KOBE
Last spring I journeyed to Japan with Mrs. Atkinson, Lafcadio Hearn's
half-sister, and her daughter. Mrs. Atkinson was anxious to make the
acquaintance of her Japanese half-sister-in-law to ascertain the
circumstances surrounding the family, also if it were possible to carry
out her half-brother's wishes with regard to educating his eldest son,
Kazuo--his Benjamin--in England.
The first place at which we landed was Kobe, situated on the eastern end
of the Inland Sea, opposite Osaka, the Manchester of Japan.
Kobe is numbered among the open ports. Consuls can fly their country's
flag and occupy offices on the "Bund." Surrounding the bay are a number
of German, American and British warehouses. Foreigners also are allowed
to reside in the city under Japanese law.
During the six weeks on board the P. & O. coming out, I had been reading
Hearn's books, and was steeped in the legendary lore, the "hidden
soul-life" of ancient Nippon. At Moji--gateway of the Inland Sea--it had
blown a gale, and the Japanese steamer, the _Chikugo Maru_, to which we
had transhipped at Shanghai, was obliged to come to anchor under the
headland. The ecstasy, therefore, after rolling in a heavy sea all
night, of floating into the calm, sun-bathed waters of the Inland Sea,
made the enchantment all the more bewitching. Reclining in our
deck-chairs, we looked on the scene as it slowly passed before our eyes,
and yielded, without a struggle, to the exquisite and fantastical charm
of the spirit of Old Japan. For what seemed uncounted hours we crept
between the dim boundaries of tinted mountains, catching glimpses here
and there of mysterious bays and islands, of shadowy avenues, arched by
symbolic _Torii_ leading to ancient shrines, of groups of fishing
villages that seemed to have grown on the shore, their thatched roofs
covered with the purple flowers of the roof plant, the "_Yane-shobu_."
At first we endeavoured to decipher in Murray the names of the
enchanting little hamlets, with their cedarn balconies, high-peaked
gables, and quaint terraced gardens, inhabited by a strange people in
_geta_ and _kimono_, like figures on a Japanese screen depicting a scene
of hundreds of years ago. Across the mind of almost every one the magic
of Japan strikes with a sensation of strangeness and delight,--a magic
that gives the visitor a sense of great issues, and remote visions,
telling of a kingdom dim and half-apprehended. Unsubstantial and fragile
as all these villages looked, they were hallowed by memorable stories of
heroism and self-sacrifice, either in the last war with Russia and
China, or in her own internecine fights centuries ago; chronicles of men
who had fought heroically and died uncomplainingly in defence of their
country, chronicles of women who had scorned to weep when told of the
death of husbands, fathers and brothers in the pest-stricken rice-fields
of China, or in the trenches before Port Arthur.
A warm, perfect noon came and went, and the sun that had poured himself
from above into the earth as into a cup, gradually descended, as we
crept up the waters of the Inland Sea, towards the shoulders of the
eastern peaks, until they turned saffron and then flushed pink, and then
paled to green.
There was no moon, but the night stretched in pale radiance overhead.
And as we watched the stars burn with the extraordinary brilliancy
peculiar to Japan, we dreamed that we looked on the River Celestial, the
Ghost of Waters. We saw the mists hovering along the verge, and the
water grasses that bend in the winds of autumn, and we knew that the
falling dew was the spray from the herdsman's oar. And the heavens
"seemed very near, and warm, and human; and the silence about us was
filled with the dream of a love unchanging, immortal, for ever yearning
and for ever young, and for ever left unsatisfied by the paternal wisdom
of the Gods."
The open port of Kobe came like an awakening out of a delicious dream.
It was impossible not to feel exasperated with the Germans, Englishmen
and Americans who have desecrated an earthly paradise with red-brick
erections, factory chimneys, and plate-glass shop-fronts; easy was it to
understand Hearn's railings against the modernisation of the country.
Not far, however, had the foreign wedge been driven in. After a short
_kuruma_ journey from the landing-stage to the hotel, we were back again
in the era of Kusimoki Marahige.
Foreign names may have been given to the hills, and stretches of sea
coast,--Aden, Bismarck Hill, Golf Links Valley;--ancient Nippon keeps
them as her own, with their Shinto and Buddhist temples, surrounded by
woods of cryptomeria and camphor-trees. Their emotional and intellectual
life is no more altered by their occidental neighbours than the surface
of a mirror is changed by passing reflections, as says their
interpreter, Lafcadio Hearn.
Next to the hotel--as if to emphasise its nationality--was an ancient
pine-surrounded cemetery, set with tall narrow laths of unpainted wood;
while behind, to the summit of the hill, stretched a blue-grey sea of
tiles, a cedar world of _engawa_ and _shoji_, indescribable
whimsicalities, representing another world in its picturesqueness and
grotesquery. But it was not only in these visible objects that a
strange, unexpected life manifested itself. In the street, as you passed
along, dim surmises of some inscrutable humanity--another race soul,
charming, fascinating, and yet alien to your own, formulated itself to
your western consciousness. The bowing, the smiling, the arrangement of
flowers in the poorest shanties, the banners and lanterns with
marvellous drawings and ideographs; the children singing nursery rhymes
in an unknown language; others sitting naked in hot tubs, a woman with
elaborately dressed hair stuck over with large-headed pins, and rouged
and powdered cheeks, cleansing her teeth over the street gutter, while
behind were glimpses of curious interiors where men and women were
squatting on the floor like Buddhas, some reading, some with brushes
writing on long strips of paper from right to left.
Enigmatical, incomprehensible it might be, but there was nothing
displeasing, nothing objectionable as in a native Arab town, or even in
the streets of Canton or Shanghai. No unhappy children, or cross,
red-faced women; no coarse, drunken men, no loud voices, no brawling.
Though all was alien to your traditions, you were forced to acknowledge
a charm, a refinement, a courtesy, a kindliness far superior to those to
be found in European cities.
The conditions existing in Kobe when Hearn arrived in 1895 were not
satisfactory from a sanitary point of view. Cholera had come with the
victorious army from China, and had carried off, during the hot season,
about thirty thousand people. The smoke and odour from the funeral pyres
that burnt continually, came wind-blown into Hearn's garden down from
the hills behind the town, just to remind him, as he says, "that the
cost of burning an adult of my own size is 80 sen--about half a dollar
in American money at the present rate of exchange."
From the upper balcony of his house the Japanese street, with its rows
of little shops, was visible to the bay; from thence he watched the
cholera patients being taken away, and the bereaved, as soon as the law
allowed, flitting from the paper-shuttered abodes, while the ordinary
life of the street went on day and night, as if nothing particular had
happened. The itinerant vendors with their bamboo poles, and baskets or
buckets, passed the empty houses, and uttered their accustomed cry; the
blind shampooer blew his melancholy whistle; the private watchman made
his heavy staff boom upon the gutter-flags; and the children chased one
another as usual with screams and laughter. Sometimes a child vanished,
but the survivors continued their play as if nothing had happened,
according to the wisdom of the ancient East.
A supersensitive man, not in robust health, must have felt acutely the
depressing effects of this state of things. Sclerosis of the arteries
and other symptoms of heart failure, warned him during this autumn of
1895 that he was "descending the shady side of the hill." An attack of
inflammation of the eyes also gave him much trouble. He had been
worried, he says in a letter to Page Baker, by the fear that either he
or his friend might die before they met again. "I think of you a great
deal.... You are a long-lived, tough race, you Bakers. Page Baker will
be most likely writing some day things of Lafcadio Hearn that was, which
the said Lafcadio never deserved, and never will deserve."
Death had no terrors for Lafcadio Hearn, but the premonitions of
physical shipwreck that beset him now depressed him heart and soul
because of the work still left undone.
He would like nothing so much, he said, as to get killed, if he had no
one but himself in the world to take care of--which is just why he
wouldn't get killed. He couldn't afford luxuries until his work was
done.
To his sister he writes:--
"I have been on my back in a dark room for a month with inflammation of
the eyes, and cannot write much. Thanks for sweet letter. I received a
_Daily News_ from you,--many, many thanks. Did not receive the other
papers you spoke of--probably they were stolen in Kumamoto. I fear I
cannot do much newspaper work for some time. The climate does not seem
to suit my eyes,--a hot climate would be better. I may be able to make a
trip next winter to some tropical place, if I make any money out of my
books. My new book--"Out of the East"--will be published soon after this
letter reaches you.
"Future looks doubtful--don't feel very jolly about it. The mere
question of living is the chief annoyance. I am offered some further
work in Kobe, that would leave me leisure (they promise) for my own
literary work, but I am not sure. However, the darkest hour is before
the dawn, perhaps.
"Kaji is well able to walk now, and talks a little. Every day his hair
is growing brighter; a thorough English boy.
"Excuse bad eyes.
"Love to you,
"LAFCADIO."
Although more than twelve years had elapsed between our visit and the
period when Hearn had resided in Kobe, nearly every one remembered the
odd little journalist, who might be seen daily making his way, in his
shy, near-sighted fashion, from his house in Kitinagasa Dori, to the
office of the _Kobe Chronicle_.
Dr. Papellier of Kobe, who attended Hearn in a professional capacity at
this time, was full of reminiscences. Long before meeting him at Kobe
Dr. Papellier had been a great admirer of his genius, had, indeed, when
surgeon on board a German vessel, translated "Chita" for a Nuremburg
paper.
Being an oculist, one of his first injunctions, as soon as he examined
Hearn's eyes, was cessation from all work and rest in a darkened room if
he wished to escape total blindness. The right eye was myopic to an
extent seldom seen, and at the moment was so severely inflamed by
neuritis that the danger of an affection to the retina seemed
imminent,--the left was entirely blind. For the purpose of keeping up
his spirits, under this unwonted constraint, Dr. Papellier, in spite of
his professional engagements, went out of his way to visit the little
man frequently, and would stop hours chatting; showed him, indeed, a
kindness and consideration that, we were told, were quite exceptional.
Hearn, Dr. Papellier relates, was a good and fluent talker, content to
keep the ball rolling himself, and preferred an attentive listener
rather than a person who stated his own opinions.
Their topics of conversations circled round the characteristics of the
civilisation in which they were living. Hearn's emotional enthusiasm for
the Japanese, the doctor said, had cooled; he had received several
shocks in dealing with officials at Kumamoto, and said his illusions
were vanishing, and he wanted to leave the country; France, China, or
the South Sea Islands seemed each in turn to attract his wayward fancy.
The account of Stevenson's life in Samoa had made a great impression on
him. He declared that if he had not his Japanese family to look after he
would pack up his books of reference and start at once for Samoa.
"His wife, who understood no English at all, seldom appeared, a servant
girl usually attending to his wants when I was present.
"It struck me at the time that his knowledge of the Japanese vernacular
was very poor for a man of his intelligence, who, for nearly four years,
had lived almost entirely in the interior, surrounded by those who could
only talk the language of the country.
"It was plain that what he knew about Japan must have been gained
through the medium of interpreters. I was still more surprised when I
discovered how extremely near-sighted he was. His impressions of scenery
or Japanese works of art could never have been obtained as ordinary
people obtain them. The details had to be studied piece by piece with a
small telescope, and then described as a whole."
His mode of life, Dr. Papellier said, was almost penurious, although he
must have been receiving a good salary from the _Kobe Chronicle_, and
was making something by his books. At home he dressed invariably in
Japanese style; his clothes being very clean and neat. The furniture of
his small house was scanty. His food, which was partly Japanese and
partly so-called "foreign," was prepared in a small restaurant somewhere
in the town. In his position as medical attendant Papellier regarded it
as his duty to remonstrate on this point, impressing upon him that he
ought to remember the drain on his constitution of the amount of brain
work that he was doing, both at the _Kobe Chronicle_ office and writing
at home.
There were reasons for this that Hearn would not care to tell Papellier.
Mrs. Koizumi was in delicate health, expecting her second child, and
Hearn doubtless, with that consideration that invariably distinguished
him in his treatment of his wife, had his food brought from outside so
as to save her the trouble and exertion of cooking it at home. Only in
one way, Papellier said, did he allow himself any indulgence, and that
was in the amount he smoked. Although he seldom took spirits, he smoked
incessantly--not cigars, but a small Japanese pipe--a _kiseru_--which he
handled in a skilful way, lighting one tiny tobacco pellet in the
glowing ashes of the one just consumed. One of his hobbies was
collecting pipes, the other was collecting books. He had already got
together a valuable library at New Orleans, he did the same in Japan. He
was able to exercise these hobbies inexpensively, but they needed
knowledge, time and patience. At his death he possessed more than two
hundred pipes, all shapes and sizes.
Every one whom we met when we arrived at Kobe advised us to call on the
editor of the _Kobe Chronicle_ if we wanted information on the subject
of Lafcadio Hearn. We therefore made our way to the _Kobe Chronicle_
office as soon as we could. Mr. Young as well as Mrs. Young, whose
acquaintance we made subsequently, were both full of reminiscences of
the odd little genius.
He generally made it a rule to drop into the Youngs' house every Sunday
for lunch; his particular fancy in the way of food, or, at all events,
the only thing he expressed a fancy for, was plum-pudding--a
plum-pudding therefore became a standing dish on Sundays, so long as
Hearn was in Kobe. "The Japanese," he was wont to say, "are a very
clever people, but they don't understand plum-pudding."
Absence of mind, and inattention to events passing around him, was very
noticeable, the Youngs told us, these days. Sometimes he seemed even to
find a difficulty in fixing his thoughts on the identity of the
individual with whom he was conversing.
Mrs. Young, if she will permit me to say so, is an extremely
agreeable-looking, clear-complexioned, chestnut-haired Englishwoman. For
some considerable time Hearn always addressed her in Japanese. At last
one day she remarked: "You know, Mr. Hearn, I am not Japanese." "Oh,
really," was his reply, as if for the first time he had realised the
fact. From that time forward he addressed her in English.
Mr. Young was kind enough to furnish me with copies of Hearn's
editorials during the seven or eight months he worked on the staff of
the _Kobe Chronicle_. Though not coinciding with many of Hearn's
opinions and conclusions, with regard to the Japanese and their
religious and social convictions, Mr. Young gave him a free hand so far
as subject-matter and expression of opinion were concerned. None of his
contributions, however, are distinguished by Hearn's peculiar literary
qualities. The flint-edged space of the newspaper column cramped and
hampered his genius. Work with him, he declared, was always a pain, but
writing for money an impossibility.
Of course, he said, he could write, and write, and write, but the moment
he began to write for money the little special colour vanished, the
special flavour that was within him evaporated, he became nobody again;
and the public wondered why it paid any attention to so commonplace a
fool. So he had to sit and wait for the gods. His mind, however, ate
itself when unemployed. Even reading did not fill the vacuum. His
thoughts wandered, and imaginings, and recollections of unpleasant
things said or done recurred to him. Some of these unpleasant things
were remembered longer than others; under this stimulus he rushed to
work, wrote page after page of vagaries, metaphysical, emotional,
romantic--and threw them aside. Then next day he rewrote them and
rewrote them until they arranged themselves into a whole, and the result
was an essay that the editor of the _Atlantic_ declared was a veritable
illumination, and no mortal man knew how or why it was written, not even
he himself.
Two of Hearn's characteristics, both of which militated considerably
against his being an effective newspaper correspondent, were his
personal bias and want of restraint. A daily newspaper must, above all
things, be run on customary and everyday lines, but Hearn did not
possess the ordinary hold on the conventional methods and usages of
life. For instance, when treating of the subject of free libraries he
thus expresses himself: "A library is now regarded, not as a treasury of
wisdom and beauty, but as a 'dumping-ground' for offal, a repository of
human frivolity, insanity and folly. Newspapers, forsooth!--why not
collect and store the other things that wise men throw away, cigar-ends
and orange-peelings? Some future historian of the gutter might like to
see them. No, I would give to all these off-scourings and clippings the
same doom."
No consideration would deter him from flying in the face of the ordinary
reader if it suited him so to do. He had always passionately resisted
the christianising of Japan, not only from a religious, but from an
artistic point of view. He thus roused the wrath of the orthodox,--a
wrath that pursued him from this year in Kobe until his death, and makes
the very sound of his name detested in Christian religious circles in
Japan.
"For myself," he says in one of the _Kobe Chronicle_ leaders, "I could
sympathise with the individual, but never with the missionary cause.
Unconsciously, every honest being in the Mission Army is a
destroyer,--and a destroyer only; for nothing can replace what they
break down. Unconsciously, too, the missionaries everywhere represent
the edge,--the _acies_,--to use the Roman word--of Occidental
aggression. We are face to face here with the spectacle of a powerful
and selfish civilisation, demoralising and crushing a weaker, and, in
many ways a nobler one (if we are to judge by comparative ideals); and
the spectacle is not pretty. We must recognise the inevitable, the
Cosmic Law, if you like; but one feels and hates the moral wrong, and
this perhaps blinds one too much to the sacrifices and pains accepted by
the 'noble army.'"
Hearn's gradually-increasing disinclination to meet strangers was, at
this time, indicative of a morbid condition of mind and body. He
summarily refused to hold any intercourse with the foreign commercial
element in Kobe, pronouncing them rough and common. After life in the
interior, he declared life at an open port to be very unpleasant. The
Germans represented the best of the foreign element, plain and
homely, which at all events was a virtue. But he harked back to the
life in Old Japan as being better, and cleaner, and higher in every
way, with only the bare means of Japanese comfort, than the luxury
and money-grabbing at Kobe; in his opinion, the Japanese peasant
was ten times more a gentleman than a foreign merchant could ever
learn to be.... Then he indulges in one of his outbursts against
carpets--pianos--windows--curtains--brass bands--churches! and white
shirts! and "_yofuku_"! Would that he had been born savage; the curse of
civilised cities was on him, and he supposed he couldn't get away
permanently from them. "How much I could hate all that we call
civilisation I never knew before. How ugly it is I never could have
conceived without a long sojourn in Old Japan--the only civilised
country that existed since Antiquity."
"Kokoro," the book written at this time, is now celebrated, and justly
so. Hearn himself called it a "crazy book." Crazy, it may be designated,
from its very originality, its strange interpretation of strange things,
the new note that it initiates, and the sympathetic power it displays of
divining beliefs and mythologies, the "race ghost" of one of the most
enigmatical people on earth. "The papers composing this volume," he says
in his preface, "treat of the inner rather than of the outer life of
Japan,--for which reason they have been grouped under the title 'Kokoro'
(Heart)."
Written with the above character, this word signifies also mind, in the
emotional sense; spirit; courage; resolve; sentiment; affection; and
inner meaning--just as we say in English, "the heart of things."
It is the quality of truthful work that it never grows old or stale; one
can return to it again and again, and in interpreting the "heart" of
Japan, Hearn's work is absolutely truthful. I know that this is
contradicted by many. Professor Foxwell tells a story of a lady tourist
who told him before she came to Japan she had read Hearn's books and
thought they were delightful as literature, but added, "What a
disappointment when you come here; the people are not at all like his
descriptions!"
The lady had not perhaps grasped the fact that Hearn's principal book on
Japan, the book that every tourist reads, is called "Glimpses of
Unfamiliar Japan." The conditions and people that he describes are
certainly not to be found along the beaten tourist track that Western
civilisation has invaded with webs of steel and ways of iron. He perhaps
exaggerated some of the characteristics and beliefs of the strange
people amongst whom he lived, and saw romance in the ordinary course of
the life around him, where romance did not exist. Dr. Papellier, for
instance, said that he once showed him a report in the _Kobe Chronicle_,
describing the suicide of a demi-mondaine and her lover in a railway
tunnel. The incident formed the basis of "The Red Bridal," published in
"Out of the East," which Papellier declared to be an entirely distorted
account of the facts as they really occurred. It is the old story of
imaginative genius and ordinary commonplace folk. In discussing the
question, Hearn insisted that every artist should carry out the theory
of selection. A photograph would give the unessential and the essential;
an artist picks out important aspects; the portrait-painter's work,
though manifestly less exact, is incomparably finer because of its
spirituality; though less technically correct, it has acquired the
imaginative sentiment of the mind of the artist. When depicting the
Japanese he felt justified in emphasising certain excellent qualities,
putting these forward and ignoring the rest; choosing the grander
qualities, as portrait-painters do, and passing over the petty
frailties, the mean characteristics that might impress the casual
observer. Nothing is more lovely, for instance, than a Japanese village
amongst the hills, when seen just after sunrise--through the mists of a
spring or autumn morning. But for the matter-of-fact observer, the
enchantment passes with the vapours: in the raw clear light he can find
no palace of amethyst, no sails of gold, but only flimsy sheds of wood
and thatch and the unpainted queerness of wooden junks.
He attained to a certainty and precision of form in these "Kokoro"
essays that places them above any previous work. Now we can see the
benefit of his concentration of mind, of his earnestness of purpose and
monastic withdrawal from things of the world; no outside influences
disturbed his communing with himself, and it is this communing that
imparts a vague and visionary atmosphere, a ghostly thrill to every page
of the volume.
Yet here was he, in the forty-fifth year of his age, a master amongst
masters, arguing with solemn earnestness upon the use or mis-use of the
word "shall" and "will," begging Professor Hall Chamberlain for
information and guidance.
"You will scarcely be able to believe me, I imagine, but I must confess
that your letter on 'shall' and 'will' is a sort of revelation in one
sense--it convinces me that some people, and I suppose all people of
fine English culture, really feel a sharp distinction of meaning in the
sight and sound of the words 'will' and 'shall.' I confess also that I
never have felt such a distinction, and cannot feel it now. I have been
guided chiefly by euphony, and the sensation of 'will' as softer and
gentler than 'shall.' The word 'shall' in the second person especially
has for me a queer identification with English harshness and
menace,--memories of school perhaps. I shall study the differences by
your teaching and try to avoid mistakes, but I think I shall never be
able to feel the distinction. The tone to me is everything--the word
nothing."
The best essays in "Kokoro" were inspired, not by Kobe, but by Kyoto,
one of the most beautiful cities in Japan, seat of the ancient
government and stronghold of the ancient creeds. It lies only a short
distance from Kobe, and many were the days and hours that Hearn spent
dreaming in the charming old-fashioned hotel and picking up impressions
amidst the Buddhist shrines and gardens of the surrounding country.
"Notes from a Travelling Diary," "Pre-existence," and the charming
sketch "Kimiko," written on the text "To wish to be forgotten by the
beloved is a soul-task harder far than trying not to forget," all
originated in Kyoto.
In a letter to his sister dated March 11th, 1895, he alludes to his book
"Kokoro."
"My sweet little beautiful sister, since my book is being so long
delayed I may anticipate matters by telling you something of the
so-called Ancestor-Worship of which I spoke in my last letter. The
subject is not in any popular work on Japan, and I think should interest
you, if for no other reason than that you are yourself such a sweet
little mother.
"When a person dies in Japan, a little tablet is made which stands upon
a pedestal, and is about a foot high. On this narrow tablet is inscribed
either the real name of the dead, or the Buddhist name given to the
soul. This is the Mortuary Tablet, or as you have sometimes seen it
called in books, the Ancestral Tablet.
"If children die they also have tablets in the home, but they are not
prayed to,--but prayed _for_. Nightly the Mother talks to her dead
child, advising, reminding, with words of caress,--just as if the little
one were alive, and a tiny lamp is lighted to guide the little ghostly
feet home.
"Well, I do not want to write a dry essay for you, but in view of all
the unkind things said about Japanese beliefs, I thought you might like
to hear this, for I think you will feel there is something beautiful in
the rule of reverence to the dead.
"I hope, though I am not at all sure, that you will receive some fairy
tales by this same mail,--as I have trusted the sending of them to a
Yokohama friend. Here there are no book-houses at all--only shops for
the sale of school texts. Should you get the stories, I want you to read
the 'Matsuyama Mirror' first. There is a ghostly beauty that I think you
will feel deeply. After all, the simplest stories are the best.
"I wanted to say many more things; but the mail is about to leave, and I
must stop to-day.
"My little fellow is trying hard to talk and to walk. He is now very
fair and strong.
"Tell me, dear little beautiful sister, how you are always,--give me
good news of yourself,--and love me a little bit. I will write soon
again.
"LAFCADIO HEARN."
In November, 1895, Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain visited him at Kobe,
and then probably the possibility was discussed of Hearn's re-entering
the government service as professor of English in the Imperial
University at Tokyo. But as late as April, 1896, he still seemed
uncertain that his engagement under government was assured.
Professor Toyama wrote to him, saying that his becoming a Japanese
citizen had raised a difficulty, which he hoped might be surmounted.
Hearn replied, that he was not worried about the matter, and had never
allowed himself to consider it very seriously--hinting, at the same
time, that he would not accept a lower salary. If Matsue only had been a
little warmer in the winter, he would rather be teaching there than in
Tokyo, in any event he hoped some day to make a home there.
About this time comes Hearn's last letter to his sister:--
"MY DEAR LITTLE SIS,
"What you say about writing for English papers, etc., is interesting,
but innocent. Men do not get opportunities to dispose of any MS. to
advantage without one of two conditions. Either they must have struck a
popular vein--become popular as writers; or they must have _social_
influence. I am not likely to become popular, and I have no social
influence. No good post would be given me,--as I am not a man of
conventions, and I am highly offensive to the Orthodoxies who have
always tried to starve me to death--without success, happily, as yet. I
am looking, however, for an English publisher, and hope some day to get
a hearing in some London print. But for the time being, it is not what I
wish that I can get, but what I can. Perhaps your eyes will open wide
with surprise to hear that I shall get nothing, or almost nothing for my
books. The contracts deprive me of all but a nominal percentage on the
2nd thousand.
"Well, this is only a line to thank you for your sweet little letter. I
have Marjory's too, and shall write her soon. Love,
"LAFCADIO.
"Excuse eyes.
"P.S.--I reopened this letter to add a few lines on second thought.
"You wrote in your last about Sir F. Ball. His expression of pleasure
about my books may have been merely politeness to a pretty lady,--my
sweet little sister. But it may have been genuine--probably was partly
so. He could very easily say a good word for me to the Editors of the
great Reviews,--the _Fortnightly_, _Nineteenth Century_, etc.--though I
am not sure whether his influence would weigh with them very greatly.
"At all events what I need is 'a friend at Court,'--and need badly.
Perhaps, perhaps only, my little sis could help me in that direction. I
think I might ask you,--when possible, to try. The help an earnest man
wants isn't money: it is opportunity.
"We have a cozy little home in Kobe, and Kobe is pretty, but I fear I
shall have to leave it by the time this reaches you. Therefore perhaps
it will be better to address me: 'c/o James E. Beale, _Japan Daily
Mail_, Yokohama, Japan.' I shall soon send Kajiwo's last photo with some
more fairy tales written by myself for your 'bairns.'
"Love to you,
"L. H."
As Lafcadio Hearn's biographer, I almost shrink from saying that this
was the last letter of the series written to his sister, Mrs. Atkinson.
It somehow was so satisfactory to think of the exile having resumed
intercourse with his own people, and with his native land; but with
however deep a feeling of regret, the fact must be acknowledged that he
suddenly put an end to the intercourse for some unaccountable reason. He
not only never wrote again, but returned her envelope, empty of its
contents, without a line of explanation. Mrs. Atkinson has puzzled over
the enigma many times, but has never been able to fathom the reason for
such an action on the part of her eccentric half-brother. There was
nothing, she declares, in her letter to wound even his irritable nerves.
At one time she thought it might have been in consequence of the
attempts of various other members of the family to open a correspondence
with him; he reiterated several times to Mrs. Atkinson the statement
that "one sister was enough." I, on the other hand, think the key may
with more probability be found in a passage from one of his letters
written at this time, saying he had received letters from relatives in
England that had made his thoughts not blue, but indigo blue. A longing
had entered his heart that each year henceforward became stronger, to
return to his native land, to hold communion with those of his own race;
this nostalgia was rendered acute by his sister's letters, his literary
work was interfered with and his nerves upset; he therefore made up his
mind suddenly to stop the correspondence.
The person who behaved thus was the same erratic creature, who, having
previously made an appointment, on going to keep it, rang the bell and
then, seized with nervous panic--ran away; or had fits of nervous
depression lasting for days because a printer had put a few commas in
the wrong place or misspelt some Japanese words. Hearn possessed supreme
intellectual courage, would stick to his artistic "pedestal of faith"
with a determination that was heroic, but where his nerves were
concerned he was an arrant coward. If letters, or arguments with
friends, flurried him, or awakened uncongenial thoughts or memories, he
was capable of putting the letters away unread, and breaking off a
friendship that had lasted for years.
Thinking his silence might be caused by ill-health, Mrs. Atkinson wrote
several times. The only answer she received was from Mr. James Beale of
the _Japan Mail_:--
"Japan Mail _Office_,
"_Yokohama_,
"_July_ 9_th_, 1896.
"Dear Madam,
"I hasten to relieve your anxiety in regard to your brother's health. I
have just returned from an expedition in the North, and previous to
leaving about a month ago, was on the point of asking Hearn if he could
accompany me, because it was a part of the country which he has never
visited, but about that time I received a letter from him in which he
stated that he was very busy (I believe he has another book on the
stocks), and I did not mention the matter when I wrote. His letter was
written in a very cheerful strain and indicated no illness or trouble
with his eyes. In regard to the latter I have heard nothing since the
spring of '95, when, through rest from study, they had recovered their
normal condition. As Hearn once lived in a very isolated town on the
West Coast I used to receive letters and other postal matter for him and
do little commissions for him here, and I remember at times English
letters passing through my hands. These were all carefully reposted to
him as they came, and I should say that your letters had undoubtedly
reached him.
"No apology is necessary on your part, as I am pleased to afford you
whatever consolation you may find in the knowledge of the fact that your
brother is alive and well. I think I may venture to say that if he has
neglected his friends it is due to being busy.
"I send you his address below.
"Yours faithfully,
"JAS. ELLACOTT BEALE.
"_No. 16, Zashiki,
"Shichi-chome, Bangai,
"Naka Zamate-dori,
"Kobe, Japan._
"MRS. M. C. BUCKLEY-ATKINSON.
"Since writing the foregoing I have learned that your brother has been
appointed to a post in the University. The announcement will appear in
to-morrow's _Mail_.
"This appointment will necessitate Hearn's removal to the capital, and
as the vacation expires on September 15, the address at Kobe I have
given will not find him. As soon as his Tokyo address reaches me I will
send it to you.
"J. E. B."
As a set-off to this unaccountable break in his correspondence with his
sister, I would like to end this chapter with a touching and pathetic
letter, addressed to Mrs. Watkin at Cincinnati, and another to his "Old
Dad," friends of over twenty years' standing, but unfortunately am not
able to do so. Hitherto Hearn's affection had been given to Mr. Watkin;
of his female belongings he had seen but little. Now apparently, Mrs.
and Miss Effie Watkin ventured to address the "great man," as their
husband's and father's eccentric Bohemian little friend had become. To
Mrs. Watkin he touches on the mysteries of spiritualism which were
scarcely mysteries in the Far East; some day he hoped to drop in on all
the circle he loved and talk ghostliness. Some hints of it appeared, he
said, in a little book of his, "Out of the East." He imagined Mr. Watkin
to be more like Homer than ever. He himself had become grey and
wrinkled, fat, too, and disinclined for violent exercise. In other
words, he was getting down the shady side of the hill, the horizon
before him was already darkening, and the winds blowing out of it cold.
He was not in the least concerned about the enigmas, he said, except
that he wondered what his boy would do if he were to die. To his "Old
Dad" he writes a whimsically affectionate letter, his old and dearest
friend, he calls him. Practical, material people predicted that he was
to end in gaol, or at the termination of a rope, but his "Old Dad"
always predicted he would be able to do something. He was anxious for as
much success as he could get for his son's sake. To have the future of
others to care for certainly changed the face of life; he worked and
hoped, the best and only thing to do.