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LAFCADIO HEARN
The Hearn crest is "on
a mount vert a heron
arg.," and the motto
"Ardua petit ardea."
[Illustration: Lafcadio Hearn and His Wife.]
LAFCADIO HEARN
BY
NINA H. KENNARD
_CONTAINING SOME LETTERS FROM LAFCADIO HEARN
TO HIS HALF-SISTER, MRS. ATKINSON_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
MCMXII
Copyright, 1912, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
REMEMBRANCE
No regret is vain. It is sorrow that spins the
thread,--softer than moonshine, thinner than
fragrance, stronger than death,--the Gleipnir-chain
of the Greater Memory.
PREFACE
When Death has set his seal on an eminent man's career, there is a not
unnatural curiosity to know something of his life, as revealed by
himself, particularly in letters to intimate friends. "All biography
ought, as much as possible, to be autobiography," says Stevenson, and of
all autobiographical material, letters are the most satisfactory.
Generally written on the impulse of the moment, with no idea of
subsequent publication, they come, as it were, like butter fresh from
the churning with the impress of the mind of the writer stamped
distinctly upon them. One letter of George Sand's written to Flaubert,
or one of Goethe's to Frau von Stein, or his friend Stilling, is worth
pages of embellished reminiscences.
The circumstances surrounding Lafcadio Hearn's life and work impart a
particular interest and charm to his correspondence. He was, as he
himself imagined, unfitted by personal defect from being looked upon
with favour in general society. This idea, combined with innate
sensitive shyness, caused him, especially towards the latter years of
his life, to become more or less of a recluse, and induced him to seek
an outlet in intellectual commune with literary comrades on paper. Hence
the wonderful series of letters, edited by Miss Elizabeth Bisland (Mrs.
Wetmore), to Krehbiel, Ellwood Hendrik, and Chamberlain. Those to
Professor Chamberlain, written during the most productive literary
period of his life, from the vantage ground, as it were, of many years
of intellectual work and experience, are particularly interesting,
giving a unique and illuminating revelation of a cultured and
passionately enthusiastic nature.
During his stay at Kumamoto, when the bulk of the letters to Chamberlain
were written, he initiated a correspondence with his half-sister, Mrs.
Atkinson, who had written to him from Ireland. His erratic nature, tamed
and softened by the birth of his son, Kazuo, turned with yearning
towards his kindred, forgotten for so many years, and these Atkinson
letters, though not boasting the high intellectual level of those to
Professor Chamberlain, show him, in their affectionate playfulness, and
in the quaint memories recalled of his childhood, under a new and
delightful aspect.
There has been a certain amount of friction with his American editress,
owing to the fact of my having been given the right to use these
letters. It is as well, therefore, to explain that owing to criticisms
and remarks made about people and relatives, in Hearn's usual outspoken
fashion, it would have been impossible, in their original form, to allow
them to pass into the hands of any one but a person intimately connected
with the Hearn family; but I can assure Mrs. Wetmore and Captain
Mitchell McDonald--those kind friends who have done so much for the sake
of Hearn's children and widow--that Mrs. Koizumi, financially, suffers
nothing from the fact of the letters not having crossed the Atlantic.
Besides being indebted to Mrs. Atkinson for having been allowed to make
extracts from the letters written to her, my thanks are due to Miss
Edith Hardy, her cousin, for the use of diaries and reminiscences; also
to the Rev. Joseph Guinan, of Priests' House, Ferbane, for having put me
in communication with the ecclesiastical authorities at Ushaw; also to
Mr. Achilles Daunt, of Kilcascan Castle, County Cork, who was apparently
Lafcadio's most intimate comrade at Ushaw, and was therefore able to
give me much information concerning his college career.
I must also express my indebtedness to friends in Japan, to Mr. W. B.
Mason, who was so obliging and helpful when Mrs. Atkinson, her daughter
and I arrived as strangers at Yokohama; also to Mr. Robert Young, who
gave me copies of all the leading articles written by Hearn during the
period of his engagement as sub-editor to the _Kobe Chronicle and Japan
Mail_.
But still more are my thanks due to the various American publishers of
Hearn's works for permission to make quotations from them; to Messrs.
Macmillan & Co., New York, for permission to quote from "Kotto" and
"Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation"; to Messrs. Little, Brown & Co.,
Boston, for permission to quote from "Exotica and Retrospectives," "In
Ghostly Japan," "Shadowings," and "A Japanese Miscellany"; to Messrs.
Gay & Hancock for permission to quote from "Kokoro"; to Messrs. Harper
for permission to quote from "Two Years in the French West Indies"; and,
above all, to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for permission to quote
from "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," and Hearn's "Letters," for without
quoting from his letters it would be an almost futile task to attempt to
write a biography of Lafcadio Hearn.
What a pathos there is in the thought, that only since Lafcadio Hearn
became "a handful of dust in a little earthen pot" hidden away in a
Buddhist grave in Japan, has real appreciation of his genius reached
England. On the top of the hill at Nishi Okubo, isolated from the sound
of English voices, cut off from the clasp of English hands, he was
animated by an intense longing for appreciation and recognition in the
Anglo-Saxon literary world. "At last," he writes to a friend, "you will
be glad to hear that my books are receiving some little attention in
England," and again, "Favourable criticism in England is worth a great
deal more than favourable criticism elsewhere."
How overwhelmed he would have been to find his name now bracketed
amongst the nineteenth century's best-known prose writers, to whom he
looked up from the depths of his own imagined insignificance. Indeed, in
that country where he longed for appreciation, the idea is gradually
growing, that when many shining lights in the literary world of to-day
stand unread on topmost library shelves, Lafcadio Hearn will still be
studied by the scientist, and valued by the cultured, because of the
subtle comprehension and sympathy with which he has presented, in
exquisite language, a subject of ever-increasing importance and
interest--the soul of the people destined, in the future, to hold
undisputed sway in the Far East.
_Southmead_,
_Farnham Royal_, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I EARLY YEARS 1
II BOYHOOD 23
III TRAMORE 33
IV USHAW 40
V LONDON 52
VI CINCINNATI 65
VII VAGABONDAGE 81
VIII MEMPHIS 88
IX NEW ORLEANS 93
X WIDER HORIZON 102
XI LETTERS AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 111
XII THE LADY OF A MYRIAD SOULS 124
XIII RELIGION AND SCIENCE 137
XIV WEST INDIES 148
XV JAPAN 160
XVI MATSUE 172
XVII MARRIAGE 179
XVIII THE KATCHIU-YASHIKI 187
XIX KUMAMOTO 199
XX OUT OF THE EAST 231
XXI KOBE 238
XXII TOKYO 260
XXIII USHIGOME 274
XXIV NISHI OKUBO 286
XXV HIS DEATH 299
XXVI HIS FUNERAL 310
XXVII VISIT TO JAPAN 313
XXVIII SECOND VISIT TO NISHI OKUBO 328
CONCLUSION 339
INDEX 351
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
LAFCADIO HEARN AND HIS WIFE. _Frontispiece_
MAJOR CHARLES BUSH HEARN (HEARN'S FATHER). 16
MRS. ATKINSON (HEARN'S HALF-SISTER). 204
KAZUO (HEARN'S SON) AND HIS NURSE. 220
KAZUO, (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVEN). 228
DOROTHY ATKINSON. 232
KAZUO, (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVENTEEN). 314
CARLETON ATKINSON. 318
LAFCADIO HEARN
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
"Buddhism finds in a dewdrop the symbol of that other
microcosm which has been called the soul.... What more,
indeed, is man, than just such a temporary orbing of viewless
ultimates--imaging sky, and land, and life--filled with
perpetual mysterious shudderings--and responding in some wise
to every stir of the ghostly forces that environ him?... In
each of a trillion of dewdrops there must be differences
infinitesimal of atom-thrilling and of reflection, and in
every one of the countless pearls of ghostly vapour, updrawn
from the sea of birth and death, there are like infinitesimal
peculiarities. Personality, individuality, the ghosts of a
dream in a dream! Life infinite only there is; and all that
appears to be is but the thrilling of it--sun, moon, and
stars--earth, sky, and sea--and mind and man, and space and
time, all of them are shadows, the shadows come and go; the
Shadow-maker shapes for ever."
On the fly-leaf of a small octavo Bible, given to Charles Hearn by his
grandmother, the following entry may be read: "Patricio, Lafcadio,
Tessima, Carlos Hearn. August 1850, at Santa Maura."
The characters are in cramped Romaic Greek, the paper is yellow, the ink
faded with age. Whether the entry was made by Lafcadio's father or
mother it is difficult to say; one fact is certain: it announces the
appearance on this world's stage of one of the most picturesque and
remarkable figures of the end of the last century.
Those who like to indulge in the fascinating task of tracing the origin
of genius will find few instances offering more striking coincidences or
curious ancestral inheritances than that afforded by Lafcadio Hearn.
On his father's side he came of the Anglo-Hibernian stock--mixture of
Saxon and Celt--which has produced poets, orators, soldiers, signal
lights in the political, literary, and military history of the United
Kingdom for the last two centuries. We have no proof that Lafcadio's
grandfather--as has been stated--came over with Lionel Sackville, Duke
of Dorset, when he was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1731. The
Rev. Daniel Hearn undoubtedly acted as private chaplain to His Grace,
and about the same time--as recognition for services done, we
conclude--became possessed of the property of Correagh in the County of
Westmeath.
A Roman Catholic branch of the Hearn family is to be found in County
Waterford--has been settled there for centuries. At Tramore, the seaside
place near the city of Waterford, where Lafcadio spent several summers
at the Molyneuxs' house with his great-aunt, Mrs. Brenane, the Rev.
Thomas Hearn is still remembered as a prominent figure in the Roman
Catholic movement against Protestantism. He founded the present
cathedral, also the Catholic College in Waterford, and introduced one of
the first of the Conventual Orders into the South of Ireland. It is
through these Waterford Hearns that Henry Molyneux claimed relationship
with the County Westmeath portion of the family.
As to the English origin of the family, the Irish Hearns have an
impression that it was a West Country (Somersetshire) stock. Records
certainly of several Daniel Hearns--it is the Christian name that
furnishes the clue--occur in ecclesiastical documents both in Wiltshire
and Somersetshire.
In Burke's "Colonial Gentry" there is a pedigree given of a branch of
Archdeacon Hearn's descendants, who migrated to Australia about fifty
years ago. There it is stated that the Hearn stock was originally
"cradled in Northumberland." Ford Castle in that county belonged to the
Herons--pronounced Hearn--to which belonged Sir Hugh de Heron, a
well-known North Country baronet, mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's
"Marmion." The crest, as with Lafcadio's Irish Protestant branch of
Hearns, was a heron, with the motto, "The Heron Seeks the Heights."
Mrs. Koizumi, Hearn's widow, tells us that her husband pronounced his
name "Her'un," "and selected 'Sageha No Tsuru'--heron with wings
down--for the design which he made to accompany his name and number at
the Literary College, Tokyo University." There can be no doubt that the
place-names and families, bearing the Hearn name in various countries,
are of different, often entirely distinct origin. Nevertheless, the
various modifications of the word--namely, Erne, Horne, Hearn, Hern,
Herne, Hearon, Hirn, etc., are derived from one root. In the Teutonic
languages it is _irren_, to wander, stray, err or become outlaw. _Hirn_,
the brain or organ of the wandering spirit or ghost, the Latin _errare_
and Frankish _errant_, with the Celtic _err_ names are related, though
the derivation comes from ancient, Indo-Germanic languages. In the West
Country in England the name Hearn is well-known as a gipsy one, and in
the "Provincilia Dictionary" for Northumberland, amongst other worthies
of note, a certain "Francis Heron" or "Hearn," King of the "Faws" or
gipsies, is referred to.
I give all these notes because they bear out the tradition, stoutly
maintained by some members of the family, that gipsy blood runs in their
veins. An aunt of Lafcadio's tells a story of having once met a band of
gipsies in a country lane in Ireland; one of them, an old woman, offered
to tell Miss Hearn's fortune. After examining her hand, she raised her
head, looked at her meaningly, and tapping her palm with her finger
said, "You are one of us, the proof is here." Needless to say that
Lafcadio valued a possible gipsy ancestor more than all the archdeacons
and lieutenant-colonels that figured in his pedigree, and was wont to
show with much pride the mark on his thumb supposed to be the infallible
sign of Romany descent.
Some foreign exotic strain is undoubtedly very apparent in many members
of the Hearn family. Lafcadio's marked physiognomy, dark complexion, and
black hair could not have been an exclusive inheritance from his
mother's side, for it can be traced in Charles Hearn's children by his
second wife, and again in their children. This exotic element--quite
distinct from the Japanese type--is so strong as to have impressed
itself on Hearn's eldest son by his Japanese wife, creating a most
remarkable likeness between him and his cousin, Mrs. Atkinson's son. The
near-sighted eyes, the marked eyebrows, the dark brown hair, the soft
voice and gentle manner, are characteristics owned by both Carleton
Atkinson and Kazuo Koizumi. History says that the original birthplace of
the gipsies was India. Even in Egypt, the country claimed by the gipsies
themselves as the place where their race originated, the native gipsy is
not Egyptian in appearance, but Hindoo. Curious to think that Lafcadio
Hearn, the interpreter of Buddhism and oriental legend to the West, may,
on his father's side, have been descended from Avatars, whose souls were
looked upon as gods, centuries ago, in India.
On his mother's side the skein of Lafcadio's lineage is still more full
of knots and entanglements than on his father's. It is impossible to
state with any amount of accuracy to what nationality Mrs. Charles Hearn
belonged. It has been generally taken for granted that she was Greek;
Lafcadio used to say so himself. Some of the Hearns, on the other hand,
maintain that she was Maltese, which is quite probable. Owing to the
agricultural richness of the Ionian Islands, Italians, Greeks, Levantine
Jews, and Maltese had all taken up their abode in the Sept-Insula at
various times and seasons. Lafcadio's third name, Tessima, was his
mother's maiden-name, and is one that figures continually in Maltese
census- and rent-rolls. When Mrs. Hearn separated from her husband to
return to her own family she went to Malta, not to the Ionian Islands.
The fact, as Lafcadio states, that he could only stammer half Italian,
half Romaic, when he first arrived in Dublin, rather points to a Maltese
origin. What wild Arabic blood may he not, therefore, have inherited on
his mother's side? For, as is well-known, in times gone by Arab tribes,
migrating from the deserts of Asia and Africa, overran the shores of the
Mediterranean and settled in Malta, intermarrying with the original
Venetian Maltese.
"We are all compounds of innumerable lives, each a sum in an infinite
addition--the dead are not dead, they live in all of us, and move us,
stirring faintly in every heart beat." Certainly Lafcadio was an
exemplification of his own theory. During the course of his strange life
all the characteristics of his manifold outcome manifested
themselves--the nomadic instincts of the Romany and Arab, the
revolutionary spirit of the Celt, the luxuriant imagination of the
oriental, with that unquenchable spark of industry and energy inherited
from his Anglo-Saxon forbears.
From the time they settled in Ireland the Hearns served their country
for the most part in church and army. Lafcadio's grandfather was colonel
of the 43rd Regiment, which he commanded at the battle of Vittoria in
the Peninsular War. He married Elizabeth Holmes, member of a family
distinguished in Irish legal and literary circles. To her children she
bequeathed musical and artistic gifts of no mean order. From his father
Lafcadio inherited a remarkable aptitude for drawing, and, as is easy to
see from his letters to Krehbiel, an ardent love of music.
Elizabeth Holmes's second son, Richard Holmes Hearn, insisted while
quite a boy on setting forth to study art in the studios in Paris. He
never made money or a great name, but some of his pictures, inspired by
the genius of Corot and Millet, are very suggestive and beautiful. He
was quite as unconventional in his mode of thought, and quite as erratic
and unbusinesslike as his famous nephew--"Veritable blunderers," as
Lafcadio says, "in the ways of the world."
Writing from Japan to his half-sister, Mrs. Atkinson, about some
photographs she had sent him of her children, he says: "They seem to
represent new types; that makes no difference in one sense and a good
deal of difference in another. I think, though I am not sure, as I have
never known you or the other half-sister, that we Hearns all lacked
something. The something is very much lacking in me, and in my brother.
I mean 'force' ... I think we of father's blood are all a little soft of
soul ... very sweet in a woman, not so good in a man. What you call the
'strange mixture of weakness and firmness' is essentially me; my
firmness takes the shape of an unconquerable resistance in particular
directions--guided by feeling mostly, and not always in the directions
most suited to my interests. There must have been very strong
characteristics in father's inheritance to have made so strong a
resemblance in his children by two different mothers--and I want so much
to find out if the resemblance is also psychological."
Charles Bush Hearn, Lafcadio's father, elected to enter the army, as his
father and grandfather had done before him. According to Hart's "Army
List" he joined the 45th Nottinghamshire Regiment of Foot as assistant
surgeon on April 15th, 1842. In the year 1846 he was sent on the Medical
Staff to Corfu. The revolutionary spirit which swept over Europe in 1849
infected the Ionian Islands as well as the mainland of Greece. At
Cephalonia they nominated a regent of their own nationality, and
strenuous efforts were made to shake off the yoke of the English
government. At the request of Viscount Seaton, the then governor,
additional troops were sent from England to restore order. When they
arrived, they, and the other regiments stationed at Corfu, were
quartered on the inhabitants of the various islands.
Oriental ideas on the subject of women still existed in this
half-Eastern region. Ladies hardly ever appeared at any of the
entertainments. If a dinner was given none but men were present. Many
stories were told of the expedients resorted to by English officers in
their endeavours to institute a closer intercourse with the female
portion of the population. Now that troops were quartered in their homes
this state of things was speedily changed. Young ladies were induced to
join their guests in riding, boating, and walking expeditions. Picnics
were instituted at which people got lost in the woods, and did not
return until the small hours of the morning, pleasure boats went ashore,
necessitating the rescue of lovely ladies from the danger of the deep;
the so-called "pleasure boats" being presumably some of the numerous
ferry boats that plied to and fro between the islands.
But in telling the love story of Charles Hearn and Rosa Tessima, there
is really no need to conjure up imaginary shipwrecks, or lost pathways.
Good-looking, clever, a smart officer, handling sword or guitar with
equal dexterity, singing an Irish or Italian love song with a melodious
tenor voice, Charles Hearn was gifted with all the qualifications for
the captivation of a young girl's fancy, and by all accounts he had
never allowed these qualifications to deteriorate for want of use.
Only the other day, I was looking over some old papers in an Irish
country house with a friend. Amongst them we came across a poem by
Charles Bush Hearn, written from Correagh, the Hearns' place in County
Westmeath, to a lady who at that time was very beautiful and an heiress.
A lock of hair was enclosed:--
"Dearest and nearest to my heart,
Thou art fairer than the silver moon,
And I trust to see thee soon."
There are quite half-a-dozen verses of the same quality ending up with
the following:--
"Adieu, sweet maid! my heart still bleeds with love
And evermore will beat for thee!!"
"Alas, I am no poet!" Lafcadio exclaims, half a century later. The power
of song was apparently not a gift his father had to bequeath.
Before going to Corfu the young officer had fallen in love with a
countrywoman of his own; means, however, were lacking on both sides, and
she was persuaded by relations to accept a richer suitor. While still
smarting under the pangs of disappointed love, lonely, heartsore, Rosa
Tessima crossed his path, and the fate of both was sealed. Where they
met we know not. The Tessimas were inhabitants of the Island of Cerigo,
but communication between the islands was frequent.
As to the stories, which subsequently drifted to relations in Ireland,
of the girl's brothers having attacked and stabbed Charles Hearn in
consequence of the injury done to their sister's reputation, it is more
than likely they are entirely legendary. The Ionian male had no exalted
opinion of women, and was not likely to resort to revenge for imaginary
wrongs. There may have been some difficulty with regard to her dowry, as
in those days the sons inherited the land and were obliged, when a
daughter left her paternal home, to bestow upon her the settlement she
was entitled to; this was sometimes accompanied by a considerable amount
of friction.
Lafcadio was born at Santa Maura, the modern name for the ancient
Leucadia of the Greeks. Charles Hearn, presumably, was transferred there
by some necessity in his profession as military surgeon. The island,
excepting Corfu, is the largest in the Sept-Insula. On the southern
extremity of the western portion of the coast is situated the rock
whence Sappho is supposed to have sought "the end of all life's ends."
Not far off stand the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. A few stones piled
together still mark the spot where ceremonies were celebrated at the
altar in honour of the sun-god. The groves of cypress and ilex that
clothe the slope were in days gone by supposed to be peopled by the
divinities of ancient Greece. A crystalline stream of water, bubbling
down the hillside by the temple wall, runs into a well, familiarly known
as the Fountain of Arethusa. Standing in the courtyard of the temple a
glimpse can be caught of the Island of Ithaca quivering in the luminous
haze, with the Gulf of Corinth and the Greek hills beyond.
Although he left the Ionian Islands in infancy, the idea of having been
born surrounded by associations of the ancient Hellenic world--the world
that represented for him the ideal of supreme artistic beauty--impressed
itself upon Hearn's imagination. Often, later, amidst the god-haunted
shrines and ancient groves and cemeteries of Japan, vague ancestral
dreams of the mystery of his birthplace in the distant Greek island with
its classic memories, stirred dimly within him. After seeing, for
instance, the ancient cemetery of Hamamura, in Izumo, he pictures a
dream of a woman, sitting in a temple court--his mother,
presumably--chanting a Celtic dirge, and a vague vision of the
celebrated Greek poetess who had wandered amidst the ilex-groves and
temples of the ancient Leucadia.... Awakening, he heard, in the night,
the moaning of the real sea--the muttering of the Tide of the Returning
Ghosts.
Towards the end of 1851, England agreed to relinquish her military
occupation of the greater portion of the Ionian Islands. The troops were
withdrawn, and Charles Hearn received orders to proceed with his
regiment from Corfu to the West Indies. With a want of foresight
typically Hibernian, he arranged that his wife and two-year-old son
should go to Dublin, to remain with his relations during the term of his
service in the West Indies. The trio proceeded together as far as Malta.
How long husband and wife stopped there, or if she remained after he had
left with his regiment, it is impossible to say.
Years afterwards, Lafcadio declared that he was almost certain of having
been in Malta as a child, and that he specially remembered the queer
things told him about the Old Palace, the knights and a story about a
monk, who, on the coming of the French had the presence of mind to paint
the gold chancel railings with green paint. Precocious the little boy
may have been, but it is scarcely possible that his brain could have
been retentive enough to bear all this in memory when but two years old.
He must have been told it later by his father, or read a description of
the island in some book of history or travels. From Malta Mrs. Hearn
proceeded to Paris, to stop with her husband's artist brother, Richard.
Charles Hearn had written to him beforehand, begging him to smooth the
way for his wife's arrival in Dublin. His brother "Dick"--indeed, all
his belongings--were devoted to good-looking, easy-going Charles, but it
was with many qualms and much hesitation that Richard undertook the task
entrusted to him.
Charles Hearn's mother and an unmarried aunt, Susan, lived in Dublin at
Gardner's Place. "Auntie Sue," as the spinster lady is always referred
to by the present generation of Hearns, was the possessor of a ready
pen. A novel of hers entitled "Felicia" is still extant in manuscript;
the melodramatic imagination, lack of construction, grammar and
punctuation, peculiar to the feminine amateur novelist of that day, are
very much in evidence. She also kept a diary recording the monotonous
routine usual to the life of a middle-aged spinster in the backwater of
social circles in Dublin; the arrival and departure of servants, the
interchange of visits with relations and friends; each day marked by a
text from the Gospels and Epistles.
Because of the political and religious animus existing between
Protestants and Papists in Ireland, orthodox circles were far more
prejudiced and bigoted than the narrowest provincial society in England.
All the Hearns belonging to the Westmeath branch of the family were
members of the Irish Protestant squirearchy, leaders of religious
movements, presiding with great vigour at church meetings and parochial
functions; it is easy, therefore, to understand the trepidation with
which they viewed the arrival of this foreign relation of theirs, a
Roman Catholic, who would consort with priests, and indulge in religious
observances hitherto anathema to thoroughgoing Protestants. Richard
Hearn, thoroughly appreciating all the difficulties of the situation,
thought it expedient, apparently, to leave his sister-in-law in
Liverpool and go on in front, to propitiate prejudices and mitigate
opinions.
On July 28th, 1852, we read in Susan Hearn's diary: "Dear Richard
arrived at 10 o'clock from Liverpool, and was obliged to return at 7
o'clock on Friday evening. We trust to see him again in the course of a
day or two, accompanied by Charles' wife and son. May Almighty God bless
and prosper the whole arrangement." Kindly, warm-hearted maiden lady!
Providence is not wont to prosper arrangements made in direct opposition
to all providential possibilities. On July 29th she writes: "A letter
from Charles, dated the 25th June from Grenada, West Indies! Dear,
beloved fellow! in perfect health, but in great anxiety until he hears
of his wife and son's arrival. I trust we shall have them soon with us."
Then on August 1st: "Richard returned at 7 this morning accompanied by
our beloved Charles' wife and child, and a nice young person as
attendant. Rosa we are all inclined to love, and her little son is an
interesting, darling child." The "nice young person" who came with Mrs.
Hearn, as attendant and interpreter, was an important factor in the
misunderstandings that arose between Rosa and her relations, and later,
in the troubles between husband and wife. Mrs. Hearn, unable to speak a
word of English, was influenced and prejudiced by meanings imparted to
perfectly harmless actions and statements.
Probably sensitive to sunlight, colour, and climate, as was her son,
having passed her life hitherto in a southern land amidst orange-groves
and vineyards, overlooking a sea blue as the sky overarching it, it is
easy to imagine the depressing influences to Rosa Hearn of finding
herself beneath an atmosphere heavy with smoke, and thick with fog, the
murky, sunless world of sordid streets, such as constitutes the major
portion of the capital of Ireland.
The description, given by those who are impartial judges, rather divests
Rosa of the poetical romance that her son has cast around her memory.
She was handsome, report says, with beautiful eyes, but ill-tempered and
unrestrained, sometimes even violent. Musical, but too indolent to
cultivate the gift, clever, but absolutely uneducated, she lived the
life of an oriental woman, lying all day long on a sofa, complaining of
the dulness of her surroundings, of the climate of Ireland, of the
impossibility of learning the language. To her children she was
capricious and tyrannical, at times administering rather severe
castigation.
When people fell short of the height to which he had raised them in
imagination, when he discovered that they had not all the qualities he
imagined them to possess, Lafcadio, as a rule, promptly cast them from
their high estate, and nothing was too bitter to say or think of them.
In his mother's case, before the searchlight of reality had time to
dissipate the illusion, she had passed from his ken forever.
When his own life was transformed by the birth of his first child, the
idea of maternal affection was deepened and expanded, and gradually
became connected with a belief in ancestral influences and transmission
of a "Karma" ruling human existence from generation to generation. He
then imagines the beauty of a mother's smile surviving the universe, the
sweetness of her voice echoing in worlds still uncreated, and the
eloquence of her faith animating prayers made to the gods of another
time, another heaven.
Years later he makes an eloquent appeal to his brother, asking him if he
does not remember the dark and beautiful face that used to bend over his
cradle, or the voice which told him each night to cross his fingers,
after the old Greek orthodox fashion, and utter the words, "In the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
When he saw his brother's photograph, his heart throbbed; for here, he
felt, was the unknown being in whom his mother's life was perpetuated,
with the same strange impulses, the same longings, the same resolves as
his own.
"My mother's face only I remember," he says in a letter to his sister,
Mrs. Atkinson, written from Kumamoto, "and I remember it for this
reason. One day it bent over me caressingly. It was delicate and dark,
with large black eyes--very large. A childish impulse came to me to slap
it. I slapped it--simply to see the result, perhaps. The result was
immediate severe castigation, and I remember both crying and feeling I
deserved what I got. I felt no resentment, although the aggressor in
such cases is usually the most indignant at consequences."
* * * * *
The only person with whom Mrs. Charles Hearn seems to have forgathered
amongst her Irish relations was a Mrs. Justin Brenane--"Sally Brenane,"
Charles Hearn's aunt, on the maternal side. She had married a Mr. Justin
Brenane--a Roman Catholic gentleman of considerable means--and had
adopted his religion with all the ardour of a convert. Poor, weak,
bigoted, kindly old soul! She and Mrs. Charles Hearn had the bond in
common of belonging to a religion antagonistic to the prejudices of the
people with whom their lot was cast; she also, at that time, was devoted
to her nephew Charles. Never having had a child of her own, she longed
for something young on which to lavish the warmth of her affection. The
delicate, eerie little black-haired boy, Patricio Lafcadio, became prime
favourite in the Brenane establishment at Rathmines, and the old lady
was immediately fired with the idea of having him educated at a Roman
Catholic school, and of making him heir to the ample fortune and
property in the County of Wexford left to her by her husband.
In the comfort and luxury of Mrs. Brenane's house, Mrs. Charles Hearn
found, for the first time since she had left the Ionian Islands,
something she could call a home. She enjoyed, too, in her indolent
fashion, driving in Mrs. Brenane's carriage, a large barouche, in which
the old lady "took an airing" every day, driving into Dublin when she
was at her house at Rathmines for shopping, or to the cathedral for
Mass. A curious group, the foreign-looking lady with the flashing eyes,
accompanied by her dark-haired, olive-complexioned small boy, garbed in
strange garments, with earrings in his ears, as different in appearance
as was possible to the rosy-cheeked, sturdy Irish "gossoons" who crowded
round, gaping and amused, to gaze at them.
Mrs. Brenane herself was a noteworthy figure, always dressed in
marvellous, quaintly-shaped, black silk gowns. Not a speck of dust was
allowed to touch these garments, a large holland sheet being invariably
laid on the seat of the carriage, and wrapped round her by the footman,
when she went for her daily drive.
* * * * *
In July and August, 1853, there are various entries in Susan Hearn's
diary, relating to her brother, Charles Hearn, in the West Indies.
Yellow fever had broken out and had appeared amongst the troops. Charles
had been ill, "a severe bilious attack and intermittent fever." Then, on
August 19th: "Letters from dearest Charles, dated July 28th, in great
hopes that he may be sent home with the invalids; so we may see him the
latter end of September, or the beginning of October." Then comes an
entry that he had "sailed with the other invalids for Southampton."
The prospect was all sunlight, not the veriest film of a cloud was
apparent to onlookers; yet the air was charged with the elements of
storm!
Charles Hearn was a man particularly susceptible to feminine grace and
charm. He found on his return a wife whose beauty had vanished, the
light washed out of her eyes by weeping, a figure grown fat and
unwieldy, lines furrowed on the beautiful face by discontent and
ill-humour; but, above all other determining causes for bringing about
the unhappiness of this ill-matched pair, Charles Hearn had heard by
chance, from a fellow-officer on the way home, that his first love, the
only woman to whom his wandering fancy had been constant, was free
again, and was living as a widow in Dublin.
What took place between husband and wife these fateful days can only be
surmised, but these significant entries occur in Susan Hearn's diary.
"October 8th, 1853. Beloved Charles arrived in perfect health, looking
well and happy; through the Great Mercy of Almighty God, my eyes once
more behold him." "Sunday, October 9th. Charles, his wife, and little
boy, dined with us in Gardner's Place, all well and happy. That night we
were plunged into deep affliction by the sudden and dangerous illness of
Rosa, Charles' wife. She still continues ill, but hopes are entertained
of her recovery." After this entry the diary breaks off abruptly, and we
are left to fill in details by family statements and hearsay.
An inherited predisposition to insanity probably ran in Rosa's veins. We
are told that, during her husband's absence in the West Indies, whilst
stopping at Rathmines with Mrs. Brenane, she had endeavoured to throw
herself out of the window when suffering from an attack of mania. Now,
whether in consequence of the passionate jealousy of her southern
nature, which for months had been worked upon by that "nice person,"
Miss Butcher, or whether the same predisposition broke out again, we
only know that the restraining link of self-control, that keeps people
on the right side of the "thin partition," gave way. Gloomy fits of
silence and depression were succeeded by scenes of such violence that
the poor creature had ultimately to be put under restraint. The attack
was apparently temporary. Daniel James, her second son, was born a year
later in Dublin, after the departure of her husband for the Crimea.
Charles Hearn was undoubtedly a most gallant soldier; he fought at the
battles of Alma and Inkermann, through the siege of Sevastopol, and
returned in March, 1855. After this his regiment was stationed for some
little time at the Curragh. Years afterwards Lafcadio described the
scarlet-coated, gold-laced officers who frequented the house at this
time, and remembered creeping about as a child amongst their spurred
feet under the dinner-table.
[Illustration: Major Charles Bush Hearn (Hearn's Father).]
It is extremely difficult to make out how much the little fellow knew,
or did not know, of the various tragic circumstances that darkened these
years--the unhappiness that at last led to the separation of his father
and mother; and the cloud that at various periods overshadowed his
mother's brain.
In the series of letters written to his half-sister, Mrs. Atkinson,
which, unfortunately, we are not permitted to give in their entirety,
strange lights are cast on the course of events. "I only once," he says,
"remember seeing my brother as a child. Father had brought me some tin
soldiers, and cannon to fire peas. While I was arranging them in order
for battle, and preparing to crush them with artillery, a little boy
with big eyes was introduced to me as my brother. Concerning the fact of
brotherhood, I was totally indifferent--especially for the reason that
he seized some of my soldiers, and ran away with them immediately. I
followed him; I wrenched the soldiers from him; I beat him and threw him
downstairs; it was quite easy, because he was four years my junior. What
afterwards happened I do not know. I have a confused idea that I was
scolded and punished. But I never saw my brother again."
The following reminiscence requires little comment:--
"I was walking in Dublin with my father. He never laughed, so I was
afraid of him. He bought me cakes. It was a day of sun, with rain clouds
above the roofs, but no rain. I was in petticoats. We walked a long way.
Father stopped at a flight of stone steps before a tall house, and
knocked the knocker, I think. Inside, at the foot of a staircase a lady
came to meet us. She seemed to me tall--but a child cannot judge stature
well except by comparison. What I distinctly remember is that she seemed
to me lovely beyond anything I had ever seen before. She stooped down
and kissed me: I think I can feel the touch of her hand still. Then I
found myself in possession of a toy gun and a picture book she had given
me. On the way home, father bought me some plum cakes, and told me never
to say anything to 'auntie' about our visit. I can't remember whether I
told or not. But 'auntie' found it out. She was so angry that I was
frightened. She confiscated the gun and the picture book, in which I
remember there was a picture of David killing Goliath. Auntie did not
tell me why she was angry for more than ten years after."
The tall lovely lady was Mrs. Crawford, destined later to be Lafcadio's
stepmother. By her first husband she had two daughters. The Hearn and
Crawford children used apparently to meet and play together at this time
in Dublin.
Mrs. Weatherall, one of these daughters, tells me that a more uncanny,
odd-looking little creature than Patricio Lafcadio it would be difficult
to imagine. When first she saw him he was about five years of age. Long,
lanky black hair hung on either side of his face, and his prominent,
myopic eyes gave him a sort of dreamy, absent look. In his arms he
tightly clasped a doll, as if terrified that someone might take it from
him.
"Tell Mrs. Weatherall I cannot remember the pleasant things she tells
of--the one day's happy play with a little girl," he writes from Japan
to Mrs. Atkinson. "I remember a little girl, but it can't have been the
same. I went into the garden. The little girl stood with one hand on her
hips, and said: 'I think I am stronger than you. Can you run?' I said
angrily 'Yes.' 'Let us run a race,' she said. We ran. I was badly
beaten. Then she laughed, and I was red with shame, for I felt my face
hot. 'I am certainly stronger than you,' she said; 'now shall we
wrestle?' I resisted rudely. But in spite of my anger she threw me down
easily. 'Ah!' she said:--'now you must do what I tell you.' She tied my
hands behind me, and led me into the house to a cage where there was a
large parrot. My hair was long. She made the parrot seize my hair. When
I tried to get away from the cage, the parrot pulled savagely. Then I
cried, and the little girl sat down on the ground in her silk dress, and
rolled with laughter. Then she called her mother to see. I hoped her
mother would scold her and free me. But the mother also laughed, and
went away again, leaving me there. I never saw that little girl again. I
think, though, that her name was Jukes. She seemed to me to feel like a
grown-up person. I was afraid of her, and disliked her because she was
cleverer than me, and treated me like a little dog. But _how_ I would
love to see her now. I suppose she is the mother of men to-day--great
huge men, perhaps generals, certainly colonels.
"At all events, tell Mrs. W. that I wish, ever so much, she were a
little girl again and I a little boy, and that we could play together
like then, in the day I can't remember. Ask her if the sun was not then
much larger, and the sky much bluer, and the moon more wonderful than
now. I rather think I should like to see her."
Poor Lafcadio! What pathos there is in the question "Ask her if the sun
was not then much larger, and the sky much bluer, and the moon more
wonderful than now." Those were the days before the loss of his eye at
Ushaw College had maimed his visual powers, and transformed his life.
In his delightful impressionist description of a journey made from
Nagasaki to Kumamoto, along the shores of the Inland Sea, the same idea
is repeated. As mile after mile he rolled along the shore in his kuruma,
the elusive fragrance of a most dear memory returned to him, of a
magical time and place "in which the sun and the moon were larger, and
the sky much more blue and nearer to the world," and he recalls the love
that he had cherished for one whom he does not name, but who I know to
be his aunt, Mrs. Elwood, who "softly ruled his world and thought only
of ways to make him happy." Mrs. Elwood was an elder sister of Charles
Hearn, married to Frank Elwood, owner of a beautiful place, situated on
Lough Corrib in the County Mayo. She was a most delightful and clever
person, beloved by her children and all her family connections,
especially by her aunt, Mrs. Brenane, who was often in the habit of
stopping at the Elwoods' place with her adopted son. We can imagine her
telling the little fellow stories, in the "great hush of the light
before moonrise," and then crooning a weird little song to put him to
sleep. "At last there came a parting day, and she wept and told me of a
charm she had given which I must never, never lose, because it would
keep me young and give me power to return. But I never returned. And the
years went; and one day I knew that I had lost the charm, and had become
ridiculously old."[1]
[1] "Out of the East," Gay & Hancock.
"The last time I saw father was at Tramore," he tells his half-sister,
when retailing further his childish memories; "he had asked leave to see
me. We took a walk by the sea. It was a very hot day; and father had
become bald then; and when he took off his hat I saw that the top of his
head was all covered with little drops of water. He said: 'She is very
angry; she will never forgive me.' 'She' was Auntie. I never saw him
again.
"I have distinct remembrances of my uncle Richard; I remember his big
beard, and a boxwood top he gave me. Auntie was prejudiced against him
by some tale told her about his life in Paris."
* * * * *
The year after his return from the Crimea, Charles and Rosa Hearn's
luckless union was dissolved by mutual consent. Gossip says that after
her departure she married the lawyer (a Jew) who had protected her
interests when she severed her connexion with Ireland; but we have no
proof of this, neither have we proof of the statement made by some
members of the Hearn family, that she returned a year or so later to see
her children but was prevented from doing so. From what we know of Rosa
Hearn, it is far more probable that, in the sunshine amidst the
vineyards and orange-groves of her own southern land, the gloom and
misery of those five years in Dublin was sponged completely from the
tablets of her memory.
After the closing of the chapter of his first unhappy marriage, Charles
Hearn married the lady he had been attached to before he met Rosa
Tessima. At the Registration Office in Stephen's Green, Dublin, the
record may be seen entered of the marriage, in 1857, of Surgeon-Major
Charles Bush Hearn, to Alicia (Posy), widow of George John Crawford.
Immediately afterwards, accompanied by his wife, Charles Hearn proceeded
with his regiment to India. His eldest boy he entrusted to the care of
Mrs. Justin Brenane, who promised to leave him her money, on condition
that she was allowed to bring him up in the Roman Catholic faith.
Neither Mrs. Brenane nor Charles Hearn reckoned with the spirit that was
housed in the boy's frail body, nor the fiery independence of mind that
made him cast off all ecclesiastical rule and declare himself, as a boy
at college, a Pantheist and Free Thinker, thus playing into the hands of
those who for purposes of their own sought to alienate him from his
grand-aunt.
Daniel James, the second boy, was ultimately sent to his Uncle Richard
in Paris.
Of his father, Lafcadio retained but a faint memory. In an article
written upon Lafcadio after his death, Mr. Tunison, his Cincinnati
friend, says he used often to refer to a "blonde lady," who had wrecked
his childhood, and been the means of separating him from his mother. His
father used to write to him from India, he tells Mrs. Atkinson,
"printing every letter with the pen, so that I could read it. I remember
he told me something about a tiger getting into his room. I never wrote
to him, I think Auntie used to say something like this: 'I do not forbid
you to write to your father, child,' but she did not look as though she
wished me to, and I was lazy."
Lafcadio and his father never met again, for on November 21st, 1866, on
his return journey to England, Surgeon-Major Charles Bush Hearn died of
Indian fever, on board the English steamship _Mula_ at Suez, thus ending
a distinguished career, and a military service of twenty-four years.
With the separation of his parents, Lafcadio's childhood came to an end.
We now have to follow the development of this strange, undisciplined
nature, through boyhood into manhood, and ultimately to fame,
remembering always that henceforth he was unprotected by a father's
advice or care, unsoothed by a mother's tenderness--that tenderness
generally most freely bestowed on those least likely to conquer in the
arena of life.