WHEN Hearn arrived in Cincinnati, in 1871 or 1872, he was twenty-one or
twenty-two years of age. All other methods of making a livelihood except
that by his pen had failed, or were soon to fail, and it is not long
before the literary way is exclusively and permanently adopted. There
was a brief first time of service with Robert Clarke and Company as
proof-reader. The exact uses of punctuation, the clearness which the
proper marks give to writing, soon earned for him the sobriquet "Old
Semicolon" among his fellow reporters. All his life Hearn clung
meticulously to his theories concerning the necessity and precise rules
of punctuation. Some of his later quarrels with periodical editors and
proof-readers arose from differences of opinion in these things. There
was a short engagement of Hearn by the librarian, Mr. Thomas Vickers, as
private secretary or helper. Among his early friends was a printer, Mr.
Henry Watkin, now residing at 1312 McMillan Street, who was kind to him,
and who taught him to set type.
"In 1874," Mr. O. P. Caylor[3] writes, "Col. Cockerill of the _World_
was managing editor of the Cincinnati _Enquirer_. A few weeks previous
to the 'Tan-Yard Murder' Mr. Hearn came to the _Enquirer_ office to sell
a manuscript. Upstairs he ventured, but there his courage failed him. It
was not enough to induce him to brave the awful editorial presence. So
he paced up and down the hall with his velvet restless tread until the
awful door opened and the terrible giant came forth. Hearn would, no
doubt, have run away had he not been at the rear of the hall when Mr.
Cockerill came out into the other end, and the stairway was between.
[3] A quotation in the _Author_, January 15, 1890, from an
article by Mr. Caylor in the Philadelphia _North American_.
"Thus it occurred that the author of 'Chita' submitted his first
manuscript. He came with others later, but never could he persuade
himself to knock at that editorial door for admission. Up and down, up
and down the hall he would pace or glide until Colonel Cockerill came
forth, whether the time consumed in waiting was ten minutes or two
hours."
In _Current Literature_, June, 1896, Colonel John A. Cockerill, writing
of Hearn, tells the story thus:
"Some twenty years ago I was the editor in charge of a daily newspaper
in a Western city. One day there came to my office a quaint,
dark-skinned little fellow, strangely diffident, wearing glasses of
great magnifying power and bearing with him evidence that Fortune and he
were scarce on nodding terms.
"In a soft, shrinking voice he asked if I ever paid for outside
contributions. I informed him that I was somewhat restricted in the
matter of expenditure, but that I would give consideration to what he
had to offer. He drew from under his coat a manuscript, and tremblingly
laid it upon my table. Then he stole away like a distorted brownie,
leaving behind him an impression that was uncanny and indescribable.
"Later in the day I looked over the contribution which he had left. I
was astonished to find it charmingly written....
"He sat in the corner of my room and wrote special articles for the
Sunday edition as thoroughly excellent as anything that appeared in the
magazines of those days. I have known him to have twelve and fifteen
columns of this matter in a single issue of the paper. He was delighted
to work, and I was pleased to have him work, for his style was beautiful
and the tone he imparted to the newspaper was considerable. Hour after
hour he would sit at his table, his great bulbous eyes resting as close
to the paper as his nose would permit, scratching away with beaver-like
diligence and giving me no more annoyance than a bronze ornament.
"His eyes troubled him greatly in those days. He was as sensitive as a
flower. An unkind word from anybody was as serious to him as a cut from
a whiplash, but I do not believe he was in any sense resentful.... He
was poetic, and his whole nature seemed attuned to the beautiful, and he
wrote beautifully of things which were neither wholesome nor inspiring.
He came to be in time a member of the city staff at a fair compensation,
and it was then that his descriptive powers developed. He loved to write
of things in humble life. He prowled about the dark corners of the city,
and from gruesome places he dug out charming idyllic stories. The negro
stevedores on the steamboat-landings fascinated him. He wrote of their
songs, their imitations, their uncouth ways, and he found
picturesqueness in their rags, poetry in their juba dances."
In January or February, 1874, there was a horrible murder, "the famous
Tan-Yard case," in Cincinnati, and Hearn's account of it in the
_Enquirer_, from the newspaper and reportorial standpoint was so graphic
and so far beyond the power of all rivals that he was henceforth assured
of employment and of a measure and kind of respect. His friend, Mr.
Edward Henderson, formerly city editor of the _Commercial_, now City
Clerk in Cincinnati, says that because of his startling report of this
murder "his city editors kept him at the most arduous work of a daily
morning paper--the night-stations, for in that field mostly developed
the sensational events that were worthy of his pen. In these days his
powers would be held in reserve to write up what others should
discover.... His repertory was strongest in the unusual and the
startling. He was never known to shirk hardship or danger in filling an
assignment or following up his self-obtained pointer."
The beginning of Hearn's literary career was his report of the Tan-Yard
Murder case. It was published in the Cincinnati _Enquirer_, November,
1874. I shall quote some parts of it in a footnote to illustrate his
innate and studied ability to outfit with words and expressions of the
most startling and realistic picturing quality, the most horrible and
loathsome facts. Keeping in mind the comparison with the illustrations
from his later work in which he was equally capable of painting noble
and beautiful things (all except those of a spiritual or religious
nature), one is filled with admiration of a faculty so rare and perfect.
Those who are sensitive should not read the excerpts which I append, and
which are given in obedience to a sense of duty.[4]
[4] "An _Enquirer_ reporter visited the establishment some
hours later, accompanied by Dr. Maley, and examined all so
far discovered of Herman Schilling's charred corpse. The
hideous mass of reeking cinders, despite all the efforts of
the brutal murderers to hide their ghastly crime, remain
sufficiently intact to bear frightful evidence against them.
"On lifting the coffin-lid, a powerful and penetrating
odour, strongly resembling the smell of burnt beef, yet
heavier and fouler, filled the room and almost sickened the
spectators. But the sight of the black remains was far more
sickening. Laid upon the clean white lining of the coffin,
they rather resembled great shapeless lumps of half-burnt
bituminous coal than aught else at the first hurried glance;
and only a closer investigation could enable a
strong-stomached observer to detect their ghastly
character--masses of crumbling human bones, strung together
by half-burnt sinews, or glued one upon another by a hideous
adhesion of half-molten flesh, boiled brains and jellied
blood, mingled with coal.
"The skull had burst like a shell in the fierce furnace
heat, and the whole upper portion seemed as though it had
been blown out by the steam from the boiling and bubbling
brains. Only the posterior portion of the occipital and
parietal bones, and the inferior and superior maxillary, and
some of the face bones remained,--the upper portion of the
skull bones being jagged, burnt brown in some spots, and in
others charred to black ashes. The brain had all boiled
away, save a small waste lump at the base of the skull about
the size of a lemon. It was crisped and still warm to the
touch. On pushing the finger through the crisp, the interior
felt about the consistency of banana fruit, and the yellow
fibre seemed to writhe like worms in the Coroner's hands.
The eyes were cooked to bubbled crisps in the blackened
sockets, and the bones of the nose were gone, leaving a
hideous hole.
"So covered were the jaws and the lower facial bones with
coal, crusted blood and gummy flesh, that the Coroner at
first supposed that the lower maxillary had been burned
away. On tearing away the frightful skull-mask of mingled
flesh and coal and charred gristle, however, the grinning
teeth shone ghastly white, and the jaws were found intact.
They were set together so firmly that it was found
impossible to separate them, without reducing the whole mass
to ashes. So great had been the heat that the Coroner was
able to crumble one of the upper teeth in his fingers.
"Besides the fragments of the skull, have been found six
ribs of the right side and four of the left; the middle
portion of the spinal-column; the liver, spleen, and
kidneys; the pelvic bones, the right and left humerus, the
femoral bone and the tibia and fibula of both legs. The body
had burnt open at the chest, and the heart and lungs had
been entirely consumed. The liver had been simply roasted
and the kidneys fairly fried. There is a horrible
probability that the wretched victim was forced into the
furnace alive, and suffered all the agonies of the bitterest
death man can die, while wedged in the flaming flue. The
teeth were so terribly clinched that more than one spectator
of the hideous skull declared that only the most frightful
agony could have set those jaws together. Perhaps, stunned
and disabled by the murderous blows of his assailants, the
unconscious body of the poor German was forced into the
furnace. Perhaps the thrusts of the assassin's pitchfork,
wedging him still further into the fiery hell, or perhaps
the first agony of burning when his bloody garments took
fire, revived him to meet the death of flames. Fancy the
shrieks for mercy, the mad expostulation, the frightful
fight for life, the superhuman struggle for existence--a
century of agony crowded into a moment--the shrieks growing
feebler--the desperate struggle dying into feeble writhings.
And through it all, the grim murderers, demoniacally
pitiless, devilishly desperate, gasping with their exertions
to destroy a poor human life, looking on in silent triumph,
peering into the furnace until the skull exploded, and the
steaming body burst, and the fiery flue hissed like a
hundred snakes! It may not be true--we hope for humanity's
sake it cannot be true; but the rightful secrets of that
fearful night are known only to the criminals and their God.
They may be brought to acknowledge much; but surely never so
much as we have dared to hint at."
"When his city editor, in compliance with the urgency of a
steeple-climber, consented to send a reporter to take observations of
the city from the top of the cross surmounting the spire of St. Peter's
Cathedral in Cincinnati, Hearn was the man selected. In mentioning the
assignment to him, the city editor handed him a valuable field-glass,
with the suggestion that he might find it useful. On taking his
departure with the climbers, Hearn quietly handed back the glasses with
the remark in undertone, 'Perhaps I'd better not take these; something
might happen.' He made the trip to the top of the spire, though the men
found it necessary to haul him part of the way in mid-air and to bodily
place and hold him on top of the cross. And he produced an account of
that thrilling experience that went the round of the newspaper
world."[5]
[5] Our wonder at the performance is heightened by the fact
that Hearn, of course, saw nothing of what he so vividly described.
It is little wonder that his "Vocabulary of the Gruesome" became famous,
since I have learned from his friend and associate, the artist, Mr.
Farney, and also from others, certain facts which demonstrate that this
vocabulary was gathered not only or chiefly because of the exigencies of
his work as a reporter, or to express the revolting in thrilling words,
but because he had a spontaneous lickerishness for the things
themselves. He positively delighted in the gruesome. With his fingers he
dug into the scorched flesh and the exuding brains of the murdered man's
body when it was taken from the furnace, and in another murder case he
slid on the floor, as if on ice, in the congealed blood of the victim.
"He even drank blood at the abattoirs with the consumptives when that
craze had fallen upon the people of Cincinnati." There is more than an
excuse for mentioning these things; it is necessary to do so in order to
understand the origin and transformation of Hearn's chief endowment as a
writer.
Even more convincing, perhaps, than these offensive gloatings as
regards his native love of the gruesome, is the unconscious testimony
given in the history of an illustrated paper established by Mr. Farney
and Mr. Hearn. Mr. Henderson has said of Hearn that "very rarely was he
known to throw a _soupcon_ of humour into his work." The newspaper
venture demonstrates that even when humour was planned Hearn had none to
give.
Number One, Volume One, of _Ye Giglampz_ was issued in Cincinnati, Ohio,
on June 21, 1874, and describes itself on the title-page as, "A Weekly
Illustrated Journal, Devoted to Art, Literature and Satire." The size of
the pages was 14-1/2 x 10-3/4 inches. The subsequent issues were larger,
about 16 x 11-1/4 inches. There were eight pages in each number, the
first, third, fourth and eighth were illustrated by Mr. H. F. Farney;
the others were made up of reading matter. The heading of the editorial
page did not exactly repeat that of the title-page, but read as follows:
"The Giglampz."
Published Daily, except Week-Days.
Terms, $2.50 per annum.
Address, "Giglampz Publishing Co."
150 West Fourth St.
[Illustration: REDUCED FIRST PAGE OF THE FIRST ISSUE.]
With the issue of Number Seven (August 2, 1874) appeared a notice that
H. F. Farney and Company had purchased the _Giglampz_ from its former
proprietors, the new office being henceforth at the North-west corner of
Fourth and Race Streets. Number Eight was the last furnished
subscribers. Probably the only existing set of this periodical is that
kindly lent to me by Mr. Farney at the request of Mr. Alexander Hill of
The Robert Clarke Company, Cincinnati. Among the many significant things
suggested in looking over the pages, is the fact that this bound file
was Hearn's personal copy, his name being written on the cover-leaf by
himself--"L. Hearn, 1877"--and just below, this: "Reminiscences of An
Editorship under Difficulties."
It is noteworthy that nowhere is it publicly announced that Hearn was
the editor, although the fact was probably an open secret in Cincinnati
at the time. The truth of the foregoing inscription in his handwriting
is confirmed by the acknowledgment of his authorship of most of the
articles, contributed as well as editorial, conveyed by his customary
signature, penciled at the end or beginning of each paragraph or column
which he had written. The very title of the paper itself was a witness
in the same way, and shows that at that time, although Hearn kept his
name concealed, he was not, as later, sensitive concerning his ocular
defect.[6] It is plain that the word _Giglampz_ refers to the large and
conspicuous spectacles or eye-glasses which at that time (not later)
were worn habitually by Hearn. The proof of this comes out in the
illustration occupying the full first page of the initial number, and
entitled:
"A Prospect of Herr Kladderadatsch,
Introducynge
Mr. Giglampz tu ye Publycke."
[6] In the first number is an editorial paragraph, written by
Hearn, reading as follows:--"The public has indulged in
speculation and no little levity, in regard to our name. In
this as in the future conduct of this extraordinary sheet,
we seek only to please ourselves. Whether the Publishing
Company will declare 'Irish Dividends' in six months, or
not, does not concern us. We (the editorial corps) being on
a salary, look on public favour with serene indifference.
The name pleases us. We look upon it in the light of a
conundrum, calculated to induce reflection in simple minds.
We hope some one may solve it, as we have incontinently
given it up."
The scene is that of the stage of a theatre, and Kladderadatsch proudly
presents Mr. Giglampz to the wildly applauding audience. The head of the
obsequious Mr. Giglampz is very large compared with his body, but most
conspicuous is the enormous _pince-nez_ astride a nose of fitting
proportions. Mr. Farney was even permitted to give a mere hint of the
editor's facial expression.
A curious and suggestive, even a pathetic, light is thrown upon Hearn's
character by the fact that this personal file of his journal with his
own inscriptions, signatures, etc., was found in a second-hand
book-store by Mr. Farney after Hearn left Cincinnati.
Although it is as much too long for our quoting as it was for
introducing the journalistic venture, I cannot help reproducing Hearn's
first editorial, the "Salutatory, By a Celebrated French Author, a
Friend of Giglampz":
It was a dark and fearsome night in the month of June,
1874; and the pavements of Fourth Street were abandoned to
solitude.
The lamps, dripping huge water-drops fire-tinged from their
lurid glare, seemed monstrous yellow goblin-eyes, weeping
phosphorescent tears.
It was raining, and the funereal sky flamed with lightning.
It was such a rain as in the primeval world created verdant
seas of slimy mud, subsequently condensed into that
fossiliferous strata where to-day spectacled geologists find
imbedded the awful remains of the titanic _iguanodon_, the
_plesiosaurus_, and the _icthyosaurus_.
We sat motionlessly meditative in the shadows of a Gothic
doorway of medieval pattern, and ruefully observed the
movements of a giant rat, slaking his thirst at a
water-spout. Suddenly we were aware of a pressure--a gentle
pressure on our shoulder.
A hurried glance convinced us that the pressure was
occasioned by the presence of a hand.
It was a long, bony, ancient hand, dried and withered to the
consistency of India-rubber. It might have been compared to
the hand of a mummy embalmed in the reign of Rameses III,
but we felt a living warmth in its pressure, penetrating our
summer linen.
The Oriental wizards occasionally need the assistance of a
magic candle, in their groping amid ancient tombs--a candle
which burns with a fuming stench so foul, that hungry ghouls
flee dismayedly away. This candle is made of green fat--the
fat of men long dead. For such a candle it is of course
necessary to have a candlestick. To procure this candlestick
it is necessary to cut off the right hand of a murderous
criminal executed by impalement, and having carefully dried
it, to insert the candle in its ghastly grasp. Now the hand
laid on our shoulder strongly resembled such a hand.
The living warmth of its pressure alone restrained us from
uttering a shriek of hideous fear. A cold sweat ravaged the
starched bosom of our under-garment.
Suddenly a face peered out from the shadow, and the sickly
glare of the flickering gas-lamp fell full upon it.
The aspect of that face immediately reassured us.
It was long to grotesqueness and meagre even to weirdness.
It would have been strongly Mephistophelic but for an air of
joviality that was not wholly saturnine. The eyes were deep,
piercing, but "laughter-stirred," as those of Haroun
Alraschid. The nose was almost satanically aquiline, but its
harsh outline was more than relieved by the long smiling
mouth, and the countless wrinkles of merriment that
intersected one another in crow's-feet all over the ancient
face. The stranger's complexion was that of caout-chouc; and
his long lank locks were blacker than the plumage of those
yellow-footed birds that prey upon the dead. His whole
aspect was that of one who, by some eerie, occult art of
self-preservation, had been enabled to live through the
centuries.
"Am I not addressing the celebrated author----?" said the
voice of the uncouthly-featured.
It was a half-merry, half-mocking voice--a deep voice that
sounded as though conveyed from a vast distance through the
medium of a pneumatic tube.
It therefore resembled in its tone the dreamily-distant
voices never-slumbering Fancy hears in the hours devoted to
darkness and slumber by moral people.
An enormous drop of soot-tinged water fell upon our nose,
incontestably proving that we were awake; and we murmured
monosyllabic assent to the stranger's query.
"It is well," replied the Unknown, with a latitudinarian
smile of joy. "I have been seeking you. I need your
assistance, your talent, your mental vigour so enormously
manifested in your cyclopean[7] phrenological development."
[7] The contrast of this allusion to his large
single eye with his morbid shyness about it of
late years is noteworthy.
"_Sapristi_, monsieur!--permit me to inquire the nature
of----"
"Attend a little, friend, and your curiosity shall be sated
with ample satisfaction. I have existed as you see through
all ages. I have lived under a thousand alias names, under
the various regimes of a thousand civilizations, which
flourished on ancient soil now covered by the mile-deep
waters of foaming oceans. I have made my dwelling-place in
the mighty palace-halls of Egyptian kings, in the giant
cities of dead Assyria, in the residences of Aztec monarchs
and Peruvian Incas, in the snow-columned temples of the
Greek, and the lordly homes of the luxurious Roman. In fact,
I am rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; and have been
worshipped as a genius in far-sparkling planets ere this
mundane sphere was first evolved from that flaming orb. In
all time when individualized intelligent thought existed, I
have inculcated in living beings the truth of that sublime
and eternal maxim--Laugh and grow fat. To-day men must be
taught this glorious truth by the Bullock Press rather than
the Tongue. I want your pen, not your tongue. Write me a
salutatory for my new illustrated weekly--only five cents a
copy."
With these words he pressed a glazed Bristol-board card into
our trembling hand, and disappeared.
By the light of the weeping street-lamps we read thereon
this weird legend:
GIGLAMPZ
The title itself, the Introduction by "Kladderadatsch," and the
character of the contributions and cuts make it plain that the third
object of the publication, called "Satire," was designed to be much more
prominent than "Art" or "Literature." Unquestionably an American
_Kladderadatsch_ was planned, and by Hearn and his friends it was
supposed that the editor had a sense of humour sufficient to carry on
the undertaking. I have quoted the Salutatory to show that with the
favouring of youth, ambition, opportunity and the best encouragement,
Hearn's mind from the first line drifted inevitably to the fearsome, the
weird, the unearthly and far-away. By no power or necessity could his
imagination be forced or bound to the task of producing things comic or
even satiric, especially such humour and jokes as the Cincinnati
newspaper reader wanted in 1874. Of the twelve columns of reading in the
first number of _Giglampz_, Hearn contributed about eight, made up of
fifteen or twenty distinct paragraphs. In the second number his
contributions number seven; in the third, six; in the fourth, three; in
the fifth, four; in the sixth, two; in the seventh, one; in the eighth,
one. In about a dozen of the first number, he somewhat unsuccessfully
tried to be humorous or satiric, while six were frankly tragical,
critical, bitter, etc. In the succeeding numbers Hearn made little
effort to be humorous; in the fifth number he describes with startling
power a picture of "a hideous scene in the interior of a seraglio;" in
number six he returns to the Orient and in "The Fantasy of a Fan" mixes
poetry, prose and fancy with a hinting of the subtle soft witchery of
the Hearn of twenty-five years later.[8] In the second number is a
full-page cut, in which Beecher is depicted as standing before a crowd
of jeerers prior to being placed in the stocks, with the scarlet letter
"A" upon his breast. Hearn especially requested Mr. Farney to make him
one of the conspicuous spectators. The bespectacled face is easily
recognizable in the copy given me by the artist. In the seventh number
Hearn describes in two columns the story he supposes behind the pictured
Gabriel Max, called "The Last Farewell" (now in the Metropolitan Museum,
New York). It shows so early suggestions of the manhood strength of the
wordmaster that I copy it:
[8] Mr. Farney tells me that he had to compel Hearn, even then,
to moderate the boldness of sentences which would by their
sensualism and licence shock their Cincinnati readers.
THE TALE A PICTURE TELLS
"_Butchered to make a Roman Holiday_"
The remarkably fine engraving from Gabriel Max's picture,
"The Last Farewell," in a late issue of the Berlin
_Illustrirte Zeitung_ (and which the New York _Graphic_ a
few days since stole to spoil in the stealing), is worthy of
the celebrated original at Munich--a painting which will
never be forgotten by those who have once beheld it. Among
modern painters, probably Max has no superior in the art of
harmoniously blending the horrible with the pathetic; and in
none of his works is this peculiar power exhibited to better
advantage than in "The Last Farewell:" a marvel of colour
and composition, one of those rare pictures which seem to
reflect the living shadows of a dead age with the weird
truthfulness of a wizard's mirror.
A beautiful Roman girl is exposed in the Flavian
amphitheatre, to be devoured by wild beasts. She can
scarcely be eighteen years old, judging from the slender
delicacy of her limbs and the childish sweetness of the
pretty little brown face which she has vainly been striving
to screen from the rude gaze of the shameless populace with
the remnants of a rich black veil--probably torn by the
rough hands of some brutal lanista. She leans with her back
to the great wall of stone, calmly awaiting her fate without
any signs of fear, although the hot, foul breath of a
panther is already warm upon her naked feet. To her right,
but a few feet away, a leopard and a huge bear are tearing
each other to pieces; on her left, another den has just been
thrown open, and at its entrance appears the hideous head of
an immense tiger, with eyes that flame like emeralds.
You can almost feel the warmth of the fierce summer sun
shining on that scene of blood and crime, falling on the
yellow sands of the arena, drying the dark pools of human
blood the wild beasts have left unlapped. You can almost
hear the deep hum of a hundred thousand voices above, and
the hideous growlings of the contending brutes below. You
wonder whether there is one heart in all that vast crowd of
cruel spectators wherein some faint impulse of humanity
still lingers, one tongue charitable enough to exclaim:
"Poor little thing!"
No: only wicked whispers followed by coarse laughter;
monstrous indifference in the lower tiers, brutal yells of
bloodthirsty impatience from the upper seats.
Two Roman knights relieve the monotony of the scene by
strange speculation.
"One hundred sesterces that the tiger gets her first!"
"Two hundred on the panther!"
"Done, by the gods! Where are the lions?"
"Why, that cursed barbarian killed the last three this
morning, one after another. The finest lions of the lot,
too."
"Who are you talking about?--that tall, dark Thracian?"
"No: he was killed the day before by the same gladiator that
killed the lions. I mean that golden-haired giant--that
Goth. Says he was chief in his own country, or something.
He's killed everybody and everything pitted against him so
far. And this morning they put him naked in the arena, with
nothing but a mirmillo's shield, and a sword; and let the
lions loose on him one after another. I bet a thousand
sesterces on that little Numidian lion; but the rascal
killed him as he sprang, with one sword-thrust, and I lost
my thousand sesterces. By Hercules, that Goth is a match for
a dozen lions!"
"Brave fellow, by all the gods! Did they give him the wooden
sword?"
"Julius Cortonus says they did. I didn't stay to see the
rest of the games, for I was too angry about my thousand
sesterces."
"Furies take that tiger!--I believe the brute's afraid of
the girl!"
* * * * *
"Why, it is madness to throw such a fine-limbed girl as that
to the lions!" cries a Greek merchant, lately arrived in
Rome. "Eyes and hair, by Zeus, like Venus Anadyomene. I
could sell her for a fortune in a slave-market."
"Aedepol! not in a Roman slave-market, you fool. Why, I've
known Lucullus to throw better-looking girls than that into
his fishpond, to fatten his lampreys with. May Cerberus
swallow that cursed tiger!"
* * * * *
The tiger has not yet moved; his vast head and flaming green
eyes are just visible at the door of the den. The leopard
and the bear are still tearing one another. The panther is
gradually, stealthily, noiselessly approaching the poor,
helpless girl.
Suddenly a fresh, bright-red rose is thrown from the seats
above: it is the last earthly greeting, the last farewell
token of some old friend--perhaps a brother, perhaps (O
God!) a lover! It falls on the blood-stained sand,
shattering itself in perfumed ruin at the maiden's feet.
She starts as the red leaves scatter before her. She
advances from the wall, and boldly withdrawing the fragments
of her poor, torn veil, looks up into the mighty sea of
pitiless visages--looks up with her sweet, childish,
cherry-lipped face, and those great, dark, softly sad Roman
eyes--to thank him by a last look of love. "Who can it be?"
No one the maiden knows. She only sees a seemingly endless
row of cruel and sensual faces, the faces of the wild beast
populace of Rome,--the faces which smile at the sight of a
living human body, torn limb from limb by lions, and
scattered over the sands in crimson shreds of flesh....
Suddenly a terrible yet friendly eye meets and rivets the
gaze of her own--an eye keen and coldly-blue as a blade of
steel. A sternly handsome Northern face it is, with flowing
yellow hair. For an instant the iron lips seem to soften in
a smile of pity, and the keen blue eyes become brighter. So
do the soft dark ones they meet in that piteous farewell.
She has found her unknown friend.
... A crash--a fierce growl--a faint, helpless cry--a spray
of warm, bright blood.
* * * * *
"Ah, Caius! you've lost your hundred sesterces. The Fates
are against you to-day!"
"Curse the Fates! Did you see the fool who threw her the
rose?"
"That great tall Titan of a fellow, with the yellow hair?"
"Yes. That's the Goth."
"What! the gladiator who killed the lions?"
"The same who won his freedom this morning. See! the fool's
wiping his eyes now. These Goths can fight like Hercules,
but they whine like sick women when a girl is hurt. They
think up in the North that women are to be worshipped like
the immortal gods. I wish they'd make the great red-headed
brute go down and kill that cursed tiger!"
Hearn's single contribution to the last number of the fated _Giglampz_
was a four-column retelling of "the weird story of Loki's evil children
from the strange folk-lore of Ancient Scandinavia."
It was thus blood, sensualism and fiendishness that still aroused
Hearn's interest when not only not compelled to the choice, but when
they were contraindicated and wholly illogical. But it was all a little
less revolting, less real, more artistic, than the tan-yard reporting,
and it was drawn from more remote sources. Mr. Henderson suggests the
same when he writes:
"But it was not in this slavery for a living even to crush out of him
the determination to advance and excel. In the small hours of morning,
into broad daylight, after the rough work of the police rounds and the
writing of perhaps columns, in his inimitable style, he could be seen,
under merely a poor jet of gas, with his one useful eye close to book
and manuscript, translating 'One of Cleopatra's Nights.' ...
"An Oriental warmth and glow pervaded him. While his lines were hard
ones in the grime and soot and trying weather of Cincinnati, from which
his frail body shrank continually, his trend of thought was largely
tropical. Perhaps he saw beyond the dusky faces, rolling eyes and broad
noses of the people of the Cincinnati levee, the mixed people of the
West Indies and the beautiful little ones of Japan, with whom he was
destined to live before long. However that may be, his greatest
pleasure, after a translation from Gautier or an original tragedy where
he could in his masterful way use his vocabulary of the gruesome, was to
study and absorb the indolent, sensuous life of the negro race, as he
found it in Cincinnati and New Orleans, and to steep them in a sense of
romance that he alone could extract from the study. Things that were
common to these people in their everyday life, his vivid imagination
transformed into a subtle melody of romance. The distant booming upon
the midnight air of a river steamer's whistle was for him the
roustabout's call to his waiting mistress at the landing, and his
fruitful pen drew the picture of their watching and coming and meeting."
The words _indolent and sensuous life_ are also significant. The
tropics, their fatalism and the kind of life there lived were drawing
him with secret but irresistible force. Now begins to mix with and
mollify the gruesome a softer element, also Oriental, or what is much
the same thing, tropical--sympathy with and study of the simple and
unlettered, those who are the improvident slaves of fate, thoughtless
impulse or heedless desire. To them, as we shall see, Hearn's mind
turned more and more. His was essentially an Oriental mind and heart, an
exotic weed (and weeds may become the loveliest of flowers) dropped by
some migrating bird upon the strange crabbed soil of the crudest of
Occidentalism. Never did Hearn stop yearning for the warmth, the
fatalism and the laziness of tropic semi-barbarism. The gruesome was not
being killed, but was being modified and tamed by civilization.
Hearn had been discharged from the _Commercial_, where his salary was
$25 a week, "on an ethical point of policy which need not be discussed
here. The _Commercial_ took him on at $22." Judge M. F. Wilson, of
Cincinnati, tells me that his discharge was caused by his seeking a
licence for and an open marriage with a coloured woman. The licence was
refused, because illegal at that time. The law was repealed a little
later. The marriage did not take place.[9]
[9] Mr. George Mortimer Roe, at that time a friend of Hearn, now
living at Long Beach, California, writes me: "Hearn was
quite persistent in his efforts to persuade me to assist him
in getting the licence, but I told him I could not aid him
in his ambition to be guilty of miscegenation. For many
years we had been the best of friends, but from that time on
he always avoided me, scarcely speaking to me if by accident
we did meet."
Mr. Henderson continues thus:
"As Hearn advanced in his power to write, the sense of the discomforts
of his situation in Cincinnati grew upon him. His body and mind longed
for the congeniality of southern air and scenes. One morning, after the
usual hard work of an unusually nasty winter night in Cincinnati, in a
leisure hour of conversation, he heard an associate on the paper
describe a scene in a Gulf State. It was something about a grand old
mansion of an antebellum cotton prince, with its great white columns,
its beautiful private drive down to the public road, whitewashed
negro-quarters stretching away in the background, in the distance some
cypress and live-oaks and Spanish moss, and close by a grove of
magnolias with their delightful odours and the melody of mocking-birds
in the early sunlight. Hearn took in every word of this, though he had
little to say at the time, with great keenness of interest, as shown by
the dilation of his nostrils. It was as though he could see and hear and
smell the delights of the scene. Not long after this, on leaving
Cincinnati for New Orleans, he remarked: 'I have lost my loyalty to this
paper, and change was inevitable. Perhaps it isn't so much the lack of
opportunity here or a lack of appreciation of associations as this
beastly climate. I seem to shrivel up in this alternation of dampness,
heat and cold. I had to go sooner or later, but it was your description
of the sunlight and melodies and fragrance and all the delights with
which the South appeals to the senses that determined me. I shall feel
better in the South and I believe I shall do better.'"
Some of his Cincinnati acquaintances speak of his obsequious, even
fawning, manner ("timid and feline of approach," says Henderson), of his
"washing his hands with invisible water"--characteristics not dictated
by the parentage ascribed to him, not consonant with his photographs,
and not wholly with his gruesome traits. He wore heavy myopic spectacles
at this time, not to see (because they were wholly discarded later), but
probably in order not to be seen--_i.e._ to hide the double deformity of
his eyes. One must remember that with or without spectacles the world a
foot or two away was much of a mystery to Hearn, and that one fears a
surely existent and near-by mystery. One approaches it or comes within
its power with doubt, dislike and caution. The play of facial expression
was not to be seen by Hearn. All Uriah Heeps may not be myopic, but all
highly myopic persons will have slow, stealthy, careful, even catlike
attitudes and manners; every step they take must be done with
hesitation, bowed head and great care, in order not to fall or stumble
against something. The wholly blind walk with more decision and
quickness. Of course this slow, soft carefulness of manner, "the velvet
feline step," was Hearn's all his life. It followed inexorably that,
though possessed of a healthy and athletic body, there was possible for
him no athletics which required accuracy of sight or sequent precision
and celerity of movement. That with good eyes he would have been an
utterly different man in character and in literature, is as certain as
that he would have had a very different manner, movement and style of
physical existence. With good eyes he would have been strong, athletic,
bold, as is admirably illustrated by the fact that in the single sport
in which little vision was required--swimming--he was most expert, and
that he enjoyed this exercise to the fullest degree.
To scale a steeple in order to describe the city from that unusual point
of view was a task worthy of yellow journalism which cared little for
accuracy but much for "scare" headlines. Hearn saw little or nothing of
the city, of course.
The only letters written during the Cincinnati period, known to exist,
are those of 1876, called, "Letters to a Lady," published in the volume,
_Letters from the Raven_, Milton Bronner, editor.[10] One other work,
the origins of which date from this period, is "One of Cleopatra's
Nights," and with this is demonstrated the beginning of the influence of
the modern French school of story-writers. Hearn was tiring of the worst
brutality and coarseness of Occidentalism, and seeking a way to the true
home of his mind. The ghastly must become the ghostly. The Frenchman's
art was to become his half-way house.
[10] Brentano's, 1907.