Chapter III: Introduction: Letters From the Raven (3)

Shortly after this long letter came the one written by Hearn's Japanese wife, accompanied by this note:

"DEAR MISS EFFIE: Here is my wife's answer to your most kind letter. She thanks you very much for writing,--says that she knows your papa well, by looking at his photograph, and by hearing me talk of him; she apologizes for not being able to write or speak English; she hopes to see you some day, and to be shown by you some of the wonders of the Western world, about which she knows nothing; she tells you about our little son; and finally says that if she ever comes to America she will bring you some curious memento from Japan. It is all written in the old style of high Japanese courtesy, in which your letter is called 'jewel-pen letter.' Best regards and kindest love for your papa. We are going to leave Kumamoto. Will write again soon.

"LAFCADIO HEARN"

In 1895 an accident befell Mr. Watkin, and, upon his request, Mrs. Watkin wrote a letter to the distant friend. Mrs. Watkin was rather timid about it and was dubious about receiving a reply. However, despite this feeling, she enclosed some little verses of hers upon a spiritual theme. In a short time she received the following reply:

_"Kobe;--shimoyamatedori, Shichome_

"7 _Feb._ 28, 1895

"DEAR MRS. WATKIN: Your kind, sweet letter reached me by last American mail, and gave me all the pleasure you could have desired. But why have you even dreamed of apologizing for writing to me, who love you all, and for whom everything is comprehensible even if not wholly comprehended? All love and good wishes to you. I received the little poem, and liked it. Those mysteries in which you appear to be interested are scarcely mysteries in the Far East: the immaterial world counts here for more than the visible. Perhaps some day I may suddenly drop in upon you all, and talk ghostliness to you,--a new ghostliness, which you may like. Some hints of it appear in a little book of mine, to be issued about the time this letter reaches you,--'Out of the East.'

"I really think I may see you and my dear old Dad again. I may be obliged erelong to return, at least temporarily, to America, to make some money, though my home must be in Japan till my boy grows up a little. He seems to be very strong and bright, and queerly enough he is fair. I have two souls now, which is troublesome; for his every word and cry stirs strange ripples in my own life, and the freedom of being responsible only for oneself is over forever for me. Whether this be for the worse or the better in the eternal order of things, the Gods must decide.

"I should like to see your new home. The other one was very cosy; but perhaps this is even better. What I also want to see is No. _16_ Longworth Street, and to hear the ticking of the old clock that used to sound like the steps of a long-legged man walking on pavement. Effie wrote me a dear, pretty letter. Thank her for me. It is just about seven years now since I saw Dad. I suppose he looks now more like Homer than ever. .1 have become somewhat grey, and have crow's-feet around my eyes. Also I have become fat, and disinclined for violent exercise. In other words, I'm getting down the shady side of the hill,--and the horizon before me is already darkening, and the winds blowing out of it, cold. And I am not in the least concerned about the enigmas,--except that I wonder what my boy will do if I don't live to be nearly as old as Dad. Ever with all affectionate regards to him and yourself and Effie,

"LAFCADIO HEARN"

In 1896 Mr. Watkin, partially recovered from his injuries, wrote Hearn a letter, and received a last one from him,--a reply in which the writer finally placed the seal upon the finest friendship in his history. Unlike some of his other attempts at prophecy, Hearn's predictions in this last letter failed to come true. He never saw his old friend again, and the old gentleman, at the age of eighty-two, now occupies a room in the Old Men's Home in Cincinnati, counting among his chief treasures the letters which have been here presented.

"_Kobe_
"_Nakayamatedori_
_"7-chome_
_"Bangai_ 16
_"May_ 23,'96

"DEAR OLD DAD: How nice to get so dear a letter from you! I know the cost to you of writing it, and my dear old father must not imagine that I do not understand why he cannot write often. With his little grey boy it is much the same now: he finds it hard to write letters, and he has very few correspondents. Why, indeed, should he have many? True men are few; and the autograph-hunters, and the scheming class of small publishers, and the people, who want gratis information about commercial matters in Japan are not considered by him as correspondents. They never get any answers. I have two or three dear friends in this world: is not that enough?--you being oldest and dearest. To feel that one has them is much.

"But I must ask many pardons. I fear Miss Effie will not forgive me for not acknowledging ere now the receipt of a photograph, which surprised as much as it pleased me. To think of the little girl having so developed into the fine serious woman! How old it makes me feel! for I remember Miss Effie when she was so little. Please ask her to forgive me. I was away when the photograph came (in Kyoto), and when I returned, lazily put off writing from day to day. There was, however, some excuse for my laziness. I have been very sick with inflammation of the lungs, and am getting well very slowly. But all danger is practically over.

"I see from the kind letter of protest bearing your initials that the idealism which makes love has never gone out of your heart when you think of me. It is all much more real than any materialism; see, you always predicted that I should be able to do something, while extremely practical, materialistic people predicted that I should end in jail or at the termination of a rope. And your prediction seems to have been wiser,--for at last, at last I am attracting a little attention in England.... Also I see (what I did not know before) that some people have been writing horrid things about me. I expected it, sooner or later, as I have been an open enemy of the missionaries; and, besides, the least success in this world must be atoned for. The price is heavy. Those who ignore you when you are nobody find it necessary to hate you when you disappoint their expectations. But if I keep my health I need not care very much. The incident only brought out some of the honey in dear old Dad's heart.

"You ask about my boy. I can best respond by sending his last photo,--nearly three years old now. If I can educate him in France or Italy, it would be better for him, I think. He is very sensitive; and I am afraid of American or English school training for him. I only pray the Gods will spare me till he is eighteen or twenty. I am watching to see what he will develop; if he have any natural gift, I shall try to cultivate only that gift. Ornamental education is a wicked, farcical waste of time. It left me incapacitated to do anything; and I still feel the sorrow of the sin of having dissipated ten years in Latin and Greek, and stuff,... when a knowledge of some one practical thing, and of a modern language or two, would have been of so much service. As it is, I am only self-taught; for everything I learned in school I have since had to unlearn. You helped me with some of the unlearning, dear old Dad!

"I really expect to see you. You are only seventy-two, and hale, and I trust you have long years before you, and that we shall meet. About the business depression, I hear that it is passing and that 'flush times' are in store for the West. This, I trust, will be. Oh, no! I shall not have to look for you 'in the old men's home,'--no, I shall see you in your own home,--and talk queer talk to you.

"For the time being (indeed, for two years) I have lived altogether by literary work, without breaking my little reserves, and it is likely that better things are in store for me. I am anxious for success,--for the boy's sake above all. To have the future of others to make--to feel the responsibilities--certainly changes the face of life. I am always frightened, of course; but I work and hope. That is the best, is it not? Remember me to all kind friends. Ask Effie to forgive my rude silence, and all yours to believe my love and constant remembrance.

"LAFCADIO HEARN

"I am a Japanese citizen now (Y. Koizumi),--adopted into the family of my wife. This settles all legal question as to property as well as marriage under Japanese law; and if I die, the Consul can't touch anything belonging to my people."

The rest is silence.

Letters to a Lady

Herewith are presented letters that were the outgrowth of a friendship that probably meant a great deal to Lafcadio Hearn at the time. In speaking of them, one inevitably thinks of Prosper Mérimée's "Lettres à une inconnue.". The later missives, too, must for years to come remain "letters to an unknown,"--unknown to all save a few persons. It was only recently that the natural course of events made it at all possible to include them in this collection. Even now the ban of silence is placed on many things we would like to know.

The letters were written during the memorable year 1876, marked by exciting political conventions and an even more exciting national election, and finally by the great Centennial Exposition. At this time Hearn was in his twenty-sixth year. He had been in the United States for nearly six years, and was at the time employed as a reporter on Mr. Murat Halstead's Cincinnati _Commercial._ Although he did not like this country and was at this time dreaming of returning some day to Europe, he had been trying for years to make a thoroughly competent newspaper reporter of himself. However, we gather from remarks in his letters that he was still regarded as only a minor member of the staff.

Among men his chief friend remained Mr. Watkin. If he had any friends among young women, he has left no record of them. He seems to have been more or less solitary always. He is constantly telling of his constraint in social gatherings, of his inability to appear otherwise than cold to those around him. Life was indeed to him always a curious carnival, in which one must be careful to keep on the mask, to guard the tongue lest one say something redounding to one's injury or discredit.

With such characteristics, we are therefore at a loss to learn how his intimacy with the unknown began. It may have had its origin when some assignment in the line of newspaper duty took him to her home. One fancies the unknown must have had a keen eye for character and ability to discern anything unusual, anything love-worthy, in the ill-dressed, somewhat ill-featured, shy, timid, little youth Hearn was at that time. It had not heretofore been his good fortune to attract. However that may be, the established fact of the friendship remains.

The identity of the unknown is a secret. We are told that she was a woman of culture and refinement; that she was possessed of some wealth; and, finally, that she was many years older than Hearn.

Mérimée has been referred to. The reference is forced upon us by Hearn himself. He mentions those famous "Lettres," and says he feels toward his "Dear Lady" as Mérimée did toward his "inconnue." The comparison is not exact. Indeed, it is rather a case of contrast. Like Mérimée, Hearn's motto seems to have been, with very rare exceptions, "Remember to distrust;" but, unlike Mérimée, Hearn was not a man of wealth and prominence and influence in his native land; unlike Mérimée, Hearn had not had all the advantages wealth and culture can give; unlike Mérimée, he had known, and was still destined to know, hard and bitter years.

With Mérimée, the French stylist _par excellence_, impersonality was a passion. His was an impersonality that was broken down only in the famous "Lettres." Hearn, on the other hand, could not help injecting much of himself into his books. Nor does the contrast end there.

"For her first thoughts," as Walter Pater well says of the "Lettres" and the author's attitude toward the woman in the case, "Mérimée is always pleading, but always complaining that he gets only her second thoughts,--the thoughts, that is, of a reserved, self-limiting nature."

In the present collection of letters, the rôles are reversed. We gather from the letters that it was Hearn who never let himself go, who always kept himself under cautious restraint, and that it was the woman who resented these second thoughts, these promptings of careful meditations rather than of fresh, warm impulses.

In Mérimée the ardent lover alternated with the severe critic. He quarrelled with the unknown and then had reconciliations, until at last the old love passed away into a form of calm friendship. In the meantime he packed his letters with keen criticisms of books, society, politics, archæology, noted people,--everything that interested a citizen of the world.

In Hearn we have the lonely little egotist, writing mainly about himself. In his appreciation of a woman's friendship and his pride in her cordial admiration, he expands and reveals some part of his own thoughts, beliefs, studies. For the rest, the connection, on his side at least, seems to have been one of platonic friendship. The lady was more or less existing, Hearn being constantly occupied in explaining away what she was quick to fancy were slights.

She would seem to have been even more sensitive than he. To speak plainly, too, there is a note of evasion in his letters; despite his appreciation of her, he seems to have seized upon his newspaper work as an excuse for preventing their friendship becoming something more intimate. He kept things--at least in his letters--upon a very formal plane. He was to the recipient, one fancies, provokingly distant in his "Dear Lady" form of address. There was an ominous sign in the constant reference to letters returned or unopened. Indeed, there finally came the breach that in the nature of things was inevitable, and then all his letters were returned to him.

The young man did not destroy them. Shortly afterwards he departed for the South. It is not a little strange that in all the years in New Orleans that followed--lean years and fat, years of bitter poverty and of comparative prosperity--Hearn preserved this batch of letters intact. When nearing the age of forty and close to that period when he was to sail for Japan, the more or less matured man passed judgment upon the letters of his youth, found them good, and placed them in the keeping of his friend. He told Mr. Watkin to do with the faded missives what he deemed best. In some fashion he would seem to have felt that he was yet destined to accomplish something in the world of literature, and to have proudly thought that some day even these boyish screeds would be eagerly read.

As for these letters, as with most of Hearn's missives, they were for the most part undated,--written hurriedly on any kind of paper, often on mere scraps.

He places himself before us as the "Oriental by birth and half by blood;" as a lad destined for Catholicism, and, instead of that, savagely attacking the religion of his mother. We have hints of the hard measure the world had dealt him and how he felt like a barbarian beyond the pale of polite society. He confesses himself ill at ease among the cultivated classes, and we dimly feel that there were in those years, before he came to Cincinnati, days so bitter that they left a permanent mark. Without religious faith, going to the boyish extreme of lightly attacking Christianity, he imagined himself ready to become a sort of æsthetic pagan, worshipping Venus and the other gods of the antique world. As antagonistic to accepted pulpit teaching, he read Darwin, and pompously and not a little solemnly announced, "I accept Darwin fully."

Perhaps no inconsiderable portion of this paganism was caused by his youthful worship of Swinburne. All young men in the late sixties and early seventies, with an ear for verbal music and magic, were swearing allegiance to the bard of the famous "Poems and Ballads." Indeed, one feels that Hearn would have been a poet himself, had he but been gifted with the faculty of rhyme. Much of the other equipment of the poet was his in abundant measure,--the love of beauty, the love of lovely words, the joy in the manifold things of nature and art.

Speaking of Swinburne brings us to his reading, and we catch a glimpse of that little shelf of treasured books,--Balzacand Gautier and Rabelais in the French; Poe, to be sure; and--strange choice--the poems of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

In these "Letters to a Lady" there is comparatively little discussion of literary subjects, save the mention of the fact that he is reading, always reading. Of literary criticism there is but little. In one letter, indeed, we do get a reference to the character of the Sultana of Aldrich's "Cloth of Gold," but this is a moral rather than a literary discussion. The sign that he was ranging far afield among other men's works, and also the hint of the writer that was to be, is given in little sentences dropped half unconsciously here and there,--sentences that to the student of Hearn's letters seem to be characteristic of his ways of thought, as when he says, "Somehow the ghosts of the letters I write by night laugh in my face by day;" or when he speaks of his horror of crowds and compares it to the terror of the desert camel being urged toward the white walls and shining minarets of the city beyond the desert; or when, curiously enough, he speaks of himself as seeming like a lizard in the July sun, a very similar turn of thought having been employed by Flaubert in one of his letters, which Hearn had probably never read, even though he did once plan a translation from that author.

It is only necessary in conclusion to call attention to one more letter in this section. As a matter of plain prose it would seem that the lady had complained of the coldness and the dubious tone of some of Hearn's letters and had returned them to him. In response he wrote to her a fable of a Sultan and a neighboring Sultana. He told how the Sultana complained of the Sultan's messengers, and how the Sultan committed them to death by fire. The lady was supposed, from this pretty fable, to draw the conclusion that Hearn's letters had been destroyed by their author. From the collection herewith appended, it can be seen that the fabulist availed himself of poetic license.

I

DEAR FRIEND: Your last kind letter makes me in some sort ashamed of my diffidence and coldness. Yet you must be aware how peculiarly I feel myself situated,--constrained, watched everywhere by a hundred eyes that know me, hemmed in with conventionalities of which I only know the value sufficiently to have my nerves on a perpetual strain through fear of breaking them. I am not by nature cold,--quite the reverse, indeed, as many a bitter experience taught me; and I beg you to attribute my manner rather to overcaution than to indifference to the feelings of others. Why, do not we all wear masks in this great carnival mummery of life, in which we all dance and smile disguisedly, until the midnight of our allotted pleasure time comes; and the King-Skeleton commands, "Masks off--show your skulls"? I am afraid you do not understand [me]; or rather, I feel sure you do not wholly,--for you have had little opportunity. You have only seen me on my best behavior; perhaps you might think less of me under other circumstances, but never think me a chilly phantom, though you may occasionally see me only as the Shadow of that which I really am. Have I been rude? Try to forgive my rudeness. It was involuntary.... I think I understood your letters; and I did not form any opinion therefrom, I feel sure, which you would not have liked. I wish I could be less strained and conventional in company. Will try my best to do better. Sincerely, L. HEARN

II

DEAR FRIEND AND LADY (if I may so call you): Do not suppose that when I delay answering one of your kind letters, the tardiness is attributable to neglect: or forgetfulness or inappreciation of your favor. I thoroughly feel--and feel keenly--every kind word or thought you have expressed or felt forme; I have never rendered you, it is true, a single compliment worthy of those I have received,--but only because I was sure that you understood my feelings better than if I had expressed them; I never write altogether as I think, partly because I am not naturally demonstrative, and while capable of more than ordinary sensitive feeling, I have a kind of reluctance to take off what I might term my little mask. Don't hesitate to scold me, as you threaten, should you think I deserve it....

I have been busy all day among noisy crowds of enthusiastic Catholics; and I shudder at the thought of entering a crowd at all times, just as the desert camel shudders when his driver urges him toward the white walls and the shining minarets of a city sparkling beyond the verge of the silent yellow waste. Consequently I was not able to write till late; and even now I am not in a good writing humor. One's skull becomes peopled with Dreams and Fantastic Things just before daybreak; and if you notice aught foolish or absurd in these lines, please attribute them to that weird influence which comes on us all--

_"in the dead vast and middle of the night."_

I must make one more visit to the Central Police Station ere cockcrow,--poetically speaking.

Sincerely,

LAF. HEARN

III

_Cincinnati, Thursday_, 27, 1876

DEAR LADY: I return by mail the very interesting letters which you kindly left for my perusal; also, the list of Mr.'s collection, whereof I have taken a copy. The other collectors are so slow in preparing their lists that I fear I shall not be able to publish a full account of their contributions to the World's Exposition for several days yet.... I am very thankful for your assistance in obtaining information regarding these things.

As an English subject, and one who feels a kind of home interest in European news, you may feel assured that the letters from beyond the "great water" interested me extremely.

The author gives a pleasant, realistic, and entertaining picture of the brilliant social affair whereof her letter treats; and her account would have done credit to most foreign newspaper correspondents, speaking from a journalistic point of view....

Believe me very respectfully yours,