Letters 1877-1889 (part 2)

Dear Krehbiel,—I think I shall soon be able to send you a Hindoo. Yes, a Hindoo,—with Orientally white teeth, the result of vegetal diet and Brahmanic abstemiousness—rather prognathous, I am sorry to say, and not therefore of purest Aryan breed. He may be a Thug, a Sepoy deserter, a Sikh drummed out of the army, a Brahmin who has lost caste, a Pariah thief, a member of the Left-hand or of the Right-hand caste (or other sections too horrible to name), a Jain, a half-breed Mongol Islamite from Delhi, a Ghoorkha, a professional fraud, a Jesuitic convert on trial ... I know not;—I send him to you with my best regard. You are large and strong; you can take care of yourself! I send him to the Tribune,—fearing the awful results of his visit to 305 West Fifty-fifth Street.

How did I find him? Well, he came one day to our office to protest about some of my editorials on Indian questions. I found he talked English well, wrote with sufficient accuracy to contribute to the T.-D., and had been in the Indian civil service. I questioned him on Hindoo literature: found him somewhat familiar with the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Vedantas,—heard him reiterate the names of the great Sanscrit poets and playwrights—Kalidasa, Vyasa, Jayadeva, Bhartrihari. He first taught me accurately to pronounce the awful title Mricchakatikâ, which means “The Chariot of Baked Clay;” and he translated for me, although with great effort and very badly, one of the delicious love-lyrics of the divine Amaron. Therefore I perceived that he knew something vaguely about the vast Mother of Languages.

And he sang for me the chants of the temples, in a shrill Indian tenor, with marvellously fine splintering of notes—melancholy, dreamy, drowsy, like the effect of monotonous echoes in a day of intense heat and atmospheric oppression.

Why, then, did not my heart warm toward him? Was it because, in the columns of the Times-Democrat, he had boldly advocated the burning of widows and abused the Government of which I remain a loving subject? Was it because he made his appearance simultaneously with that of that colossal fraud, the “North, South and Central American Exposition”? Nay: it was because of his prognathism, his exceedingly sinister eye, like the eye of a creature of prey; his shaky suppleness of movement; and his mysterious past. How might I trust myself alone with a man who looked like one of the characters of the “Moonstone”? And yet I regret ... what a ridiculous romance I might have made!

Never mind, I send him to you! He says he is a Brahman. He says he can sing you the chants and dirges of his sun-devoured land. Let him sing!—let him chant! If he merit interest in the shape of fifty cents, give it to him, and watch him slip it into his swarthy bosom with the stealthy gesture of one about to pull forth a moon-shaped knife. Or tell him where to get, or to look for work. He worked here in a moss-factory and in a sash-factory and other factories; living upon rice and beans more cheaply than a Chinaman. Yet beware you do not smite him on the nostrils without large and solid reason. I give him a letter to you. Amen! (P.S. His alleged name is Sattee or Suttee—perhaps most probably the latter, as he advocates it.)

I received your book—a charming volume in all that makes a volume charming: including clear tinted paper, not too glossy; fascinating type; broad margins; tasteful binding. Thanks for dear little phrase written in it. I will send first criticism of contents in shape of a review. Have something else to talk of later.

I hope you received photograph sent by Baker through me,—and paper. The translation does not convey original force of style; but it may serve to reveal something of the author’s intensity. His power of impressing and communicating queer sensations makes him remarkable

Affectionately,

L. Hearn.

To H. E. Krehbiel New Orleans, 1886.

Dear Krehbiel,—I was waiting to write you in the hope of being able to send you some literary news. I have my little Chinese book in Ticknor’s hands; but the long silence is still unbroken. The omen is not a bad one, yet I am disappointed in not being able now, when replying to your delightful letter, to tell you everything is O. K.,—because the book is dedicated to you. There are only six little stories; but each of them cost months of hard work and study, and represent a much higher attempt than anything in the “Stray Leaves.” The dedication will, I think, amuse you if the book appears,—and will be more or less mysterious to the rest of the world. I fear now it cannot be published in time to reach you before you leave for Europe.

Well, dear old fellow, I think I must try to see you at New York anyhow. At all events I must have a change. The prolonged humidity and chilliness of our winter is telling on me; I have been considerably pulled down in spite of an easy life, and must try the sea somewhere. I fear the Eastern beaches are too expensive; but I could run North, and spend the rest of the time allowed me after my visit at some obscure fishing village. Europe, I fear, must be given up this summer. I could visit Spain in company with a dear friend, Dr. Matas; but I feel it a duty to myself to stick at literary work this summer in order to effect a new departure.

Now, I must tell you about it. I am writing a novelette. It will require at least twelve months to finish—though it will be a tiny book. It will be all divided into microscopic chapters of a page or half-a-page each. Every one of these is to be a little picture, with some novel features. Some touches of evolutionary philosophy. I want to make something altogether odd, novel, ideal in the best sense. The theme, I fear, you will not like. The story of a somewhat improper love—a fascination developed into a sincere but vain affection—an effort to re-create what has been hopelessly lost,—a seeking after the impossible. I am not quite sure yet how I shall arrange the main part;—there will be much more of suggestion than of real plot.... I do, indeed, remember your advice; but I am not sorry not to have followed it before. My style was not formed; I did not really know how to work; I am only now beginning to learn. Ticknor writes that if I should undertake a novelette, he is certain it would succeed. So I shall try. In trying I must study from real material; I must take models where I can find them. Still the work will be ideal to the verge of fantasy.

So much for that. If I have been selfish enough to talk first about myself, it is partly because I cannot answer your question without giving some of my own experience. You ask about style; you deem yours unsatisfactory, and say that I overestimated it. Perhaps I may have overestimated particular things that with a somewhat riper judgement I would consider less enthusiastically. But I always perceived an uncommon excellence in the tendency of your style—a purity and strength that is uncommon and which I could never successfully imitate. A man’s style, when fully developed, is part of his personality. Mine is being shaped for a particular end; yours, I think, is better adapted to an ultimately higher purpose. The fact that you deem it unsatisfactory shows, I fancy, that you are in a way to develop it still further. I have only observed this, that it is capable of much more polish than you have cared to bestow upon it. Mind! I do not mean ornament;—I do not think you should attempt ornament, but rather force and sonority. Your tendency, I think, is naturally toward classical purity and correctness—almost severity. With great strength,—ornament becomes unnecessary; and the general cultivation of strength involves the cultivation of grace. I still consider yours a higher style than mine, but I do not think you have cultivated it to one fourth of what it is capable. Now, let me say why.

Chiefly, I fancy, for want of time. If you do not know it already, let me dwell upon an art principle. Both you and I have a trade: journalism. We have also an art: authorship. The same system of labour cannot be applied to the one as to the other without unfortunate results. Let the trade be performed as mechanically as is consistent with preservation of one’s reputation as a good workman: any more labour devoted to it is an unpaid waste of time. But when it comes to writing a durable thing,—a book or a brochure,—every line ought to be written at least twice, if possible three times. Three times, at all events, to commence with. First—roughly, in pencil: after which correct and reshape as much as you deem necessary. Then rewrite clean in pencil. Read again; and you will be surprised to find how much improvement is possible. Then copy in ink, and in the very act of copying, new ideas of grace, force, and harmony will make themselves manifest. Without this, I will venture to say, fine literary execution is impossible. Some writers need the discipline less than others. You, for example, less than I. My imagination and enthusiasm have to be kept in control; my judgements to be reversed or amended; my adjectives perpetually sifted and pruned. But my work is ornamental—my dream is poetical prose: a style unsuited to literature of the solid and instructive kind. Have you ever worked much with Roget’s "Thesaurus"?—it is invaluable. Still more valuable are etymological dictionaries like those of Skeat (best in the world), of Brachet (French), of Dozy and Engelmann (Spanish-Arabic). Such books give one that subtle sense of words to which much that startles in poetry and prose is due. Time develops the secret merit of work thus done.... These, dear K., are simply my own experiences, ideas, and impressions. I now think they are correct. In a few years I might modify them. They may contain useful suggestions. Our humblest friends may suggest valuable things sometimes.

Talking of change in opinions, I am really astonished at myself. You know what my fantastic metaphysics were. A friend disciplined me to read Herbert Spencer. I suddenly discovered what a waste of time all my Oriental metaphysics had been. I also discovered, for the first time, how to apply the little general knowledge I possessed. I also learned what an absurd thing positive skepticism is. I also found unspeakable comfort in the sudden and, for me, eternal reopening of the Great Doubt, which renders pessimism ridiculous, and teaches a new reverence for all forms of faith. In short, from the day when I finished the “First Principles,”—a totally new intellectual life opened for me; and I hope during the next two years to devour the rest of this oceanic philosophy. But this is boring you too much for the nonce.

Believe me, dear friend, affectionately,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To H. E. Krehbiel New Orleans, 1886.

Dear Krehbiel,—I must drop you another line or two; for you must let me hear from you again before you go to Europe.

I have completely recovered from the nervous shock which the sudden return of my tiny volume produced in spite of myself; and all my scattered plans are being re-crystallized. I know my work is good in some respects; and if it bears reading over well, next winter I may take a notion to publish a small edition at my own expense. In fact, I believe I will have to publish several things at my own expense. Even if my art-ideas are correct (and I sincerely believe they are)—in their most mature form they would represent a heterodox novelty in American style, and literary heterodoxies no publisher will touch. I am going to give up the novelette idea,—it is too large an undertaking at present,—and will try short stories. My notebooks will always be useful. Whenever I receive a new and strong impression, even in a dream, I write it down, and afterwards develop it at leisure. These efforts repay me well in the end.

There are impressions of blue light and gold and green, correlated to old Spanish legend, which can be found only south of this line. I obtained a few in Florida;—I must complete the effect by future visits: therefore I shall go to the most vast and luminous of all ports known to the seamen of the South—the Bay of the Holy Ghost (Espiritu Santo),—in plainer language, Tampa. So I shall vegetate a while longer in the South. I have some $600 saved up; but, I fear, under present circumstances, that I would be imprudent to expend it all in a foreign trip, and will wait until I can make some sort of impression with some new sort of work. The T.-D. will save expenses for me on Florida trip, and instead of roar and rumble of traffic and shrieking of steam and dust of microbes, I shall dream by the shores of phosphorescent seas, and inhale the Spirit that moveth over the face of the Deep.

I forgot in my last to thank you for little notice in the playbill of my Gautier stories; but you were mistaken as to their being paraphrases. They were literal translations, so far as I was able to make them at the time. I am sorry that they now appear full of faults: especially as I cannot get any publisher to take them away from Worthington. If I succeed some day, I may be able to get out a more perfect edition in small neat shape. “Stray Leaves” also has several hideous errors in it. I never dare now to look at them for fear of finding something else worse than before.

By the way, last year I had to muster up courage to condemn a lot of phantasmagoria to the flames

Very affectionately,

Lafcadio.

Dear K.,—Like a woman I must always add a P.S.

Something that has been worrying me demands utterance. A Paris correspondent of the Tribune, grossly misinformed, has written an error to that paper on “Lakme.” “Lakme” may have been drawn from “Le Mariage de Loti,”—the weirdest and loveliest romance, to my notion, ever written;—but that novel has nothing to do with India or English officers. It is a novel of Polynesian life in Tahiti. It is unspeakably beautiful and unspeakably odd. I translated its finest passages in a so-and-so way when it first came out, and won the good will of its clever author, Julien Viaud, who sent me his portrait and a very pretty letter. I have collected every scrap “Loti” wrote, and translated many things: will send you a rough-and-ready translation from his new novel on Sunday. No writer ever had such an effect upon me; and time strengthens my admiration. I hold him the greatest of living writers of the Impressionist School; and still he is something more—he has a spirituality peculiarly his own, that reminds you a little of Coleridge. I cannot even think of him without enthusiasm. Therefore I feel sorry to hear of him being misrepresented. He is a great musician in the folk-lore way, too; and in one of my letters to him I mentioned your name. Some day you might come together; and he could sing you all the Polynesian and African songs you want. He has lived in the Soudan. I sent you once a fragment by him upon those African improvisors, called Griots. If the Tribune ever wants anything written about Loti, see if you can’t persuade them to apply to me. I know all about his life and manners, and I would not ask any remuneration for so delightful a privilege as that of being able to do him justice in a great paper. His address is 141 Rue St. Pierre, Rochefort-sur-Mer. You might see him in Europe, perhaps.

Lafcadio H.

To H. E. Krehbiel New Orleans, October, 1886.

Dear Krehbiel,—While in hideous anxiety I await the decision of my future by various damnably independent censors, I must seize the moment of leisure—the first calm after a prolonged storm of work—to chat with you awhile, and to thank you for your musical aid. Alden is, of course, deliberating over the “Legend of l’Ile Dernière;” Roberts Bros. are deliberating over “Chinese Ghosts;” I am also deliberating about a voyage to Havana, the Mystical Rose of a West Indian dawn—with palms shaking their plumes against the crimsoning. What are you deliberating about? Something that I shall be crazy to read, no doubt, and will have the delight of celebrating the appearance of in the editorial columns of the provincial T.-D.! O that I were the directing spirit of some new periodical—backed by twenty million dollar publishing interests,—and devoted especially to the literary progression of the future,—the realization of a dream of poetical prose,—the evolution of the Gnosticism of the New Art! Then, wouldn’t I have lots to say about The Musician,—my musician,—and the Song of Songs that is to be!

For my own purpose now lieth naked before me, without shame. I suppose we all have a purpose, an involuntary goal, to which the Supreme Ghost, unknowingly to us, directs our way; and when we find we have accomplished what we wished for, we also invariably find that we have travelled thither by a route very different from that which we laid out for ourselves, and toward a consummation not precisely that which we anticipated—although pleasing enough. Well, you remember my ancient dream of a poetical prose,—compositions to satisfy an old Greek ear,—like chants wrought in a huge measure, wider than the widest line of a Sanscrit composition, and just a little irregular, like Ocean-rhythm. I really think I will be able to realize it at last. And then, what? I really don’t know. I fancy that I shall have produced a pleasant effect on the reader’s mind, simply with pictures; and that the secret work, the word-work, will not be noticed for its own sake. It will be simply an eccentricity for critics; an originality for those pleased by it—but I’m sure it will be grateful unto the musical ear of H. E. K.!

Now I remember promising to write about going to New York.

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!

’Tis winter. My lizard blood freezes at the thought. In my room it is 71°: that is cold for us. New York in winter signifieth for such as me—Dissolution,—eternal darkness and worms. Transformation of physical and vital forces of L. H. into the forces of innumerable myriads of worms! “And though a man live many years, and rejoice in them all—yet let him remember the Days of Darkness,—for they shall be many!” No: March, April, or May! But you say,—“Then it will be the same old story, and seasons will cycle, and generations pass away, and yet he will not come.” Yet there are symptoms of my coming: little spider-threads of literary weaving with New York are thickening. When the rope is strong, I can make my bridge.—Think of the trouble I would have with my $1800 of books, and all my other truck. Alas! I have an anchor!

My friend Matas has returned. He tells me delightful things about Spanish music, and plays for me. He also tells me much concerning Cuban and Mexican music. He says these have been very strongly affected by African influence—full of contretemps. He tried to explain about the accompaniments of Havanen and Mexican airs having peculiar interresemblances of a seemingly dark origin—the bass goes all the time something like Si, Mi, Si,—si, mi, si. “See me?—see?” that’s how I remembered it. But he has given me addresses, and I will be able to procure specimens

Affectionately,

Lafcadio.

To W. D. O’Connor New Orleans, February, 1887.

Dear O’Connor,—Please, if feeling free enough from other and more important labours, write to me, let me have a few lines from you—telling me how you are, and how the years pass.

With me they have been somewhat uneventful—except, indeed, that your wish to see me succeed with the Harpers has been realized: I have become a contributor to the Magazine, and am going to have the honour of a short sketch of myself in it,—of course, in connection with the New Southern Literary Movement. And I will also soon have the pleasure of sending you a new production, just got, or getting out by a Boston house,—my “Chinese Ghosts;” brief studies in poetical prose, if you like. They may amuse you in a leisure moment.

I am soon going to run away to Florida, and perhaps the West Indies, for a romantic trip—a small literary bee in search of inspiring honey. There is a good market for books on Florida; and I may be able to get one out this next winter. You will like my sketch in Harper’s when it appears, as it deals with topics in which you are directly interested professionally,—Gulf-coasts and shifting dunes, sands, winds and tides, storms, and valiant saving of life. I think I am beginning to learn how to do good work.

I trust you are feeling strong and hearty. Last time you wrote me you were quite ill.

How delightful it would be if you could take a trip with me in March, to the Floridian springs, to windy Key West, or to the palmier Antilles, where we might watch together the rose-blossoming of extraordinary sunrises, the conflagration of apocalyptic sunsets. Is it impossible? My dreams now are full of fantastic light—a Biblical light: and the World-Ghost, all blue, promises inspiration. Could we not celebrate the Blue Ghost’s pentecost together?

Affectionately,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To W. D. O’Connor New Orleans, March, 1887.

Dear O’Connor,—I was sincerely pained to hear of your illness; and reading your long, kind, affectionate letter, felt that I had, without intending it, strained your generosity by causing you to write so much while ill. Not that your letter was wanting in any of those splendid and unique qualities which, I think, make you unrivalled as a letter-writer; but that, having been once severely shocked by overwork myself, I am fully aware how much it costs to write a long letter when the nervous system flags. In sending you this tiny book, I only desire to amuse you in leisure moments when you might feel inclined to read it;—don’t think I want you to write me about it; for if you were to write again before you get quite strong you would pain me....

I find I will have to go to the West Indies by way of New York;—at first I intended to go through lower Florida, and take a steamer at Key West for Havana. But I would have to change vessels so many times, I thought it best to get a New York steamer for Trinidad. In Trinidad I can see South American flora in all their splendour; in Jamaica and, especially, Martinique, I can get good chances to study those Creole types which are so closely allied to our own. I want to finish a tiny volume of notes of travel—Impressionist-work,—always keeping to my dream of a poetical prose.

But I feel you will have to make some new departure in your own work at Washington: so terrible a mill as they have there for grinding minds, frightens me! I used to think Government positions were facile to fill, and exacted less than ordinary professions in private life. I see such is not the case; and I hope you will be prudent, and not return to the same exacting duties again—enemigo reconciliado, enemigo doblado. My own sad experience at journalistic work, which broke me down, did me great good: it rendered it out of the question ever to put myself in a similar situation, and instead of the old loss of liberty I found leisure to study, to dream a little, to conceive an ambition which I now hope to fulfil in the course of a few years, if I live. Out of the misfortune, good came to me; and I notice that Nature is really very kind when we obey her;—she gives back more than she takes away, she lessens energies to increase mental powers of assimilation; she compels recognition, like the God of Job “who maketh silence in the high places,” and after having taught us what we cannot do, then returns to us a hundredfold that which she first took away. This is just what she will do for you; and I even hope the day will come when you will feel quite glad that you did overwork yourself a little, because the result turned the splendid stream of your mind into a broader channel of daily action, not confined within boundaries of hewn stone, but shadowed by odorous woods, and swept by free winds, and changing under the pressure of the will-current.

I want you to feel full of cheer and faith in this dear Nature of ours, who is certain to make you strong and lucky,—if you don’t go back to that horrid brain-mill in the Capital.

I will write you a little while I am gone,—if I can find a little strange bit of tropical colour to spread on the paper,—like the fine jewel-dust of scintillant moth-wings.

Believe me, with sincerest wishes and regards,

Affectionately,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To H. E. Krehbiel New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Krehbiel,—Your letter contained a cutting truth,—“This is not a country to dream in; but to get rich or go to the poorhouse.” Still, O golden-haired musician, is it not a crime to stifle the aspirations toward the beautiful which strive to burn upon the altar of every generous heart? Why not aim to kindle the holy fire, in spite of harsh realities and rains of Disappointment?

If you have written any pretty things recently let me see a copy soon as possible.

Don’t forget me altogether. It will be best to address me at post-office.

A gentleman lent me a bundle of Creole music yesterday. I could not copy it; the writing was too funny; but he is going to have it copied in order to send it to you

Very truly yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

Afterthought!—It has just occurred to me to ask if you are familiar with Lissajous’ experiments. I know nothing about them except what I found in Flammarion’s great “Astronomie Populaire.” One extraordinary chapter on numbers gives diagrams of the vibrations of harmonics—showing their singular relation to the geometrical designs of crystal-formation;—and the chapter is aptly closed by the Pythagorean quotation: Ἀεὶ ὁ Θεὸς γεωμετρεί.—“God geometrizes everywhere."... I should imagine that the geometry of a fine opera would—were the vibrations outlined in similar fashion—offer a network of designs which for intricate beauty would double discount the arabesque of the Alhambra. I was reading in an article on Bizet not long ago that music has ceased to be an art and has become a science—in which event it must have a mathematical future!... Probably all this is old to you; but it produced such an impression upon me when I first saw it, that I believe its mention won’t tire you anyhow. And then, between friends, it is a pleasure to exchange thoughts even of the most hyperbolical, and, perhaps, useless description.

L. H.

I send specimen music choral dance of Greek women in Megara. It is called La Trata, and was first published in Bourgault-Ducoudray’s "Souvenirs d’une mission musicale en Grèce;”—I took mine from Mélusine. The dance is very peculiar, and is supposed to have been danced in antique times at the festival of Neptune or Poseidon. The women form a chain, by so interlacing their hands that across each woman’s breast the hands of those on either side of her are clasped. The dancers move forward and retreat in file,—as if pulling nets. Ancient tomb-paintings show it was known in early Roman times also;—might not the music be as old as the dance,—as old as Phidias anyhow?... I suppose this is absurd, but wish it wasn’t.

To H. E. Krehbiel New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Krehbiel,—Excuses for silence between us are, I fancy, recognized as unnecessary, since they always have a good cause. I read with admiration and pleasure the fine critiques you were kind enough to send me; and I verily believe that you will be recognized sooner or later, if you are not already, as the best musical critic in the United States. Of course, I’m talking now on a subject I know little about; yet, if there be any superior to you, I am sure it is only that, being much older than you, they may have had a generation longer of opportunities for study.

My little book is advancing; and I am now face to face with what I recognize as one of the most awful situations in life, the criticism of the proofreader. I don’t mean the commonplace proof-reader, who is a mere printer; but the terrible scholar who supervises proofs for a leading class of publishers, such as the man of the University or Riverside Press, who knows all rules of grammar, all laws of form, all the weaknesses of writers,—and whose frightful suggestions are often simply crushing! What you have spent a month in making a beauty-blossom of style, may suddenly fade into worthless dust at one touch of his terrific pencil, making the simple hook-mark “?”. I can imagine I hear a voice asking: “Do you desire to make a fool of yourself by having this line in print?” And then the after-thoughts, the premature hurrying away of proofs, the frantic rush to the telegraph-office to have them returned or corrected, the humble letters of apology for trouble given, the yells of anguish in bed at night when I think to myself, “Oh! what a d—d ass I have been!” I have been now three times in front of this awful man, and like the angels he is without wrath and wholly without pity.

Your query about an opera-subject which suggested my lines about Rabyah, also inspired me to make the story a poetical sketch in my best style, which I sent to Harper’s Bazar; and perhaps, when you read it, you will think again more favourably about the theme. I am going one of these days to make a study on the romance of Rabyah’s courtship and marriage, which is very pretty in the rendering of the old Arabian chronicles. I understand exactly what you want; but not having any accurate idea of stage-necessities and theatrical exigencies, I fear you must always remain the one to determine the worth of any operatic suggestion possible to make. Now, for example, I can’t understand why Rabyah’s death could not be mounted, etc. You will like the colour of my sketch for the Bazar, to which I gave the title of “Rabyah’s Last Ride.” I have adopted the Arabic names, in preference to Lyall’s or Muir’s, unpronounceable at sight.—It seems to me that you can devise a splendid piece of gloomy beauty from the “Kalewala.”

I am going to the West Indies as soon as my book is out. It will be a tiny 16mo, with Chinese figures.

Believe me always your warmest friend,

Lafcadio.

I made a mistake in writing you about Hindola and Kabit; they represent poetical measures, or styles of chant, not instruments. See how my memory failed me.

To Elizabeth Bisland New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—More than two weeks before receiving your most welcome letter, I wrote to Messrs. Roberts Bros. of Boston to send you, as soon as published, a copy of “Chinese Ghosts,” which will appear in a few weeks. It opens with the story of the Bell—the legend of the Great Bell of Pekin, or Pe-King;—and you will also find in it the “Legend of the Tea-Plant:” both in better form than that which you first saw.... If you watch the Harper’s Bazar, you will find in it a little pre-Islamic story—“Rabyah’s Last Ride,”—which I expect will please you.

I am under so many obligations to you that I can’t attempt to thank you seriatim; but I am especially grateful to you for the pleasure of knowing something of Mrs. Alice W. Rollins. All the nice little things you have written about me and said about me, I can only hope to thank you for as I should like, when I am better able to prove what I feel.

As for your criticism of my queer ways, I can only say in explanation that I suspected a slightly sarcastic tendency where I was no doubt mistaken, and simply beat retreat from an imaginary fire.

Anyhow, let me assure you no one has ever had a sincerer belief in, or a higher opinion of your abilities, or a profounder recognition of many uncommon qualities discerned in you,—than myself. I trust you will soon receive the visit of the Ghosts: there are only six of them

Very truly and gratefully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland New Orleans, April 7 and 14, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—Your delightful letter ought, I imagine, to have been answered before; but among literary brothers and sisters a little delay can always be comprehended and forgiven, even without explanation. The explanation, however, might be interesting to one who feels so generous a sympathy with my work. I am trying to find the Orient at home,—to apply the same methods of poetical-prose treatment to modern local and living themes. The second attempt, in form of a novelette, is nearly ready. The subject of the whole is one which you love as much as I,—Louisiana Gulf-life.

Yes, indeed, I remember the Baboo!—with his prognathic profile, and his Yakshasa smile. I remember him especially, perhaps, because I first learned in his presence that your eyes were grey, instead of black.... I sent the Baboo to Krehbiel with a letter last summer;—taking care, however, to warn my friend against the ways of the Phansigars. Really the Baboo was an uncanny fellow; and the mysterious fact of his discharge from the British Civil Service impressed me as suspicious.

I think you are really lucky to be able to see and hear a Brahmin, and to find the East at your right hand. Atmans and mantras, and the skandhas, and the Days and Nights of Him with the unutterable name, and the mystic syllable Aum! Enough to suggest all the rest,—light, warmth, sounds, and the splendour of nights in which fountain-jets of song do bubble up from the rich flood of flower-odours.... Perhaps I shall be able to see the Brahmin;—I hope to be in New York early in May. I do not know whether I shall behold you;—you will be there, as here, a blossom dangerous to approach by reason of the unspeakable multitude of bees!

I have always wondered at your pluck in going boldly into the mouth of that most merciless of all monsters—a Metropolis of the first dimension,—and at your success in the face of very serious difficulties of the competitive sort. Let me hope you will feel always confident, as I do, that you are going to do more. You have one very remarkable and powerful faculty,—that of creating an impression, that remains, with a very few words. It shows itself in little things—for example, your few lines about the composite photos. Do you still write verse? A little volume of poetry by you is something I hope to see one of these days. The only thing I used to be afraid of regarding you was that you might lack the rare yet terribly necessary gift of waiting. And yet, there is something very unique in your literary temperament;—you are able to reach an effect at once and directly which others would obtain only by long effort. If you like anything I have done, it is because I have taken horrible pains with it. Eight months’ work on one sketch;—then eight months on another—not yet finished; but happily 120 pages are done; and the first was only 75. The attempt at romantic work on modern themes taught me lots of things. One is, that the purpose, as well as the thought, must evolve itself, but the thought must come first;—then the thing begins to develop—and always in a different way from that at first intended. Also I found that the importance of noting down impressions, introspective or otherwise,—and expanding them at leisure, is simply enormous. Perhaps you know all this already;—if not, try it and get a pretty surprise.

I have one thing more to chat about;—I am trying to get all my friends to read Herbert Spencer—beginning with “First Principles.” Slow reading, but invaluable; systematizes all one’s knowledge and plans and ideas. I’ve made three converts. The only way to read him is by paragraphs—all of which are numbered. I am now wrestling with the two big volumes of “Biology,” and have digested one of the “Sociology.” The “Psychology” I will touch last, though it is his mightiest work. Four years’ study, at least, for me to complete the reading. But “First Principles” contain the digest of all;—the other volumes are merely corollaries. When one has read Spencer, one has digested the most nutritious portion of all human knowledge. Also the style is worth the labour,—puissant, compact, and melodious.

Believe me always with many thanks for kind letter,

Your friend and literary brother,

Lafcadio Hearn.

Twice commenced, it is time this rambling document should finish. But I forgot to tell you C. D. Warner is here—stops at No. 13 Rampart. He called once at my rooms, seated himself among the papers, dust, bad pictures, and general desolation; and went away, leaving his card upon the valise (long-extemporized into a desk). I did not see him! He never called again.

To George M. Gould New Orleans, April, 1887.

Dear Sir,—However pleasant may have been the impulse prompting your generous letter, I doubt whether you could fully comprehend the value of it to myself,—the value of literary encouragement from an evidently strong source. There is nothing an author or an artist needs so much,—nothing that is more difficult to obtain.

After all, the reward for him who strives to express beauty or truth, for its own sake, is just such a letter as yours; for his aim is only to reach and touch that kindred something in another which the Christian calls Soul,—the Pantheist, God,—the philosopher, the Unknowable.

Your wish as to the application to modern themes of the same literary methods is about to be accomplished. I do not know how the work will be received by the public, nor can I tell just when it will appear; but I think soon, and in Harper’s Magazine (entre nous!). If it appears subsequently (or immediately) in more enduring form, I shall show my gratefulness by sending you a copy

Believe me, very sincerely,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To George M. Gould New Orleans, April, 1887.

Dear Mr. Gould,—You could not have done me more pleasure than by sending me your pamphlet on the “Colour-Sense.” I am an Evolutionist, and as thorough a disciple of Spencer as it is possible for one not a practical scientist to be; and such studies, combined with art and poetry, with which they serve in my case to stimulate and illustrate and expand, are my delight. I like your criticism on Grant Allen, too. In his “Physiological Æsthetics,” as well as in “Common-Sense in Science” and various other volumes, he has occasionally made singularly wild divergences from the perfectly smooth path he professes to travel—tumbled into imaginative thickets, lost himself in romantic groves. Still he is, as you observe, more than interesting sometimes; delightful, suggestive, skilled in giving a charming homeliness and familiarity to new truths vast as the sky.

The pamphlet on retinal insensibility I have not yet read through; and I fear some parts of it will prove too technical for me. But its larger conclusions and elucidations impress me already sufficiently to tell me that a more complete grasp of it will more than please and surprise.

My novelette is complete and in a publisher’s hands. When you read the first part, whether in the Magazine or in book form,—I think you will find much of what you have said regarding the Æsthetic Symbolism of Colour therein expressed, intuitively,—especially regarding the holiness of the sky-colour,—the divinity of Blue. Blue is the World-Soul

With grateful regards,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To George M. Gould New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Mr. Gould,—Reading your letter, I was strongly impressed by the similarity in thought, inspiration, range, even chirography, with the letters of a very dear friend, almost a brother, and also a physician,—though probably less mature than you in many ways. A greater psychological resemblance I have never observed. My friend is very young, but already somewhat eminent here;—he has been demonstrator of anatomy for some years at our University, and will ultimately, I am sure, turn out a great name in American medicine. But he is a Spaniard,—Rodolfo Matas. I first felt really curious about him after having visited him to obtain some material for a fantastic anatomical dream-sketch, and asked where I could find good information regarding the lives and legends of the great Arabian physicians. When he ran off a long string of names, giving the specialties of each man, and criticizing his work, I was considerably surprised; and even felt a little skeptical until I got hold of Leclerc and Sprengel and found the facts there as given to me by word of mouth. I trust you will meet him some day, and find in him an ideal confrère, which I am sure he would find in you. It is a singular fact that most of my tried friends have been physicians.

You asked me about Gautier. I have read and possess nearly all his works; and before I was really mature enough for such an undertaking I translated his six most remarkable short stories: (“Une Nuit de Cléopâtre;” “La Morte Amoureuse;” “Arria Marcella;” “Le Pied de Momie;” “Le Roi Candaule;” and “Omphale”), which were published by R. Worthington under the title of the opening story,—“One of Cleopatra’s Nights.” The work contains, I regret to say, several shocking errors; and the publisher refused me the right to correct the plates. The book remains one of the sins of my literary youth; but I am sure my judgement of the value of the stories was correct, and if ever able I shall try to get out a new and correct edition. Of Sainte-Beuve I have read very little—found him silver-grey. Most of the Romantic school I have. If you like Gautier, how much more would you like the work of Julien Viaud (Pierre Loti). We know each other by letter. Read “Le Roman d’un Spahi” first; I think it will astonish you. Then “Le Mariage de Loti;” then "Fleurs d’Ennui.” All his work, which has already won, even for so young a man, the highest encomium of the Academy, and the Vitel prize, is extraordinary; but my dislike of grey skies, fogs and ice, causes me to find less pleasure in “Mon Frère Yves,” and “Pêcheur d’Islande,” though there are superb tropical pages scattered through the latter.

I send you a little Arabian story, which I wrote for Harper’s Bazar last winter, and which I will reproduce some day in another shape, if I live to complete my Arabian plan. Perhaps you are familiar with the legend.

You will be glad to hear my novelette has been purchased by the Magazine. So that I may ultimately hope to be able to leave journalism alone. It is not arduous work for me; but I am a thorough demophobe, and it compels me to meet many disagreeable experiences,—experiences which often result in absolute nervous prostration caused wholly by annoyance. You can imagine the difficulties of creating artistic things only in the intervals of a long succession of petty troubles. Such troubles would be absurd to most minds, but to me they are horribly serious: I have a badly-balanced nervous make-up.

Next week I go away to hunt up some tropical or semi-tropical impressions. The Atlantic has given me some attention, and I am going to try to make a sketch for them.

Yours must be a very remarkable mind: I was greatly impressed by the plan and purpose and admirable instructive excellence of that optic model you sent me the circular of. In fact, I feel very small when I compare the work of my fancy with the work of such knowledge as yours. Still I have the power to give you pleasure, which is quite a consolation.

Believe me very truly, your friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

P.S. Are you inclined to believe in a further evolution of the colour-sense? Spencer, in vol. II “Biology,” is rather conservative as to the further prospects of physical evolution, although I suppose further moral evolution must necessitate a further progress in the nervous system.

To George M. Gould New Orleans, 1887.

In reply to nearly all the questions about my near-sightedness, I might answer, “Yes.” Had the best advice in London. Observe all the rules you suggest. Glasses strain the eye too much—part of retina is gone. Other eye destroyed by a blow at college; or rather by inflammation consequent upon blow. Can tell you more about myself when I see you, but the result will be more curious than pleasing. Myopia is not aggravating.

I knew you were going to have thorough success;—you will do far better than you think. Wish I had the opportunity to study medicine, or rather, the ability to be a good physician. Ah! to have a profession is to be rich, to have international current-money, a gold that is cosmopolitan, passes everywhere. Then I think I would never settle down in any place; would visit all, wander about as long as I could. There is such a delightful pleasantness about the first relations with people in strange places—before you have made any rival, excited any ill will, incurred anybody’s displeasure. Stay long enough in any one place and the illusion is over: you have to sift this society through the meshes of your nerves, and find perhaps one good friendship too large to pass through. To be a physician, an architect, an engineer,—anything that makes one capable of supplying to a universal or cosmopolitan want, is a great capital. Next to this, a good tradesman is worthy of envy: he may feel as much at home in Valparaiso as in New York; in Bangkok as in Paris.

Apropos of a medical novel, again,—have you had occasion to remark the fact that among the French, every startling discovery in medicine or those sciences akin to medicine, is almost immediately popularized by a capital story? The best of those I have seen appeared in the Revue Politique et Littéraire and in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The evolution of electricity by the human body suggested a powerful but very Frenchy sketch in the former some years ago, which appeared concomitantly with those theatrical exhibitions of a famous “electrical woman.” Then there was one dealing with the super-refinement of the five senses, particularly vision and smell,—entitled “Un Fou.” The researches of Charcot and others into hypnotism and its phenomena, doubtless suggested “Une Tresse Blonde” in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

It is always a safe and encouraging thing to trace one’s ancestral history, supposing one be very philosophical. In your case it is. A fine physical and mental man can feel sure from the mere fact of his comparative superiority that he has something to thank his ancestors for. But suppose the man be small, puny, sickly, scrofulous,—the question of ancestry becomes unpleasant. We are far ahead of Tristram Shandy, nowadays; the inferiority of the homunculus is no mere matter of accident or interruption. How depressing some knowledge is, and how little philosophy betters the situation some discoveries bring about. Take such an example as this: a nice, sweet girl, full of physical attractiveness, grace, freshness, with a delicious disposition, fascinates you, you think of marriage. Somebody tells you the mother and grandmother both went mad. How much of a change in your admiration is produced by this simple fact. I saw this feeling put into practice. A Southern planter—splendid man!—was asked for his daughter’s hand by a gentleman of the neighbourhood, whose grandfather had committed a terrible crime. The young man was wealthy, accomplished, steady, brave, had the best of reputations and was liked by the girl. The father refused him frankly for the simple reason that he had in his veins some of the blood of a great criminal.

It must have struck you, if you have studied Buddhism—(not “esoteric Buddhism,” which is damnable charlatanism!)—how the tenets of that great faith are convertible into scientific truths in the transforming crucible of the new philosophy. The consequence of the crime or the sacrifice in the forming of the future personality; the heights attainable by discipline, of indifference to external things; the duty and holiness of the extinction of the Self; the monstrous allegory of the physical metempsychosis, which is the shadow of a tremendous truth; the supreme Buddha-hood which is the melting into the infinite life, light, knowledge, and the peace of the immensities: science gives an harmonious commentary upon all these, which it refuses to the more barbarous faith of the Occident. All that is noble in the Christianity, too much boasted of, belongs also to the older and vaster dream of the East—is perchance a dim reflection of it; the possibility of the invasion of the Oriental philosophy into the Occident seems to me worthy of consideration. In the meanwhile, it is unfortunate that such apes as the —— should parade their detestable macaqueries as Buddhism and obtain such hosts of hearers.

Speaking of the sexual sense being “such an infernal liar,” there are reasons that lead me to doubt whether it is all a liar. I think it never tells a physical lie. It only tells an ethical one. The physical memory of the most worthless woman that ever ensnared a man vibrates always afterward with a thrill of pleasure. But that is not really what I intended to say: I want to know if there be any scientific explanation of this fact. A woman wicked enough to tempt a man to cut his mother’s throat may have a peculiar physical magnetism. The touch of her hand in passing, the character of a look from her,—although she be ugly,—may be irresistible, damning. A good woman, beautiful, graceful, infinitely her physical superior, may have no such charm for the same man. Here is a mystery I cannot explain. This phenomenon is especially noticeable in the tropics, where differences of race and race mixture produce astounding sexual variations. Never was there a huger stupidity than the observation that “all women are in one respect alike.” On the contrary, in that one respect they differ infinitely, inexplicably, diabolically, fantastically.

L. H.

To George M. Gould New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Mr. Gould,—I posted a letter, thanking you for two treatises so kindly sent, just before receiving your note. Be sure that I will find it no small pleasure to have a chat with a brother-thinker, if I find myself in Philadelphia this summer.

To the best of my recollection the book you speak of is a small, thin volume which only pretends to be a synopsis of the most gigantic of existing epics—the Mahabharata excepted. There are three complete translations of the colossal Ramayana:—The Italian version of Gorresio, I think in ten vols.; the French prose one by Hippolyte Fauche in nine, which I have read; and the exceedingly tiresome English translation (now O. P.) by Griffith, in Popish verse. It was, I think, on this last that “The Iliad of the East” was based—a very poor effort, artistically.

These epics are simply inexhaustible mines of folk-lore and legend,—like the Kathā-sarit-Sāgara. But one gets cloyed soon. It requires the patience of a Talmudist to work in these huge masses to get out a diamond or two. But diamonds there are. You know that mighty pantheistic hymn, the “Bhagavad-Gita,” is but a little fragment of the Mahabharata;—also the story of Nala, so beautifully translated by Monier Williams, Arnold, and the wonderful dead Hindoo girl, Toru Dutt, who wrote English and French as well as Hindustani and Sanscrit, made also some exquisite renderings. All you could wish for in this direction has not indeed been done; but it will take a hundred years to do it.

I am only a dilettante, not a linguist; and I only try to familiarize myself with the aspect of a national Idea as manifested in these epics. Some day I shall try to offer the public a little volume dealing with the Old Arabic spirit—pre-Islamic and post-Islamic. The poetry of the desert is Homeric. And I don’t know but that for pure natural poetry, the great Finnish Kalewala is not more wonderful than the Indian epics. When I made my brief renderings from the French edition of 1845, I was not familiar with the completion of the work by the labours of Loennrot.

Pardon long letter. You and I may have a good chance to talk these things over later on

Very cordially yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—At the time your letter reached me, the few proofs sent had been given away;—I have not many friends, of course, but I did not have many proofs either. The best I can therefore do is to send original photo. This is taking a liberty, I suppose, to send what wasn’t asked for; but it is the best I can do, and you can pitch it away if you don’t want it.

My novelette is done, and I am waiting to hear of its fate before starting. I am sure you will like it, and recognize a good deal of the scenery. I do not know how long I shall stay in New York;—might only stay a very short time, but quite long enough to see you once,—for a little while. Then again I might take a notion to stay in the North—don’t really know what I shall do.

What would be nice, if one could manage it, would be to live in the country, or in some vast wilderness, and ship one’s work away. But I fear that will only be possible when I have become Ancient as the Moon,—if I should ever become ancient

Very truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

P. S. I met no more Hindoos here, but I met some other singular beings.

My last pet was a Chinese doctor, whose name I cannot pronounce. He tried to teach me Chinese; but I discovered nasal tones almost impossible to imitate,—snarling sounds like the malevolent outcries of contending cats.... “Gha!—ho-lha! Koum Yada! Gha! ghwang hwa!—yow sum!” Under the placid naïveté of a baby, my Chinese tutor concealed a marvellous comprehension of human motives and of human meannesses. He observed like a judge, and smiled always—always, with the eternal, half-compassionate, half-divine smile of the images of Fo.

To H. E. Krehbiel New Orleans, 1887.

Dear Krehbiel,—All that is now delaying me is news from the Harpers which I am waiting for. I have sent on my completed novelette,—an attempt at treatment of modern Southern life in the same spirit of philosophic romance as the “Ghosts” attempted to exemplify,—an effort to reach that something in the reader which they call Soul, God, or the Unknowable, according as the thought harmonizes with Christian, Pantheistic, or Spencerian ideas, without conflicting with any. Of course, I am a little anxious over this parturition;—have no idea how it is going to impress Alden. In a week from this date I expect to hear from him. Then I will be able to go.

Of course, New York is a horrible nightmare to me. I have been a demophobe for years,—dread crowds and hate unsympathetic characters most unspeakably. I have only been once to a theatre in New Orleans; to hear Patti sing, and I got out after she had sung one song. I can’t be much of a pleasure to any one. Here I visit a few friends steadily for a couple of months;—then disappear for six. Can’t help it;—just a nervous condition that renders effort unpleasant. So I shall want to be very well hidden away in New York,—to see no one except you and Joe. There are one or two I shall have to visit; but I shall take care to make those visits just before leaving town.

Your suggestion about the catalogue was so kind, that I don’t know how to thank you. What bothers me about it are the following points:—

1. If the collection is a large one, seems to me that each department should be entrusted to a specialist. Japanese armourers-work alone demands that. You know what Damascus-steel means in literary and scientific research; and the Japanese artisans surpassed the world in such work. Then porcelains, lacquers, inlaid work, pictured books, goldsmithery, etc. I know nothing about these things.

2. The Japanese expert may have simply confined himself to titles, dates, names;—or have made explanatory text as fitting and dry as possible. If he has, I don’t see how a unique catalogue could be made. The only way it could be made, I imagine, would be to make explanatory text picturesque and rich in anecdote; which would require immense reading, and purchase of many expensive books on the subject of art and history—De Rosny, Gonse, Metchnikoff, etc. Oriental art is one of the things I can never afford to study. It costs too much—the luxury of a rich dilettante.

3. Seems to me such a work would require at least six months to do at all, a whole year to do well. Don’t think I could afford to do it. I cannot write or read at night. If it were simply a question of translation and arrangement, it would be done soon; and I would need only a few technical and art treatises, some of which I already have....

I need rest and change a while,—not that I feel sick, but the continual fight with malaria leaves a fellow’s nerves terribly slack, like the over-strained chords of a—well, better leave the rest of the simile to you.... I don’t know whether the “Ghosts” walk; but I have been told it did me much good in Boston literary circles. The publishers voluntarily made a 5-years’—10 per cent—contract with me; but I have not heard from them. Notices were very contradictory outside of New York and Boston. Some said the stories were literal translations; others said they were fabrications, without any Chinese basis; others said the book was obscene; others called it “exquisitely spiritual,”—in short, the critics didn’t seem to know what to make of it. Three lines in the Atlantic consoled me amply for naughty Western criticism.

You may expect to hear definitely from me very soon,—at latest, I suppose, ten days

Affectionately,

L. Hearn.

Have you any idea how big a catalogue it ought to be?—if 100, 200, 300 pp. 16mo? Would it be indexed generally, or by departments,—duplex or single? Five pp. a day on such a job would be work. Then rewriting at rate of 10 pp. per day. All supposing that no research or elaborated treatment of incident were required,—only description and explanation.

I’ve had to open envelope to ask another question: Does he want the catalogue written in French? Because if he does, I wouldn’t attempt it. No one but a Frenchman, or some rare men like Rossetti and Swinburne can write artistic French. I can’t write French with delicacy and correctness.

Or does he simply want bad French turned into good English?

My experience is this. Translation—except for an artistic motive, and with ample leisure—never pays, either in self-satisfaction or anything else. Cataloguing, pure and simple, is the most terrible and tiresome of earthly labours;—first notebook and eyes; then arrangement of amplified notes by “a’s” and “b’s;” then enveloping or boxing, and pasting, then rewriting; then, O God!—the proofs!

I know how to do it, but it is so much life thrown away—so much thought-time made sterile. In this case the chief compensation would be opportunity to study the phases of Japanese art,—the esprit.

To Elizabeth Bisland New York, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—A small creature rang the bell at 136 Madison Avenue. A large and determined concierge responded, and the following converse ensued:—

S. C.—“Miss Bisland—?”

C.—“No, sir!”

S. C.—“Miss E-liz-a-beth Bisland—?”

C.—“No, sir!”

S. C.—“Isn’t this 136 Madison Avenue?”

C.—“Yes.—Used to live here.—Moved.”

S. C.—“Do you not know where—?”

C.—“No, sir.”

S. C.—“None of her friends or relatives here, who could tell me?”

C.—“No!”

The sudden closing of the door here made a Period and a Finis.

Then I wandered away down a double row of magnificent things that seemed less buildings than petrifactions,—astonishments of loftiness and silent power,—and wondered how Miss Elizabeth Bisland must have felt when she first trod these enormous pavements and beheld these colossal dreams of stone trying to touch the moon. And reaching my friend Krehbiel’s house I made this brief record of my vain effort to meet the grey eyes of E. B.

Lafcadio Hearn.

To H. E. Krehbiel Saint-Pierre, Martinique, 1887.

Dear Krehbiel,—I was delighted to get your letter, the first which reached me from America during my trip. My own correspondence has been irregular, though I have written a good many short letters; but the amount of work on my hands has been something enormous,—and I have only had five idle days, caused by a fever due to imprudence. I got into a marshy town, got wet, and came home with a burning headache. The result was not serious except that I had to stop all writing for a while.

You ask me to send you a hint about my work; but I think it were best to say nothing about it. I have a very large mass of MS. prepared, and don’t yet know what I am going to do with it: it is not polished as I should wish, but I hope to work it into proper shape in a few days more. It consists simply of a detailed account of impressions, sensations, colours, etc. I have tried to put the whole feeling of the trip on paper. Then I have about $60 worth of photos to illustrate it. My photo set is very complete;—I have also a rich collection of Coolie and half-breed types, including many nude studies.

Strange as you may think it, this trip knocks the poetry out of me! The imagination is not stimulated, but paralyzed by the satiation of all its aspirations and the realization of its wildest dreams. The artistic sense is numbed by the display of colours which no artist could paint; and the philosophical sense is lulled to inactivity by the perpetual current of novel impressions, by the continual stream of unfamiliar sensory experiences. Concentration of mind is impossible.

It pleases me, however, to have procured material for stories, which I can write up at home; and for romantic material the West Indies offer an unparalleled field of research. I shall return to them again at my earliest opportunity;—the ground is absolutely untilled, and it is not in the least likely that anybody in the shape of a Creole is ever going to till it.

By this time you will have seen the doll. I want to remind you that this is more than a doll; it is really an artistic model of the dress worn by the women of Martinique,—big earrings and all. The real earrings and necklaces are pure gold; the former worth 175 francs a pair; the latter often running as high as 500, 600, even 900 francs.

In case this reaches you before leaving New York, I hope you will be able to make some arrangement with Joe or somebody, so that I can put my things in a place of safety for a day or two, until I can try to arrange matters with the Harpers. I will be obliged to stay a short while in New York,—and shall want a room badly, until my MS. and photos have been disposed of, and my proof-reading has been done on “Chita.” With affectionate regards to all,

Very truly yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

P. S. I return with the Barracouta.

My inquiries about the Marimba and other instruments have produced no result except the discovery that our negroes play the guitar, the flute, the flageolet, the cornet-à-piston! Some play very well; all the orchestras and bands are coloured. But the civilized instrument has killed the native manufacture of aboriginalities. The only hope would be in the small islands, or where slavery still exists, as in Cuba, There are one or two African songs still current, but they are sung to the tam-tam—

Welleli, welleli,
hm, hm!
Papa mon ce papa mon
hm, hm!
Welleli, welleli,
hm, hm!
Maman mon ce maman mon
hm, hm!
Welleli, etc.

To Elizabeth Bisland Georgetown, Demerara, July, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—I suppose you will have just a tiny little bit of curiosity to know about my impressions here? They have been all flavoured with that enchanting sensation which artists term surprise. The effect upon me has been such that I think the North will always look torpid to me,—as a benumbed and livid part of our planet. Nearly all these isles are volcanic; and this largely accounts for the green and purple symmetry of their shapes. The colours are of the kind called "impossible;”—and the days have such an azure expansion, so enormous a luminosity that it does not really seem to be our sky above, but the heaven of some larger world.

That’s all I can attempt to say about it now (in a general way) without wearying you.

Imagine old New Orleans, the dear quaint part of it, young and idealized as a master-artist might idealize it,—made all tropical, with narrower and brighter streets, all climbing up the side of a volcanic peak to a tropical forest, or descending in terraces of steps to the sea;—fancy our Creole courts filled with giant mangoes and columnar palms (a hundred feet in height sometimes); and everything painted in bright colours, and everybody in a costume of more than Oriental picturesqueness;—and astonishments of half-breed beauty;—and a grand tepid wind enveloping the city in one perpetual perfumed caress,—fancy all this, and you may have a faint idea of the sweetest, queerest, darlingest little city in the Antilles: Saint-Pierre, Martinique. I hope it will be my residence for the next two months,—and for the latter part of my wretched little existence. I love it as if it were a human being.

Outside are queer little French islands, with queer names—Marie Galante is rather an old appellation for an island,—full of Cytherean suggestion.

We leave this very fantastic and unhealthy land—now smitten with Gold-fever as well as other maladies—to-morrow. Then will come Trinidad, with its Hindoo villages to see. Photos, bought at Demerara and St. Kitts, predict visions of Indian grace worth daring the perpendicular sun to see. I am now the only passenger. My last companion—a fine Northwestern man—goes, I fear, to leave his bones in the bush. From the interior men are being carried back to the coast to die, yet the stream pours on to the gold-mines. My miner thinks he can stand it: he has dug for African gold, under a fiercer sky. He was an odd fellow. Saw no beauty in these islands. “No, partner—if you want to see scenery see the Rockies: that’s something to look at! Even the sea’s afraid of them mountains,—ran away from them: you can see four thousand feet up where the sea tried to climb before it got scared!”

Sometimes the apes on board are taught the experiences of life, the advantages of civilization. Torpedoes are tied to their tails; fire-crackers surround them with circles of crepitation and flame. Also they are occasionally paralyzed by unexpected sensations of electricity;—they have made the acquaintance of a galvanic battery; they have been induced to do foolish things which resulted in sharp and unfamiliar pains and burnings. Their lives are astonishments, and prolonged spasms of terror.

The sea at night is an awful and magnificent sight. It looks infernal,—Acherontic;—black surges that break into star-spray;—an abyss full of moving lights that come and go.

Well, I can’t write a good letter now;—wait till I get back to Martinique. I wanted you to know I had not forgotten my promise to write. You must make a trip down here some day. It is not hotter than New York except in the sun. You can do whatever you wish. You have force to do it. You have more brains in your finger-tips than some who have managed to get a big reputation. The little talk about Grande Isle that night was an absolute poem,—gave me a sense of the charm of the place such as I felt the first beautiful morning there. You don’t know what you can do, if you want to.

I think I should do something with this novel material, it is so rich in absurd colour! But I don’t feel enthusiastic now. Enthusiasm has been numbed by a long series of violent sensations and unexpected experiences. I have artistic indigestion;—going to try to dream it away at divine, paradisaical Martinique. There I will write you again. My address will be, care American Consul. But you mustn’t write unless you have plenty of time;—I am only paying my debts, not trying to make you waste paper answering me.

I believe I am beginning to write absurdities: it is so hot that rain-clouds form in one’s head.

Good-bye, believe the best you can of me

Your friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Saint-Pierre, Martinique, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—I am settled here for at least a month:—wish I could settle here forever. I love this quaint, whimsical, wonderfully-coloured little town,—all its ups and downs, vistas of azure harbour and overshadowing volcanic hills,—all the stones that whisper under the myriad naked feet of this fantastic population. It pleases me to find my affection for it is not merely inspiration: the place has fascinated more than one practical American,—persuaded them to abandon ambitions, contests, popular esteem, friends, society,—and to settle here for the rest of their days, in delightful indolence and dreamy content.

In my trunk I have something for you: a Coolie girl’s bracelet. It will not look so well on your arm as on hers, because its effect depends on a background of dark colour; and all this clumsy Indian jewelry is inartistically wrought. It is indeed made chiefly for economical reasons. Coolies so carry their wealth;—I saw one Hindoo wife with some $900 worth of jewelry upon her.

In the little Coolie village near Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, I sat, and looked at rudely painted Indian gods, while waiting for the silversmith to sit down before his ridiculous little anvil. All the palm-shadows, intensely black, crawled outside like tarantulas; it was a glowing day,—blindingly blue: the light of a larger sun seemed to fill the world,—a white sun,—Sirius!

“Ra!” called out the Coolie smith when I told him I wanted to look at his jewelry;—and his wife came in. She wore the Hindoo garb without the long veils: a white robe like a Greek chiton, or rather like a lady’s chemise,—leaving the arms and ankles bare, and confined about the waist. I thought her very lovely,—slender and delicate,—a perfect bronze-colour: the gold-flower attached to the nostril did not impair the symmetry of the face;—extraordinary eyes and teeth. She held out her pretty round arms for examination: there were about ten silver rings upon each: the two outer ones being round, the inner eight being flat. The arm was infinitely prettier than the bracelets;—I selected one ring, and the smith opened and removed it with an iron instrument and gave it me. It had a faint musky odour: perhaps that was why the smith insisted on putting it into an absurdly small furnace, and purifying it after the Indian manner.

I wanted to buy a pair of baby bracelets;—so they brought in the baby,—a girl, and therefore (?) having a dress on. The little babies of the other sex wear nothing but circles of silver on arms and ankles. Sometimes the custom is extended; for the little wife who carried her girl baby to the post-office when I was at Demerara, carried it naked at her hip in the most primitive manner.

This Trinidad baby had absurdly large eyes,—looked supernatural: the mother’s eyes magnified. She held up her little arms and I chose two rings. Then she talked to me in—Creole patois! It is the commercial dialect of the poor; and the Hindoos learn it well

Always truly,

Lafcadio Hearn.

There are palms here over 200 feet high. There are fish here of all the colours of marsh-sunset.

To Elizabeth Bisland Fort de France, Martinique, July, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—Imagine yourself turned into marble, all white,—robed after the fashion of the Directory,—standing forever on a marble pedestal, under an enormous azure day,—encircled by a ring of tall palms, graceful as Creole women,—and gazing always, always, over the summer sea, toward emerald Trois Islets.

That is Josephine! I think she looks just like you, “Mamzelle Josephine,”—or Zefine, if you like.

I want to tell you a little story about her,—just a little anecdote somebody told me on the street, which I want to develop into a sketch next week.

It was after the fall of the Second Empire,—after France felt the iron heel of Germany upon her throat.

Far off in this delicious little Martinique, the Republican rage made itself felt;—the huge reaction passed over the ocean like a magnetic current. So it happened, in a little while, that the Martinique politicians resolved to do that which had already been done in France,—to obliterate the memories of the Empire.

There was Mamzelle Zefine, par exemple!... They put a rope round her beautiful white neck. They prepared to destroy the statue.

Then Somebody rang the Church-bell—(you ought to see the sleepy little church: it makes you want to doze the moment you pass into its cool shadow). A vast crowd gathered in the Savane.

It was a crowd of women,—mostly women who had been slaves,—quadroons, mulattoesses; the house-servants, the bonnes, the nurses and housekeepers of the old days. (You could form no possible idea of this coloured Creole element without seeing it: it does not exist in New Orleans.) They gathered to defend Mamzelle Zefine.

When the Republican officials came with their workmen at sunrise, Mamzelle Zefine was still gazing toward Trois Islets; she was white as ever; her pure cold passionate face just as lovely: she seemed totally indifferent to what was about to happen,—she was dreaming her eternal plaintive dream.

But she could well afford to feel indifferent! About her, under the circle of the palms, surged a living sea,—a tide of angry yellow faces, above which flashed the lightning of cane-knives, axes, couteaux de boucher. “Ah! li vieu!—lâches! cafa’ds! pott’ons! Vos pas cabab toucher li! Touché li—yon tête fois!—Osé toucher li. Capons Républicains! Osé toucher li!“

Mamzelle Zefine still gazed plaintively toward Trois Islets. She must have seemed to that yellow population to live;—for each one she represented some young mistress, some petted child, some memory of the old colonial days. And all the love of the slave for the master—all the strange passionate senseless affection of the servant for the Creole family—was stirred to storm by the mere idea of the proposed desecration. The man who should have dared to lay an evil finger upon Josephine that day would have been torn limb from limb in the public square. The officials were frightened and foiled: they pledged their faith that the statue should not be touched.

So they took the ropes away; and they piled flowers at Mamzelle Zefine’s white feet; they garlanded her; they twined the crimson jessamines of the tropics about her beautiful white throat.

And she is still here,—always in the circle of the palms, always looking to Trois Islets, always beautiful and sweet as a young Creole maiden,—dreamy, gracious, loving,—with a smile that is like some faint, sweet memory of other days.

Always,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland New York, 1887.

Dear Miss Bisland,—Thanks for the gracious little letter. I wish I could see you, and see other friends; but fate forbids. Distances are too enormous; engagements imperative; preparations for coming journey made my head whirl. For I return to the tropics, dear Miss Bisland,—probably forever: I imagine that civilization will behold me no more, except as a visitor at very long intervals. I would like to write you sometimes, praying only that my letters be not ever shown unto newspaper people. You will hear from me soon again. I am off on Friday afternoon, and have not even the necessary time to do what I ought to do in the mere matter of exceedingly small purchases, outfits, etc.

Good-bye, with best regards and something a little more, too.

Lafcadio Hearn.

I have not seen Krehbiel at all,—was out of town when I returned, and seems to have found no time afterwards.

To Elizabeth Bisland New York, 1887.

Your letter reached me just at a time when everything that had seemed solid was breaking up, and substance had become Shadow. It made me very foolish,—made me cry. Your rebuke for the trivial phrase in my letter was very beautiful as well as very richly deserved. But I don’t think it is a question of volition. It is necessary to obey the impulses of the Unknown for Art’s sake—or rather, you must obey them. The Spahi’s fascination by the invisible Forces was purely physical. I think I am right in going: perhaps I am wrong in thinking of making the tropics a home. Probably it will be the same thing over again: impulse and chance compelling another change.

The carriage—no, the New York hack and hackman (no romance or sentimentality about these!)—is waiting to take me to Pier 49, East River. So I must end. But I have written such a ridiculous letter that I shan’t put anybody’s name to it.

To George M. Gould Saint-Pierre, Martinique, May, 1888.

Dear Gould,—One of your letters, I think a P. Cd., many months ago, caught me in British Guiana, another to-day finds me here. I left N. O. in June, 1887, and have been travelling since, or at least sojourning in these tropics. I have been sick, too,—have had some trouble fighting the influences of climate, trouble in trying to carry out large plans with absurdly small resources; and have been unable to do my friends justice. How could you think I could have been offended? It was only the other day, in a letter to the editor of Harper’s, that I referred to one of your delightful colour-theories.

Praise from you I value very highly. As to impress such a mind as yours means to me a great pride and pleasure. I am delighted “Chita” pleased you.

I have written a number of sketches on the West Indies,—some of which may appear in a few months, others later on. It has been a hope of mine to make a unique book on these strange Hesperides, with their singularly mixed races; but I don’t know whether I shall be able to carry the project out.

The climate is antagonistic to work. It is a benumbing power, rendering concentrated thought almost out of the question. I can now understand why the tropics have produced so little literature.

We are quarantined and isolated for the present by a long epidemic of small-pox, which among these populations means something as fatal as an Oriental plague. The whites are exempt. But the disease, although on the decline, still prevails to an extent rendering it doubtful when I can get away from here.

I would like much to hear from you when you have time. I am temporarily settled here, and everything goes well enough now, so that I can write regularly

With best affection,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To George M. Gould Grand Anse, Martinique, June, 1888.

Dear Dr. Gould,—I am writing you from an obscure, pretty West Indian village, seldom visited by travellers. Tall palms, and a grand roaring sea, blue as lapis lazuli in spite of its motion.

I was certainly even more pleased to hear from you than you could have been at the receipt of my letter;—for in addition to the intellectual and sympathetic pleasure of such a correspondence, the comparative rarity of friendly missives, enhancing their value, lends them certain magnetism difficult to describe,—the sensation, perhaps, of that North, and that Northern vigour of mind which has made the world what it is, and that pure keen air full of the Unknowable Something which has made the Northern Thought.

I seldom have a chance now to read or speak English; and English phrases that used to seem absolutely natural already begin to look somewhat odd to me. Were I to continue to live here for some years more, I am almost sure that I should find it difficult to write English. The resources of the intellectual life are all lacking here,—no libraries, no books in any language;—a mind accustomed to discipline becomes like a garden long uncultivated, in which the rare flowers return to their primitive savage forms, or are smothered by rank, tough growths which ought to be pulled up and thrown away. Nature does not allow you to think here, or to study seriously, or to work earnestly: revolt against her, and with one subtle touch of fever she leaves you helpless and thoughtless for months.

But she is so beautiful, nevertheless, that you love her more and more daily,—that you gradually cease to wish to do aught contrary to her local laws and customs. Slowly, you begin to lose all affection for the great Northern nurse that taught you to think, to work, to aspire. Then, after a while, this nude, warm, savage, amorous Southern Nature succeeds in persuading you that labour and effort and purpose are foolish things,—that life is very sweet without them;—and you actually find yourself ready to confess that the aspirations and inspirations born of the struggle for life in the North are all madness,—that they wasted years which might have been delightfully dozed away in land where the air is always warm, the sea always the colour of sapphire, the woods perpetually green as the plumage of a green parrot.

I must confess I have had some such experiences. It appears to me impossible to resign myself to living again in a great city and in a cold climate. Of course I shall have to return to the States for a while,—a short while, probably;—but I do not think I will ever settle there. I am apt to become tired of places,—or at least of the disagreeable facts attaching more or less to all places and becoming more and more marked and unendurable the longer one stays. So that ultimately I am sure to wander off somewhere else. You can comprehend how one becomes tired of the very stones of a place,—the odours, the colours, the shapes of Shadows, and tint of its sky;—and how small irritations become colossal and crushing by years of repetition;—yet perhaps you will not comprehend that one can actually become weary of a whole system of life, of civilization, even with very limited experience. Such is exactly my present feeling,—an unutterable weariness of the aggressive characteristics of existence in a highly organized society. The higher the social development, the sharper the struggle. One feels this especially in America,—in the nervous centres of the world’s activity. One feels at least, I imagine, in the tropics, where it is such an effort just to live, that one has no force left for the effort to expand one’s own individuality at the cost of another’s. I clearly perceive that a man enamoured of the tropics has but two things to do:—To abandon intellectual work, or to conquer the fascination of Nature. Which I will do will depend upon necessity. I would remain in this zone if I could maintain a certain position here;—to keep it requires means. I can earn only by writing, and yet if I remain a few years more, I will have become (perhaps?) unable to write. So if I am to live in the tropics, as I would like to do, I must earn the means for it in very short order.

I gave up journalism altogether after leaving N. O. I went to Demerara and visited the lesser West Indies in July and August of last year,—returned to New York after three months with some MS.,—sold it,—felt very unhappy at the idea of staying in New York, where I had good offers,—suddenly made up my mind to go back to the tropics by the very same steamer that had brought me. I had no commission, resolved to trust to magazine-work. So far I have just been able to scrape along;—the climate numbs mental life, and the inspirations I hoped for won’t come. The real—surpassing imagination—whelms the ideal out of sight and hearing. The world is young here,—not old and wise and grey as in the North; and one must not seek the Holy Ghost in it. I suspect that the material furnished by the tropics can only be utilized in a Northern atmosphere. We will talk about it together; for I will certainly call on you in Philadelphia some day.

I would not hesitate, if I were you, to begin the magnum opus;—the only time to hesitate would be when it is all complete, before giving to the printer. Then one may perhaps commune with one’s self to advantage upon the question of what might be gained or lost by waiting for more knowledge through fresh expansions of science. But the true way to attempt an enduring work is to begin it as a duty, without considering one’s self in the matter at all, but the subject only,—which you love more and more the longer you caress it, and find it taking form and colour and beauty with the patient years.

I am horribly ignorant about scientific matters; but sometimes the encouragement of a layman makes the success of the prelate.

Now, replying to your question about “Chita.” “Chita” was founded on the fact of a child saved from the Lost Island disaster by some Louisiana fisher-folk, and brought up by them. Years after a Creole hunter recognized her, and reported her whereabouts to relatives. These, who were rich, determined to bring her up as young ladies are brought up in the South, and had her sent to a convent. But she had lived the free healthy life of the coast, and could not bear the convent;—she ran away from it, married a fisherman, and lives somewhere down there now,—the mother of multitudinous children.

And about my work, I can only tell you this:—I will have two illustrated articles on a West Indian trip in the Harper’s Monthly soon,—within four or five months. These will be followed by brief West Indian sketches. Other sketches, not suited for the magazine, will go to form a volume to be published later on. I do not correspond or write for any newspaper, and I would always let you know in advance where anything would be published written by me.

You know what the nervous cost of certain imaginative work means; and this sort of work I do not think I shall be able to do here. One has no vital energy to spare in such a climate. I cannot read Spencer here,—gave up the “Biology” (vol. II) in despair. But I did not miss the wonderful page about the evolution of the eye—hair—snail-horn—etc., etc.... I want to see anything you write that I can understand, with my limited knowledge of scientific terms and facts. And when you write again, tell me what you said of Loti in the letter I never received. Did you read his “Roman d’un Spahi”? I thought you would like it. If you do not, let me know why,—because Loti has had much literary influence upon me, and I want to know his faults as well as his merits. With love to you,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To George M. Gould Saint-Pierre, Martinique, August, 1888.

Dear Gould,—Many thanks for the quid!—the surprising quid. I have been waiting to send you the quo, which I do not like so well as one taken in New Orleans, of which I have no copy within reach. But before I tell you anything about the quo, I ought to scold you for your startling deception. I pictured you as a much younger man than myself—although quite conscious of meeting an intelligence much more virile and penetrating than my own, and with an experience of life larger: this did not, however, astonish me; for whatever qualities I have lie only in that one direction which pleased you and won your friendship,—moreover, I had met several much younger men than myself, my mental superiors in every respect. But, all of a sudden you come upon me with such a revelation of your personality as makes me half afraid of you. I perceive that your envergure is much larger than I imagined:—I mean, of course, the mental spread-of-wing; and then your advice and suggestions, while manifesting your ability to teach me much in my own line, resemble only those proffered by old experienced masters in literary guidance. It is exactly the advice of Alden, among one or two others.

Now about the quo. I am about five feet three inches high, and weigh about 137 pounds in good health;—fever has had me down to 126. Nothing phthisical,—36¾ inches round the chest, stripped. Was born in June (27th), 1850, in Santa Maura (the antique Leucadia), of a Greek mother. My father, Dr. Charles Bush Hearn, who spent most of his life in India, was surgeon-major of the 76th British regiment (now merged in West Riding Battalion). Do not know anything about my mother, whether alive or dead;—was last heard of (remarried) in Smyrna, about 1858-9. My father died on his return from India. There was a queer romance in the history of my father’s marriage. It is not, however, of the sort to interest you in a letter. I am very near-sighted, have lost one eye, which disfigures me considerably; and my near-sightedness always prevented the gratification of a natural penchant for physical exercise. I am a good swimmer; that is all.

Your advice about story-writing is capital; I am not so sure about your suggestion of plot. I cannot believe—in view of the extraordinary changes (changes involving even the whole osseous structure) wrought in the offspring of Europeans or foreigners within a single generation by the tropical climate—that anything of the parental moral character on the father’s side would survive with force sufficient to produce the psychical phenomena you speak of. In temperate climates these do survive astonishingly, even through generations; in the tropics, Nature moulds every new being at once into perfect accord with environment, or else destroys it. The idea you speak of occurred to me also; it was abandoned after a careful study of tropical conditions. It could only be used on an inverse plot,—transporting the tropical child to the North. At least, I think so, with my present knowledge on the subject,—which might be vastly improved, no doubt....

About story-writing, dear friend, you ought to know I would like to be able to do nothing else. But even in these countries, where life is so cheap, I could not make the pot—or as they call it here, the canari—boil by story-writing until I gain more literary success, and can obtain high prices. A story takes at least ten or twelve months to write, that is, a story of the length of “Chita.” Suppose it brings only $500,—half as much as you will soon be able to obtain for a single operation! It is pretty hard to live even in the tropics on that sum. I must write sketches too. They do me other good also, involve research I might otherwise neglect. I have prepared some twelve sketches in all, which obligated investigation that will prove invaluable for a forthcoming novelette.

I like your firm, strong, sonorous letter, better than anything of the sort I ever received. The only thing I did not relish in it was the suggestion that I should prepare a lecture, or make an appearance before a private club. I would not do it for anything! I shrink from real life, however, not at all because I am pessimistic. It is a very beautiful world:—the ugliness of some humanity only exists as the shadowing that outlines the view; the nobility of man and the goodness of woman can only be felt by those who know the possibilities of degradation and corruption. Philosophically I am simply a follower of Spencer, whose mind gives me the greatest conception of Divinity I can yet expand to receive. The faultiness is not with the world, but with myself. I inherit certain susceptibilities, weaknesses, sensitivenesses, which render it impossible to adapt myself to the ordinary milieu; I have to make one of my own, wherever I go, and never mingle with that already made. True, I lose much knowledge, but I escape pains which, in spite of all your own knowledge, you could not wholly comprehend, for the simple reason that you can mingle with men. By the way, it is no small disadvantage in life to be 5 ft. 3 in. high. I remember observing, at a great gathering of American merchant princes, that the small or insignificant looking men present might have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Success in life still largely depends upon the power to impose respect, the reserve of mere physical force; since the expansion of everybody’s individuality—at the expense of everybody else’s individuality—is still the law of existence.

I am not yet sure what I am going to do. One thing certain is that I am to go to South or to Central America—for monetary reasons. I may linger here long enough to finish a novelette. If not able to do so, I will perhaps be in New York before December. I left it October 2, 1887, after a stay of only three weeks, to return to the tropics. It was then impossible to visit Philadelphia. Should I go to the Continent from here, you will know at least six weeks in advance.

Thanks for the superb paper on Loti. I cannot imagine anything much finer in the way of literary analysis. But what does James want?—evolution to leap a thousand years? What he classes as sensual perceptions must be sensitized and refined supernally,—fully evolved and built up before the moral ones, of which they are the physiological foundations, pedestals. Granting the doubt as to the ultimate nature of Mind, it is still tolerably positive that its development—so far as man is concerned—follows the development of the nervous system; and that very sensuousness which at once delights and scandalizes James, rather seems to me a splendid augury of the higher sensitiveness to come, in some future age of writers and poets,—the finer “sensibility of soul,” whose creative work will caress the nobler emotions more delicately than Loti’s genius ever caressed the senses of colour and form and odour.

You ask about my idea of Whitman? I have not patience for him,—not as for Emerson. Enormous suggestiveness in both, rather than clear utterance. I used to like John Weiss better than Emerson. Then there is a shagginess, an uncouthness, a Calibanishness about Whitman that repels. He makes me think of some gigantic dumb being that sees things, and wants to make others see them, and cannot for want of a finer means of expression than Nature gives him. But there is manifest the rude nobility of the man,—the primitive and patriarchal soul-feeling to men and the world. Whitman lays a Cyclopean foundation on which, I fancy, some wonderful architect will yet build up some marvellous thing.... Yes, there is nonsense in Swinburne, but he is merely a melodist and colourist. He enlarges the English tongue,—shows its richness, unsuspected flexibility, admirable sponge-power of beauty-absorption. He is not to be despised by the student.

Let me pray you not to make mention of anything written to you thus, even incidentally, to newspaper folk—or to any literary folk who would not be intimate friends. There are reasons, more than personal, for this suggestion, acceptance of which would remove any check on frankness

Best love to you, from

Lafcadio Hearn.

Speaking of Whitman, I must add that my idea of him is not consciously stable. It has changed within some years. What I like, however, was not Whitman exactly,—rather the perception of something Whitman feels, and disappoints by his attempted expression of.

After closing letter I remember you wanted to know about illustrations in magazine. They are after photos. I am sorry to say incorrect use has been made of several: the types published as Sacratra were not Sacratra, but in two cases half-breed Coolie,—one seemingly of Southern India, showing a touch of Malay. There were other errors. It is horrible not to be able to correct one’s own work,—on account of irregularities in mail involved by quarantine. In the December number you will see a study of a peculiar class of young girls here. If you want, yourself, to have some particular photo of some particular thing, send word, and I will try to get it for you.

I can only work here of mornings. Nobody dreams of eating before noon: all rise with the sun. After 2 P.M., the heat and weight of the air make thinking impossible. Your head gets heavy, as if there was lead in it, and you sleep.

To George M. Gould Saint-Pierre, Martinique, October, 1888.

Dear Friend Gould,—I have read your delightful letter,—also, the delightful essays of James you so kindly sent me. I suspect James has not his equal as a literary chemist: the analyses of his French contemporary, Lemaître, are far less qualitative. You have made me know him as a critic;—I had only known him as a novelist. My work has been poor; it has been condensed and recondensed for the magazine till all originality has been taken out of it; finally I never had a chance to revise it in proof. I believe I have temporarily lost all creative power: it will come back to me, perhaps, when I inhale some Northern ozone.

I would like to call your attention to the article by Loti in Fortnightly Review—“Un Rêve,” a delicious little psychological phenomenon. Have you seen “Madame Chrysanthemum”—wonderfully illustrated!

Are you perfectly, positively sure there is really a sharp distinction between moral and physical sensibilities? I doubt it. I suspect what we term the finer moral susceptibilities signify merely a more complex and perfect evolution of purely physical sensitiveness. The established distinction simply seems to me that “moral” feelings are those into which the sexual instinct does not visibly enter, or those in which some form of desire, some form of egotism, does not predominate at the cost of justice to others. There is a queer vagueness about all definitions of the moral sense. When one’s physical sensibilities are fully developed and properly balanced, I do not think wickedness to others possible. The cruel and the selfish are capable of doing what is called wrong, because they are ignorant of the suffering inflicted. Thorough consciousness of the result of acting forms morality, if morality is self-restraint, self-sacrifice, incapacity to injure unnecessarily;—one who understands pain does not give it. Of course, I am not a believer in free will. I do not believe in the individual soul,—though in the manifestations of a universal human, or divine, soul, I am inclined to believe, or to have that doubt which almost admits of belief. What offends in certain writings, I suppose, is the feeling that the writer’s faculties are not perfectly balanced,—that certain senses are so much more developed than others that one can suspect him of yielding to cruelties of egotism. Perhaps I may say that I would call moral feelings, as distinguished from those termed physical, the sensitiveness of perception of suffering in others,—of the consequences of acts. But can those be thoroughly developed before those which conduce to self-preservation? I imagine the reverse to be the case. By the super-refinement of the earlier sensations comes the capacity for the “higher sentiments.” It is true that moral standards are very old, but those existing are also very defective. Evolutionally, egotism must precede altruism;—altruism itself being only a sort of double reflex action of egotism.—All this is very badly written; but you can catch the idea I am trying to express.

When you think of tropical Nature as cruel and splendid, like a leopard, I fancy the Orient, which is tropical largely, dominates the idea. Humanity has a great beauty in these tropics, a great charm,—that of childishness, and the goodness of childishness. As for the mysterious Nature, which is the soul of the land, it was understood by the ancient Mexicans, whose goddess of flowers, Coatlicue, was robed in a robe of serpents interwoven. She is rich in death as in life, this Nature, and lavish of both. I would love her; but I fear she is an enemy of the mind,—a hater of mental effort.

No, indeed, I did not laugh at your experiences. I have had nearly as multiform; but mine were less successful,—I was less fitted for them. I have not your advantages, nor capacities. I never learned German. It is only in America such careers are possible. I wish I could have finished like you, as a physician; for I hold, that with the modern development of medicine as an enormous interbranching system of science and philosophy, the physician is the only perfect man, mentally. Like those old Arabian physicians who affected to treat the soul, the modern knows the mind, the reason of actions, the source of impulses,—which must make him the most generous of men to the faults of others.

I don’t like your plot for a medical novel at all. It involves ugliness. I believe in Théophile Gautier’s idea of art, study only the beautiful;—create only ideals, therefore. You are not a realist, I am sure. Then your plot is too thin. It has not the beauty nor depth of that simple narrative about a famous painter, or writer,—I forget which,—whose imagination rendered it impossible for him to complete his medical studies. Shapes impressed themselves upon his brain as on the brain of an artist: vividly to painfulness. He was in love, engaged to be married; under the peach flesh and behind the velvet gaze, he always saw the outlined skull, the empty darkness of void orbits. He had to abandon medicine for art. A very powerful short sketch might be made of this fact.

I believe in a medical novel,—a wonderful medical novel. We must chat about it. Why not use a fantastic element,—anticipate discoveries hoped for,—anticipate them so powerfully as to make the reader believe you are enunciating realities?

Your objection to my idea is quite correct. I have already abandoned it. It would have to be sexual. Never could you find in the tropics that magnificent type of womanhood, which, in the New England girl, makes one afraid even to think about sex, while absolutely adoring the personality. Perfect natures inspire the love that is a fear. I don’t think any love is noble without it. The tropical woman inspires a love that is half a compassion; this is always dangerous, untrustworthy, delusive—pregnant with future pains innumerable.

I don’t know why you hold the work of Spencer, etc., more colourless than those of the other philosophers and scientists whom you have studied—all except beastly Hegel: there is an awful poetry to me in the revelation of which these men are the mouthpieces, as much vaster than the old thoughts as the foam of suns in the via lactea is vaster than the spume of a wave on the sea-beach. Wallace I know only as a traveller and naturalist; is it the same Wallace? I am very fond of him too: he is very human, fraternal: he is not like God the Father as Spencer is. I suppose what we need is God the Holy Ghost. He is not yet come.

Flower, who wrote that interesting little book “Fashion in Deformity” and many other excellent things, could find some good texts here. I am convinced now that most of our fashions are deformities; that grace is savage, or must be savage in order to be perfect; that man was never made to wear shoes; that in order to comprehend antiquity, the secret of Greek art, one must know the tropics a little (so much has fashion invaded the rest of the world), and that the question of more or less liberty in the sex relation is like the tariff question—one of localities and conditions, scarcely to be brought under a general rule.

To George M. Gould Saint-Pierre, Martinique, February, 1889.

Dear Gould,—A letter to you has been lying on my desk for months unfinished,—I can only just gum the envelope and let it go as it is. I am obliged at intervals—thank Goodness, only at very long ones—to let all correspondence, even the most important, wait a little or risk the results of interrupting a work which exacts all one’s thinking time during waking hours. This has been partly my case,—having just completed a novelette; but I have also had a good deal of trouble about other matters that left me no chance to do anything until now. I am free again,—I hope for a good long time.

Meanwhile I received your pamphlets, and read every one with more pleasure than you could readily believe a non-scientific man could feel in them. Of course, those which interested me most were:

1. That on the Homing Instinct (a much better word than the French orientation). 2. That on the electric light. My first experience with the light was painful; then I learned to like it (the white, not the yellow) very much and found gaslight intensely disagreeable afterward. By the way, do you correspond with Romanes, who solicits correspondence on the subject of animals? You know him, of course, the author of “Animal Intelligence” and “Mental Evolution in Animals.” A man like that ought to be delighted with such a splendid and powerful suggestion as that of your pamphlet. I hope you are not too patriotic to think you cannot do better with a scientific suggestion abroad than at home. There are certain things that seem to me too worthy to remain buried in the archives of a medical society,—which ought to reach a larger scientific circle through a more eclectic medium, such as that of the superb foreign reviews, devoted to what used to be called natural history, but for which the term has long ago become too small. Still I am sure you must have heard from your paper on the homing instinct if the publication in which it appeared reached the quarters it ought to have reached.

I don’t know what to tell you about myself. Since October last I have been buried in my room—facing, happily, a semi-circle of Mornes curving away into a sea like lapis lazuli—and have neither heard nor seen anything else. We had an epidemic of yellow fever which carried away many Europeans and strangers; but it is over, and the weather is delightful, if you can call weather delightful which keeps you drenched in perspiration from morning to night, and forces you to lie down and sleep in the afternoon if you dare attempt to write or read. The difficulty of work in such a climate only those who have had the experience can understand. I think my case is an experiment; almost a phenomenon,—and I am very curious to know the result by the verdict upon my work. I cannot judge it myself here. What at sundown seems good in the morning appears damnably bad; and I was obliged to give every page a test of three or four days’ waiting. My novelette made itself out of an incident related to me about a case of heroism during a great negro revolt.

There is no question but that I shall be in New York this summer, for a while. It is imperative. I have to oversee work before it can be published;—that which already appeared was in terribly bad shape on account of my not having seen the proofs. Then I may be getting out a little book.

Did you see the incident in regard to the admission of a remarkable young lady doctor into the profession by the faculty of Paris,—the remarks of Charcot and others? I thought of your medical novel. There were some remarks very suggestive made. The thesis of the candidate was the position and duty of woman as a physician. You know what those French are, and what peculiar ways they have of looking at the question of women as physicians;—the Paris papers made all kinds of observations scabreuses; but the dignity of the girl carried her splendidly through the ordeal—an ordeal to which Americans would never put a female student.

I have a curious compilation,—“Etudes pathologiques et historiques sur l’origine et la propagation de la Fièvre Jaune” (1886),—perhaps you know it already,—by Dr. Cornilliac of Martinique. If you do not know it I will send it you from New York. It contains a great deal of valuable matter regarding the climate of the West Indies, and formative influences of that climate on races and temperament. Martinique has had several physicians of colonial celebrity,—how great I cannot estimate, being ignorant of their comparative value; but some of them have a decided charm as writers and historians. Such was Rufz de Lavison, author of a delightful history of the colony, and a work upon the trigonocephalus, which would not bear equal praise, I fancy. If you want any information about medical matters in Martinique, I will hunt it up for you.

I hope to see you and have a great chat with you. But the heat is great, and there is an accumulation of letters to answer, and you will forgive me for saying for the moment good-bye

Your sincere friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To George M. Gould Saint-Pierre, Martinique, April, 1889.

Dear Gould,—I read your pamphlets with intense pleasure: that on the effect of reflex neurosis, of course, impressed me only as a curious research; but your paper on dreams, full of truth and suggestive beauty, had much more than a scientific interest for me. There is a world of poetical ideas and romantic psychology evoked by its perusal. I wonder only that you did not dwell more upon the softness, sweetness, impalpable goodness of this dream-world in which everything—even what we usually think wrong—seems to be right. Doubtless all man’s dreams of paradise, of a golden past age, or a perfect future, were born of the thin light vanishing sensations of dream. The work of Gautier cited by you—“Avatar”—was my first translation from the French. I never could find a publisher for it, however, and threw the MS. away at last in disgust. It is certainly a wonderful story; but the self-styled Anglo-Saxon has so much damnable prudery that even this innocent phantasy seems to shock his sense of the “proper.”

You will be pleased to hear my novelette has been a success with the publishers. It cost me terrible work in this continual heat, small as it is; and I feel so mentally blank that I must get back to the States for a while to seek some vitality, brighten whatever blood I have got left after two years of tropical air.

If you could find me in Philadelphia a very quiet room where I could write without noise for a few months, I would try my luck there. New York is stupefying; I know too many people there; and I want to be very quiet,—only to see a friend or two now and then, when I am in good trim for a chat. I shall return to the West Indies in the winter.

Address me if you have time to write c/o H. M. Alden, Edr. Harper’s Magazine;—for I shall have left Martinique, doubtless, by the time this reaches you.

Faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Joseph Tunison New York, 1889.

Dear Joe,—By the time this reaches you I shall have disappeared.

The moment I get into all this beastly machinery called “New York,” I get caught in some belt and whirled around madly in all directions until I have no sense left. This city drives me crazy, or, if you prefer, crazier; and I have no peace of mind or rest of body till I get out of it. Nobody can find anybody, nothing seems to be anywhere, everything seems to be mathematics and geometry and enigmatics and riddles and confusion worse confounded: architecture and mechanics run mad. One has to live by intuition and move by steam. I think an earthquake might produce some improvement. The so-called improvements in civilization have apparently resulted in making it impossible to see, hear, or find anything out. You are improving yourselves out of the natural world. I want to get back among the monkeys and the parrots, under a violet sky among green peaks and an eternally lilac and lukewarm sea,—where clothing is superfluous and reading too much of an exertion,—where everybody sleeps 14 hours out of the 24. This is frightful, nightmarish, devilish! Civilization is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery! Surely a palm 200 feet high is a finer thing in the natural order than seventy times seven New Yorks. I came in by one door as you went out at the other. Now there are cubic miles of cut granite and iron fury between us. I shall at once find a hackman to take me away. I am sorry not to see you—but since you live in hell what can I do? I will try to find you again this summer.

Best affection,

L. H.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

Dear Miss Bisland,—A week ago in New York I was asking a friend where you were, but could then obtain no satisfactory information without taking steps I had no time to attempt. I was really glad to get out of the frightful whirl and roar of modern improvements as soon as possible, but regretted not seeing you, even while assured of being able to do so before long.

It is true I have been silent with my friends: I did not write seven letters in seventeen months,—not even business letters. It was very difficult to write anything in the continuous enervating heat; and I had to struggle with difficulties of the most unlooked for sort, incessantly,—until I found correspondence become almost impossible. But I thought of you very often; and wondered if you were still in that terrible metropolis. I saw in Max O’Rell’s book some lines about a charming young lady and thought it must have been you.... I returned on the 8th from Martinique.

Dr. Matas sent me your pretty eulogy of “Chita”—which I often re-read afterward, and which gave me encouragement when I began to doubt whether I could do anything else.... I don’t think I shall write another story in the same manner,—feel I have changed very much in my way of looking at things and of writing. “Chita” will soon be sent to you in book form as a souvenir of Grande Isle: it is not as short a story as it looked in the serried type of Harper’s—will make a volume of 225 pp. I will have something else to send you, however, that will interest you more as to novelty,—a volume of tropical sketches.

I wonder whether you could ever throw upon paper the thoughts you uttered to me that evening I visited you nearly two years ago,—when you said why you liked Grande Isle. In your few phrases you said much that I had been trying to express and could not,—at least it so seemed to me.... I have seen a great many strange beaches since; but nothing like the morning charm of Grande Isle ever revealed itself. I wonder if I were to see it now, whether I should feel the same pleasure....

Thanks for those verses!—there is a large, strong, strange beauty in them. There seems, you know, to be just now a straining-up of eyes to look for some singer able to prophesy,—to chant even one hymn of that cosmic faith that is stealing upon the world

Affectionately your friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

Dear Miss Bisland,—Oh! what a stiff epistle, with a little sharp pointing of reproach twisting about in the tail of every letter! Really you must never, never feel vexed at anything I write:—I wrote you just as I wrote to Mr. Stedman about the same matter. I feel the man sometimes is much less than the work: my work, however weak, is so much better than myself, that the less said about me the better,—then there are so many things you do not know. As for you not liking personalities, that is a very different thing! Your own personality has charm enough to render the truth very palatable. But I am sure, now, from your letter anything you say will be nice,—though I think it would have been better not to have said it. Does a portrait of an ugly man make one desirous to read his book? I could not get out of the Harper plan for an article on Southern writers, without hurting myself otherwise; but the candid truth is that I felt like yelling when I saw the thing—howling and screeching! Indeed I think that my belief in the invisible personality of a man has been largely forced by my thorough disgust with the visible personality. Schopenhauer says a beautiful thing about the former,—that the “I” is the dark point in consciousness,—just as the point of the retina where the sight-nerve enters is blind, and as the brain itself is without sensation, and the eye sees all but itself. I am not anxious to see my soul; but the fact of inability to see it encourages me to believe it is better than the thing called L. H.

I don’t know that I wrote anything clever enough to be worth your using, but it is a pleasure you should think so. I can only suggest that the adoption of my poor notions would tend to make me selfish about such as I might think really good ones—I would keep them out of my letters, until they could get into print!?!

Sub rosa, now!... My Martinique novelette comes out—the first part—in January. I think you will like it better than “Chita:” it is more mature and more exotic by far. It will run through two numbers. They have made some illustrations which I have not seen, and am therefore afraid of. Unless an illustration either reflects precisely or surpasses the writer’s imagination, it hurts rather than helps. By the way, have you ever met H.F. Farny? Farny is an Alsatian, a fine man, and a superb sketcher—though lazy as a serpent. But if you ever want imaginative drawing of a certain class, he is one to do it.

Please don’t ask me when I’m going to New York. I really can’t find out. I wish I could. I ought to be there on the 15th. But I am peculiarly situated, tied up by a business-muddle,—tangled by necessities of waiting for information,—tormented, befuddled, anxious beyond expression about an undecided plan,—shivering with cold, and longing for the tropics. All my life I have suffered with cold—all kinds of cold—psychical and physical;—I hate cold!!!!—I never can resign myself to live in it!—I can’t even think in it, and I would not be afraid of that Warm Place where sinners are supposed to go! Perhaps the G.A. will sentence me to everlasting sojourn in an iceberg when I have ceased to sin.

Very faithfully, and to some extent apologetically.

For you I do remain always as nice as I can be.

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

Dear Miss Bisland,—I can’t say definitely when I shall be in New York, to have the delightful pleasure of a chat with you—something I have been looking forward to for fully a year; but I will write to tell you a few days in advance. I am drifting about with the forces of circumstance—following directions of least resistance. Just now I have a large mass (at least it looks very big to me) of MS. to amend and emend and arrange into a tropical book: you will like some things in it. When this job is finished, in a couple of weeks, it is probable I will set to work on a short sketch or story, for which I have the material partly arranged; and then I will go to New York. It is so quiet in this beautiful great city, and my present environment is so pleasant, that I am sure of doing better work here than I could in that frightful cyclone of electricity and machinery called New York....

I am afraid you were right about the tropics, and the fascination of climate. It is still upon me, and I shall find it very difficult to conquer the temptation to return to the French colonies: the main fact which helps me is the conviction that I cannot work there,—one’s memory and will blurs and fails in the incessant heat and sleepy air; and for three months before leaving I could not write a line.... My friends advise me to try the Orient next time; and I think I shall.

I have a novelette in the Magazine pigeon-holes,—you will like it; but I don’t know when it is going to come out.

It is not a little pleasure to know that my admiration of your verses can be an encouragement;—you have quite forgiven my ancient effort to amend a stanza by spoiling it!... I think your present position will leave you time—after a while—for all you love to do, and can do so uniquely. Magazine editing is so largely a question of method and system—so far as I can learn—that I fancy you will eventually find it possible to claim a few hours every day for yourself;—and such systematic work as you must take hold of, will not, like journalistic routine, deaden aspiration. I hope you will have a greater success with the new monthly than you yourself expect, and I am sure you will if you have fair chances at all.—But I must wait for the opportunity to see you—because what one writes (at least what I myself write) on such matters sounds so fictitious and flat,—though you know it comes from your sincere friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

Dear Miss Bisland,—It is true that I am only a small Voice;—but the Voice has been uninterruptedly in the City of Doctors and Quakers, with the exception of a much regretted interim passed in looking at that monstrosity,—aptly described by C. D. Warner as “having been cut out with a scroll-saw,”—Atlantic City.... (May I never, never behold anything resembling it again!) I fear you must have written the address wrong—so I send you the right one. It will always do: no matter where I be. The Voice will call at 475 Fourth Avenue as soon as it can. It is not its fault that it has not so done already. Everything to be written must be finished, if possible, by the 15th prox.,—so that I can get some place where the air is blue before cold weather. I will not be able to run away from the country before Christmas anyhow.

I trust you are very, very well,—and as—everything—nice as anybody could wish, and with best regards, remain always,

Your very true and positive friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

P.S. Now I want to see those letters which came back from the Dead Letter Office. Is it really so?

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

Dear Miss Bisland,—I know I am a horrid ignis fatuus; but the proofs of “Chita” are only half-read, and I have no time to get away till it is all done. Then I am working on a sketch,—then there will be more proof-reading to do on the other book. But I will certainly get away in a few weeks more, and will have ever so many things to tell you.

I have never seen the Cosmopolitan in its new dress, and I do not know what has been going on anywhere....

Philadelphia is a city very peculiar—isolated by custom antique, but having a good solid social morality, and much peace. It has its own dry drab newspapers, which are not like any other newspapers in the world, and contain nothing not immediately concerning Philadelphia. Consequently no echo from New York enters here—nor any from anywhere else: there are no New York papers sold to speak of. The Quaker City does not want them—thinks them in bad taste, accepts only the magazines and weeklies. But it’s the best old city in the whole world all the same.

Faithfully,

L. Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

My dear Miss Bisland,—I don’t know whether you saw a little gem of Loti’s in the Fortnightly; I cut it out and send it,—also an attempt at translation which proves the wisdom of the English magazine editor in printing it in French,—and a comment of mine. I don’t think you are likely to wish to print such a thing as the translation; but if you should, don’t use it without sending me a proof, because it is full of errors.

While in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, I found it—originally contributed, in French, to the Fortnightly for August, 1888—copied into a French paper. The impression made by reading it startled me for reasons independent of the exquisite weirdness of the thought. There was the great orange sunset of the tropics before me, over a lilac sea,—bronzing the green of the mango, and tamarind-trees, and the broad, satiny leaves of bananier and balisier. The interior described in the vision was not of modern Saint-Pierre; but I knew an old interior in Fort de France, whose present quaint condition repeated precisely the background of the dream. A hundred years ago there were but two places on the sunset-side of Martinique which could have presented the spectacle of the little low streets described,—Fort de France and Saint-Pierre. The high mountains cut off the sunset glow at an early hour on the eastern side of the island. It seemed to me a strange coincidence that in Les Colonies, a local paper, I had just read also, that some old cemetery of Fort de France was about to be turned into a playground for children.

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

Dear Miss Bisland,—Verily shirîn, shirîntar, and shirîntarin art thou,—and Saadi in the Garden of the Taj likewise,—and also the letter which I have just received.

Emotionally the book is surely Arnold’s strongest: it has that intensity of sweetness which touches the sphere of pain. One need not seek in the Bostan or Gulistan for the essence of that volume: the Oriental thought has been transfigured in its reflection from a nineteenth century mind. There has been in one of Edwin Arnold’s books some suggestion of a future religion of human goodness and human brotherhood, through recognition of soul-unity,—but in none, I think, so strangely as in this. And then, what horror to read the very coarse interview published recently in a daily paper: the brutal repetition of a man’s words uttered under constraint, about the most sacred of sentiments!...

No; I won’t go to New York till you come back. I trust you will not overwork yourself: when we see (I mean “hear”) each other, we can talk over all known devices for lightening literary duties. I am acquainted with some; and I would not have you fall sick for anything—unless you were to do me something “awfully mean:” then I’m afraid I would not be so sorry as I ought to be.

I will try to give you something for the Christmas number anyhow,—but not very long. By the way, I have an idea which may be wrong, but seems to me worth uttering. The prose fiction which lives through the centuries in the short story: like the old Greek romances—narratives like “Manon Lescaut;” “Paul et Virginie;” the “Candide” of Voltaire; the “Vicar of Wakefield;” “Undine,” etc., outlive all the ampler labour of their authors. It seems to me that with this century the great novel will pass out of fashion: three-quarters of what is written is unnecessary,—is involved simply by obedience to effete formulas and standards. As a consequence we do not read as we used to. We read only the essential, skipping all else. The book that compels perusal of every line and word is the book of power. Create a story of which no reader can skip a single paragraph, and one has the secret of force,—if not of durability. My own hope is to do something in accordance with this idea: no descriptions, no preliminaries, no explanations—nothing but the feeling itself at highest intensity. I may fail utterly; but I think I have divined a truth which will yet be recognized and pursued by stronger minds than mine. The less material, the more force;—the subtler the power the greater, as water than land, as wind than water, as mind than wind. I would like to say something about light, heat, electricity, rates of ether-vibration;—but the notion will work itself out in your own beautiful mind without any clumsy attempts of mine to illustrate. —About the translation,—do as you please,—but don’t please put it in a great big daily, next to the account of a prize-fight or a murder,—and please, if you do anything with it, see, above all things earthly, that I get proofs. But I would just as soon you would keep it. I made it for you, and am glad you had not seen the original previously. I thought the Cosmo. was a sort of literary weekly. It is a beautiful little magazine,—full of surprises; and I trust it is going to win a great success.

Good-bye;—your Voice wishes you a very happy pleasure-trip, in which you will feel all sorts of new feelings, and dream all manner of new dreams.

Lafcadio Hearn.

To Elizabeth Bisland Philadelphia, 1889.

This morning I dropped you a little note; but this afternoon, reading your book-chat in the Cosmo. I find I must write you something more impersonal.

—You know, perhaps, that Spencer’s thought about education—the paramount necessity of educating the Will through the Emotion—has received, consciously or unconsciously, more attention in Italy than elsewhere. The Emotions are not, as a rule, educated at all outside of the home-circle. The great public schools of all countries have a system which either ignores the emotions, or leaves them unprotected;—while all sectarian teaching warps and withers them in the direction, at least, of their natural growth. You know all this, I suppose, better than I. But perhaps you do not know the “Cuore” of Edmondo de Amicis (Thos. Y. Crowell & Co.), which has passed through 39 Italian editions. And if you do not know it, I pray you to read it without skipping a single phrase. It is as full of heart-sweetness as attar-of-roses is full of flower-ghosts; and it seems a revelation of what emotional education might accomplish.

I read Brownell’s book at your suggestion. It contains, I think, the best teaching about how to study French character; but I could not accept many of its inferences,—especially in regard to art and morality,—without reluctance. There is a sense of something wanting in the book—something lucid and spiritual (is it Conviction?) that makes it heavy. How luminous and psychically electric is Lowell’s book compared with it. And how much nobler a soul must be the dreamer of Chosön!

—I shall never write “Miss Bisland” again, except upon an envelope. It is a formality,—and you are you: you are not a formality,—but a somewhat. And I am only

“I.”

To George M. Gould 1889.

Dear Gould,—Verily there is no strength nor power but from God,—the High, the Great! I have thy letter, O thou of enormous working capacity, and I admire and wonder, but am in no wise sorry for thee, seeing thou doest that which thou art able to do, and findest pleasure therein and excellence and dignity and power,—and that if thou wert doing it not thou wouldst surely be doing something else;—for God (whose name be exalted!) hath numbered thee among those who find felicity in exceeding activity. Thou art indeed forty-one years old, by reckoning of time; but as thou art of the Giants this reckoning hath no signification for thee. Verily thou art but twenty-five years old, and thou shalt never know age until a hundred winters shall have passed over thee. And all things which thou dost desire shall be accorded unto thee by Him who, like thyself, reposeth never, and whose blessed name be forever exalted! Also unto thee shall the patients come, as an army for multitude, so that thy bell shall make but one ringing through all thy days continuously, and that thy neighbours shall be oppressed by reason of the concourse in the street about thy dwelling.

But as for me, concerning whom thou makest inquiry, trouble not thyself about thy servant, whose trust and power are in God—the High, the Great! That which shall be shall be, and that which hath been shall not be again:—for the moment, indeed, I am concerned only to know why the flame of my lamp goeth upward, and all flame likewise,—unless it be for the purpose of praising God (whose name be exalted by all living creatures!). For thou saidst unto me, being a Kafeer, that Flame is a vibration only; but thou hast not been able to tell me the mystery of the pointing of fire and the upreaching of it to the feet of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Here it raineth always, and this Soul of me is slowly evaporating, despite the perusal of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who spake of souls. Meseems that each time I behold the eyes of her concerning whom I spake to thee, something of that soul is drawn out unto her, and devoured perhaps for sustenance of that Jinneyah—which is her own soul. So that mine hath become thin as the inner shadow wrought by a strong double light upon the ground; and I shall become even as a vegetable presently—having knowledge of nothing save the witchery of God in the eyes of women. The memory of Schopenhauer hath passed,—and with its passing I find my only salvation in a return to the study of the Oceanic Majesty and Power and Greatness and Holiness and Omniscience of the mind of Herbert Spencer.

Be thou ever blessed and loved by the sons of men, even as by

Hearn.

To George M. Gould 1889.

Gould,—You must have skipped, bad boy!—for the girl is not “all face and foot”! You missed the finely detailed account of her body in William’s diary,—and the just observation of a trait characteristic of the race in its purity; the great length of the lower limb,—fine greyhounds, fine thoroughbred horses, and fine men and women have all this characteristic, like the conventional figures of antique gem-work. The gipsy-girl is possible: I have seen charming ones. You must read Borrow’s “Gipsies” (the unabbreviated edition in two volumes),—also his "Bible in Spain,” and “Lavengro,”—a Gipsy novel. Simpson’s “Gipsies” is also worth looking at.... But if you won’t believe in the bird of passage, take Carmen and believe in her—there, at least, you will not doubt: all will prove in accordance with possible sin and sorrow. Why do you want the Bird’s body to be better known—since nobody ever knew it any better than you know it; (or would know if you had read all)—could not have except by making to operate, like the Vicar of Azey-le-Rideau, all its “hinges and mesial partitions,” even to disjuncture. What a singular fact in the history of torture, that the inquisitor was trained to believe the beautiful body he was breaking and rending and burning was never beautiful—that its grace and symmetry were illusions, the witchcraft of the dear old compassionate Devil striving to save his victim by the mirage of fleshly attractiveness! Only through this belief could certain monstrosities have been possible. It was always Saint Anthony’s temptation!

I have a book for you—an astounding book,—a godlike book. But I want you to promise to read every single word of it. Every word is dynamic. It is the finest book on the East ever written; and though very small contains more than all my library of Oriental books. And an American (?) wrote it! It is called “The Soul of the Far East.” It will astound you like Schopenhauer, the same profundity and lucidity. Love to you,

Hearn.

To George M. Gould 1889.

Dear Gould,—I blacked—that is, I had my boots blacked yesterday,—just for the same reason that we do things after people are dead (which we would not have done for them while they lived and asked), with a ghostly idea of pleasing them. If you had been here I might not have had them blacked, but as you were gone, I did it for the Shadow of you. And I gave the boy 20 cents,—because of the feeling that he might never have such a chance again. That boy runs after me now everywhere,—but—he is mistaken! I am no longer the same! I have satisfied my conscience, and enjoy Nirvana.

This morning when I got up I thought the streets looked queer. It seemed as if they were lighted by the afternoon in some way or other, instead of the morning. I went to the P. O. with “The Soul of the Far East.” How silent the streets for a Friday morning! The population seemed all to have ebbed away somewhere as if to look at something. The post-office was silent as a pyramid inside. I went to the book-store, and found it closed,—and for the first time realized that it was Sunday. Then I understood why the streets looked like afternoon; and the sunshine had a tinge as of evening in a cemetery. Confound Sunday!

Talking with Jakey last night about Nature, I heard him express the opinion that his capacity of scientific realization of the causes of things was enough to account for the absence in him of any feeling of awe or reverence in the presence of mountain scenery. It occurred to me therewith that the characteristic of indifference to poetry might be almost common to mathematicians. The man who wrote “The Soul of the Far East” and “Chosön” is nevertheless an accomplished mathematician. But you will notice that his divine poetry touches only that which no scientific knowledge can explain,—that which no mathematics can solve,—that which must remain mysterious throughout all conceivable span of time,—the fluttering of the Human Soul in its chrysalis, which it at once hates and loves, and hates because it loves, and strives to burst through, and still fears unspeakably to break,—though dimly conscious of the infinite Ghostly Peace beyond.

Hearn.

To George M. Gould 1889.

Dear Gould,—I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals—my formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride develops octohedron crystals,—with a fine blue fluorescence. My physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death accompanied by an orange blossom odour. The heart stopped in systole. A base—L3 H9 NG4—offers analogous reaction to phosmotinigstic acid. Yours with best regards,

Phosmolyodic Lafcadio Hearn.

Gould,—“Concerning zombis, tell me all about them.”

Hearn,—“In order to relate you that which you desire, it will be necessary first to explain the difference in the idea of the supernatural as existing in the savage and in the civilized mind. Now, I remember a very strange thing....”

Gould,—“I’ll be back in a minute.” (Strides across the street.)

Violent agitation in the peripheral centres of Hearn, together with considerable acute anguish, owing to disintegration of cerebral tissue consequent upon the sudden arrest of nerve-force in discharge. (See Grant Allen on cause of pain, “Physiological Æsthetics.”)

Gould, suddenly reappearing:—“Go on with that old story, now.”

(Resurrection of cerebral agitation in the ganglionic centres and intercorrelate cerebral fibres of Hearn. After desperate and painful research, the broken threads of memories and impulses are found again, and peripherally conjointed, and the wounded narrative proceeds, limping grievously.)

Hearn,—“As I was observing, I recollect one very curious instance of emotional and fantastic—”

Gould,—“Yes, I’ll be out in a moment—“ (Disappears through a door.)

—Brutal confusion established in the visual, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory ganglia of Hearn;—general quivering and strain of all the mnemonic current lines, and then a sense of inquisitorial torture going on in various brain-chambers, where the vital forces, suddenly arrested, flow back in a deluge and set all ideas afloat in drowning agony. Slow recovery as from concussion of the cerebellum.

Enter Gould,—“Now proceed with that story of yours.”

Hearn,—pacifying the fury of the ganglionic centres with the most extreme possible difficulty, timidly observes,—

“But you don’t care to hear it?”

Gould,—moving with inconceivable rapidity, dynamically overcharged,—

“Of course, I do: I’m just dying to hear it.”

Hearn, running after him, skipping preliminaries in the anguish of “hope deferred which maketh the heart sick,”—

“Well, it was in the Rue du Bois Morier,—one of the steepest and strangest streets in the world, full of fantastic gables, and the shadows of—”

Gould,—“Yes, I’ll be out in a minute.” (Vanishes through a shop entrance.)

(Inexpressible chaos and bewilderment of impulses afferent and efferent,—electrical collisions in the ganglia,—unspeakable combustion of tissue in the intercorrelating fibres,—paralysis of conflicting emotions,—unutterable anguish: coma followed by acute mania in the person of Hearn.)

Gould,—emerging, “Well, go on with that old yarn....”

But Hearn is being already conveyed by two large Philadelphia Policemen to the Penn. Lunatic Asylum for Uncurables.

Astonishment of Gould.

To George M. Gould 1889.

Gould,—Just after I wrote you last night, something began to whiffle quite soundlessly round my head: I saw only a shadow, and I turned down the gas,—remembering that he who extinguisheth his light so that insects may not perish therein, shall, according to the book of Laotse, obtain longer life and remission of sins. Then it struck me with its wings so heavily that I knew it was a bat,—for no bird could fly so silently; and I turned up the gas again,—full. There it was!—very large,—circling round and round the ceiling so swiftly that I felt dizzy trying to turn to keep it in sight,—and as noiselessly as its own shadow above it. I could not tell which was the shadow and which the life,—until both came together at last upon a ledge, and made a little peak-shouldered devilish thing with strangely twisted ears.

All at once I remembered an experience in Martinique one summer evening. We were at Grand Anse,—friend Arnoux and I,—supping in a little room opening over a low garden full of banana-trees, to the black beach of the sea; and the great Voice thundered so we could scarcely hear ourselves speak; and the candle in the verrine fluttered like something afraid. Then right over my head a bat began to circle, with never a sound. Arnoux exclaimed: “Mais, mon cher, regarde cette sacrée bête—ah—c’est drôle!” By the look of his face I knew drôle meant “weird.” He struck it down with his napkin and it disappeared; but a moment later came back again, and flew round as before. Again he hit it and drove it away; but it always came flitting back. Then we all laughed;—and Pierre, the host, tickling my ear with his beard, cried out,—“C’est ta maîtresse à Saint-Pierre—elle est morte,—elle vient te chercher.” And I looked so serious that Arnoux burst into a laugh as loud as the surf outside.

Now when I saw that bat, I thought it was “weird,”—drôle as the other. I even found myself wondering, Who it could be? I thought it might be Clemence, about whose death I received news in my last letter. I did not think for a moment it was Gould. Only some very poor simple soul would avail itself of so humble a vehicle for apparition.... Then it looked so much like something damned as it moved about, that I felt ashamed of thinking it could be Clemence,—the best kind of old souls, Clemence!—My blanchisseuse. It was not easy to catch the bat without hurting it. I argued that if it was anybody I knew it could not be afraid of me. It sat on the mirror. It went under the table. It flattened under the trunk and feigned death. Then I caught it in my hat; and it revealed its plain nature by burying its teeth in my finger; and it would not let go,—and it squeaked and chippered like a ghost. I was almost mad enough to hurt it; but I tried to caress its head, which felt soft and nice. But it showed all its teeth and looked too ugly, and there was a musky smell of hell about it—so that I knew, if it were anybody, the place with a capital “P” where it came from. I put it in a box. To-night I am going to let it go.

With love to you,

Lafcadio Hearn.

To George M. Gould 1889.

My most dear Gould,—I am really quite lonesome for you, and am reflecting how much more lonesome I shall be in some outrageous equatorial country where I shall not see you any more;—also it seems to me perfectly and inexplainably atrocious to know that some day or other there will be no Gould at 119 S. 17th St. That I should cease to make a shadow some day seems quite natural, because Hearn is only a bubble anyhow (“the earth hath bubbles”),—but you, hating mysteries and seeing and feeling and knowing everything,—you have no right ever to die at all. And I can’t help doubting whether you will. You have almost made me believe what you do not believe yourself,—that there are souls. I haven’t any, I know; but I think you have,—something electrical and luminous inside you that will walk about and see things always. Are you really—what I see of you—only an envelope of something subtler and perpetual? Because if you are, I might want you to pass down some day southward,—over the blue zone and the volcanic peaks like a little wind,—and flutter through the palm-plumes under the all-purifying sun,—and reach down through old roots to the bones of me, and try to raise me up.

“Ruth" maketh progress; but I had to murder the “Mother of God.” Anyhow the simile would have had a Catholic idolatrousness about it, so that I don’t regret it.—I send a clipping I found in the trunk, to make you laugh: the “Femmes Arabes” of Dr. Perron furnished me the facts.—Mrs. Gould moveth or reposeth in serenity,—Jakey fulfilleth with becoming dignity the duties devolved upon him. I have consumed one plug of “Quaker City;” but as the smoke spires up, the spiritual-sensualism of “Ruth” becometh manifest.

There has been some rain almost worthy of the tropics,—and much darkness. And I can understand better why the ancients of Yucatan, accustomed to the charm of real physical light (about which you Northerners know nothing), put no fire into their hell, but darkness only, as woe enough for tropical souls to bear!

I hope you are having a glorious, joyous journeying, and remain,

Lovingly yours,

Hearn.

TO ——1889.

I am very sorry your trip was a chilly and rainy one. As for me, I have been shivering here, and have got to get South somewhere soon,—if only till I can get back to the tropics. I am sorry to confess it; but the tropical Circe bewitches me again—I must go back to her.

I had such a queer dream last night. A great, warm garden with high clipped hedges,—much higher than a man,—and a sort of pleasant country-house, with steps leading into the garden,—and everywhere, even on the steps, hampers and baskets. Krehbiel was there,—he told me he was going to Europe never to come back. And you were there, too, all in black silk—sheathed in it; you were also going away somewhere; and I was packing for you, getting things ready. Everybody was saying nice things: one did not seem to hear,—really one never hears voices in dreams,—but one feels the words, tones and all, as if they passed unspoken—just the soul or will of them only—out of one brain into another. I can’t remember what anybody said precisely: what I recollect best is the sensation that everybody was going, and that I was to stay all alone in the place, or anywhere I pleased; and it was getting dark. Then I woke up, and said: “Well, I really must see her.” I suppose dreams mean nothing: but interpreted by the contrary, as is a custom, it would mean the reverse—that I am going away somewhere,—which I don’t yet know

Always and in all things yours,

Lafcadio Hearn.

P. S. Oh!—you spoke about Philadelphia.... Is it possible you have never seen it? Is it possible you have never seen Fairmount Park? Believe me, then, that it is the most beautiful place of the whole civilized world on any sunny, tepid summer day. Your Central Park is a cabbage-garden by comparison: F. Pk. is fifteen miles long, by about eight or ten broad. But the size is nothing. It is the beauty of the woods and their vistas, the long drives by the river, the glimpse of statuary and fountains from delightful terraces, the knolls commanding the whole circle of the horizon, the vast garden and lawn spaces, the shadowed alleys where 100,000 people make scarcely any more sound than a swarm of bees,—and over it all such a soft, sweet dreamy light. (When you go to see it, be sure to choose a sunny, warm day.) Thousands of thousands of carriages file by, each with a pair of lovers in it. Everybody in the park seems to be making love to somebody. Love is so much the atmosphere of the place,—a part of the light and calm and perfume—that you feel as if drenched with it, permeated by it, mesmerized. And if you are all alone, you will look about you once in a while, wondering that somebody else is not beside you.... But I forgot that I am not writing to a stupid man, like myself.

L. H.

TO ——New York, November, 1889.

Oh! you splendid girl!—will it really give you some short pleasure to see this old humbug’s writing again?... I was very sorry not to have been able to see you: I should have wished to be able to give you a few bits of advice about precautions to take during the tropical part of your trip. But I have faith in your superb constitution and youth,—and trust this will reach eyes undimmed by fever, and brightened more than ever by the glow of all the strange suns that will have shone upon you.

So that is my dream that I wrote you about: it was you, not I, that were to run away. But I did not help you to do your packing, as I imagined.

I wonder if you went away in black silk, or black cashmere: I dreamed of you all in black that time. And when I saw the charming notice about you in the Tribune, there suddenly came back to me the same vague sense of unhappiness I had dreamed of feeling,—an absurd sense of absolute loneliness.

For seldom as I saw you, I must tell you that I looked forward to such visits as to something very delightful, that helped me to forget the great iron-whirling world and everything in it but yourself. You made a little circle of magnetic sunshine for me; and you know I liked to bask in it so much that I used to be quite selfish about it. I feel now as though, each night I sat up so late in your little parlour, I was taking from you so much rest,—which means life and strength,—acted, in short, the part of a psychical cannibal! And I am remorseful at not being able to feel more remorseful than I do; it was so nice to be there that I can’t be properly sorry, as I should.

I and my friends have been wagering upon you, hoping for you, praying for you to win your race,—so that every one may admire you still more, and your name be flashed round the world quicker than the sunshine, and your portrait—in spite of you—appear in some French journal where they know how to engrave portraits properly. I thought I might be able to coax one from you; but as you never are the same person two minutes in succession, I am partly consoled: it could only be one small phase of you,—Proteus, Circe, Undine, Djineeyeh!

—And you found the loose bar at last, and shook it out, and flew! I much doubt if they will ever get you well into the cage again,—that was so irksome to you. But perhaps the world itself will seem a cage to you hereafter:—it will have grown so much smaller in that blue-flashing circuit of yours about it. Perhaps when human society shall have become infinitely more fluid and electric than at present,—which it is sure to do with the expansion and increasing complexity of intercommunication by steam and wire,—this little half-dead planet will seem too small to mankind. One will feel upon it, in the light of a larger knowledge, constrained almost as much as Simon on the top of his pillar,—and long, like him, for birth into a larger mode of being. Even now there is no more fleeing into strange countries,—because there are no strange countries: everything is being interbound and interspersed with steel rails and lightning wires;—there are no more mysteries,—except what are called hearts, those points at which individualities 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.

—Did you often wish to stop somewhere, and feel hearts beating about you, and see the faces of gods and dancing-girls? Or were you petted like the Lady of the Aroostook by officers and crew,—and British dignitaries eager to win one Circe-smile,—and superb Indian Colonels of princely houses returning home,—that you had no chance to regret anything? I have been so afraid of never seeing you again, that I have been hating splendid imaginary foreigners in dreams,—which would have been quite wickedly selfish if I had been awake!...

With every true good wish and sincere affection,

Your friend,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ——March 7–8, 1890

I must write you a line or two, before I finish packing,—though it is the hour of ghosts, when writing is a grave imprudence. Something makes me write you nevertheless.

I could not go to see Mr. M——: there was too much ice and snow. But you can forgive that.

I shall be very sorry not to see you again,—and this time, you are not sorry to know I am going away as you were when I went South. Perhaps you are quite right....

—But that is nothing. What I want to say is, that after looking at your portrait, I must tell you how sweet and infinitely good you ... can be, and how much I like you, and how I like you,—or at least some of those many who are one in you.

I might say love you,—as we love those who are dead—(the dead who still shape lives);—but which, or how many, of you I cannot say. One looks at me from your picture; but I have seen others, equally pleasing and less mysterious.

... Not when you were in evening dress, because you were then too beautiful; and what is thus beautiful is not that which is most charming in you. It only dazzles one, and constrains.... I like you best in the simple dark dress, when I can forget everything except all the souls of you. Turn by turn one or other floats up from the depth within and rushes to your face and transfigures it;—and that one which made you smile with pleasure like a child at something pretty we were both admiring is simply divine.... I do not think you really know how sacred you are; and yet you ought to know: it is because you do not know what is in you, who are in you, that you say such strangely material things. And you yourself, by being, utterly contradict them all.

It seems to me that all those mysterious lives within you—all the Me’s that were—keep asking the Me that is, for something always refused;—that you keep saying to them: “But you are dead and cannot see—you can only feel; and I can see,—and I will not open to you, because the world is all changed. You would not know it, and you would be angry with me were I to grant your wish. Go to your places, and sleep and wait and leave me in peace with myself.” But they continue to wake up betimes, and quiver into momentary visibility to make you divine in spite of yourself,—and as suddenly flit away again. I wish one would come—and stay: the one I saw that night when we were looking at ... what was it?

Really, I can’t remember what it was: the smile effaced the memory of it,—just as a sun-ray blots the image from a dry-plate suddenly exposed. There was such a child-beauty in that smile.... Will you ever be like that always for any one being?

—I hope you will get my book before you go: it will be sent you Tuesday at latest, I think. I don’t know whether you will like the paper; but you will only look for the “gnat of a soul” that belongs to me between the leaves.

—Forgive all my horrid ways, my dear, sweet, ghostly sister.

Good-bye,

Lafcadio Hearn.

END OF VOLUME I