Lafcadio Hearn Part 19

"Kajiwo is my nightmare. I am tortured all day and all night by the problem of how to set him going in life before I become dust. Sometimes I think how bad it was of me to have had a child at all. Yet before that, I did not really know what life was; and I would not lose the knowledge for any terms of gifts of years. Besides, I am beginning to think I am really a tolerably good sort of fellow,--for if I had been really such a monster of depravity as the religious fanatics declared, how could I have got such a fine boy. There must be some good in me anyhow. n.o.body shall make a 'Christian' of Kajiwo if I can help it--by 'Christian' I mean a believer in absurd and cruel dogmas. The world talks much about Christianity, but no one teaches it.

"--So glad to hear you are able to go out a little again. Perhaps a long period of strong solid calm health is preparing for you. After the trials and worries of maternity such happy conditions often come as a reward. I hope to chat with you by a fire when we are both old, and Kaji has shot up into a man,--looking like his aunt a little--with a delicate aquiline face. But only the Eternities know what his face will be like.

It is changeable as water now. I won't send another photo of him till he looks pretty again.

"With best love, "LAFCADIO HEARN.

"_June_ 24, '94.

"I must go off travelling in a couple of weeks. Perhaps there will be a little delay before my next letter reaches you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: KAZUO (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVEN).]

In the next letter he touches upon these travels undertaken with his wife, mother-in-law, and Kaji (an abbreviation of Kazuo, or Kajiwo, as Hearn was in the habit of calling him at first).

"How sweet of you," he says, "to send that charming photo of the children. It delighted us all. Setsu never saw a donkey--there are none in j.a.pan; and all wondered at the strange animal. What I wondered at was to see what a perfect pretty little woman the charming Marjory is. As for the boy, he is certainly what every parent wants a boy to be as to good looks; but I also think he must have a very sweet temper. I trust that you won't allow the world to spoil it for him. They do spoil tempers at some of the great public schools. I cannot believe it is necessary to let young lads be subjected to the brutality of places like Eton and Harrow. It hardens them too much. The answer is that the great school turns out the conquerors of the world,--the subalterns of Kipling,--the Clives,--the daring admirals and great captains, etc.

Perhaps in this militant age it is necessary. But I notice the great thinkers generally come from other places. However, this is the _practical_ age,--there is nothing for philosophers, poets, or painters to succeed in, unless they are independently situated. I shall try to make a good doctor out of Kaji, if I can. I could never afford to do more for him. And if possible I shall take him to Europe, and stay there with him for a couple of years. But that is a far-away matter."

Characteristically with that apprehensive mind of his, his son's future, as Hearn himself confesses, became a perfect nightmare.

"I must make an Englishman of him, I fear. His hair has turned bright brown. He is so strong that I expect him to become a very powerful man: he is very deep-chested and thick-built and so heavy now, that people think I am not telling the truth about his age.

"Kajiwo's soul seems to be so English that I fancy his memory of former births would scarcely refer much to j.a.pan. How about the real compound race-soul, though? One would have to recollect having been two at the same time. This seems to me a defect in the popular theory--still the j.a.panese hold, or used to hold, that the soul is itself a multiple--that each person has a _number of souls_. That would give an explanation.

Scientifically it is true. We are all compounds of innumerable lives--each a sum in an infinite addition--the dead are not dead--they live in all of us and move us,--and stir faintly in every heart-beat.

And there are ghostly interlinkings. Something of _you_ must be in _me_, and of both of us in Kajiwo.

"--I wonder if this also be true of little Dorothy. It is a curious thing that you tell me about the change in colour of the eyes. I only saw that happen in hot climates. Creole children are not uncommonly born with gold hair and bright blue eyes. A few years later the skin, eyes, hair seem to have entirely changed,--the first to brown, the two last to coal-black.

"--I am writing all this dreamy stuff just to amuse my sweet little sister,--because I can't be near to pet her and make her feel very happy. Well, a little Oriental theory may have some caressing charm for you. It is a very gentle faith--though also very deep; and you will find in my book how much it interests me.

"Take very, very, _very_ good care of your precious little self,--and do not try to write till you feel immensely strong. Setsu sends sweet words and wishes. And I----!

"With love, "LAFCADIO HEARN.

"_k.u.mamoto, June_ 2, '94."

CHAPTER XX OUT OF THE EAST

"So j.a.pan paid to learn how to see shadows in Nature, in life, and in thought. And the West taught her that the sole business of the divine sun was the making of the cheaper kind of shadows. And the West taught her that the higher-priced shadows were the sole product of Western civilisation, and bade her admire and adopt. Then j.a.pan wondered at the shadows of machinery and chimneys and telegraph poles; and at the shadows of mines and of factories, and the shadows in the hearts of those who worked there; and at the shadows of houses twenty storeys high, and of hunger begging under them; and shadows of enormous charities that multiplied poverty; and shadows of social reforms that multiplied vice; and the shadows of shams and hypocrisies and swallow-tail coats; and the shadow of a foreign G.o.d, said to have created mankind for the purpose of an auto-da-fe. Whereat j.a.pan became rather serious, and refused to study any more silhouettes.

Fortunately for the world, she returned to her first matchless art; and, fortunately for herself, returned to her own beautiful faith. But some of the shadows still cling to her life; and she cannot possibly get rid of them. Never again can the world seem to her quite so beautiful as it did before."

After the lapse of a certain amount of time Hearn gradually became more reconciled to k.u.mamoto. The climate agreed with him, he put on flesh, all his j.a.panese clothes, he declared, even his _kimono_, had become too small. "I cannot say whether this be the climate, the diet, or what.

Setsu says it is because I have a good wife: but she might be prejudiced, you know."

It is more likely that his well-being at this time arose from his having given up the experiment of living exclusively on a j.a.panese regimen.

After his bout of illness at Matsue, he found that he could not recuperate on the fare of the country, even when reinforced with eggs.

Having lived for ten months thus, horribly ashamed as he was to confess his weakness, he found himself obliged to return to the flesh-pots of Egypt, and devoured enormous quant.i.ties of beef and fowl, and drank terrific quant.i.ties of beer. "The fault is neither mine nor that of the j.a.panese: it is the fault of my ancestors, the ferocious, wolfish hereditary instincts and tendencies of boreal mankind. The sins of the fathers, etc."

Meantime, his knowledge of the strange people amongst whom his lot was cast was deepening and expanding. "Out of the East," the collection of essays--essence of experiences acc.u.mulated at this time, and the book, next perhaps to "Glimpses of Unfamiliar j.a.pan," by which he is best known--is typical of his genius at its best and at its worst. The first sketch, ent.i.tled, "The Dream of a Summer's Day," is simply a bundle of impressions of the journey to which he alludes when writing to his sister, made from Nagasaki to k.u.mamoto, along the sh.o.r.es of the Inland Sea. This journey, through some of the most beautiful scenery of j.a.pan, after the horrors of a foreign hotel at an open port, was one of those experiences that form an epoch in an artist's life, touching him with the magic wand of inspiration. All the delightful impressions made by the poetry and the elusive beauty of old j.a.pan seem concentrated into six pages of poetic prose. To the world it is known as "The Dream of a Summer's Day."[24] To those who have been in j.a.pan, and love the delicate beauty of her mountain ranges, the green of her rice-fields, and the indigo shadows of her cryptomeria-groves, it summons up delightful memories, the rapture felt in the crystalline atmosphere, its picturesque little people, its running waters, the flying gleams of sunlight, the softly tolling bells, the distant ridges blue and remote in the warm air. Like a bubbling spring the sense of beauty broke forth from the caverns of ancient memory, where, according to Lafcadio, it had lain imprisoned for years, to ripple and murmur sweet music in his ears.

He went back to the days of his childhood, back to dreams lying in the past in what had become for him an alien land; the fragrance of a most dear memory swept over his senses. The gnat of the soul of him flitted out into the gleam of blue 'twixt sea and sun, back to the cedarn balcony pillars of the j.a.panese hotel, whence he could see the opening of the bay and the horizon, haunted by mountain shapes, faint as old memories, and then again to distant and almost forgotten memories of his youth by Lough Corrib, in the West of Ireland, the result being as beautiful a prose poem as Hearn ever wrote.

[24] "Out of the East," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dorothy Atkinson.]

The last essay in the collection is called "Yuko," a reminiscence.

There are many of Lafcadio Hearn's critics who say that, in consequence of his ignorance of the j.a.panese language, and the isolation in which he lived, he never could have known anything really of the innermost thoughts and feelings of the people to whom he professed to act as interpreter. Sometimes they maintain that his views are unfavourable to an exaggerated extent, at another too laudatory. His essay ent.i.tled "Yuko" might certainly be taken as an example of the manner in which he selected certain superficial manifestations as typical of the inner life of the j.a.panese--a people as reserved, as secretive, as difficult to follow in their emotional aspects as the hidden currents to which he compares them, quoting the words of Kipling's pilot: "And if any man comes to you, and says, 'I know the Javva currents,' don't you listen to him; for those currents is never yet known to mortal man!"

Yuko was a servant-maid in a wealthy family at Kinegawa. She had read in the daily newspaper the account of the attempt on the life of the Czarevitch during his visit to j.a.pan in 1891. Being an hysterical, excitable girl, she was apparently wound up to the pitch of temporary insanity. Leaving her employer's home, she made her way to Kyoto, and there, buying a razor, she cut her throat opposite the gate of the Mikado's palace. Hearn writes of the incident as if the girl were a Joan of Arc, obeying the dictates of the most fervent patriotism. He goes to the extent of describing the Mikado, "The Son of Heaven," hearing of the girl's death, and "augustly ceasing to mourn for the crime that had been committed because of the manifestations of the great love his people bore him."

Afterwards, Hearn admitted that his enthusiasm was perhaps exaggerated, for revelations showed that Yuko, in a letter she had left, had spoken of "a family claim." Under the raw strong light of these commonplace revelations, he confessed that his little sketch seemed for the moment much too romantic, and yet the real poetry of the event remained unlessened--the pure ideal that impelled a girl to take her own life merely to give proof of the love and loyalty of a nation. No small, mean, dry facts could ever belittle that large fact.

Let those, however, who say that Hearn did not understand the enigmatical people amongst whom his lines were cast, read his article on "Jiu-jitsu" in this same volume. It is headed by a quotation from the "Tao-Te-King." "Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So is it with all things.... Firmness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness are the concomitants of life. Hence he who relies upon his own strength shall not conquer."

Preaching from this text, Hearn writes a masterly article, showing how j.a.pan, though apparently adopting western inventions, preserves her own genius and mode of thought in all vital questions absolutely unchanged.

The essay ends with a significant paragraph, showing how we occidentals, who have exterminated feebler races by merely over-living them, may be at last exterminated ourselves by races capable of under-living us, more self-denying, more fertile, and less expensive for nature to support.

Inheriting, doubtless, our wisdom, adopting our more useful inventions, continuing the best of our industries--perhaps even perpetuating what is most worthy to endure in our sciences and our arts; pus.h.i.+ng us out of the progress of the world, as the dinotherium, or the ichthyosaurus, were pushed out before us.

Towards the end of his stay at k.u.mamoto, he wrote one of his delightful, whimsically affectionate letters to his old friend, Mr. Watkin, in answer apparently to one from him, recalling their talks and expeditions in the old days at Cincinnati, and expressing his grat.i.tude for the infinite patience and wisdom shown in his treatment of his naughty, superhumanly foolish, detestable little friend. "Well, I wish I were near you to love you, and make up for all old troubles." He then tells his "dad" that he has been able to save between $3,500 and $4,000, that he has placed in custody in his wife's name. The reaction, he said, against foreign influence was very strong, and the future looked more gloomy every day. Eventually, he supposed, he must leave j.a.pan and work elsewhere, and he ends, "When I first met you I was nineteen. I am now forty-four--well, I suppose I must have lots more trouble before I go to Nirvana."

Towards the end of the Chinese-j.a.panese War Hearn was worried with anxiety on the subject of the noncontinuance of his appointment at the k.u.mamoto College. "Government Service," he writes to Amenomori, "is uncertain to the degree of terror,--a sword of Damocles; and Government doesn't employ men like you as teachers. If it did, and would give them what they should have, the position of a foreign teacher would be pleasant enough. He would be among thinkers and find some kindness,--instead of being made to feel that he is the servant of petty political clerks." He approached Page Baker, his old New Orleans friend, asking him if he could get him anything if he started in the spring for America. Something good enough to save money at, not only for himself, but something that would enable him to send money to j.a.pan; he was not desirous of seeing Boston, New York or Philadelphia, but would rather be in Memphis, Charleston, or glorious Florida. Page Baker had apparently been sending him help, for on June 2nd Hearn writes acknowledging a draft for one hundred and sixty-three pounds, thanking him ten thousand times from the bottom of his much scarified heart. "I am now forty-four," he adds, "and as grey as a badger. Unless I can make enough to educate my boy well, I don't know what I'm worth,--but I feel that I shall have precious little time to do it in; add twenty to forty-four, and how much is left of a man?"

In another letter he again alludes to the manner in which the government are cutting down the number of employes: "My contract runs only until March," he ends, "and my chances are 0."

At last, after many hesitations, he definitely decided to leave government service, and in the autumn of 1894 accepted the offer of a position on the staff of the _Kobe Chronicle_ made by Mr. Robert Young, proprietor and editor of the newspaper.

To his sister he wrote from the _Kobe Chronicle_ office, Kobe, j.a.pan:--

"MY DEAR MINNIE,

"I am too much in a whirl just now to write a good letter to you (whose was the little curl in your last?--you never told me). I am writing only to say that I have left the Government Service to edit a paper in one of the open ports. This is returning to my old profession, and is pleasant enough,--though not just now very lucrative.

"Best love to you. Perhaps we shall meet in a few years. My boy is well, beginning to walk a little. My book was to be issued on the 29th Sept.

"Ever affectionately, "LAFCADIO."

CHAPTER XXI KOBE

Last spring I journeyed to j.a.pan with Mrs. Atkinson, Lafcadio Hearn's half-sister, and her daughter. Mrs. Atkinson was anxious to make the acquaintance of her j.a.panese half-sister-in-law to ascertain the circ.u.mstances surrounding the family, also if it were possible to carry out her half-brother's wishes with regard to educating his eldest son, Kazuo--his Benjamin--in England.

The first place at which we landed was Kobe, situated on the eastern end of the Inland Sea, opposite Osaka, the Manchester of j.a.pan.