The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 32

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 a.s.sure 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 mult.i.tude 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 compet.i.tive 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 doc.u.ment 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, G.o.d,--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 ill.u.s.trate and expand, are my delight. I like your criticism on Grant Allen, too. In his "Physiological aesthetics," 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 aesthetic 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 _confrere_, 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 Cleopatre;" "La Morte Amoureuse;" "Arria Marcella;" "Le Pied de Momie;"

"Le Roi Candaule;" and "Omphale"), which were published by R.

Worthington under the t.i.tle 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 Frere Yves," and "Pecheur 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