The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 27

AUGUST, 1896.

DEAR NIs.h.i.+DA,--We got back on the night of the twenty-third. We had to wait a couple of days at Sakai; and I had some more swimming. Dr.

Takahas.h.i.+ was very much surprised at my condition. He said that my lungs had become perfectly well, and that the swimming had brought out all the chest-muscles again in an extraordinary way--considering the time in which it had happened. He tells me to go to the sea whenever I feel pulled down again.

Sakai is a queer place for swimming. The currents change three times every day, and twice at least become very strong. One who cannot swim far has to be careful. Straws in the water show the way of the current near sh.o.r.e; but in the middle there are cross-currents going the other way.

There were eight foreign officers on the Meiji Maru. They were very kind to us. The captain (his name is Poole) was decorated with the 3d Order of the Rising Sun (I think) and got a present of $2000 for services during the war,--the transport-service, of course. He told me some very interesting things about the behaviour of the soldiery,--very nice things.

I felt unhappy at the Ohas.h.i.+, because you waited so long, and I had no power to coax you to go home. I can still see you sitting there so kindly and patiently,--in the great heat of that afternoon. Write soon,--if only a line in j.a.panese,--to tell us how you are.

Kaji-_chan_ remembers you, and sends his little greeting to Nis.h.i.+da-San no Oji-San. We all hope to have another summer with you next year.

Ever faithfully, with warmest regards of all,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

I still see you sitting at the wharf to watch us go. I think I shall always see you there.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, 1896.

DEAR HENDRICK,--I am in immediate and awful need of books, and am going to ask you to put me into communication with a _general book-dealer_ to whom I can send P. O. orders, and who will mail me books directly on receipt of cash. It is hopeless ordering through local book-dealers,--not simply because of charges and errors, but because of enormous delays. On a separate sheet I enclose some t.i.tles of what I badly want for the moment; and I am sending some cash. This said, I promise not to trouble you further _except when I can't help it_. See what a nuisance I am!

You may well believe me in a hurry when I send a letter with such a beginning. Imagine my position:--a professor of literature without books, improvising lectures to students without books. I reached Tokyo about seven days ago, and have not yet got a house,--but am living in a hotel. At present I can give you no valid impressions:--everything is a blur. But so far the position does not seem disagreeable--rather the reverse. In fact I am afraid to express my satisfaction,--remembering Polyxenes. The salary is 400 yen,--and in j.a.pan, a yen is a dollar though it is only fifty-odd cents in America.

Old pupils of Izumo and elsewhere gather round me, welcoming me, delighted--some needing help and winning it--some needing only sympathy.

Professors far off, moving in separate and never-colliding orbits. I can teach for years--if I please--without ever seeing any of my colleagues.

But Government favour, you know, is uncertain. The chances are that I shall hold on for three years at least.

When I heard last from you I was in Izumo. There I became very strong by constant swimming and starving,--j.a.panese diet takes all the loose flesh from a man in short order. My lungs got quite sound, and my miserable eye _nearly_ well.

I suppose that I partly owe this place to my books, and partly to Professor Chamberlain's kind recommendation. The j.a.panese seldom notice literary work,--but they have paid considerable attention to mine, considering that I am a foreigner. My ambition, though, is independence in my own home,--an old-fas.h.i.+oned _yas.h.i.+ki_, full of surprises of colour and beauty and quaintness and peace. And a few years abroad with my boy,--who is very mischievous now, and beats his father occasionally.--Curious, how much better the j.a.panese understand children than we do. You remember as a boy the obligatory morning _dip_ in the sea, no doubt. This no j.a.panese parents would inflict on their child.

I tried it with mine, but the folks said, "That is wrong: it will only make him afraid of the water." Which proved true. Moreover, he would not allow me to come near him any more in the sea,--but used to order me to keep away. "Go away, and don't come back any more." Then the grandmother took him in charge; and in a week he was as fond of the water as I,--had overcome his fear of it. But it requires great patience to treat children j.a.panese-style,--by leaving them _almost_ free to follow their natural impulses, and coaxing courage by little and little.

Awful weather,--floods, wreckings, ruinings, drownings. I think the deforestation of the country is probably the cause of these terrible visitations. In Kobe just before I left, the river, usually a dry sandbed, burst its banks after rain, swept away whole streets, wrecked hundreds of houses, and drowned about a hundred people. Then you know the tidal wave in the north--it was _only_ 200 miles long--destroyed some 30,000 lives. A considerable part of East Central j.a.pan is still under water at this moment--river water. Lake Biwa rose and drowned the city of Otsu.

Isn't it almost wicked of me to have fought for a foreign salary under such circ.u.mstances?--especially while students come to tell me: "My father and mother have educated me thus far by selling all their property,--piece by piece,--even mother's dresses and our lacquer-ware had to be sold. And now we have nothing, and my education is unfinished--and unless it is finished I cannot even hope for a position. Teacher, I shall work six years to pay the money back, if you will help me." Poor fellows!--their whole expense is only about $120 (j.a.panese) a year. But if I did not take the salary, another foreigner would ask even more; and I am working for a j.a.panese community of my own. Buying books is rather extravagant, but my literary work pays for that.

Well, here's love to you. (If the book-business does not bother you too much, please tell the book-dealer to mail _everything_,--not to send by express.)

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

(Y. KOIZUMI.)

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

OCTOBER, 1896.

DEAR HENDRICK,--I have two unanswered letters from you--delayed in reaching me because of my change of residence. One is only a glorious shout of joy and sympathy;--the other describes charmingly the incidents and sensations of your Nova Scotia days. It struck me while reading it that the great pleasure each of you had was in watching the display of the powers and the graces of the other, in the new field,--and from thinking about that I began to think of my own experiences. I believe that my happiest glows of sympathetic admiration have been felt under somewhat like circ.u.mstances. If one's friend is a fine keen man, and one is proud of him, what greater enjoyment than to see him face the unfamiliar and watch him dealing with it _en maitre_,--turning it this way and that with symmetrical ease,--and winning all he wants with a smile or a bright jest? The pleasure of watching a play is nothing to it. And again, what _novel_ (it is always new, you know)--what novel delight that of seeing a soldier, a man of business, or even a "man of G.o.d," turning into a boy under the mere joyous bath of air and sun and summer air out of town! It gives one a larger sense of humanity, and a sort of awe at the omnipotent magic of Nature.

Well, I have a house,--a large, but, I regret to say, not beautiful house in Tokyo. There is no garden,--no surprises,--no delicacies,--no chromatic contrasts: a large bald utilitarian house, belonging to a man who owns eight hundred j.a.panese houses, and looks after them all at seventy-eight years of age. He was a sake-brewer: he is now good to the poor,--buries free of charge the head of any family unable to pay the expenses of a Buddhist funeral. He looked at my boy and played with him and said: "You are too pretty,--you ought to have been a girl. When you get a little older you will be studying things you ought not to study,--pulling girls about, and doing mischief." (Because he used to be an old rascal himself.) But he set me thinking. I don't think K. will be very handsome; but if he feels like his father about pretty girls,--what shall I do with him? Marry him at 17 or 19? Or send him to grim and ferocious Puritans that he may be taught the Way of the Lord? I am now beginning to think that really much of ecclesiastical education (bad and cruel as I used to imagine it) is founded upon the best experience of man under civilization; and I understand lots of things which I used to think superst.i.tious bosh, and now think solid wisdom. Don't have children (Punch's advice is the same, you know) unless you want to discover new Americas....

In haste to give a lecture on _ballad_ literature(!).

Affectionately, LAFCADIO.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, October, 1896.

DEAR HENDRICK,--I have had several delightful letters from you, some of which were not answered in detail, though deserving to be. Let me see about my deficiencies in acknowledging your letters during recent hurry and flurry:--That sermon, belonging to the 13th--or perhaps the 10th century--was really an amazement. Thanks for kindly note about Lowell's words of praise....

As for the university. Because the shadow of the Jesuit, broadening back through the centuries, is very black, and because I saw stake-fires in it, I didn't relish the idea of his acquaintance. But that _had_ to come, you know. There was a weary matriculation ceremony at which all of us had to be present; and it was purely j.a.panese, so that we could not understand it. We had to sit for three hours and listen. So I and the Jesuit, for want of anything else to do, got into a religious discussion; and I found him charming. Of course, he said that every thought which I thought was heresy,--that all the philosophy of the 19th century was false,--that everything accomplished by free thought and Protestantism was folly leading to ruin. But we had sympathies in common,--the contempt of religion as convention, scorn of the missionaries, and just recognition of the sincerely and profoundly religious character of the j.a.panese,--denied, of course, by the ordinary cla.s.s of missionary jacka.s.ses. Then we were both amused by the architecture of the university. It is ecclesiastical, of course,--and the pinnacles and angles are tipped with cruciform ornaments. "C'est tout-a-fait comme un monastere," said my comrade of the beard;--"et ceci,--on en fera une a.s.sez jolie eglise. _Et pourtant ce n'est pas l'esprit Chretien qui_," etc. His irony was delicious, and the laughter broke the ice.

Now comes a queer fact. The existing group of professors in the Library college who keep a little together are the Professor of Philosophy (Heidelberg), the Professor of Sanscrit and Philology (Leipsig), the Professor of French Literature (Lyons), and the Professor of English Literature--from the devil knows where. There is little affiliation outside. Now all this group is--including myself--Roman Catholic by training. Why it is, I can't say, except the Jesuit, we are not believers,--but there is a human something separating us from the _froid protestantisme_, or the hard materialism of the other foreign professors,--something warmer and more natural. Is it not the _Latin_ feeling surviving in Catholicism,--and humanizing paganly what it touches?--penetrating all of us--the Russian, the German, the Frenchman, and L. H., through early a.s.sociation? Really there is neither art nor warm feeling nor the spirit of human love in the stock Protestantism of to-day.--I regret to say, however, that I have no Spencerian sympathizer. In my beliefs and tendencies I stand alone; and the Jesuit marvels at the astounding insanity of my notions. He, like all of his tribe, does not quite know how to take the American. The American Professor of Law--enormously self-sufficient, and aggressive--rather embarra.s.ses him. I saw him wilt a little before him; and I like him all the better for it,--as he is certainly very delicate, and his shrinking was largely due to this delicacy. But all these are only impressions of the moment.

As a member of the faculty, I have to sometimes attend faculty meetings, called for various purposes. One of the purposes was to decide the fate of a certain German Professor of History--not nominally for the purpose, but really. I could not help the professor, and I felt that he was really unnecessary--not to speak of $500 per mensem. I do not think his contract will be renewed. I did not like the man very much: he is a wors.h.i.+pper of Virchow and an enemy of English psychology, etc., _ipso facto_. We could have no sympathies. But I was startled by the fas.h.i.+on in which those who professed to be his friends suddenly went back upon him, when they saw the drift of things. The drift was given by the j.a.panese Professor of Philosophy (Buddhist and other),--a fine, lean, keen, soft-spoken, persistent champion of j.a.panese national conservatism, and a good honest hater of sham Christianity. I like him: his name is Inoue Tetsujiro. He very sensibly observed that he saw no reason why foreign professors should forever teach _history_ in a j.a.panese university,--or why students should be obliged to listen to lectures not in their native tongue. I felt he was right; but it meant the doom of nearly all foreign teaching. (Perhaps I shall last for some years more, and the professors of foreign _languages_--but the rest will certainly go before long.)

I said to my little self: "Don't expect any love from those quarters, old fellow: the j.a.panese themselves will treat you more frankly, even if they get to hate you." I have no doubt whatever that there will be as much said against _me_ as _dare_ be said. Happily, however, my engagement is based on j.a.panese _policy_--kindly policy--with a strong man behind it; and mere tongue-thrusts will do me no harm at all in the present order of things.

"Sufficient for the day is," etc.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, November, 1896.

DEAR HENDRICK,--I fear--I suspect that this position has been given unto me for a combination of reasons, among which the dominant is that I may write at ease many books about j.a.pan. This has two unfortunate aspects.

Firstly, the people who do not know what labour literary work is imagine that books can be written by the page as quickly as letters, and keep asking me why I don't get out another book--that means the Influence of Hurry-Scurry. Secondly, I am plunged into a world of which the highest possible effort in poetry seems to be this:--

"_Sometimes I hear your flute, But I never can see your face, O beautiful Oiterupe!_"

Who is Oiterupe? Euterpe, of course. And this represents, I do a.s.sure you, the very highest possible result of a Western education at Gottingen, etc., upon the mind of the modern j.a.panese poet. Formerly he would have said something. Now he is struck dumb by--Heidelberg or Gottingen.

I have only twelve hours a week in which to teach; but, as I told you before, there are no text-books, and the university will not buy any; and the general standard of English is so low that I am sure not half of my cla.s.ses understand what I say. Worst of all, there is no discipline. The students are virtually the masters in certain matters: the authorities fear their displeasure, and they do things extraordinary which fill European professors with amazement and rage--such as _ordering_ different hours for their lectures, and demanding after a menacing fas.h.i.+on subscriptions for their various undertakings. Fancy the following colloquy:--

Professor--"But this is not a case of distress: I don't think a professor should be asked for money where money is not needed--and then--"

Student--"The question is simply, will you pay or will you not?"

Professor--"I have told you my ideas about--"