon the floor, exclaiming, "May all the
Ghouls devour my father's bones, and may they tear and devour me when
next I visit my mother's grave! By the beard of Allah, those messengers
are not; they have died the dog's death, and have vanished even as
the smoke of a narghile vanisheth." And a soft wind from the sensuous
rosy-skied South toyed and caressed the volatile dust of the bones of
the messengers; the dust fructified flowers of intoxicating perfume,
and the spirit of the messengers melted into the glory of Paradise.
There is but one God--Mahomet is his prophet. [_This is signed by a
crescent and with L and H interwoven_.]
XII
DEAR LADY: I felt glad for divers reasons on receiving your letter and
the little parcel,--firstly, because I felt that you were not very
angry at my foolish fable; and secondly, because I always feel happy
on having something nice to read. I had already read considerable of
Darwin's "Voyages;" but just now I happened to desire a work of just
that kind in order to educate myself in regard to certain ethnological
points. I accept Darwin fully.
I do not believe in God--neither god of Greece nor of Rome nor any
other god. I do indeed revere Woman as the creator, and I respect--yes,
I almost believe in--the graceful Hellenic anthropomorphism which
worshipped feminine softness and serpentine fascination and
intoxicating loveliness in the garb of Venus Anadyomene. Yes, I could
almost worship Aphrodite arisen, were there another renaissance of
the antique paganism; and I feel all through me the spirit of that
exquisite idolatry expressed in Swinburne's ode to "Our Lady of
Pain." But I do not believe in Christ or in Christianity,--the former
is not a grand character in my eyes, even as a myth; the latter I
abhor as antagonistic to art, to nature, to passion, and to justice.
As Théophile Gautier wrote, "I have never gathered passionflowers on
the rocks of Calvary; and the river which flows from the flank of the
Cross, making a crimson girdle about the world, has never bathed me
with its waves."
I always take good care of books, and will return these you have so
kindly lent me in a week or two.
Dear Lady, I am very anxious to be able to write that I have a week's
freedom or a fortnight's holiday; and I promise you to let you know
as soon as possible. But as yet I cannot leave my dull office,--the
convention keeps us awfully busy. I would see you very often were it
possible; but I never have more than a few hours' leisure daily.
XIII
I have still your letter,--I fancied it might be asked for again, but
I do not like to return it, dear Lady,--I had rather make a Gheber
sacrifice, and immolate Eros, a smiling and willing victim, to the
White Lord of Fire.
No, I did not think the Sultana wicked; for I hold naught in human
action to be evil save that which brings sorrow or pain to others. But
even suppose the Sultana wicked for the sake of argument: her pretty
and yet needless apology for the supposed mischief done was so tender,
delicate, and uniquely fantastic that it would have earned the pardons
supplicated for by ten thousand such peccadilloes. I could not forget
it any more than I could forget the curves about the carved lips of the
sweet Medicean Venus; it was a psychical blush of which the peculiar
ruddiness made one long to see its twin.
This morning I found within my room a perfumed parcel, daintily
odorous, containing diverse wonderful things, including a crystal
vessel of remarkably peculiar design, very beautiful and very foreign.
I thought of filling it with black volcanic wines, choleric and angry
wine, in order to stimulate my resolution to the point of chiding the
sender right severely. But the style of the vessel forbade; it was
ruddily clear in the stained design, and icily brilliant elsewhere;
it suggested the cold purity of a northern land,--fresh sea-breezes,
fair hair, coolness of physical temperature. I concluded that nothing
stronger than good brown ale would look at home therein; and this
beverage provoketh good-nature.
I don't know how to reproach the author of this present properly. I
shall not attempt it now. But I will certainly beg and entreat that I
may not be favored with any more such kindnesses. I don't merit them,
and feel the reverse of pleasant by accepting them. Why I don't know,
but I never like to get presents some way or other. It is remarkably
odd and pretty; so was the letter which accompanied it.
XIV
DEAR LADY: Notwithstanding your threat to leave my letters unopened, I
will venture to write you a few lines. I think that you have misjudged
me; and while fancying that I was treating you unkindly, you actually
treated me somewhat unfairly,--without, of course, intending it. You
have a&ed throughout, or nearly so, upon sudden impulse, which was
injudicious; and when you found me acting in the opposite extreme, the
necessary lack of sympathy in our actions prompted you to believe that
I was "heartless." Now I can fully sympathize with your impulsiveness
because I have had similar impulses; but I have been forced to control
such impulses by the caution learned of unpleasant experiences. I will
run no risks that could involve you or me,--especially you. I did not
for one instant (and you only asserted the contrary through a spirit of
mischievous reproach) think that I could not trust you with my letters.
But I could not trust the letters....