The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 27

Several new volumes have appeared. I have some Oriental things to send you--music, if you will agree to return in one month from reception. But you need not have expressed those other things--made me feel sorry. I expressed them to you for other reasons entirely.

I have a delightful Mexican friend living with me, and teaching me to speak Spanish with that long, soft, languid South American Creole accent that is so much more pleasant than the harsher accent of Spain. His name is Jose de Jesus y Preciado, and he sends you his best wishes, because he says all my friends must be his friends too.

Now, I hope you'll write me a pretty, kind, forgiving letter,--not condescendingly, but really nice,--you know what I mean.

Your supersensitive and highly suspicious friend,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, January, 1885.

DEAR FRIEND KREHBIEL,--Many, many happy New Years. Your letter came luckily during an interval of rest,--so that I can answer it right away.

I have not been at all worried by your silence,--as your former kind lines showed me you had fully forgiven my involuntary injustice and my voluntary, but only momentary _malice_. (Please give this last the French accent, which takes off the edge of the word.)

In a few days my Creole Dictionary will be published in New York; and I will not forget to send you a copy, just as soon as I can get some myself. I do not expect to make anything on the publication. It is a give-away to a friend, who will not forget me if he makes money, but who does not expect to make a fortune on it. This kind of thing is never lucrative; and the publication of the book is justified only by Exposition projects. As for the "Stray Leaves" I have never written to the publishers yet about them,--so afraid of bad news I have been. But I have dared to try and get a good word said for it in high places. I succeeded in obtaining a personal letter from Protap Chunder Roy, of Calcutta, and hope to get one from Edwin Arnold. This is cheeky; but publishers think so much about a commendation from some acknowledged authority in Oriental studies.

The prices are high; the markets are all "bulled;" and for the first time I find my room rent here (twenty dollars per month) and my salary scarcely enough for my extravagant way of life. Money is a subject I am beginning to think of in connection with everything except--art. I still think n.o.body should follow an art purpose with money in view; but if no money comes in time, it is discouraging in this way,--that the lack of public notice is generally somewhat of a bad sign. Happily, however, I have joined a building a.s.sociation, which compels me to pay out $20 per month. Outside of this way of saving, I save nothing,--except queer books imported from all parts of the world.

Very affectionately yours,

HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL.

NEW ORLEANS, January, 1885.

MY DEAR KREHBIEL,--I fear I know nothing about Creole music or Creole negroes. Yes, I have seen them dance; but they danced the Congo, and sang a purely African song to the accompaniment of a dry-goods box beaten with sticks or bones and a drum made by stretching a skin over a flour-barrel. That sort of accompaniment and that sort of music, you know all about: it is precisely similar to what a score of travellers have described. There are no harmonies--only a furious contretemps. As for the dance,--in which the women do not take their feet off the ground,--it is as lascivious as is possible. The men dance very differently, like savages, leaping in the air. I spoke of this spectacle in my short article in the _Century_.

One must visit the Creole parishes to discover the characteristics of the real Creole music, I suspect. I would refer the _Century_ to Harris's book: he says the Southern darkies don't use the banjo. I have never seen any play it here but Virginians or "upper country" darkies.

The slave-songs you refer to are infinitely more interesting than anything Cable's got; but still, I fancy his material could be worked over into something really pretty. Gottschalk found the theme for his Bamboula in Louisiana--_Quand patate est chinte_, etc., and made a miracle out of it.

Now if you want any further detailed account of the Congo dance, I can send it; but I doubt whether you need it. The Creole songs, which I have heard sung in the city, are Frenchy in construction, but possess a few African characteristics of method. The darker the singer the more marked the oddities of intonation. Unfortunately most of those I have heard were quadroons or mulattoes. One black woman sang me a Voudoo song, which I got Cable to write--but I could not sing it as she sang it, so that the music is faulty. I suppose you have seen it already, as it forms part of the collection. If the _Century_ people have any sense they would send you down here for some months next spring to study up the old ballads; and I believe that if you manage to show Cable the importance of the result, he can easily arrange it....

You answered some of my questions charmingly. Don't be too sarcastic about my capacity for study. My study is of an humble sort; and I never knew anything, and never shall, about acoustics. But I have had to study awful hard in order to get a vague general idea of those sciences which can be studied without mathematics, or actual experimentation with mechanical apparatus. I have half a mind to study medicine in practical earnest some day. Wouldn't I make an imposing Doctor in the Country of Cowboys? A doctor might also do well in j.a.pan. I'm thinking seriously about it.

This is the best letter I can write for the present, and I know it's not a good one. I send a curiosity by Xp to you.

The Creole slaves sang usually with clapping of hands. But it would take an old planter to give reliable information regarding the accompaniment.

Yours very truly, L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1885.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--I regret having been so pressed for time that I was obliged to return your MS. without a letter expressing the thanks which you know I feel. I scribbled in pencil--which you can erase with a bit of bread--some notes on the Cajan song, that may interest you.

The Harpers are giving me warm encouragement; but advise me to remain a fixture where I am. They say they are looking now to the South for literary work of a certain sort,--that immense fields for observation remain here wholly untilled, and that they want active, living, opportune work of a fresh kind. I shall try soon my hand at fiction;--my great difficulty is my introspective disposition, which leaves me in revery at moments when I ought to be using eyes, ears, and tongue in studying others rather than my own thoughts.

I find the word _Banja_ given as African in Bryan Edwards's "West Indies." My studies of African survivals have tempted me to the purchase of a great many queer books which will come in useful some day. Most are unfortunately devoted to Senegal; for our English travellers are generally poor ethnographers and anthropologists, so far as the Gold Coast and Ivory Coast are concerned. You remember our correspondence about the comparative anatomy of the vocal organs of negroes and whites.

A warm friend of several years' standing--a young Spanish physician and professor here--is greatly interested in this new science: indeed we study comparative human anatomy and ethnology in common, with goniometers and Broca's instruments. He states that only microscopic work can reveal the full details of differentiation in the vocal organs of races; but calls my attention to several differences already noticed.

Gibb has proved, for instance, that the cartilages of Wrisberg are larger in the negro;--this would not affect the voice especially; but the fact promises revelations of a more important kind. We think of your projects in connection with these studies.

I copied only your Acadian boat-song. What is the price of the slave-song book? If you have time to send me during the next month the music of "Michie Preval," and of the boat-song, I can use them admirably in _Melusine_....

Your friend, L. H.

TO W. D. O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, March, 1885.

Big P. S. No. 1.

I forgot in my hurried letter yesterday, to tell you that if you ever want a copy of "Stray Leaves," don't go and buy it, as you have been naughty enough to do, but tell me, and I'll send you what you wish. I hope to dedicate a book to you some day, when I am sure it is worth dedicating to you.

I am quite curious about you. Seems to me you must be like your handwriting,--firmly knit, large, strong, and keen;--with delicate perceptions, (of course I know _that_, anyhow!) well-developed ideas of order and system, and great continuity of purpose and a disposition as level and even as the hand you write. If my little scraggy hand tells you anything, you ought to recognize in it a very small, erratic, eccentric, irregular, impulsive, variable, nervous disposition,--almost exactly your ant.i.type in everything--except the love of the beautiful.

Very faithfully, L. H.

Big P. S. No. 2.

I did not depend on _Le Figaro_ for statements about Hugo; but picked them up in all directions. What think you of his refusal to aid poor blind Xavier Aubryet by writing a few lines of preface for his book?

What about his ignoring the services of his greatest champion, Theophile Gautier? What about his studied silence in regard to the works of the struggling poets and novelists of the movement which he himself inaugurated? I really believe that the man has been a colossus of selfishness. One who prejudiced me very strongly against him, however, was that eccentric little Jew, Alexander Weill, whose reminiscences of Heine made such a sensation. Perhaps after all literary generosity is rare. Flaubert and Gautier possessed it; but twenty cases of the opposite kind, quite as ill.u.s.trious, may be cited. In any event I am glad of your rebuke. Whether my ideas are right or wrong, I believe we ought not to speak of the weaknesses of truly great men when it can be avoided;--therefore I cry _peccavi_, and promise to do so no more.

Yours very sincerely, LAFCADIO HEARN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. HEARN'S EARLIER HANDWRITING]

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, 1885.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--I have been away in Florida, in the track of old Ponce de Leon,--bathing in the Fount of Youth,--talking to the palm-trees,--swimming in the great Atlantic surf. Charley Johnson and I took the trip together,--or to be strictly fair, it was he that induced me to go along; and I am not sorry for the expense or the time spent, as I enjoyed my reveries unspeakably. For bathing--sea-bathing--I prefer our own Creole islands in the Gulf to any place in Florida; but for scenery and sunlight and air,--air that is a liquid jewel,--Florida seems to me the garden of Hesperus. I'll send you what I have written about it....

Charles Dudley Warner, whose acquaintance made here, strikes me as the nicest literary personage I have yet met.... Gilder of the _Century_ was here--a handsome, kindly man.... A book which I recently got would interest you--Symonds's "Wine, Women, and Song." I had no idea that the Twelfth Century had its literary renascence, or that in the time of the Crusades German students were writing worthy of Horace and Anacreon. The Middle Ages no longer seem so Doresquely black.

Your friend, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO REV. WAYLAND D. BALL

NEW ORLEANS, 1885.