The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 41

TOKYO, May, 1899.

DEAR MRS. FENOLLOSA,--You will be shocked, I fear, when I tell you that I was careless enough to lose the address given me in your last charming letter. Your letters are too precious to be thus mislaid; and I am ashamed of negligence in this case. But though I forgot the address, I forgot no word of the letter,--nor of the previous charming letter, with its quotation from that very clever friend of yours (Miss Very)--the Emerson quotation from the Brahma-poem. I hope you will tell me more about your friend some day; for she seems to be intellectually my friend also. I liked very much what she said, as quoted by you,--who know curiously well how to give pleasure, and do it so generously, notwithstanding such meagre return.

I was struck by the paragraph in your last letter concerning the _feeling_ of understanding a writer better than anybody else in the whole world. You seemed to think it presumptuous to make such a declaration about any writer; but the feeling, I believe, is always _true_. I have it in regard to all my favourite authors,--especially in regard to certain pages of French writers, like Anatole France, Loti, Michelet, Gautier, Hugo. And I know I am right--though I never can be a critic. The fact is that the greatest critics, each of them, think likewise; and their criticisms prove them correct. No two feel or appreciate an author in exactly the same way: each discerns a different value in him. For no two personalities being the same, and no personal understanding the same, the "equation" makes the judgement unique in this world, and so incomparably valuable, when it is a large one....

The missionaries are furthermore wrong in sending women to the old-fas.h.i.+oned districts. The people do not understand the maiden-missionary, and if she receives a single foreign visitor not of her own s.e.x, the most extraordinary stories are set in circulation. Of course, the people are not malicious in the matter; but they find such a life contrary to all their own social experience, and they judge it falsely in consequence.

For myself I could sympathize with the individual,--but never with the missionary-cause. Unconsciously, every honest being in the mission-army is a destroyer--and a destroyer only; for nothing can replace what they break down. Unconsciously, too, the missionaries everywhere represent the edge--the _acies_, to use the Roman word--of Occidental aggression.

We are face to face here with the spectacle of a powerful and selfish civilization demoralizing and crus.h.i.+ng a weaker and, in many ways, a n.o.bler one (if we are to judge by comparative ideals); and the spectacle is not pretty. We must recognize the inevitable, the Cosmic Law, if you like; but one feels and hates the moral wrong, and this perhaps blinds one too much to the sacrifices and pains accepted by the "n.o.ble army."

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, June, 1899.

DEAR MITCh.e.l.l,--I reached my little j.a.panese house last night, carrying with me a sort of special tropic atmosphere or magnetic cloud--composed of impressions of hearts, hands, and minds dearer and altogether superior to the things of this world. Are you not as Solomon who "made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars as the sycamore-trees that are in the lowland for mult.i.tude"?

Presently I squatted down before my _hibachi_, and smoked and viewed the landscape o'er--inverted in the pocket-lens of Dr. Bedloe, and invested thereby with iridescences of violet and crimson and emerald. And it occurred to me that the prismatic lights in question symbolized those fairy-tints and illusions which the two of you wove around me while I remained in the circle of your power. Spell it must have been--for I cannot yet a.s.sure myself that I left Tokyo only yesterday morning, and not a month ago. The riddle reverses the case of Uras.h.i.+ma;--I have been trying to argue out the question whether happiness does really make the hours shorter, or does rather stretch time infinitely, like the thread of a spider. No doubt, however, the true explanation lies in contrasts--the contrasts of the extraordinary change from real j.a.panese existence to the American colonial circle of the year of grace 1899. It is really, you know, like taking a single stride of a thousand years in measure,--and the result is, of course, more bewildering than the striding of Peter Schlemihl. He could only go from the Pole to the Tropics in an afternoon--just now you are like old acquaintances who come back at night to talk to us as if they had not been under the ground for thirty years and more. Are you all quite sure down there that you are alive? I believe _I_ am,--though I have to pinch myself betimes to make sure. Then I have the evidence of that magnifying gla.s.s; and my shoes tell me that I must have been out.

Yet more--I have two letters to send you. (They need no comment, other than that which I have inscribed upon them.) I enclose them only because I know that you want to see them.

By the way, I feel otherwise displeased with you. I could forgive you for much besides getting off a moving train. _There was a pillar right behind you_ as you stepped off. What would the not impossible Mrs.

Mitch.e.l.l McD. of my wishes say to you for that!

Affectionately, LAFCADIO.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, June, 1899.

DEAR MITCh.e.l.l,--Your delightful letter is with me. I did not get through that examination work till Sunday morning--had about 300 compositions to look through: then I had nearly a day's work packing and sending out prizes which I give myself every year--not for the best English (for that depends upon natural faculty altogether), but for the best _thinking_, which largely depends upon study and observation.

Lo! I am a "bloated bondholder." I am "astonished" and don't know what to say--except that I want to hug you! About the semi-annual meeting, though--fear I shall be far away then. Unless it be absolutely necessary, I don't think I shall be able to come. Can't I vote by letter, or telegraph? If you make out a form, I'll vote everything that you want, just as you want it. (By the way, I _might_ be able to come--in case I am not more than fifty miles off. Perhaps I can't get to where I want to go.) We'll take counsel together. Yet, you ought to know that I hate meetings of all kinds with hatred unspeakable.

So it was a Mrs.----, not a Mr.----. I am afraid of Scotch people.

However, that was a nice letter. Perhaps I ought to send her a copy of "Ghostly j.a.pan." But one never can tell the exact consequences of yielding to these impulses of grat.i.tude and sympathy. My friends are enough for me--they are as rare as they are few; rare like things from the uttermost coasts,--diamonds, emeralds and opals, amethysts, rubies, and topazes from the mines of Golconda. What more could a fellow want?

_All_ the rest is useless even when it is not sham--which it generally is.

Haven't been idle either. Am working on "The Poetry and Beauty of j.a.panese Female Names." Got all the common names I want into alphabetical order, and cla.s.sified. Aristocratic names remain to be done,--an awful job; but I think that I shall manage it before I get away.

Perhaps I shall not finish that dream-work for years,--perhaps I might finish it in a week. Depends upon the Holy Ghost. By the way, a thing that I had never been able to finish since I began it six years ago, and left in a drawer, has suddenly come into my present scheme,--fits the place to a "T." So it may be with other things. I leave them to develop themselves; and if I wait long enough, they always do.

I have heard from the Society of Authors. The American public is good to me. I have only a very small public in England yet. I fancy at present that I shall do well to become only an _a.s.sociate_ of the Authors'

Society,--pay the fees,--and wait for fame, in order to take the publishers privately recommended to me. We shall see.

What a tremendous, square, heavy, settled, immoveable, mountainous thing is the English reading public! The man who can bore into the basalt of that ma.s.s must have a diamond-drill. I tell you that I feel dreadfully minute,--microscopic,--when I merely read the names of the roll of the Authors' Society. Love to you from all of us,

LAFCADIO.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, June, 1899.

DEAR McDONALD,--Do you know that I felt a little blue after you went away the other day,--which was ungrateful of me. A little while ago, reading Marcus Aurelius, I found a quotation that partially explains: "One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down to his account. Another is not ready to do this.... A third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced fruit." And I feel somewhat displeased at the vine--inasmuch as I know not what to do in regard to my own sense of the obligation of the grapes.

The heat is gorgeous and great. I dream and write. The article on women's names is dry work; but it develops. I have got it nearly two thirds--yes, fully two thirds done. I am going to change the sentence "lentor inexpressible" which you did not like. It is a kind of old trick word with me. I send you a copy of the old story in which I first used it,--years and years ago. Don't return the thing--it has had its day.

I feel queerly tempted to make a Yokohama trip some afternoon, towards evening, instead of morning: am waiting only for that double d--d faculty meeting, and the finis.h.i.+ng up of a little business. "Business?"

you may bewilderingly exclaim. Well, yes--business. I have been paying a student's way through the university--making him work, however, in return for it. And I must settle his little matters in a day or so--showing him that he has paid his own way really, and has discharged all his obligations. Don't think he will be grateful--but I must try to be like the vine--like Mitch.e.l.l--and though I can't be quite so good, I must pretend to be--act as if I were. The next best thing to being good is to imitate the acts and the unselfishness of Vines.

LAFCADIO.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

YAIDZU, August, 1899.

DEAR MITCh.e.l.l,--I am writing to you under _very_ great difficulties, and on a floor,--and therefore you must not expect anything very good.

Got to Yaidzu last night, and took a swim in a phosph.o.r.escent sea.

To-day is cold and grey--and not a day for you to enjoy. I saw an immense crowd of pilgrims for Fuji at Gotemba, and wondered if you would go up, as this time you would have plenty of company.

Sorry I did not see dear Dr. Bedloe; but I hope to catch him upon his way back to the Far East.

How I wish you could come down some fine day here--only, I _do_ fear that you could not stand the fleas. I must say that it requires patience and perseverance to stand them. But you can have glorious swimming. When I can get that--_fleas_ and all other things are of no consequence.

Also I am afraid that you would not like the odours of fish below stairs, of _daikon_, and of other things all mixed up together. _I_ don't admire them;--but there is swimming--nothing else makes much difference.

You would wonder if you saw how I am quartered, and how much I like it.

I _like_ roughing it among the fisher-folk. I love them. I am afraid that you not only couldn't stand it, but that you would be somewhat angry if you came down here--would tell me that "I ought to have known better," etc. Nevertheless I want you to come for one day--see if you can stand it. "Play up the Boyne Wather softly till I see if I can stand it." Ask Dr. Bedloe the result of playing the Boyne Wather softly. But I am warning you fairly and fully.

Affectionately, LAFCADIO.

P. S. I am _sure_ that you could not stand it--perfectly sure. But then--think of the value of the _experience_. I had a j.a.panese officer here last year and _he_ liked it.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

YAIDZU, August, 1899.

DEAR MITCh.e.l.l,--Went to that new hotel this afternoon, and discovered that the people are all liars and devils and.... Therefore it would _never_ do for you to go there. Then I went to an ice and fruit seller, who has a good house; and he said that after the fourteenth he could let you have sleeping room. The village festival is now in progress, so that the houses are crowded.