The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 14

QUERIDO AMIGO,--Your words in regard to my former letter flatter me considerably, for I feel rather elated at being able to be of the smallest service to you; and as to your unavoidable delays in writing, never allow them to trouble you, or permit your correspondence to encroach upon your study hours for my sake. Indeed, it is a matter of surprise to me how you are able to spare any time at present in view of your manifold work.

So _your_ literary career--at least the brilliant portion of it--commences in January; and mine ends at the same time, without a single flash of brightness or a solitary result worthy of preservation.

My salary has been raised three times since I heard from you,--encouraging, perhaps, but I do not suffer myself to indulge in any literary speculations. Since the close of the sickly season my only thought has been to free myself from the yoke of dependence on the whims of employers,--from the harness of journalism. I hired myself a room in the northern end of the French Quarter (near the Spanish), bought myself a complete set of cooking utensils and kitchen-ware, and kept house for myself. I got my expenses down to $2 per week, and kept them at that (exclusive of rent, of course) although my salary rose to $20. Thus I learned to cook pretty well; also to save money, and will start a little business for myself next week. I have an excellent partner,--a Northern man,--and we expect by spring to clear enough ready money to start for South America. By that time I shall have finished my Spanish studies,--all that are necessary and possible in an American city, and shall--please (not G.o.d but) the good old G.o.ds--play gipsy for a while in strange lands. Many unpleasant things may happen; but with good health I have no fear of failure, and the new life will enable me to recruit my eyes, fill my pockets, and improve my imagination by many strange adventures and divers extraordinary archaeological pursuits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAFCADIO HEARN _In the '70's_]

How is that for Bohemianism? But I wish I could spend a day with you in order to recount the many wonderful and mystic adventures I have had in this quaint and ruinous city. To recount them in a letter is impossible.

But I came here to enjoy romance, and I have had my fill.

Business,--ye Antiquities!--hard, practical, unideal, realistic business! But what business? Ah, _mi corazon_, I would never dare to tell you. Not that it is not honourable, respectable, etc., but that it is so devoid of dreamful illusions. Yet hast thou not said,--"This is no world for dreaming,"--and divers other horrible things which I shall not repeat?

Tell me all about your exotic musical instruments, when you have time,--you know they will interest me; and may not I, too, some day be able to forward to you various barbaric symbols and sackfuls from outlandish places?--from the pampas or the llanos,--from some palm-fringed islands of the Eastern sea, where even Nature dreams opiated dreams? How knowst thou but that I shall make the Guacho and llanero, the Peruvian and the Chilian, to contribute right generously to thy store of musical wealth?

I have not made much progress in the literature most dear to you; inasmuch as my time has been rather curtailed, and the days have become provokingly short. But I have been devouring Hoffmann (Emile de la Bedolliere's translation in French--could not get a complete English one); and I really believe he has no rival as a creator of musical fantasticalities. "The Organ-Stop," "The Sanatus," "Lawyer Krespel" (a story of a violin, replete with delightful German mysticism), "A Pupil of the Great Tartini," "Don Juan,"--and a dozen other stories evidence an enthusiasm for music and an extraordinary sensitiveness to musical impressions on the author's part. You probably read these in German,--if not, I am sure many of them would delight you. The romance of music must, I fancy, be a vast aid to the study of the art,--it seems to me like the setting of a jewel, or the frame of a painting. I also have observed in the New York _Times_ a warm notice of a lady who is an enthusiast upon the subject of Finnish music, and who has collected a valuable ma.s.s of the quaint music and weird ditties of the North. As you speak of having a quant.i.ty of Finnish music, however, I have no doubt that you know much more about the young lady than I could tell you.

Prosper Merimee's "Carmen" has fairly enthralled me,--I am in love with it. The colour and pa.s.sion and rapid tragedy of the story is marvellous. I think I was pretty well prepared to enjoy it, however. I had read Simpson's "History of the Gipsies," Borro's[6] "Gypsies of Spain," a volume of Spanish gipsy ballads,--I forget the name of the translator,--and everything in the way of gipsy romance I could get my hands on,--by Sheridan Le Fanu, Victor Hugo, Reade, Longfellow, George Eliot, Balzac, and a brilliant novelist also whose works generally appear in the _Cornhill Magazine_. Balzac's "Le Succube" gives a curious picture of the persecution of the Bohemians in mediaeval France, founded upon authentic records. Le Fanu wrote a sweet little story called "The Bird of Pa.s.sage," which contained a remarkable variety of information in regard to gipsy secrets; but it is only within very recent years that a really good novel on a gipsy theme has been written in English; and I am sorry that I cannot remember the author's name. I found more romance as well as information in Borro and Simpson than in all the novels and poems put together; and I obtained a fair idea of the artistic side of Spanish gipsy life from Dore's "Spain." Dore is something of a musician as well as a limner; and his knowledge of the violin enabled him to make himself at home in the camps of that music-loving people. He played wild airs to them, and studied their poses and gestures with such success that his gipsies seem actually to dance in the engravings. I read that Miss Minnie Hauck plays Carmen in gorgeous costume, which is certainly out of place, except in one act of the opera. Otherwise from the first scene of the novel in which she advances "poising herself on her hips, like a filly from the Cordovan Stud," to the ludicrous episode at Gibraltar, her attire is described as more nearly resembling that picturesque rag-blending of colour Dore describes and depicts. If you see the opera,--please send me your criticism in the _Gazette_.

[6] See page 205.

You may remember some observations I made--based especially on De Coulanges--as to the derivation of the Roman and Greek tongues from the Sanscrit. Talking of Borro reminds me that Borro traces the gipsy dialects to the mother of languages; and Simpson naturally finds the Romany akin to modern Hindostanee, which succeeded the Sanscrit. Now here is a curious fact. Rommain is simply Sanscrit for The Husbands,--a domestic appellation applicable to the gipsy races above all others, when the ties of blood are stronger than even among the Jewish people; and Borro asks timidly what is then the original meaning of those mighty words, "Rome" and the "Romans," of which no scholar (he claims) has yet ventured to give the definition. Surely all mysteries seem to issue from the womb of nations,--from the heart of Asia.

I see that the musical critic of the New York _Times_ speaks of certain airs in the opera of _Carmen_ as Havanese airs,--_Avaneras_. If there be a music peculiar to Havana, I expect that I shall hear some of it next summer. If I could only write music, I could collect much interesting matter for you.

There is a New Orleans story in the last issue of _Scribner's Monthly_,--"Ninon,"--which I must tell you is a fair exemplification of how mean French Creoles can be. The great cruelties of the old slave regime were perpetuated by French planters. Anglo-Saxon blood is not cruel. If you want to find cruelty, either in ancient or modern history, it must be sought for among the Latin races of Europe. The Scandinavian and Teutonic blood was too virile and n.o.ble to be cruel; and the science of torture was never developed among them.

Before I commenced to keep house for myself, I must tell you about a Chinese restaurant which I used to patronize. No one in the American part of the city--or at least very few--know even of its existence. The owner will not advertise, will not hang out a sign, and seems to try to keep his business a secret. The restaurant is situated in the rear part of an old Creole house on Dumaine Street,--about the middle of the French Quarter; and one must pa.s.s through a dark alley to get in. I had heard so much of the filthiness of the Chinese, that I would have been afraid to enter it, but for the strong recommendations of a Spanish friend of mine,--now a journalist and a romantic fellow. (By the way, he killed a stranger here in 1865 one night, and had to fly the country. A few hot words in a saloon; and the Spanish blood was up. The stranger fell so quickly and the stab was given so swiftly,--"according to the _rules_,"--that my friend had left the house before anybody knew what had happened. Then the killer was stowed away upon a Spanish schooner, and s.h.i.+pped to Cuba, where he remained for four years. And when he came back, _there were no witnesses_.)

But about the restaurant. I was surprised to find the bills printed half in Spanish and half in English; and the room nearly full of Spaniards.

It turned out that my Chinaman was a Manilan,--handsome, swarthy, with a great shock of black hair, wavy as that of a Malabaress. His movements were supple, noiseless, leopardine; and the Mongolian blood was scarcely visible. But his wife was positively attractive;--hair like his own, a splendid figure, sharp, strongly marked features, and eyes whose very obliqueness only rendered the face piquant,--as in those agreeable yet half-sinister faces painted on j.a.panese lacquerware. The charge for a meal was only twenty-five cents,--four dishes allowed, with dessert and coffee, and only five cents for every extra dish one might choose to order. I generally ordered a nice steak, stewed beef with potatoes, stewed tongue, a couple of fried eggs, etc. Everything is cooked before your eyes, the whole interior of the kitchen being visible from the dining-table; and nothing could be cleaner or nicer. I asked him how long he had kept the place; he answered, "Seven years;" and I am told he has been making a fortune even at these prices of five cents per dish.

The cooking is perfection.

There is nothing here which would interest you particularly in the newspaper line. We have a new French daily, _Le Courrier de la Louisiane_; but the ablest French editor in Louisiana--Dumez of Le Meschacebe--was killed by what our local poets are pleased to term "The March of the Saffron Steed!" The _Item_, beginning on nothing, now represents a capital, and I would have a fine prospect should I be able to content my restless soul in this town. The _Democrat_ is in a death struggle with the gigantic lottery monopoly; and cannot live long.

Howard is king of New Orleans, and can crush every paper or clique that opposes him. He was once blackballed by the Old Jockey Club, who had a splendid race-course at Metairie. "By G.o.d," said Howard, "I'll make a graveyard of their d----d race-course." He did it. The Metairie cemetery now occupies the site of the old race-course; and the new Jockey Club is Howard's own organization.

It just occurs to me that the name of the gypsy novel written by the Cornhill writer is "Zelda's Fortune," and that I spelled the name Borrow wrong. It has a "w." Merimee refers to B_a_rrow, which is also wrong.

Longfellow borrowed (excuse the involuntary pun) nearly all the gypsy songs in his "Spanish Student" from Borrow. I remember, for instance, the songs commencing,----

"Upon a mountain's tip I stand, With a crown of red gold in my hand;"

also,

"Loud sang the Spanish cavalier And thus his ditty ran: G.o.d send the gypsy la.s.sie here, And not the gipsy man."

(I have been spelling "gipsy" and "gypsy"--don't know which I like best.) I wonder why Longfellow did not borrow the forge-song, quoted by Borrow,--_Las Muchis_, "The Sparks":----

"More than a hundred lovely daughters I see produced at one time, fiery as roses, in one moment they expire, gracefully circ.u.mvolving."

Is it not beautiful, this gipsy poetry? The sparks are compared to daughters, but they are _gitanas_ "_fiery_ as roses;" and in the words, "I see them expire, gracefully _circ.u.mvolving_," we have the figure of the gypsy dance,--the Romalis, with its wild bounds and pirouettes.

My letter is too long. I fear it will try your patience; but I cannot say half I should wish to say. You will soon hear from me again; for le pere Rouquette hath returned; I must see him, and show him your letter.

A villainous wind from your boreal region has overcast the sky with a cope of lead, and filled the sunny city with gloom. From my dovecot shaped windows I can see only wet roofs and dripping gable-ends. The nights are now starless, and haunted by fogs. Sometimes, in the day there is no more than a suggestion of daylight,--a gloaming. Sometimes in the darkness I hear hideous cries of murder from beyond the boundary of sharp gables and fantastic dormers. But murders are so common here that n.o.body troubles himself about them. So I draw my chair closer to the fire, light up my pipe _de terre Gambiese_, and in the flickering glow weave fancies of palm-trees and ghostly reefs and tepid winds, and a Voice from the far tropics calls to me across the darkness.

Adios, hermano mio, Forever yours, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO H.E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1879.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I regret very much that I could not reply until now; overstudy obliged me to quit reading and writing for several days; I am just in that peculiar condition of convalescence when one cannot tell how to regulate the strain upon his eyes.

It pleased me very much to hear from you just before you entered upon your duties as a professor of the beautiful art you have devoted yourself to;--that letter informed me of many things more than its written words directly expressed,--especially that you felt I was really and deeply interested in every step you were taking, and that I would on receiving your letter experience that very thrill of indescribable anxiety and hope, timidity and confidence, and a thousand intermingled sensations,--which ever besets one standing on the verge of uncertainty ere taking the first plunge into a new life.

I read your lecture with intense interest, and felt happy in observing that your paper did you the justice to publish the essay entire. Still, I fancy that you may have interpolated its delivery with a variety of unpublished comments and verbal notes,--such as I have heard you often deliver when reading from print or MSS. These I should much have wished to hear,--if they were uttered.

Your lecture was in its entirety a vast ma.s.s of knowledge wonderfully condensed into a very small compa.s.s. That condensation, which I would regret if applied to certain phases of your whole plan, could not have been avoided in its inception; and only gave to the whole an encyclopaedic character which must have astonished many of your hearers.

To present so infinite a subject in so small a frame was a gigantic task of itself; and nevertheless it was accomplished symmetrically and harmoniously,--the thread of one instructive idea never being broken. I certainly think you need harbour no further fears as to success in the lecture-room, and far beyond it.

The idea of religion as the conservator of Romanticism, as the promoter of musical development, seemed to me very novel and peculiar. I cannot doubt its correctness, although I believe some might take issue with you in regard to the Romantic idea,--because the discussions in regard to romantic truth are interminable and will never cease. Religion is beyond any question the mother of all civilizations, arts, and laws; and no archaeologic research has given us any record of any social system, any art, any law, antique or modern, which was not begotten and nurtured by an ethical idea. You know that I have no faith in any "faiths" or dogmas; I regard thought as a mechanical process, and individual life as a particle of that eternal force of which we know so little: but the true philosophers who _hold_ these doctrines to-day (I cannot say originated them, for they are old as Buddhism) are also those who best comprehend the necessity of the religious idea for the maintenance of the social system which it cemented together and developed. The name of a religion has little to do with this truth; the law of progress has been everywhere the same. The art of the Egyptian, the culture of the Greeks, the successful policy of Rome, the fantastic beauty of Arabic architecture, were the creations of various religious ideas; and pa.s.sed away only when the faiths which nourished them weakened or were forgotten. So I believe with you that the musical art of antiquity was born of the antique religions, and varied according to the character of that religion. But I have also an inclination to believe that Romanticism itself was engendered by religious conservation. The amorous Provencal ditties which excited the horror of the mediaeval church were certainly engendered by the mental reactions against religious conservatism in Provence; and I fancy that the same reaction everywhere produced similar results, whether in ancient or modern history. This is your idea, is it not; or is it your idea carried perhaps to the extreme of attributing the birth of Romanticism to conservatism, Pallas-Athene springing in white beauty from the head of Zeus?

There is one thing which I will venture to criticize in the lecture,--not positively, however. I cannot help believing that the deity whose name you spell _Schiva_ (probably after a German writer) is the same spelled Seeva, Siva, or s.h.i.+va, according to various English and French authors. If I am right, then I fear you were wrong in calling Schiva the _G.o.ddess_ of fire and destruction. The G.o.d, yes; but although many of these Hindoo deities, including Siva, are bi-s.e.xual and self-engendering, as the embodiment of any force, they are masculine.

Now Siva is the third person of the Hindoo trinity,--Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; Siva, the Destroyer. Siva signifies the wrath of G.o.d. Fire is sacred to him, as it is an emblem of the Christian Siva, the _Holy Ghost_. Siva is the Holy Ghost of the Hindoo trinity; and as sins against the Holy Ghost are unforgiven, so are sins against Siva unforgiven. There is an awful legend that Brahma and Vishnu were once disputing as to greatness, when Siva suddenly towered between them as a pillar of fire. Brahma flew upward for ten myriads of years vainly striving to reach the flaming capital of that fiery column; Vishnu flew downward for ten thousand years without being able to reach its base.

And the G.o.ds trembled. But this legend, symbolic and awful, signifies only that the height and depth of the vengeance of G.o.d is immeasurable even by himself. I think the _wife_ of Siva is Parvati. See if I am right. I have no works here to which I can refer on the subject.

There is to my mind a most fearful symbolism in the origin of five tones from the head of Siva. I cannot explain the idea; but it is a terrible one, and may symbolize a strange truth. All this Brahminism is half true; it conflicts not with any doctrine of science; its symbolism is only a monstrously-figured veil wrought to hide from the ignorant truths they cannot understand; and those elephant-headed or hundred-armed G.o.ds do but represent tremendous facts.

On the subject of Romanticism, I send you a translation from an article by Baudelaire. The last part of the chapter, applying wholly to romanticism in form and colour, hardly touches the subject in which you are most interested. His criticism of Raphael is very severe; that of Rembrandt enthusiastic. "The South," he says, is "brutal and positive in its conception of beauty, like a sculptor;" and he remarks that sculpture in the North is always rather picturesque than realistic.

Winckelmann and Lessing long since pointed out, however, that antique art was never realistic; it was only a dream of human beauty deified and immortalized, and the ancients were true Romanticists in their day. I wonder what Baudelaire would have thought of our modern Pre-Raphaelites,--Rossetti, _et als_. Surely they are true Romanticists also; but I must not tire you with Romanticism.

Do you not think that outside of the religio-musical system of Egyptian wors.h.i.+p, there may have been a considerable development of the art in certain directions--judging from the wonderful variety of instruments,--harps, flutes, tamborines, sistrums, drums, cymbals, etc., discovered in the tombs or pictured forth upon the walls? Your remarks on the subject were exceedingly interesting.

I fear my letters will bore you,--however, they are long only because I must write as I would talk to you were it possible. I am disappointed in regard to several musical researches I have been undertaking; and can tell you little of interest. The work of Cable is not yet in press--yellow fever killed half his family. Rouquette has been doing nothing but writing mad essays on the beauties of chast.i.ty, so that I can get nothing from him in the way of music until his crazy fit is over. Several persons to whom I applied for information became suspicious and refused point-blank to do anything. I traced one source of musical lore to its beginning, and discovered that the individual had been subsidized by another collector to say nothing. Speaking of Pacific Island music, you have probably seen Wilkins' "Voyages," 5 vols., with strange music therein. I have many ditties in my head, but I cannot write them down....

Thine, O Minnesinger, L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1880.