KŌBE, February, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I had mailed you the American letter before your own
most kind enclosure came, with the note from Makino. Of course this
is beyond thanks,--and I can't say very much about it. Since then I
received from you also Lowell's six papers on Mars,--which I have read,
and return by this mail,--and your friendly lines from Atami.
Just as you suggested in the Atami letter, I was feeling about matters.
There would be special conditions in New Orleans, on the paper of which
I was ten years a staff-writer. I should have to work only a couple of
hours a day in my own room, and would have opportunities of money-making
and travel. There are risks, too,--yellow fever, lawlessness, and
personal enemies. But to leave Japan now would, of course, be like
tearing one's self in two,--and I am not sure but the ultimate nervous
result would destroy my capacity for literary work. The best thing, I
imagine, will be to ask my friend to keep the gate open for me, in case
I have to go. The great thing for me is not to worry: worry and literary
work will not harmonize. The work always betrays the strain afterward.
You say my friend writes nicely. He is about the most lovable man
I ever met,--an old-time Southerner, very tall and slight, with a
singular face. He is so exactly an ideal Mephistopheles that he would
never get his photograph taken. The face does not altogether belie the
character,--but the mockery is very tender play, and queerly original.
It never offends. The real Mephistopheles appears only when there are
ugly obstacles to overcome. Then the diabolical keenness with which
motives are read and disclosed, and the lightning moves by which a plot
is checkmated, or made a net for the plotter himself, usually startle
people. He is a man of immense force--it takes such a one to rule in
that community, but as a gentleman I never saw his superior in grace or
consideration. I always loved him--but like all whom I like, never could
get quite enough of his company for myself.
The papers on Mars are quite weirdly suggestive--are they not? Just
how much of the theories and the discoveries were Lowell's very own,
I can't make out--though the papers are things to be thankful for. You
know the physiological side of his psychology in "Occult Japan" is no
more original than the "Miscellany" of a medical weekly.
By the way, I must point out a serious mistake he makes on page
293,--when he says that the absence of the belief in possession by other
living men is a proof of the absence of personality in Japan. As a
matter of fact there is no such absence. I alone know of three different
forms of such belief--and know that one is extremely common. So that all
the metaphysical structure of argument built upon the supposed absence
of that belief vanishes into nothingness!
As Huxley says, that man who goes about the world "unlabelled" is sure
to be punished for it. So I can't help thinking that I ought to have
a label. Fancy the man who makes his bear drink champagne seeking
my company on the ground that "Neither of us are Christians." The
Ama-terasu-Ōmi-kami business first aroused my suspicions, but the
phrase itself was so raw!
Compañia de uno
1 Compañia de ninguno;
Compañia de dos
2 Compañia de Dios;
Compañia de tres
3 Compañia es (but never for me);
Compañia de cuatro
4 Compañia del diablo.
This old Spanish hymn might have been made expressly about me,--except
in No. 3. I should feel more at home with you if I knew you would share
my letters with nobody. This is all for yourself only. Ever gratefully,
with more than regards,