Lafcadio Hearn Part 6

It is typical of Hearn that, though driven to such straits, he never applied to Mr. Cullinane, to whose charge he had been committed. We are not surprised that the little room at the back of Mr. Watkin's shop, with the bed of paper shavings, and Mr. Watkin's frugal meals, yes, even sleeping in dry-goods boxes in a grocer's shed, or the shelter of a disused boiler in a vacant "lot," was preferable to the acceptance of money sent through the intervention of Henry Molyneux to Henry Molyneux's brother-in-law.

In his book, "Concerning Lafcadio Hearn,"[9] Dr. George Milbury Gould alludes to this gentleman in the following terms:--

[9] Messrs. Fisher Unwin.

"There is still living, an Irishman, to whom Lafcadio was sent from Ireland, and in whose care, at least to a limited extent, the boy was placed. He was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1870."

"He was not sure," says Gould in his account of an interview with Mr.

Cullinane, "whether Mrs. Brenane was really Hearn's grand-aunt; the fact is, he declared that he knew nothing, and no one knew anything true of Hearn's life. Asked why the lad was shipped to him, he replied, 'I do not know--I do not even know whether he was related to my brother-in-law, Molyneux, or not.'"

From these statements Gould infers that the boy couldn't stop in any school to which he was sent, that he was apparently an unwelcome charge upon his father's Irish relations. Every one, indeed, who had anything to do with him made haste to rid themselves of the obligation.

The friendship with Mr. Watkin, the old English printer, was destined to last for the term of Hearn's life.

Many of Hearn's friends in America have insinuated that Mr. Watkin exaggerated the strength of the tie that bound him to Lafcadio Hearn; but Hearn's letters to his sister bear out all the statements made in the introduction to the volume ent.i.tled "Letters from the Raven." Even when Hearn succeeded in obtaining occupation elsewhere, he would return to Mr. Watkin's office during leisure hours, either for a talk with his friend, or, if Mr. Watkin was out, for a desultory reading of the books in the "library," the appellation by which the two or three shelves containing Mr. Watkin's heterogeneous collection was dignified. He was of no use in Mr. Watkin's business owing to defective eyesight, but when he returned after his day's work elsewhere, literary, political and religious subjects were discussed and quarrelled over.

As was now and afterwards his custom with his friends, in spite of daily intercourse, Hearn kept up a frequent correspondence with Mr. Watkin.

This correspondence has been edited and published by Mr. Milton Bronner under the t.i.tle of "Letters from the Raven." Edgar Allan Poe had died in 1849, but the influence of his weird and strange genius was still pre-eminent in America. Early in their acquaintance Hearn established the habit of addressing Mr. Watkin as "Old Man" or "Dad," while on the other hand the boy, in consequence of his sallow complexion, black hair, and admiration for Poe's works, was known as the "Raven." During the long years of their correspondence, a drawing of a raven was generally placed in lieu of signature when Lafcadio wrote to Mr. Watkin. Many of these pen-and-ink sketches interspersed with other ill.u.s.trations here and there through the letters show considerable talent for drawing, of a fantastic sort, that might have been developed, had Hearn's eyesight permitted, and had he not nourished other ambitions.

Some of the letters are simply short statements left on the table for Mr. Watkin's perusal when he returned home, or a few lines of nonsense scribbled on a bit of paper and pinned on a door of the office.

Often when Hearn was offended by some observation, or a reprimand administered by the older man, he would "run away in a huff." Mr.

Watkin, who was genuinely attached to the erratic little genius and understood how to deal with him, would simply follow him, tell him not to be a fool, and bring him back again.

In the fourth autobiographical fragment, found amongst Hearn's papers after his death, is one ent.i.tled "Intuition." He there alludes to Watkin as "the one countryman he knew in Cincinnati--a man who had preceded him into exile by nearly forty years."

In a gla.s.s case at the entrance to a photographer's shop, Hearn had come across the photograph of a face, the first sight of which had left him breathless with wonder and delight.... The gaze of the large dark eyes, the aquiline curve of the nose, the mouth firm but fine--made him think of a falcon, in spite of the delicacy of the face.... He stood looking at it, and the more he looked, the more the splendid wonder of it seemed to grow like a fascination. But who was she? He dared not ask the owner of the gallery. To his old friend Watkin, therefore, he went and at once proposed a visit to the photographer's. The picture was as much a puzzle to him as to Hearn.

For long years the incident of the photograph pa.s.sed from Hearn's memory until, in a Southern city hundreds of miles away, he suddenly perceived, in a gla.s.s case in a druggist's shop, the same photograph.

"Please tell me whose face that is," he asked.

"Is it possible you do not know?" responded the druggist. "Surely you are joking?"

Hearn answered in the negative. Then the man told him--it was that of the great tragedienne, Rachel.

Cincinnati is separated from Kentucky by the Ohio. It is there but a narrow river, and the Cincinnati folk were wont to migrate into Kentucky when there were lectures on spiritualism, revivalist meetings, or political haranguings going on. Hearn and his old "Dad" used often to make the journey when the day's work was done.

Hearn was ever fascinated by strange and unorthodox methods of thought.

We can imagine him poring over Fourier's "Harmonie Universelle" as well as the strange theories set forth in esoteric Buddhism with its astral visions and silent voices, even accepting the materialisation of tea-cups and portraits and the transportation of material objects through s.p.a.ce.

These were not the only expeditions they made together. When, later, Hearn was on the staff of the _Enquirer_ as night reporter, his "Dad"

often accompanied him on his night prowls along the "levee," as the water edge is called on the river towns of the Mississippi valley.

At the time of Hearn's death in 1904 a member of the _Enquirer_ staff visited Mr. Henry Watkin, who was then living in the "Old Men's Home"

(he died a few months ago), a well-known inst.i.tution in Cincinnati where business people of small means spend their declining years. An account of this visit was printed in the newspaper on October 2nd. The writer described the old bureau in Watkin's room with its many pigeon-holes, holding gems more dear to the old man than all "the jewels of Tual"--the letters of Lafcadio Hearn. To it the old gentleman tottered when the reporter asked for a glimpse of the precious writings, and as he balanced two packages, yellow with age, in his hand, he told, in a voice heavy with emotion, how he first met Hearn accidentally, and how their friendship ripened day after day and grew into full fruition with the years.

"I always called him 'The Raven,'" said Watkin, "because his gloomy views, his morbid thoughts and his love for the weird and uncanny reminded me of Poe at his best--or worst, as you might call it; only, in my opinion, Hearn's was the greater mind. Sometimes he came to my place when I was out and then he left a card with the picture of a raven varied according to his whim, and I could tell from it the humour he was in when he sketched it."

Mr. Watkin was then eighty-six years of age, and dependence can hardly be placed on his memories of nearly fifty years before. One of his statements, that Hearn had come, in company with a Mr. McDermott, to see him twenty-four hours after he had been in Cincinnati, cannot be quite accurate, because of Hearn's own account to his sister of having spent nights in the streets of Cincinnati, of his various adventures after his arrival, of his having worked as type-setter and proof-reader for the Robert Clarke Co., before seeking employment at Mr. Watkin's office.

It was while he was sleeping on the bed of paper shavings behind Mr.

Watkin's shop that he acted as private secretary to Thomas Vickers, librarian in the public library at Cincinnati. He mentions Thomas Vickers at various times in his letters to Krehbiel, and refers to rare books on music and copies of cla.s.sical works to be found at the library.

During all this period, wandering from place to place, endeavouring to find employment of any kind, the boy's underlying ambition was to obtain a position on the staff of one of the large daily newspapers, and thus work his way to a competency that would enable him to devote himself to literary work of his own.

"I believe he would have signed his soul away to the devil," one of his colleagues says, "to get on terms of recognition with either Colonel John c.o.c.kerill, then managing editor of the _Cincinnati Enquirer_, or Mr. Henderson, the city editor of the _Commercial_." Though Hearn may not have signed his soul to the devil, he certainly sold his genius to ign.o.ble uses when he wrote his well-known description of the tan-yard murder. His ambition however was gratified. A reporter who could thus cater to the public greed for horrors was an a.s.set to the Cincinnati press.

We have an account, given by John c.o.c.kerill, twenty years later, of Hearn's first visit to the _Enquirer_:--

"One day there came to the office a quaint, dark-skinned little fellow, strangely diffident, wearing gla.s.ses of great magnifying power and bearing with him evidence that Fortune and he were scarce on nodding terms.

"When admitted, in a soft, shrinking voice he asked if I ever paid for outside contributions. I informed him that I was somewhat restricted in the matter of expenditures, but that I would give consideration to what he had to offer. He drew from under his coat a ma.n.u.script, and tremblingly laid it upon my table. Then he stole away like a distorted brownie, leaving behind him an impression that was uncanny and indescribable.

"Later in the day I looked over the contribution which he had left. I was astonished to find it charmingly written....

"From that time forward he sat in the corner of my room and wrote special articles for the Sunday Edition as thoroughly excellent as anything that appeared in the magazines of those days. I have known him to have twelve and fifteen columns of this matter in a single issue of the paper. He was delighted to work, and I was pleased to have his work, for his style was beautiful and the tone he imparted to the newspaper was considerable. Hour after hour he would sit at his table, his prominent eyes resting as close to the paper as his nose would permit, scratching away with beaver-like diligence and giving me no more annoyance than a bronze ornament. His eyes troubled him greatly in those days, one was bulbous, and protruded farther than the other. He was as sensitive as a flower. An unkind word from anybody was as serious to him as a cut from a whiplash, but I do not believe he was in any sense resentful.... He was poetic, and his whole nature seemed attuned to the beautiful, and he wrote beautifully of things which were neither wholesome nor inspiring. He came to be in time a member of the city staff at a fair compensation, and it was then that his descriptive powers developed. He loved to write of things in humble life. He prowled about the dark corners of the city, and from gruesome places he dug out charming idyllic stories. The negro stevedores on the steamboat-landings fascinated him. He wrote of their songs, their imitations, their uncouth ways, and he found picturesqueness in their rags, poetry in their juba dances."

A journalistic feat still remembered in Cincinnati for its daring was Hearn's ascent of the spire of the cathedral on the back of a famous steeplejack, for the purpose of writing an account of the view of the city from that exalted position.

Mr. Edmund Henderson gives an account of the accomplishment of the performance. Hearn was told of the peril of the thing but he would not listen. Despite his physique he was as courageous as a lion, and there was no a.s.signment of peril that he would not bid for avidly. "Before the climb began the editor handed him a field gla.s.s with the suggestion that he might find it useful. Hearn, however, quietly handed it back with the remark 'perhaps I had better not take it; something might happen.'

Amidst the cheers of the crowd beneath the foolhardy pair accomplished their climb. Hearn came back to the office and wrote two columns describing his sensations, and the wonders of the view he had obtained from the steeple top, though he was so near-sighted he could not have seen five feet beyond the tip of his nose."

Henceforth Hearn accepted the "night stations" on the staff of the paper. Amongst the policemen of Cincinnati, who accompanied him in his wanderings, he was a prime favourite, known as "O'Hearn" both to them and to his fellow-reporters.

After hours of exposure, weary and hungry, he might be seen sitting in the deserted newspaper office until the small hours of the morning, under a miserable gas-jet burning like a "mere tooth of flame in its wire muzzle," his nose close to paper and book, working at translations from Theophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert, and Baudelaire.

Being a meridional, he said, he felt rather with the Latin race than the Anglo-Saxon, and he hoped with time and study to be able to create something different from the stone-grey and somewhat chilly style of the latter-day English and American romance. Although later he modified considerably his opinion with regard to the moral tendency of their art, he ever retained the same admiration for the artistic completeness and finish of the French Impressionist School; their instinct for the right phrase, their deftness in setting it precisely in the right position, the strength that came from reserve, and the ease due to vividly-realised themes and objects, all these elements combined conferred a particular charm on their method of expression to a stylist of Hearn's quality.

Not being able to find a publisher for Gautier's "Avatar," his first translation from the French, he subjected it "to the holy purification of fire." He next attempted a portion of some of Gautier's tales, included under the t.i.tle of "One of Cleopatra's Nights"; then he undertook the arduous task of translating Flaubert's "La Tentation de Saint Antoine." "It is astonishing what system will accomplish. If a man cannot spare an hour a day he can certainly spare a half-hour. I translated "La Tentation" by this method, never allowing a day to pa.s.s without translating a page or two. The work is audacious in parts; but I think nothing ought to be suppressed."

As well attempt, however, to gain a hearing for a free-thinking speech at Exeter Hall as to obtain readers for Gautier's or Flaubert's productions amidst a society nourished on Emerson, Longfellow, and Th.o.r.eau! Unorthodox in religious opinion some of the American prophets and poets might be, but rigid and narrow as a company of Puritans in the matter of social morality.

When we know that about this time Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring Camp"

was refused admittance to the pages of a San Francisco magazine as likely to shock the sentiments of its readers and injure the circulation of the periodical in consequence of the morals of the mother of the _Luck_, we are not surprised that Hearn's attempt to introduce the American public to the masterpieces of the French Impressionist School was foredoomed to failure. There is a certain nave, determined defiance of convention in his insistence on gaining admiration both from his friends and the public for productions that were really quite unsuited to general circulation at that time in America. We find him, for instance, recommending the perusal of "Mdlle. de Maupin" to a clergyman of the Established Church and sending a copy of Gautier's poems to Miss Bisland in New Orleans.

"I shall stick," he says, "to my pedestal of faith in literary possibilities like an Egyptian Colossus with a broken nose, seated solemnly in the gloom of my own originality, seeking no reward save the satisfaction of creating something beautiful; but this is worth working for."

It is a noteworthy fact and one that may be mentioned here that, in spite of his extraordinary mastery of the subtleties of the French language, he always spoke French with an atrociously bad accent. "He had a very bad ear," his friend, Henry Krehbiel, tells us in his article on "Hearn and Folk Music," "organically incapable of humming the simplest tune; he could not even sing the scale, a thing that most people do naturally."

From these Cincinnati days dates Hearn's hatred of the drudgery of journalism, "a really nefarious trade," he declared later; "it dwarfs, stifles and emasculates thought and style.... The journalist of to-day is obliged to hold himself in readiness to serve any cause.... If he can enrich himself quickly and acquire comparative independence, then, indeed, he is able to utter his heart's sentiments and indulge his tastes...."

Amongst his colleagues on the staff of the _Enquirer_ Hearn was not popular. He was looked upon as what Eton boys call a "sap"; his fussiness about punctuation and style, soon earned for him the sobriquet of "Old Semi-Colon." This meticulous precision on the subject of punctuation and the value of words remained a pa.s.sion with him all his life. He used to declare he felt about it as a painter would feel about the painting of his picture. He told his friend, Tunison, that the word "gray" if spelt "grey" gave him quite a different colour sensation.

We remember his delightful outburst in a letter to Chamberlain, that has been so often quoted. "For me words have colour, form, character: they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations;--they have moods, humours, eccentricities:--they have tints, tones, personalities," etc., etc.

Though Hearn did not get on with others of the newspaper staff, he formed ties of intimacy with several choice spirits then moving in the best literary circles of Cincinnati and now well known in the literary life of the United States.