BOYHOOD
"You speak about that feeling of fulness of the heart with
which we look at a thing--half-angered by inability to
analyse within ourselves the delight of the vision. I think
the feeling is unanalysable, simply because, as Kipling says,
'the doors have been shut behind us.' The pleasure you felt
in looking at that tree, was it only your pleasure, no,--many
who would have loved you, were looking through you and
remembering happier things. The different ways in which
different places and things thus make appeal would be partly
explained;--the supreme charm referring to reminiscences
reaching through the longest chain of life, and the highest.
But no pleasure of this sort can have so ghostly a sweetness
as that which belongs to the charm of an ancestral home. Then
how much dead love lives again, how many ecstasies of the
childhoods of a hundred years must revive!"
Most of Lafcadio's life while with Mrs. Brenane seems to have been
passed in Dublin, at her house, 73, Upper Leeson Street; at Tramore, a
seaside place on the coast of Waterford in Ireland; at Linkfield Place,
Redhill, Surrey, a house belonging to Henry Molyneux, a Roman Catholic
friend of Mrs. Brenane's--destined to play a considerable part in the
boy's life--and in visiting about among Mrs. Brenane's relatives, whose
name was legion.
Mrs. Brenane, when left a widow, lived occasionally in a small house,
Kiltrea, situated on the Brenane property, near Enniscorthy. We have
records of Charles Hearn, Mrs. Brenane's favourite nephew, and his
sister, Miss Hearn, visiting her there, but can nowhere hear of Lafcadio
stopping in Wexford. In 1866, the old lady lost her money, and Kiltrea
was let to a Mr. Cookman, whose son lives there now.
Mrs. Wetmore, in her sketch of Hearn's life, states that he "seems to
have been removed about his seventh year to Wales, and from
thenceforward only to have visited Ireland occasionally." This erroneous
idea--common to most of Hearn's biographers--has originated from Hearn
himself. He later makes allusions to journeyings in England and Wales,
but never mentions Ireland. This is typical of his sensitive, capricious
genius. Ireland was connected with unpleasant memories; he therefore
preferred to transplant his imaginings to a more congenial atmosphere.
Besides which, in his later years, he was fascinated by the descriptions
of Welsh scenery given in Borrow's "Wild Wales," and De Quincey's
"Wanderings in Wales."
Interpolated between a story of grim Japanese goblinry, and a delightful
dream of the fairyland of Horai, in "Kwaidan,"[2] one of Hearn's last
books, there is a sketch called "Hi-Mawari" (Sunflower), the scene of
which is undoubtedly laid in Ireland, at the Elwoods' place; and "the
dearest and fairest being in his little world," alluded to here, and in
his "Dream of a Summer's Day," is his aunt, Mrs. Elwood. Beautiful as
any Welsh hills are the Connemara Peaks, faintly limned against the
forget-me-not Irish sky. But Lafcadio eliminates Ireland from his
memory, and calls them "Welsh hills."
[2] The publishers of "Kwaidan" are Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The "Robert" mentioned in the sketch was his cousin, Robert Elwood, who
ultimately entered the navy, and was drowned off the coast of China,
when endeavouring to save a comrade, who had fallen overboard. Hence the
allusion at the end of the essay ... "all that existed of the real
Robert must long ago have suffered a sea change into something rich and
strange." "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for a friend."
The old harper, "the swarthy, unkempt vagabond, with bold black eyes,
under scowling brows," was Dan Fitzpatrick of Cong, a well-known
character in the County Mayo. One of his stock songs was "Believe me, if
all those endearing young charms." A daughter of his, who accompanied
her father on his tramps and collected the money contributed by the
audience, was, a few years ago, still living in the village of Cong.
Forty-six years later, noticing a sunflower near the Japanese village of
Takata, memories of the Irish August day came back to him, the pungent
resinous scent of the fir-trees, the lawn sloping down to Lough Corrib,
his cousin Robert standing beside him while they watched the harper
place his harp upon the doorstep, and troll forth--
"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day ..."
The only person he had ever heard sing these words before was she who
was enshrined in the inmost sanctuary of his childish heart. All Charles
Hearn's sisters were musical; but above all Mrs. Elwood was famous for
her singing of Moore's melodies. The little fellow was indignant that a
coarse man should dare to sing the same words; but, with the utterance
of the syllables "to-day," the corduroy-clad harper's voice broke
suddenly into pathetic tenderness, and the house, and lawn, and
everything surrounding the boy, trembled and swam in the tears that rose
to his eyes.
In a letter to his half-sister, written probably November, 1891, he thus
alludes to the Elwoods: "I remember a cousin, Frank Elwood, ensign in
the army. I disliked him, because he used to pinch me when I was a
child. He was a handsome fellow, I liked to see him in his uniform. I
forget when I saw my cousin, Robert Elwood, last. I might have been
eight or nine years old--I might have been twelve. And that's all."
It was customary, in the middle of last century, for Irish people, who
could afford it, to cross St. George's Channel for their summer holiday.
Mrs. Brenane, his grand-aunt, passed several summers at Bangor. These
visits seemed to have been some of the happiest periods in Lafcadio's
life. He was then the adopted child of a rich old lady, pampered,
spoilt, and made much of by all the members of her circle. Carnarvon
Castle was a favourite resort; there Lafcadio had his first experience
of the artistic productions of the Far East.
One season he was sent with his nurse to reside in the cottage of a
sea-captain, whose usual "run" had been to China and Japan. Piled up in
every corner of the little house were eastern grotesqueries, ancient
gods, bronze images, china animals. We can imagine the ghostly influence
these weird curiosities would exercise over the sensitive brain of a
lonely little boy. Years after, writing to Krehbiel, he gives a vivid
description of a Chinese gong that hung on an old-fashioned stand in the
midst of the heterogeneous collection. When tapped with a leather
beater, it sobbed, like waves upon a low beach ... and with each tap the
roar grew deeper and deeper, till it seemed like an abyss in the
Cordillera, or a crashing of Thor's chariot wheels.
By his own showing, Lafcadio must have been a most difficult boy to
manage. He tells his half-sister, should any thought come to her that it
would have been better that they could have grown up together, she ought
to dismiss it at once as mere vexation of spirit. "We were too much
alike as little ones to have loved each other properly; and I was,
moreover, what you were not, wilful beyond all reason, and an
incarnation of the spirit of contrariness. We should have had the same
feelings in other respects; but they would have made us fall out, except
when we would have united against a common oppressor. Character is
finally shaped only by struggle, I fancy; and assuredly one can only
learn the worth of love and goodness by a large experience of their
opposites. I think I have been tolerably well ripened by the frosts of
life, and that I should be a good brother now. I should not have been so
as a child; I was a perfect imp."
Hearn's widow, Mrs. Koizumi, told us that often when watching his
children at play he would amuse them with anecdotes of what he himself
was as a child. Apparently, from his earliest days, he was given to
taking violent likes and dislikes, always full of whims and wild
imaginings, up to any kind of prank, with a genius for mischief--traps
arranged with ink-bottles above doors so that when the door was opened,
the ink-bottle would fall. One lady, apparently, was the object he
selected for playing off most of his practical jokes. "She was a
hypocrite and I could not bear her. When she tapped my head gently, and
said 'Oh, you dear little fellow,' I used to call at her, 'Osekimono'
(flatterer) and run away and hide myself."
He hated meat, but his grand-aunt would insist on his eating it; when
she wasn't looking he would hide it away in the cupboard, where, days
after, she would discover it half-rotten.
Surely it was the irony of fate that gave such a creature of fire and
touchwood, with quivering nerves and abnormal imagination, into the
charge of an injudicious, narrow-minded, bigoted person, such as Sally
Brenane; and yet she was very fond of him, and he of her. At Tramore, an
old family servant said that he used to "follow her about like a
lap-dog."
But it was Mrs. Brenane's maid, his nurse as well, Kate Mythen, who was
one of the principal influences in his life, in these days at Tramore,
and Redhill, before he went to Ushaw. To Kate's care he was, to a great
extent, committed. As Robert Louis Stevenson used to make Allison
Cunningham, or "Cummie," the confidante of his childish woes, and joys,
and imaginings, so Lafcadio Hearn communicated to Kate Mythen all that
was in his strange little heart and imaginative brain. But "Cummie" was
staunch, with the old Scotch Covenanter staunchness. The last book
Stevenson wrote was sent to her with "the love of her boy." After he
left Ushaw, Lafcadio Hearn never saw Kate Mythen and held no communion
with her of any kind. She must have known of the banishment of the boy,
of the alienation of his adopted mother's affections, of the
transference of his inheritance to others, yet she died in Mrs.
Molyneux's house at Tramore in 1903, only a year before her nursling,
whose name then had become so famous; to her it was tainted and defiled,
for had he not cast off the rule of Holy Mother Church, and declared
himself a Buddhist and a pagan? Such is the power of priest and religion
over the Celtic mind.
Hearn's references to the nameless terror of dreams, to which he was a
prey in his childhood, especially as set forth in a sketch entitled
"Nightmare Touch," reveals the sufferings of a creature highly strung
and sensitive to the point almost of lunacy.
He was condemned, when about five years of age, it seems, to sleep by
himself in a lonely room. His foolish old grand-aunt, who had never had
children of her own and could not therefore enter into his sufferings,
ordained that no light should be left in his room at night. If he cried
with terror he was whipped. But in spite of the whippings, he could not
forbear to talk about what he heard on creaking stairways and saw behind
the folds of curtains. Though harshly treated at school, he was happier
there than at home, because he was not condemned to sleep alone, and the
greater part of his day was spent with "living human beings" and not
"ghosts."
The most interesting portion of Dr. Gould's book, "Concerning Lafcadio
Hearn," is that which treats of Hearn's eyesight. As an oculist, he
maintains that Hearn must have suffered from congenital eyestrain,
brought on by pronounced myopia from his earliest childhood, long before
the accident at Ushaw.
The description that Hearn gives somewhere of the "sombre yellowish
glow, suffusing the dark, making objects dimly visible, while the
ceiling remained pitch black, as if the air were changing colour from
beneath," is a phenomenon familiar to all who have suffered from
eyestrain.
After Hearn's death, in a drawer of his library at Tokyo half-a-dozen
envelopes were found, each containing a sketch neatly written in his
small legible handwriting. He apparently had intended to construct a
book of childish reminiscences after the manner of Pierre Loti's "Livre
de la Pitie et a de la Mort." These sketches throw many sidelights on
his early years, but, except the one named "Idolatry" they are not up to
the level of his usual work. The material is too scanty, events seen
through the haze of memory are thrown out of focus, unimportant
incidents made too important.
"Only with much effort," he writes to Mrs. Atkinson, "can I recall
scattered memories of my boyhood. It seems as if a much more artificial
self were constantly trying to speak instead of the self that is in
me--thus producing obvious incongruities."
"My Guardian Angel" relates the sufferings inflicted on his childish
mind by a certain cousin Jane--apparently one of the Molyneux clan, a
convert to the Roman Catholic church, who made the little fellow
intensely unhappy by telling him that he would burn for ever in Hell
fire if he did not believe in God.
When she left in the spring he hoped she might die. He was haunted by
fears of her vengeance during her absence, and when she returned later,
dying of consumption, he could not bear to be near to her. She left him
a bequest of books, of which he hardly appreciated the value then. It
included a full set of the "Waverley Novels," the works of Miss
Edgworth, Martin's "Milton," Pope's "Iliad and Odyssey," some quaint
translations of the "Arabian Nights," and Locke's essay on "The Human
Understanding." Curiously enough, there was not a single theological
book in the collection. His cousin Jane's literary tastes were
apparently uninfluenced by her religious views.
In 1859, Henry Molyneux was living at Linkfield Lodge, Linkfield Lane,
Redhill. The Redhill of to-day, with its acres of bricks and mortar, its
smart shops, its imposing Town Hall, and Protestant and Roman Catholic
churches, is a very different place from the straggling village that it
was in those days. The few gentlemen's houses were occupied by business
men, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway being the first in
England to run fast morning and evening trains for the convenience of
those who wanted to come and go daily to London.
Mrs. Brenane seems to have been in the habit of going over periodically
to Redhill from Ireland to stop with Molyneux and his wife. She had, at
various times, invested most of her fortune left to her by her husband
in Molyneux's business, a depot for oriental goods in Watling Street.
When Henry Molyneux became bankrupt--we see his name assigned by the
Court in the London List of Bankrupts for 1866--the house at Redhill was
given up, and he and his wife, accompanied by Mrs. Brenane, settled
permanently at Tramore, and there, apparently, when he was allowed to
leave college, Lafcadio spent his vacations. His grand-aunt by that time
had become a permanent inmate of the Molyneux establishment.
Before I had seen the Atkinson letters, I wondered how much Hearn knew
of the influences brought to bear on his life at this time. In the
second Atkinson letter he openly reveals his entire knowledge of the
incidents that appear to have deprived him of his inheritance.
Jesuits, he thought, managed the Molyneux introduction--but was not
sure. "It was brought about by the Molyneuxs claiming to be relatives of
Aunty's dead husband." (Here, Lafcadio was mistaken, for Molyneux, on
the contrary, declared himself to be connected with the Hearns and
called himself Henry Hearn Molyneux.) "Aunty adored that husband," he
goes on, "she was all her life troubled about one thing. When he was
dying he had said to her: 'Sally, you know what to do with the
property?' She tried to question him more, but he was already beyond the
reach of questions. Now the worry of her whole life was to know just
what those words meant. The priests persuaded her they meant that she
was to take care the property remained in Catholic hands, in the hands
of the relatives of her husband. She hesitated a long time; was
suspicious. Then the Molyneux people fascinated her. Henry had been
brought up by the Jesuits. He had been educated for commerce, spoke four
or five languages fluently. He soon became omnipotent in the house. Aunt
told me she was going to help him for her husband's sake. The help was
soon given in a very substantial way, by settling five hundred a year on
the young lady he was engaged to marry.... Mr. Henry next succeeded in
having himself declared heir in Aunty's will; I to be provided for by an
annuity of (I think, but am not sure) L500. 'Henry,' who had 'made
himself the darling,' was not satisfied. He desired to get the property
into his hands during Aunty's life. This he was able to do to his own,
as well as Aunty's, ruin. He failed in London. The estate was put into
the hands of receivers. I was withdrawn from college, and afterwards
sent to America, to some of Henry's friends. I had some help from them
in the shape of five dollars per week for a few months. Then I was told
to go to the devil and take care of myself. I did both. Aunty died soon
after. Henry Molyneux wrote me a letter, saying that there were many
things to be sent me, etc., he also said he had been made sole Executor,
but told me nothing about the Will. (If you ever have a chance to find
out about it, please do.) I wrote him a letter which probably troubled
his digestion, as he never was heard of more by me.... There was a
daughter, however, quite attractive. 'My first love'--at fourteen. I
used to write her foolish letters, and wore a lock of her hair for a
year or two....
"Well,--there is enough reminiscences for once. If you wish for any
more, little sister mine, I'll chatter another time. To-day, under
pressure of work, I have to say good-bye.
"Lovingly ever,
"LAFCADIO HEARN."
In another letter, he says, "I know Aunt Brenane made a Will; for she
told me so in Dublin, when living at 73, Upper Leeson Street; and I used
to go to an aged Lawyer with her, but I can't remember his name. I don't
think the matter is very important after all; but it might, if
accurately known, give revelation about some other matters."