The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 13

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1878.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I received yours, with the kind wishes of Mrs.

Krehbiel, which afforded me more pleasure than I can tell you,--also the _Golden Hours_ with your instructive article on the history of the piano. It occurs to me that when completed your musical essays would form a delightful little volume, and ought certainly to find a first-cla.s.s publisher. I hope you will entertain the suggestion, if it has not already occurred to you. I do not know very much about musical literature; but I fancy that no work in the English tongue has been published of a character so admirably suited to give young people a sound knowledge of the romantic history of music instruments as your essays would const.i.tute, if shaped into a volume. The closing observations of your essay, markedly original and somewhat startling, were very entertaining. I have not yet returned your ma.n.u.script, because Robinson is devouring and digesting that Chinese play. He takes a great interest in what you write.

I send you, not without some qualms of conscience, a copy of our little journal containing a few personal remarks, written with the idea of making you known here in musical circles. I have several apologies to make in regard to the same. Firstly, the _Item_ is only a poor little sheet, in which I am not able to obtain s.p.a.ce sufficient to do you or your art labour justice; secondly, I beg of you to remember that if I have spoken too extravagantly from a strictly newspaper standpoint, it will not be taken malicious advantage of by anybody, as the modest _Item_ goes no farther north than St. Louis.

The Creole rhymes I sent you were unintelligible chiefly because they were written phonetically after a fas.h.i.+on which I hold to be an abomination. The author, Adrien Rouquette, is the last living Indian missionary of the South,--the last of the Blackrobe Fathers, and is known to the Choctaws by the name of Charitah-Ima. You may find him mentioned in the American Encyclopaedia published by the firm of Lippincott & Co. There is nothing very remarkable about his poetry, except its eccentricity. The "Chant d'un jeune Creole" was simply a personal compliment,--the author gives something of a sketch of his own life in it. It was published in _Le Propagateur_, a French Catholic paper, for the purpose of attracting my attention, as the old man wanted to see me, and thought the paper might fall under my observation. The other, the "Moqueur-Chanteur,"--as it ought to have been spelled,--or "Mocking Singer," otherwise the mocking-bird, has some pretty bits of onomatopoeia. (This dreamy, sunny State, with its mighty forests of cedar and pine, and its groves of giant cypress, is the natural home of the mocking-bird.) These bits of Creole rhyming were adapted to the airs of some old Creole songs, and the music will, perhaps, be the most interesting part of them.

I am writing you a detailed account of the Creoles of Louisiana, and their blending with Creole emigrants from the Canaries, Martinique, and San Domingo; but it is a subject of great lat.i.tude, and I can only outline it for you. Their characteristics offer an interesting topic, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring of the miscegenated French and African, or Spanish and African, dialects called Creole offer pretty peculiarities worth a volume. I will try to give you an entertaining sketch of the subject. I must tell you, however, that Creole music is mostly negro music, although often remodelled by French composers. There could neither have been Creole patois nor Creole melodies but for the French and Spanish blooded slaves of Louisiana and the Antilles. The melancholy, quavering beauty and weirdness of the negro chant are lightened by the French influence, or subdued and deepened by the Spanish.

Yes, I _did_ send you that song as something queer. I had only hoped that the music would own the charming naivete of the words; but I have been disappointed. But you must grant the song is pretty and has a queer simplicity of sentiment. Save it for the words. (Alas!

_Melusine_--according to information I have just received from Christern of New York--is dead. Poor, dear, darling _Melusine_! I sincerely mourn for her with archaeological and philological lament.) L'Orient is in Brittany, and the chant is that of a Breton fisher village. That it should be melancholy is not surprising; but that it should be melancholy without weirdness or sweetness is lamentable. _Melusine_ for 1877 had a large collection of Breton songs, with music; and I think I shall avail myself of Christern's offer to get it. I want it for the legends; you will want, I am sure, to peep at the music. Your criticism about the resemblance of the melody to the Irish keening wail does not surprise me, although it disappointed me; for I believe the Breton peasantry are of Celtic origin. Your last letter strengthened a strange fancy that has come to me at intervals since my familiarity with the Chinese physiognomy,--namely, that there are such strong similarities between the Mongolian and certain types of the Irish face that one is inclined to suspect a far-distant origin of the Celts in the East. The Erse and the Gaelic tongues, you know, are very similar in construction, also the modern Welsh. I have heard them all, and met Irish people able to comprehend both Welsh and Gaelic from the resemblance to the Erse. I suppose you have lots of Welsh music, the music of the Bards, some of which is said to have had a Druidic origin. Tell me if you have ever come across any Scandinavian music--the terrible melody of the Berserker songs, and the Runic chants, so awfully potent to charm; the Raven song of the Sweyn maidens to which they wove the magic banner; the death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok, or the songs of the warlocks and Norse priests; the many sword-songs sung by the Vikings, etc. I suppose you remember Longfellow's adaptation of the Heimskringla legend:--

"Then the Scald took his harp and sang, And loud through the music rang The sound of that s.h.i.+ning word; And the harp-strings a clangor made, As if they were struck with the blade Of a sword."

I am delighted to hear that you have got some Finnish music. Nothing in the world can compare in queerness and all manner of grotesqueness to Finnish tradition and characteristic superst.i.tion. I see an advertis.e.m.e.nt of "Le Chant de Roland," price $100, splendidly ill.u.s.trated. Wonder if the original music of the Song of Roland has been preserved. You know the giant Taillefer sang that mighty chant as he hewed down the Saxons at the battle of Hastings.

With grateful regards to Mrs. Krehbiel, I remain

Yours a jamais, L. H.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--That I should have been able even by a suggestion to have been of any use to you is a great pleasure. Your information in regard to Pere Rouquette interested me. The father--the last of the Blackrobe Fathers--is at present with his beloved Indians at Ravine-les-Cannes; but I will see him on his return and read your letter to the good old soul. If the columns of a good periodical were open to me, I should write the romance of his life--such a wild strange life--inspired by the magical writings of Chateaubriand in the commencement; and latterly devoted to a strangely beautiful religion of his own--not only the poetic religion of _Atala_ and _Les Natchez_, but that religion of the wilderness which flies to solitude, and hath no other temple than the vault of Heaven itself, painted with the frescoes of the clouds, and illuminated by the trembling tapers of G.o.d's everlasting altar, the stars of the firmament.

I have received circular and organ-talk. You are right, I am convinced, in your quotation of St. Jerome. To-day I send you the book--an old copy I had considerable difficulty in coaxing from the owner. It will be of use to you chiefly by reason of the curious list of writers on mediaeval and antique music quoted at the end of the volume.

If you do not make a successful volume of your instructive "Talks,"

something dreadful ought to happen to you,--_especially as Cincinnati has now a musical school in which children will have to learn something about music_. You are the professor of musical history at that college.

Your work is a work of instruction for the young. As the professor of that college, you should be able to make it a success. This is a suggestion. I know you are not a wire-puller--couldn't be if you tried; but I want to see those talks put to good use, and made profitable to the writer, and you have friends who should be able to do what I think.

Your friend is right, no doubt, about the

"Tig, tig, malaboin La chelema che tango Redjoum!"

I asked my black nurse what it meant. She only laughed and shook her head,--"Mais c'est Voudoo, ca; je n'en sais rien!" "Well," said I, "don't you know anything about Voudoo songs?" "Yes," she answered, "_I know Voudoo songs; but I can't tell you what they mean_." And she broke out into the wildest, weirdest ditty I ever heard. I tried to write down the words; but as I did not know what they meant I had to write by sound alone, spelling the words according to the French p.r.o.nunciation:--

"Yo so dan G.o.do Heru mande Yo so dan G.o.do Heru mande Heru mande.

Tiga la papa, No TinG.o.dise Tiga la papa Ha Tinguoaiee Ha Tinguoaiee Ha Tinguoaiee."

I have undertaken a project which I hardly hope to succeed in, but which I feel some zeal regarding, viz., to collect the Creole legends, traditions, and songs of Louisiana. Unfortunately I shall never be able to do this thoroughly without money,--plenty of money,--but I can do a good deal, perhaps.

I must also tell you that I find Spanish remarkably easy to acquire; and believe that at the end of another year I shall be able to master it,--write it and speak it well. To do the latter, however, I shall be obliged to spend some time in some part of the Spanish-American colonies,--whither my thoughts have been turned for some time. With a good knowledge of three languages, I can prosecute my wanderings over the face of the earth without timidity,--without fear of starving to death after each migration.

After all, it has been lucky for me that I was obliged to quit hard newspaper work; for it has afforded me opportunities for self-improvement which I could not otherwise have acquired. I should like, indeed, to make more money; but one must sacrifice something in order to study, and I must not grumble, as long as I can live while learning.

I have really given up all hope of creating anything while I remain here, or, indeed, until my condition shall have altered and my occupation changed.

What material I can glean here, from this beautiful and legendary land,--this land of perfume and of dreams,--must be chiselled into shape elsewhere.

One cannot write of these beautiful things while surrounded by them; and by an atmosphere, heavy and drowsy as that of a conservatory. It must be afterward, in times to come, when I shall find myself in some cold, bleak land where I shall dream regretfully of the graceful palms; the swamp groves, weird in their ragged robes of moss; the golden ripples of the cane-fields under the summer wind, and this divine sky--deep and vast and cloudless as Eternity, with its far-off horizon tint of tender green.

I do not wonder the South has produced nothing of literary art. Its beautiful realities fill the imagination to repletion. It is regret and desire and the Spirit of Unrest that provoketh poetry and romance. It is the North, with its mists and fogs, and its gloomy sky haunted by a fantastic and ever-changing panorama of clouds, which is the land of imagination and poetry.

The fever is dying. A mighty wind, boisterous and cool, lifted the poisonous air from the city at last.

I cannot describe to you the peculiar effect of the summer upon one unacclimated. You feel as though you were breathing a drugged atmosphere. You find the very whites of your eyes turning yellow with biliousness. The least over-indulgence in eating or drinking prostrates you. My feeling all through the time of the epidemic was about this: I have the fever-principle in my blood,--it shows its presence in a hundred ways,--if the machinery of the body gets the least out of order, the fever will get me down. I was not afraid of serious consequences, but I felt conscious that nothing but strict attention to the laws of health would pull me through. The experience has been valuable. I believe I could now live in Havana or Vera Cruz without fear of the terrible fevers which prevail there. Do you know that even here we have no less than eleven different kinds of fever,--most of which know the power of killing?

I am very glad winter is coming, to lift the languors of the air and restore some energy to us. The summer is not like that North. At the North you have a clear, dry, burning air; here it is clear also, but dense, heavy, and so moist that it is never so hot as you have it. But no one dares expose himself to the vertical sun. I have noticed that even the chickens and the domestic animals, dogs, cats, etc., always seek shady places. They fear the sun. People with valuable horses will not work them much in summer. They die very rapidly of sunstroke.

In winter, too, one feels content. There is no nostalgia. But the summer always brings with it to me--always has, and I suppose always will--a curious and vague species of homesickness, as if I had friends in some country far off, where I had not been for so long that I have forgotten even their names and the appellation of the place where they live. I hope it will be so next summer that I can go whither the humour leads me,--the propensity which the author of "The Howadji in Syria" calleth the Spirit of the Camel.

But this is a land where one can really enjoy the Inner Life. Every one has an inner life of his own,--which no other eye can see, and the great secrets of which are never revealed, although occasionally when we create something beautiful, we betray a faint glimpse of it--sudden and brief, as of a door opening and shutting in the night. I suppose you live such a life, too,--a double existence--a dual ent.i.ty. Are we not all doppelgangers?--and is not the invisible the only life we really enjoy?

You may remember I described this house to you as haunted-looking. It is delicious, therefore, to find out that it is actually a haunted house.

But the ghosts do not trouble me; I have become so much like one of themselves in my habits. There is one room, however, where no one likes to be alone; for phantom hands clap, and phantom feet stamp behind them.

"And what does that signify?" I asked a servant. "_ca veut dire, Foulez-moi le camp_"--a vulgar expression for "Git!"

There is to be a _literary_ (G.o.d save the mark!) newspaper here. I have been asked to help edit it. As I find that I can easily attend to both papers I shall scribble and scrawl and sell 'em translations which I could not otherwise dispose of. Thus I shall soon be making, instead of $40, about $100 per month. This will enable me to acc.u.mulate the means of flying from American civilization to other horrors which I know not of--some place where one has to be a good Catholic (in outward appearance) for fear of having a _navaja_ stuck into you, and where the whole population is so mixed up that no human being can tell what nation anybody belongs to. So in the meantime I must study such phrases as:----

Tiene V. un leoncito? Have you a small lion?

No senor, pero tengo un fero perro. No: but I've an ugly dog.

Tiene V. un muchachona? Have you a big strapping girl?

No: pero tengo un hombrecillo. No: but I've a miserable little man.

May the G.o.ds of the faiths, living and dead, watch over thee, and thy dreams be made resonant with the sound of mystic and ancient music, which on waking thou shalt vainly endeavour to recall, and forever regret with a vague and yet pleasant sorrow; knowing that the G.o.ds permit not mortals to learn their sacred hymns.

L. HEARN.

By the way, let me send you a short translation from Baudelaire. It is so mystic and sad and beautiful.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1879.