KŌBE, January, 1896.
DEAR PAGE,--What a pleasure your letter was--in spite of the
typewriting! How shall I answer it? From the end backwards,--as the last
was the most pleasant.
Of course it was _really_ long ago that we used to sit
together--sometimes in your office, sometimes upon a doorstep,
sometimes at a little marble-topped table somewhere over a glass of
something,--and talk such talk as I never talked since. It is very
nearly ten years ago. That is quite true. But you say that my flitting
has been my gain, and that I have made myriads of friends by my books.
That is not quite so true as you think. You think so only because you
have still the heart of the old Southern gentleman,--the real aristo.
and soldier,--the man who said exactly what he thought, and expected
other people to do the same, and lived in a world where people did so.
That is why also you remain for me quite distinct and different from
other men: you have never lost your ideals--therefore you can remain
ideal to others, as you will always do to me. But you are enormously
mistaken in supposing that I have made myriads of friends, or gained
anything--except what one gains by disillusion, and the change that
comes with the care and love of others: this, of course, is gain. But
book-success! No: it seems to me just the reverse. The slightest success
has to be very dearly paid for. It brings no friends at all, but many
enemies and ill-wishers. It brings letters from autograph-hunters,
and letters enclosing malicious criticisms, and letters requesting
subscriptions to all sorts of shams, and letters of invitation to
join respectable-humbug societies, and requests to call on people who
merely want to gratify the meanest sort of curiosity,--that which
views a fellow creature _only_ as a curiosity. Then, of course, there
are uncounted little tricks and advertising dodges to be avoided like
pitfalls,--and extravagant pretences of sympathy, often so clever as to
seem really genuine, made for utilitarian purposes. Then there are all
sorts of little snobberies and patronizings and disappointments. And
after the work is done, it soon begins to get shabby and threadbare in
memory; and I pick it up and wonder how I could have written it, and
marvel how anybody could have bought it, and find that the criticisms
which I didn't like were nearly all true. Sometimes I feel good, and
think I have really done well; but that very soon passes, and in a day
or two I find I have been all wrong, and sure never to write anything
quite right.
The fact seems to be that when ideals go away, writing becomes mere
downright hard work; and the reward of the pleasure of finishing it is
not for me, because I have nobody to talk to about it, and nobody to
take it up, and read it infinitely better than I could do myself. The
most delightful criticisms I ever had were your own readings aloud of my
vagaries in the _T.-D_. office, after the proofs came down. How I should
like to have that experience once more--just to hear you read something
of mine quite fresh from the composition-room,--with the wet sharp inky
smell still on the paper!
But I suppose I have gained otherwise. You also. For there is something
in everybody--the best of him, too, isn't it?--which only unfolds in him
when he has to think about his double,--the other self to which he has
given existence; and then he sees things differently. I suppose you do.
I imagine you must now be ever so much more lovable than you used to
be--but that you have less of yourself proportionately to give away. If
I were in New Orleans I don't think that I could coax you to talk after
a fixed hour: you would say, "--! it's after twelve o'clock: I must be
off!"
What you write about little Miss Constance is very sweet. I hope soon to
send her some Japanese fairy-tales written by your humble servant;--that
is, I _hope_; for the Tōkyō publisher is awfully slow in getting
them out. You have had anxiety, I find. But the delicacy that causes it
means a highly complex nervous organization; and the anxieties will be
well compensated, I fancy, later on. She will become, judging from the
suggestion of that gold-head in the photograph, almost too beautiful:
I hope to see another photograph later on. I shall send one of Kazuo
in a few days. We were terribly frightened about him,--for he caught a
serious cold on the lungs; but after a few weeks he picked up well. He
gets taller, and every day surprises us with some new observation. He
seems to get fairer always instead of darker--nobody now ever takes him
to be a Japanese boy. He is very jealous of his mother,--won't allow
me to monopolize her for even five minutes; and I am no longer master
in my own house. Servants and relatives and grandparents, they all
obey him,--and pay no attention at all to my wishes unless they happen
to be in harmony with his own. Certainly Japanese people are kinder
to children than any other people in the world,--too good altogether.
Still, they do not spoil children,--for as a general rule they manage
to make them grow up strangely, incomprehensibly obedient. I don't
understand it,--except as heredity: indeed, I may as well frankly say
that the longer I live in Japan, the less I know about the Japanese.
"That is a sign," says one Oriental friend, "that you are beginning to
understand. It is only when a foreigner confesses he knows nothing about
us that there is some reason to expect he will understand us later on."
About the letters, I need only say, perhaps, that I shall give you the
best of what I write this year (excepting, of course, essays on Buddhist
philosophy, or stuff of that sort, which would be out of place, no
doubt, in a newspaper). I may include a few little stories....
"Kokoro" ought to reach you next March. It is rather a crazy book; but I
wish I could hear you _read_ one or two pages in it....
Ever affectionately,
LAFCADIO HEARN.