The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 10

"After this he did not go to the temple yard any more.

"Sometime after the old priest was removed to another temple; and the younger new priest, the head of temple, began cutting trees.

"His desire was to live in a little house, in some lonely suburb, with a s.p.a.cious garden full of trees. I looked for several places; at Nishi Okubo _mura_ I found a house of pure j.a.panese style and even with no foreign styled house in the neighbourhood, for his desire was to live in the midst of genuine j.a.pan. That the house stood in a lonely suburb and that there was a bamboo bush in the rear of house pleased him much and prompted his immediate decision. Being much afraid of cold winter, he wanted to have one room furnished with a stove newly built and that the library should open to the west. His library, with an adjoining room with a stove, and my sitting room were built. He left all else to my choice, saying, 'I have only to write; other things I do not care for; you know better, good Mamma San!'

"It was on the 19th March, 1902, that we removed on new house at Okubo. He used to go to university by a jinrikisha; it took about 40 minutes. Our house was all furnished in j.a.panese fashion, except the stove and the gla.s.s-screen on account of the stove, instead of a paper-screen, in regard to that apartment.

"On the day we removed I was helping him arrange books in the library.

Among the bamboo woods were heard the uguisu or warbler's notes through the stillness of the place. 'How happy!' he said, pleased with the new abode. 'But my heart is sorry,' he added. 'Why?' I asked. 'To be happy is a cause of anxiousness to me;' he said, 'I would like to live long in this house. But I do not know whether I can.'

"He put too much importance to Beauty or Nicety perhaps. He was too enthusiastic for beauty, for which he wept, and for which he rejoiced, and for which he was angry. This made him shun social intercourse; this made him as if he were an eccentric person. To him meditating and writing were the sole pleasure of life; and for this he disposed of all things else. I often said: 'You are too secluded in your room. Please go out when you like and find enjoyment anything you like.' 'You know my best enjoyment: thinking and writing. When I have things to write upon I am happy. While writing I forget all cares and anxieties. Therefore give me subjects to write. Talk to me more,' he said. 'I have talked you all things. I have no more story to tell you.' 'Therefore you go out, and when you come back home, tell me all you have seen and heard. Only reading books is not enough.'

"I used to tell him ghost-stories in dreary evenings, with the lamp purposely dimly lighted. He seemed always to listen as if he were withholding breath for fear. His manner, so eagerly attentive and looking fearful, made me tell the story with more emphasis. Our house was, as it were, a ghost-house on those times; I began to be haunted with fearful dreams in the night. I told him about that and he said we would stop ghost-stories for some time.

"When I tell him stories I always told him at first the mere skeleton of the story. If it is interesting, he puts it down in his note-book and makes me repeat and repeat several times.

"And when the story is interesting, he instantly becomes exceedingly serious; the colour of his face changes; his eyes wear the look of fearful enthusiasm.

"As I went on as usual the story of Okachinsan [in the begining of 'Kotto'], his face gradually changed pale; his eyes were fixed; I felt a sudden awe. When I finished the narrative he became a little relaxed and said it was very interesting. 'O blood!' he repeatedly said; and asked me several questions regarding the situations, actions, etc., involved in the story. 'In what manner was "O blood!" exclaimed? In what manner of voice? What do you think of the sound of "geta" at that time? How was the night? I think so and so. What do you think? etc.' Thus he consulted me about various things besides the original story which I told from the book. If any one happened to see us thus talking from outside, he would surely think that we were mad.

"'Papa, come down; supper is ready,' three children used to say altogether to him; then 'All right, sweet boys,' he would say, and come to the table in a cheerful manner. But when he is very much absorbed in writing, he would say, 'All right,' very quickly. And whenever his answer is quick, he would not come very soon. I then go to him and say: 'Papa San! the children are waiting for you. Please come soon, or the dishes will lose their good flavour.'

"'What?' he asks.

"'The supper is ready, Papa.'

"'I do not want supper. Didn't I already take that? Funny!'

"'Mercy! please awake from your dream. The little child would weep.'

"In such occasion, he is very forgetful; and takes bread only to himself. And children ask him to break bread for them. And he would take whiskey for wine or put salt into the cup of coffee. Before meal he took a very little quant.i.ty of whiskey. Later when his health was a little hurt he took wine.

"But on usual meals we were very pleasant. He tells stories from foreign papers; I from j.a.panese newspapers. Kiyoshi would peep from the hole of sliding-paper screen. The cat comes; the dog come under the window; and they share some sweets he gives. After meal we used to sing songs innocently and merrily.

"Often he danced or laughed heartily when he was very happy.

"In one New Year's day it happened that one of the jinrikisha men of our house died suddenly while drinking _sake_ in a narrow room near the portal of our house. The dead man was covered with a bed-covering. A guest came for wishing a happy new year to our home. The guest found that and said: 'O, a drunkard sleeping on the New Year's day. A happy fellow!' The rikisha man, who sat near and was watching the dead, said in his vulgar tone: 'Not a drunkard, but a Buddha!'[4] The guest was sorely astonished and went out immediately. After some days I told him this fact; he was interested to imagine the manner the guest made in astonishment. And he ordered me to repeat the conversation between the guest and the rikisha man. He often imitated the words of 'Not a drunkard, but a Buddha,' as being a very natural and simple utterance.

[4] "Hotoke-sama" means the dead.

"Whenever he met with a work of any art suited to his taste, he expressed an intense admiration, even for a very small work. A man with a nice and kind heart he was! We often went to see the exhibition of pictures held occasionally in Tokyo. If he found any piece of work very interesting to him, he spoke of it as cheap though very high in price. 'What do you think of that?' my husband says. 'It is too much high price,' I say, lest he should immediately buy it quite indifferent of prices. 'No, I don't mean about prices. I mean about the picture. Do you think it is very good?' Then I answer: 'Yes, a pretty picture, indeed, I think.' 'We shall then buy that picture,' he says, 'the price is however very cheap; let us offer more money for that.' As to our financial matter, he was entirely trusting to me. Thus, I, the little treasurer, sometimes suffered on such occasions.

"In those innocent talks of our boys he was pleased to find interesting things. In fact his utmost pleasure was to be acquainted with a thing of beauty. How he was glad to hear my stories. Alas! he is no more! though I sometimes get amusing stories, they are now no use. Formalities were the things he most disliked. His likes and dislikes were always to the extreme. When he liked something he liked extremely. He used to wear a plain cloth; only he was particular about shirts on account of cold.

When he had new suit of cloth made, he wore it after my repeated entreaties. Being fond of j.a.panese cloth, he always puts off foreign cloth when he comes back from without, and, sitting on the cushion so pleasantly, he smokes. At Aizu in summer, he often wore bathing cloth and j.a.panese sandals.

"He always chose the best and excellent quality of any kind of things, so in purchasing my dress, he often ordered according to his taste.

Sometimes he was like an innocent child. One summer we went to a store selling cloth for a bathing cloth (_yukata_) which I wear in summer-time. The man showed us various kinds of designs, all of which he was so very fond and bought. I said that we need not so many kinds. He said: 'But think of that. Only one yen and half for a piece. Please put on various kinds of dress, which only to see is pleasant to me.' He bought some thirty pieces, to the amazement of the store people.

"He resented in his heart that many j.a.panese people, forgetting of the fact that there exist many beautiful points in things j.a.panese, are imitating Western style. He regretted that j.a.pan would thus be lost. So he abhorred the foreign style which j.a.panese a.s.sume. He was glad that many Waseda professors wore j.a.panese _haori_ and _hakama_. He disliked unharmonized foreign dress of j.a.panese lady and proud girl speaking English. We one day went to a bazar at Ueno Park. He asked the price of an article in j.a.panese. The storekeeper, a girl of new school, replied in English. He was displeased and drew my dress and turned away. When he became the professor of Waseda, Dean Takata invited him to his house.

It was very rare that he ever accepted an invitation. At the portal, Mrs. Takata welcomed him in j.a.panese language. This reception greatly pleased him, so he told me when he returned home. In our home, furnitures and even the manner of maids' hair-dressing were all in genuine j.a.panese style. If I happened to buy some articles of foreign taste, he would say: 'Don't you love j.a.panese arts?' He wanted our boy put on j.a.panese cloths and wear _geta_ instead of shoes. Sometimes in company with him in usual walks, one of our boys would wear shoes. He say: 'Mamma San, look at my toes. Don't you mind that our dear children's toes should become disfigured in such manner as mine?' As Kazuo's appearance is very much like a foreigner, he taught him English.

Other boys were taught and brought up in j.a.panese way. We kept no interpreter since our Matsue days. A j.a.panese guest would come to our house in Western style and smoke cigarettes, but the host receives him in j.a.panese cloth and does all in j.a.panese fashion--a curious contrast.

With one glance of his nose-gla.s.s which he keeps he catches the whole appearance of any first visitor even to the smallest details of the physiognomy. He is extremely near-sighted; and the minute he takes a glance is the whole time of his observation; still his wonderfully keen observation often astonished me.

"One day I read the following story to him from a j.a.panese paper: 'A certain n.o.bleman's old mother is extremely fond of cla.s.sical j.a.panese ways, absolutely antagonistic to the modern manners. The maids were to wear _obi_ in old ways. Lamps were not allowed, but paper _ando_ was used instead. Nor soaps were to be used in this household. So maids and servants would not endure long.' Hearn was very much delighted to learn that there still existed such a family. 'How I like that!' he said. 'I would like to visit them.' One time I said to him in joke: 'You are not like Westerner, except in regard to your nose.' Then he said: 'What shall I do with this nose? But I am a j.a.panese. I love j.a.pan better than any born j.a.panese.'

"Indeed, he loved j.a.pan with his whole heart, but his sincere love for j.a.pan was not very well understood by j.a.panese.

"When asked anything to him, he would not readily accept that; but everything he did he did it with his sincere and whole heart!

"One day he said to me: 'Foreign people are very desirous to know of my whereabouts. Some papers have reported that Hearn disappeared from the world. What do you think of this? How funny!--disappeared from the world.' Thus his chief pleasure was only to write, without being disturbed from without. O, while I thus talk of my dear husband's life, I feel in myself as if I were being scolded by him why I was thus talking of him. 'Where is Hearn now? He has disappeared from the world.'

This was his desire--unknown to the rest of the world. But though he would scold me I wish to tell about him more and more.

"When he was engaged in writing he was so enthusiastically that any small noise was a great pain to him. So I always tried to keep the house still in regard to the opening and shutting of doors, the footsteps of family, etc.; and I always chose to enter his room when necessary as I heard the sound of his pipes (tobacco-smoking pipes) and his songs in a high voice. But after removal to Okubo, our house was wide enough and his library was very remote from the children's room and the portal. So he could enjoy his enjoyment in the world of calmness.

"When writing the story of 'Miminashi Hochi,' he was forgetful of the approach of evening. In the darkness of the evening twilight he was sitting on the cushion in deep thought. Outside of the paper-screens of his room, I for a trial called with a low voice, 'Hochi! Hochi!' 'Yes, I am a blind man. Who are you?' he replied from within; he had been imagining as if he himself were Hochi with a _biwa_ in his hand.

Whenever he writes he is entirely absorbed with the subject. On those days I one day went to the city and bought a little doll of blind priest with a _biwa_. I put it secretly upon his desk. As he found it he was overjoyed with it and seemed as if he met an expecting friend. When a rustling noise of fallen leaves in the garden woods he said seriously: 'Listen! the Heike are fallen. They are the sounds of waves at Dan-no-ura.' And he listened attentively. Indeed sometimes I thought he was mad, because he seemed too frequently he saw things that were not and heard things that were not."

His life outside of the university and of his own home he narrowed down to a point where the public began to create legends about him, so seldom was he seen. The only person ever able to draw him forth was his friend Mitch.e.l.l McDonald, whose sympathy and hospitality he constantly fled from and constantly yielded to. To Mrs. Fenollosa he wrote:

"My friends are much more dangerous than my enemies. These latter--with infinite subtlety--spin webs to keep me out of places where I hate to go ... and they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost love them. They help me to maintain the isolation absolutely essential to thinking.... Blessed be my enemies, and forever honoured all them that hate me!

"But my friends!--ah! my friends! They speak so beautifully of my work; they say they want more of it,--and yet they would destroy it! They do not know what it costs, and they would break the wings and scatter the feather-dust, even as the child that only wanted to caress the b.u.t.terfly. And they speak of converse and sympathy.... And they say,--only a day--just an afternoon--but each of them says this thing.

And the sum of the days is a week of work dropped forever into the Abyss.... I must not even think about people's kind words and faces, but work, work, work, while the Scythe is sharpening within vision."

Under the strain of constant work his eyesight again began to fail, and in 1902 he wrote to friends in America asking for aid to find work there, desiring to consult a specialist, and to bring for instruction in English his beloved Kazuo--from whom he would never be parted for a day. He was ent.i.tled to his sabbatical year of vacation from the university, and while he took advantage of it he wished to form other connections, as intrigues among those inimical to him made him fear for the tenure of his position. His family had increased by the birth of another son, and his responsibilities--with weakening lungs and eyesight--began to weigh heavily on his mind. An arrangement was made for him to lecture for a season in Cornell University at a salary of $2500, and these lectures he at once began to prepare. When, however, he applied for leave it was refused him, and an incident occurring at this juncture, of the intrusion of an English traveller into his cla.s.sroom during one of his lectures--an incident which had its origin in mere curiosity,--seemed to his exacerbated imagination to have a significance out of all proportion to its real meaning; and convinced that it was intended as a slight by the authorities in their purpose to be rid of him, he resigned. The students--aware that influences were at work to rob him of his place--made some demonstrations of resentment, but finally abandoned them at his personal request.

He plunged more deeply, at once, into the preparation of his work for the American lectures, but shortly before he was to have sailed for America the authorities at Cornell withdrew from their contract on the plea that the epidemic of typhoid at Ithaca the previous summer had depleted the funds at their command.

Vigorous efforts were at once undertaken by his friends in America to repair this breach of contract by finding him employment elsewhere, with but partial success, but all these efforts were rendered useless by a sudden and violent illness, attended by bleeding from the lungs, and brought on by strain and anxiety. After his recovery the lectures prepared for Cornell were recast to form a book, but the work proved a desperate strain upon already weakened forces.

Mrs. Hearn says this:--

"Of his works, 'j.a.pan: an Interpretation' seemed a great labour to him.

So hard a task it was that he said at one occasion: 'It is not difficult that this book will kill me.' At another time he said: 'You can imagine how hard it is to write such a big book in so short a time with no helper.' To write was his life; and all care and difficulties he forgot while writing. As he had no work of teaching in the university, he poured forth all his forces in the work of 'j.a.pan.'

"When the ma.n.u.scripts of 'j.a.pan' were completed, he was very glad and had them packed in strong shape and wrote addresses upon the cover for mail. He was eagerly looking forward to see the new volume. A little before his death he still said that he could imagine that he could hear the sound of type-work of 'j.a.pan' in America. But he was unable to see the book in his lifetime."

To me he wrote, in that la.s.situde always following on the completion of creative work: "The 'rejected addresses' will shortly appear in book form. I don't like the work of writing a serious treatise on sociology.... I ought to keep to the study of birds and cats and insects and flowers, and queer small things--and leave the subject of the destiny of empires to men with brains." Despite which verdict he probably recognized it as the crowning achievement of his long effort to interpret his adopted country to the world.

Shortly after its completion he accepted the offer of the chair of English in the Waseda University, founded by Count Ok.u.ma, for he was expecting again to be a father and his pen was unable to meet all the demands upon his income. Meantime the University of London had entered into negotiation with him for a series of lectures, and it was suggested that Oxford also wished to hear him. It had always been the warmest of his desires to win recognition from his own country, and these offers were perhaps the greatest satisfaction he had ever known. But his forces were completely exhausted. The desperate hardships of his youth, the immense labours of his manhood, had burned away the sources of vitality.

On the 26th of September, 1904--shortly after completing the last letter included in these volumes, to Captain Fujisaki, who was then serving on Marshal Oyama's staff--while walking on the veranda in the twilight he sank down suddenly as if the whole fabric of life had crumbled within, and after a little s.p.a.ce of speechlessness and pain, his long quest was over.

In "Kwaidan" he had written: "I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind, so that my ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji. That old cemetery behind my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living brain; even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or magnetism.... Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings so strangely far away from all the nineteenth-century part of me that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid,--deliciously afraid. Never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost,--a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell."

In so far as was possible this was complied with. Though not a Buddhist he was buried according to Buddhist rites. One who was present at his funeral thus describes it:--

"The procession left his residence, 266 Nishi Okubo, at half past one and proceeded to the Jito-in Kobu-dera Temple in Ichigaya.... First came the bearers of white lanterns and wreaths and great pyramidal bouquets of asters and chrysanthemums; next, men carrying long poles from which hung streamers of paper _gohei_; after them two boys in 'rickshas carrying little cages containing birds to be released, symbols of the soul released from its earthly prison....