In his own honorable tongue Mr. Yoni Noguchi is, I dare say, a poet;
in ours he is a trifle unintelligible. His English prose, too, is of
a kind that one does not write if one has a choice in the matter, yet
sometimes Mr. Noguchi thinks in it with clarity and point. Concerning
the late Lafcadio Hearn and the little tempest that was roaring round
that author’s life and character, Mr. Noguchi wrote:
“It is perfectly appalling to observe in the Western countries that
when one dies his friends have to rush to print his private letters,
and even an unexpected person volunteers to speak as his best friend,
and presumes to write his biography.”
No, this is not good prose (barring the “unexpected person,” which is
delicious) but it is obvious truth and righteous judgment. Publication
of letters not written for publication is _prima facie_ evidence of
moral delinquency in the offender. In doing this thing he supplies
the strongest presumption against himself. The burden of proof is
heavy upon him; he is to be held guilty unless he can support it with
positive evidence of a difficult thing to prove—an untainted intention
not related to gain, glory nor gratification of a public appetite
to which there is no honorable purveyance. No evidence less valid
than written permission obviously covering the particular letters
published is acceptable. In all the instances that I have observed this
credential is wanting. True, the scope of my observation is somewhat
narrow, for I would no more read a dead man’s private correspondence
in a book than I would break open his desk to obtain it. From a woman
related to a famous poet and critic then recently deceased I had once a
request for any letters that I might have from him. The lady said that
she wanted them for his biography, already in course of preparation.
The letters related to literary matters only, but as the lady submitted
no authorization from their writer for their publication I civilly
refused and took the consequences—there were consequences. Whether or
not my part of the correspondence appeared in the book I shall not know
unless told.
The family of a man of genius and renown may be pretty confidently
trusted to make him ridiculous in life with their clumsy tongues, and
after death with their thrifty pens. I think there was never a man of
genius whom all his relatives excepting his immediate offspring did
not, while jealous of his fame, secretly regard as a fool. (Even the
brothers of Jesus of Nazareth did not “believe on him,” and to some of
us who are immune to legends of the Church it is given to know that his
mother was of their way of thinking.) Dumbly resenting the distinction
that seems to accentuate their own obscurity, these worthies are
nevertheless keen to shine by the growing light of his posthumous fame,
if he have it, and to profit by it too, as are his more appreciative
children and children’s children, usually dullards and dolts to the
thirteenth and fourteenth generation. His death is the opportunity of
all. Some of them are very sure to crucify the body of him and thrust a
pen into his side to show that his blood is the same as their own.
A most disagreeable instance of this most disagreeable practice is that
of a son of Robert Browning, who has won literary renown and popular
commendation by publishing his parents’ love-letters. Doubtless he is
proud of his work, but in the eyes of his sainted father, I fear,
he is one of Mr. Noguchi’s “unexpected persons,” at least in the
sense that he is not expected in Paradise. Another and more recent
illustration is the book _My Soldier_, the sanguinary work of a wife.
Observe with what celerity the forehanded family of Tennyson “improved
the occasion” of his passing. The poor man was hardly cold before they
thrust a volume of Shakspeare into his dead hand, clove it with his
finger at a significant passage chosen by a domestic council, admitted
a consistent ray of moonshine into the death chamber and invited the
world to witness the edifying show. So the man who wrote
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me
was made to seem to “pass out to sea” in an impressive pose,
appropriately spectacular and dramatically ridiculous.
If there is a Better Land it is where a great man can grow up from the
ground like a tree, without human agency, get on without a friend,
write no letters and leave no name at which himself grew pale, to point
a lying anecdote or tale.
To the perils herein pointed out authors are peculiarly exposed. The
world has apparently agreed that he who writes for publication shall
write for nothing else. I have heard men of decent life and social
repute gravely defend the thesis that the public has a _right_ to all
that an author has written; and as his letters are likely to be rather
more interesting than those of one who works at another trade, they are
held to have a value disproportionate to the mere fame of their writer.
We all concede the virtue of abstention from theft of a paste jewel,
but a real diamond!—that is another matter.
The people are not pigs; the author of their favorite personal letters
need not have a great personal renown. If he has uttered a sufficient
body of private correspondence they are willing to forgive him for
their inattention to his public work. Their purveyors are even more
liberal in the matter: they do not insist on an excellent epistolary
style nor anything of that kind. An intimate “human document” in
ailing syntax is quite as available for their purpose as one baring
the heart of a grammarian. _The Filial Correspondence of George Ade_
is foredoomed to as sharp a competition among dealers as _The Love
Letters of Professor Harry Thurston Peck, Stylist._
It may be thought that all this is a cry from the deep and dark of a
great fear. Not so; since I became a public writer I have never engaged
in a correspondence in which it has not been distinctly understood
that my letters were never to be printed. Only through an impossible
treachery can the public ever have the happiness and profit of reading
them. As to love-letters I am clean-handed: all mine have been written
in honorable payment for favors and, as Conscience is my willing
witness, I never meant one word of them.