WIDER HORIZONS
"There are no more mysteries--except what are called hearts,
those points at which individuals rarely touch each other,
only to feel as sudden a thrill of surprise as at meeting a
ghost, and then to wonder in vain, for the rest of life, what
lies out of soul-sight."[13]
[13] "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The doctor Hearn alludes to in his letter to his sister was Rudolf
Matas, a Spaniard, now an eminent physician and a very important person
in New Orleans. He did not fail the little man who was brought almost
stone blind to his consulting-room that winter of 1876. In six months
his eyes were comparatively well, and he was able to return to regular
literary work.
Matas always remained Hearn's firm partisan, and was an enthusiastic
admirer of his genius; Hearn seems to have reciprocated his affection,
and years afterwards addressed some of his most interesting letters from
Martinique to his "dear brother and friend Rudolfo Matas." By him he is
said to have been told the incidents in the story of "Chita," and to him
the book was dedicated.
* * * * *
After the yellow fever had passed away "there were plenty of vacancies
waiting to be filled," Hearn significantly tells his sister....
A daily newspaper called the _Item_ was at that time issued in New
Orleans. A great deal of clipping and paste-pot went to its production,
"items" taken from European and American sources filling most of its
columns. Hearn described it as a poor little sheet going no farther
north than St. Louis.
He was offered the assistant-editorship; the leisure that he found for
literary pursuits on his own account more than compensated for the
smallness of the salary. He hoped now to be able to scribble as much as
he liked, and to have an opportunity for reading, with a view to more
consecutive and concentrated work than mere contributions to daily and
weekly newspapers. He also had many opportunities, he said, for mixing
with strange characters, invaluable as literary material--Creoles,
Spaniards, Mexicans--all that curious, heterogeneous society peculiar to
New Orleans.
If in Cincinnati to mix with coloured folk was deemed sufficient to
place yourself under the ban of decent society, it was ten times more so
in New Orleans; but Lafcadio Hearn, Bohemian and rebel, took the keenest
pleasure in outraging public opinion, and challenging scandalous
tongues, breaking out of bounds whenever the spirit prompted, and
throwing in his lot with people who were looked upon as pariahs and
outcasts from the world of so-called respectability.
At one time he took up his abode in a ruined house, under the same roof
as a Creole fortune-teller. He describes her room with its darkened
windows, skulls and crossbones, and lamp lit in front of a mysterious
shrine. This was quite sufficient to associate his name with hers, and
many were the unfounded rumours--Nemesis of the unfortunate episode with
Althea Foley at Cincinnati--which floated northwards regarding the
manner of his life.
Some members of a Brahminical Society visited New Orleans about this
time. Needless to say that Hearn immediately foregathered with them, and
in leisure hours took to studying the theories of the East, the poetry
of ancient India, the teachings of the wise concerning "absorption and
emotion, the illusions of existence, and happiness as the equivalent of
annihilation," maintaining that Buddhism was wiser than the wisest of
occidental faiths. He astonished the readers of the _Item_ by weird and
mystical articles on the subject of the Orient and oriental creeds,
considerably increasing the sale of the little paper, and drawing
attention, amongst cultured circles in New Orleans, to his own genius.
The routine of his life at this time is given in letters written to his
"old Dad" and his friend, Krehbiel.
The same ascetic scorn for material comfort, heritage of his oriental
ancestry, seems to have distinguished him at this period in New Orleans,
as later in Japan. The early cup of coffee, the morning's work at the
office, "concocting devilment" for the _Item_, his Spanish lessons with
Jose de Jesus y Preciado, the "peripatetic blasphemy," as he named him
afterwards, dinner at a Chinese restaurant for an infinitesimal sum, an
hour or two spent at second-hand book-stalls, and home to bed. There is,
I am told, an individual, Armand Hawkins by name, owner of an ancient
book-store at New Orleans, still alive, who remembers the curious little
genius, with his prominent eyes, wonderful knowledge on all sorts of
out-of-the-way subjects recounted in a soft, musical voice, who used to
come almost daily to visit his book-store. He it was who enabled Hearn
to get together the library about which there has been so much
discussion since his death. Next to his love of buying old books,
Hearn's great indulgence seems to have been smoking, not cigars, but
pipes of every make and description.
The glimpses we get of him from his own letters and from reminiscences
collected from various people in New Orleans all give the same
impression. A Bohemian love of vagabondage, picking up impressions here
and there, some of which were set down in pencil, some in ink; as far as
his eyesight would permit, many were the sketches made at this time.
None of them have been preserved, except the very clever Mephistophelian
one sent to Mr. Watkin and reproduced in the volume entitled "Letters
from the Raven." "He was a gifted creature," says a lady who knew him at
this time. "He came fluttering in and out of our house like a shy moth,
and was adored by my children."
He had no ambitions, no loves, no anxieties, sometimes a vague unrest
without a motive, sometimes a feeling as if his heart were winged and
trying to soar; sometimes a half-crazy passion for a great night with
wine and women and music; but the wandering passion was strongest of
all, and he felt no inclination to avail himself of the only anchor
which keeps the ship of a man's life in port.... Nights were so liquid
with tropic moonlight, days so splendid with green and gold, summer so
languid with perfume and warmth, that he hardly knew whether he was
dreaming or awake.
In 1881, Hearn succeeded in becoming a member of the staff of the
leading New Orleans paper, the _Times Democrat_, "the largest paper," he
tells his sister, "in the Southern States." He now seemed to have
entered on a halcyon period of life--congenial society, romantic and
interesting surroundings. Penetrated with enthusiasm for the modern
French literary school as he was, he here met intellects and
temperaments akin to his own. Now he was enabled to get his translations
from Gautier and Baudelaire printed, and read for the first time by an
appreciative public. "Everybody was kind," he tells his sister; "I
became well and strong, lived steadily, spent my salary on books. I was
thus able to make up for my deficiencies of education.... I had only a
few hours of work each day;--plenty of time to study. I wrote novels and
other books which literary circles approved of."
With Page Baker, the owner and editor-in-chief of the _Times Democrat_,
he formed a salutary and enduring friendship. The very difference in
character between the two seems to have made the bond all the more
enduring. Page Baker was a man of great business capacity, and at the
same time keen discrimination in literary affairs. From the first he
conceived the highest opinion of Hearn's literary ability. However
fantastic or out-of-the-way his contributions to the columns of the
_Times Democrat_, they were always inserted without elision. Years
afterwards, writing to him from Japan, Hearn declares, in answer to a
panegyric written by Page Baker on some of his Japanese books, that the
most delightful criticisms he ever had were Page Baker's own readings
aloud of his vagaries in the "_T. D._" office, after the proofs came
down, just fresh from the composition room, with the wet, sharp, inky
smell still on the paper. Baker, apparently, in 1893 sent him
substantial help, and Hearn writes thanking him from the bottom of his
much-scarified heart. Often amidst the cramped, austere conditions of
his existence in Japan, he recalled these days of communion with
congenial spirits at New Orleans, and work with his colleagues at the
_Times Democrat_ office. "Ghosts! After getting your letter last night I
dreamed. Do you remember that splendid Creole who used to be your city
editor--John----?--is it not a sin that I have forgotten his name? He
sat in a big chair in the old office, and told me wonderful things,
which I could not recall on waking."
In a letter dated July 7, 1882, Hearn tells Mr. Watkin that he had
entered into an arrangement with Worthington, the publisher, for the
issuing of his translation of Gautier's stories made at Cincinnati. It
was to cost him one hundred and fifty dollars, but there was an
understanding that this money was to be repaid by royalties on the sale
of the book and any extra profits. He announced his intention of going
North in a few months by way of Cincinnati, as he wished to see
Worthington about his new publication. Though he was making, he said,
the respectable wage of thirty dollars a week for five hours' work a
day, he felt enervated by the climate, incapable of any long stretch of
work, and thought change to a northern climate for a bit might stimulate
his intellectual powers. He then touched on the changes that passing
years had wrought in his outlook on life. "Less despondent, but less
hopeful; wiser a little and more silent; less nervous, but less merry;
... not strictly economical, but coming to it steadily." His horizons
were widening, the accomplishment of a fixed purpose in life was really
the only pleasurable experience, and the grasp of a friendly hand the
only real satisfaction of an existence that wisdom declared a delusion
and a snare.
Hearn at times indulged in exaggerated fits of economy, the one thought
that animated him being the idea of freeing himself from the yoke of
dependence on the whims of employers--from the harness of journalism. He
made up his mind to keep house for himself, so hired a room in the
northern end of the French quarter, and purchased a complete set of
cooking utensils and kitchen ware. He succeeded in reducing his expenses
to two dollars a week, and kept them at that (exclusive of rent),
although his salary rose to thirty dollars a week. Having saved a
respectable sum, he formed the fantastical idea of trying to keep a
restaurant, run on the lines of the cheap Spanish and Chinese
restaurants he had been wont to frequent. "Business--ye Antiquities";
hard, practical business! he told Krehbiel; honourable, respectable
business, but devoid of dreamful illusions. "Alas, this is no world for
dreaming."
The venture ended as might have been expected. Hearn had not inherited
the commercial instincts of his ancestors who sold oil and wine in the
Ionian Islands; his partner robbed him of all the money he had invested,
and decamped, leaving him saddled with the restaurant and a considerable
number of debts. A swindling building society seems to have absorbed the
rest of his savings.
After these two catastrophes the little man became almost comically
terrified at financial enterprise of any kind, even the investment of
money in dividend-paying concerns. When Captain Mitchell McDonald later,
in Japan, endeavoured to induce him to put his money into various
lucrative concerns, Hearn declared that he would prefer to lose
everything he owned than submit to the worry of investing it. The mere
idea of business was "a horror, a nightmare, a torture unspeakable."
Though apparently only journalising and translating, Hearn was piling up
experiences and sensations, not making use of them except in letters,
but laying down the concrete and setting the foundation for his work in
the West Indies and Japan. "The days come and go like muffled and veiled
figures sent from a friendly, distant party; but they say nothing, and
if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them silently away."
Emerson did not take into account those apparently infertile periods in
an artist's life, when the days come and go, but though they pass
silently away, all their gifts are not unused, nor is their passage
unproductive. How invaluable, for instance, was Hearn's study of Creole
proverbs for his "Two Years in the French West Indies." How invaluable
for his interpretation of the Orient were the studies he undertook for
"Strange Leaves from Strange Literature," and his six small adaptations
entitled "Chinese Ghosts."
After several refusals "Stray Leaves" was accepted for publication by
Osgood. He thus announced the fact to his friend Krehbiel:--
"DEAR K. (Private),
"'Stray Leaves,' etc., have been accepted by James R. Osgood and Co.
Congratulate your little Dreamer of Monstrous Dreams,
"Aschadnan na Mahomet Rasoul Allah,
"Bismillah,
"Allah-hu-akbar."
The book was dedicated to "Page M. Baker, Editor of the New Orleans
_Times Democrat_."
This series of small sketches is typical of the clarity of language and
purity of thought that invariably distinguish Hearn's work; but it lacks
the realism, the keenness of _choses vues_, so characteristic of his
Japanese sketches. There is none of the haunting, moving tragedy and
ghostliness, the spiritual imagination and introspection of "Kokoro" or
the "Exotics." Though polished and scholarly, showing refinement in the
use of words, the interest is remote and visionary, permeated here and
there also with a certain amount of Celtic sentimentality, a "Tommy
Moore" flavour, somewhat too saccharine in quality. The one, for
instance, called "Boutimar" treats of a very hackneyed subject, the
offering of the water of youth, and life without end, to Solomon, and
the sage's refusal, because of the remembrance suggested by Boutimar
that he would outlive children, friends and all whom he loved; therefore
"Solomon, without reply, silently put out his arm and gave back the
cup.... But upon the prophet-king's rich beard, besprinkled with powder
of gold, there appeared another glitter as of clear dew,--the diamond
dew of the heart, which is tears."
"Chinese Ghosts," though distinguished also by that _soigneux_ flavour
that gives a slightly artificial impression, holds far more the
distinctive flavour of Hearn's genius. His own soul is written into the
legend of "Pu the potter." "Convinced that a soul cannot be divided, Pu
entered the flame, and yielded up his ghost in the embrace of the Spirit
of the Furnace, giving his life for the life of his work,--his soul for
the soul of his Vase."
By the publication of the "Letters from the Raven" we are enabled to
push those to Krehbiel, published by Miss Bisland, into place, and
assign fairly accurate dates to each of them. He tells Mr. Watkin that
he was six months before finding a fixed residence. In August, 1878, he
writes inviting him to come in the autumn to pay him a visit, and
telling him of delightful rooms with five large windows opening on
piazzas, shaded by banana-trees. This apparently is the house in St.
Louis Street, which he describes to Krehbiel. Miss Bisland places it
almost at the beginning of the series, but it must have been written at
a considerably later period. How picturesque and vivid is his
description! With the magic of his pen he conjures up the huge archway,
with its rolling echoes, the courtyard surrounded by palm-trees, their
dry leaves rustling in the wind, the broad stairway guarded by a hoary
dog, his own sitting-room and study, "vast enough for a carnival ball,"
with its five windows and glass doors opening flush with the floor and
rising to the ceiling.
Gautier, the artist to whom at one time Hearn pinned his faith, is said
to have observed once to an admirer of his art: "I am only a man to whom
the visible world is visible." So Lafcadio Hearn, though gifted with
only half the eyesight of ordinary folk, was by the prescience of his
genius enabled to see not only the visible world that the Frenchman saw,
but an immaterial and spiritual world as well.