The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 2

"Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!"

The early Church did not teach that the G.o.ds of the heathen were merely bra.s.s and stone. On the contrary she accepted them as real and formidable personalities--demons who had a.s.sumed divinity to lure their worshippers to destruction. It was in reading the legends of that Church, and the lives of her saints, that I obtained my first vague notions of the pagan G.o.ds.

I then imagined those G.o.ds to resemble in some sort the fairies and the goblins of my nursery-tales, or the fairies in the ballads of Sir Walter Scott. Goblins and their kindred interested me much more than the ugly Saints of the Pictorial Church History,--much more than even the slender angels of my French religious prints, who unpleasantly reminded me of Cousin Jane. Besides, I could not help suspecting all the friends of Cousin Jane's G.o.d, and feeling a natural sympathy with his enemies,--whether devils, goblins, fairies, witches, or heathen deities.

To the devils indeed--because I supposed them stronger than the rest--I had often prayed for help and friendship; very humbly at first, and in great fear of being too grimly answered,--but afterwards with words of reproach on finding that my condescensions had been ignored.

But in spite of their indifference, my sympathy with the enemies of Cousin Jane's G.o.d steadily strengthened; and my interest in all the spirits that the Church History called evil, especially the heathen G.o.ds, continued to grow. And at last one day I discovered, in one unexplored corner of our library, several beautiful books about art,--great folio books containing figures of G.o.ds and of demi-G.o.ds, athletes and heroes, nymphs and fauns and nereids, and all the charming monsters--half-man, half-animal--of Greek mythology.

How my heart leaped and fluttered on that happy day! Breathless I gazed; and the longer that I gazed the more unspeakably lovely those faces and forms appeared. Figure after figure dazzled, astounded, bewitched me.

And this new delight was in itself a wonder,--also a fear. Something seemed to be thrilling out of those pictured pages,--something invisible that made me afraid. I remembered stories of the infernal magic that informed the work of the pagan statuaries. But this superst.i.tious fear presently yielded to a conviction, or rather intuition--which I could not possibly have explained--that the G.o.ds had been belied _because_ they were beautiful.

... (Blindly and gropingly I had touched a truth,--the ugly truth that beauty of the highest order, whether mental, or moral, or physical, must ever be hated by the many and loved only by the few!).... And these had been called devils! I adored them!--I loved them!--I promised to detest forever all who refused them reverence!... Oh! the contrast between that immortal loveliness and the squalor of the saints and the patriarchs and the prophets of my religious pictures!--a contrast indeed as of heaven and h.e.l.l.... In that hour the mediaeval creed seemed to me the very religion of ugliness and of hate. And as it had been taught to me, in the weakness of my sickly childhood, it certainly was. And even to-day, in spite of larger knowledge, the words "heathen" and "pagan"--however ignorantly used in scorn--revive within me old sensations of light and beauty, of freedom and joy.

Only with much effort can I recall these scattered memories of boyhood; and in telling them I am well aware that a later and much more artificial Self is constantly trying to speak in the place of the Self that was,--thus producing obvious incongruities. Before trying to relate anything more concerning the experiences of the earlier Self, I may as well here allow the Interrupter an opportunity to talk.

The first perception of beauty ideal is never a cognition, but a _recognition_. No mathematical or geometrical theory of aesthetics will ever interpret the delicious shock that follows upon the boy's first vision of beauty supreme. He himself could not even try to explain why the newly-seen form appears to him lovelier than aught upon earth. He only feels the sudden power that the vision exerts upon the mystery of his own life,--and that feeling is but dim deep memory,--a blood-remembrance.

Many do not remember, and therefore cannot see--at any period of life.

There are myriad minds no more capable of perceiving the higher beauty than the blind wan fish of caves--offspring of generations that swam in total darkness--is capable of feeling the gladness of light. Probably the race producing minds like these had no experience of higher things,--never beheld the happier vanished world of immortal art and thought. Or perhaps in such minds the higher knowledge has been effaced or blurred by long dull superimposition of barbarian inheritance.

But he who receives in one sudden vision the revelation of the antique beauty,--he who knows the thrill divine that follows after,--the unutterable mingling of delight and sadness,--he _remembers_! Somewhere, at some time, in the ages of a finer humanity, he must have lived with beauty. Three thousand--four thousand years ago: it matters not; what thrills him now is the shadowing of what has been, the phantom of rapture forgotten. Without inherited sense of the meaning of beauty as power, of the worth of it to life and love, never could the ghost in him perceive, however dimly, the presence of the G.o.ds.

Now I think that something of the ghostliness in this present sh.e.l.l of me must have belonged to the vanished world of beauty,--must have mingled freely with the best of its youth and grace and force,--must have known the worth of long light limbs on the course of glory, and the pride of the winner in contests, and the praise of maidens stately as that young sapling of a palm, which Odysseus beheld, springing by the altar in Delos.... All this I am able to believe, because I could feel, while yet a boy, the divine humanity of the ancient G.o.ds....

But this new-found delight soon became for me the source of new sorrows.

I was placed with all my small belongings under religious tutelage; and then, of course, my reading was subjected to severe examination. One day the beautiful books disappeared; and I was afraid to ask what had become of them. After many weeks they were returned to their former place; and my joy at seeing them again was of brief duration. All of them had been unmercifully revised. My censors had been offended by the nakedness of the G.o.ds, and had undertaken to correct that impropriety. Parts of many figures, dryads, naiads, graces, muses had been found too charming and erased with a pen-knife;--I can still recall one beautiful seated figure, whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s had been thus excised. Evidently "the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the nymphs in the brake" had been found too charming: dryads, naiads, graces and muses--all had been rendered breastless. And, in most cases, _drawers_ had been put upon the G.o.ds--even upon the tiny Loves--large baggy bathing-drawers, woven with cross-strokes of a quill-pen, so designed as to conceal all curves of beauty,--especially the lines of the long fine thighs.... However, in my case, this barbarism proved of some educational value. It furnished me with many problems of restoration; and I often tried very hard to reproduce in pencil-drawing the obliterated or the hidden line. In this I was not successful; but, in spite of the amazing thoroughness with which every mutilation or effacement had been accomplished, my patient study of the methods of attack enabled me--long before I knew Winckelmann--to understand how Greek artists had idealized the human figure.... Perhaps that is why, in after years, few modern representations of the nude could interest me for any length of time. However graceful at first sight the image might appear, something commonplace would presently begin to reveal itself in the lines of those very forms against which my early tutors had waged such implacable war.

Is it not almost invariably true that the modern naked figure, as chiselled or painted, shadows something of the modern living model,--something, therefore, of individual imperfection? Only the antique work of the grand era is superindividual,--reflecting the ideal-supreme in the soul of a race.... Many, I know, deny this;--but do we not remain, to some degree, barbarians still? Even the good and great Ruskin, on the topic of Greek art, spake often like a Goth. Did he not call the Medicean Venus "an uninteresting little person"?

Now after I had learned to know and to love the elder G.o.ds, the world again began to glow about me. Glooms that had brooded over it slowly thinned away. The terror was not yet gone; but I now wanted only reasons to disbelieve all that I feared and hated. In the sunshine, in the green of the fields, in the blue of the sky, I found a gladness before unknown. Within myself new thoughts, new imaginings, dim longings for I knew not what were quickening and thrilling. I looked for beauty, and everywhere found it: in pa.s.sing faces--in att.i.tudes and motions,--in the poise of plants and trees,--in long white clouds,--in faint-blue lines of far-off hills. At moments the simple pleasure of life would quicken to a joy so large, so deep, that it frightened me. But at other times there would come to me a new and strange sadness,--a shadowy and inexplicable pain.

I had entered into my Renaissance.

Already must have begun the inevitable fissure between himself and his pious protectress, and one may imagine the emotions of his spiritual pastors and masters aroused by such an incident as this--related in one of his letters of later years:--

"This again reminds me of something. When I was a boy I had to go to confession, and my confessions were honest ones. One day I told the ghostly father that I had been guilty of desiring that the devil would come to me in the shape of the beautiful women in which he came to the anchorites in the desert, and that I thought I should yield to such temptations. He was a grim man who rarely showed emotion, my confessor, but on that occasion he actually rose to his feet in anger.

"'Let me warn you!' he cried, 'let me warn you! Of all things never wish that! You might be more sorry for it than you can possibly believe!'

"His earnestness filled me with a fearful joy;--for I thought the temptation might actually be realized--so serious he looked ... but the pretty _succubi_ all continued to remain in h.e.l.l."

From these indications the belief is unavoidable that there was never the slightest foundation for the a.s.sertion that an endeavour was made to train him for the priesthood. In a letter to his brother he distinctly denies it. He says:--

"You were misinformed as to Grand-aunt educating your brother for the priesthood. He had the misfortune to pa.s.s some years in Catholic colleges, where the educational system chiefly consists in keeping the pupils as ignorant as possible. He was not even a Catholic."

Indeed his bitterness against the Roman Church eventually crystallized into something like an obsession, aroused perhaps by inherited tendencies, by the essential character of his mind, and by those in authority over him in his boyhood driving him, by too great an insistence, to revolt. He was profoundly convinced that the Church, with its persistent memory and far-reaching hand, had never forgotten his apostasy, nor failed to remind him of the fact from time to time. This conviction remained a dim and threatening shadow in the background of his whole life; to all remonstrance on the subject his only reply was, "You don't know the Church as I do;" and several curious coincidences in crises of his career seemed to him to justify and confirm this belief.

Of the course and character of his education but little is known. He is said to have spent two years in a Jesuit college in the north of France, where he probably acquired his intimate and accurate knowledge of the French tongue. He was also for a time at Ushaw, the Roman Catholic college at Durham,[2] and here occurred one of the greatest misfortunes of his life. In playing the game known as "The Giant's Stride" he was accidentally blinded in one eye by the knotted end of a rope suddenly released from the hand of one of his companions. In consequence of this the work thrown upon the other eye by the enormous labours of his later years kept him in constant terror of complete loss of sight. In writing and reading he used a gla.s.s so large and heavy as to oblige him to have it mounted in a handle and to hold it to his eye like a lorgnette, and for distant observation he carried a small folding telescope.

[2] A cousin writes of him at this period: "I remember him a boy with a great taste for drawing. Very near-sighted, but so tender and careful of me as a little child. He was at a priest's college where I was taken by my grand-aunt (who had adopted him), to see him. I remember his taking me upstairs to look at the school-room, and on the way bidding me bow to an image of the Virgin, which I refused to do. He became very much excited and begged me to tell him the reason of my refusal. He always seemed very much in earnest, and to have a very sensitive nature."

A fellow-pupil at Ushaw says of him:--

"My acquaintance with him began at Ushaw college, near Durham.

Discovering that we had some tastes in common, we chummed a good deal, discussing our favourite authors, which in Lafcadio's case were chiefly poets, though he also took considerable interest in books of travel and adventure. Even then his style was remarkable for graphic power, combined with graceful expression.... He was of a very speculative turn of mind, and I have a lively recollection of the shock it occasioned to several of us when he one day announced his disbelief in the Bible. I am of opinion, however, that he was then only posing as an _esprit fort_, for a few days afterwards, during a walk with the cla.s.s in the country, he returned to this subject in discussion with a master, and I inferred from what he said to me that he was quite satisfied with the evidences of the truth of the Scriptures. It is interesting in connection with this to recall his subsequent adoption of Buddhism. I am rather inclined to think that in either 1864 or 1865 Lafcadio devoted more attention to general literature than to his school studies, as (if my memory does not play me false) he was 'turned back' on our cla.s.s moving into 'Grammar.'...

"Longfellow was one of his favourite poets, his beautiful imagery and felicity of expression appealing with peculiar force to a kindred soul. He was fond of repeating sc.r.a.ps of poetry descriptive of heroic combats, feats of arms, or of the prowess of the Baresarks, or Berserkers, as described in Norse sagas.... He used to dwell with peculiar satisfaction on the line:--

'Like Thor's hammer, huge and dinted, was his h.o.r.n.y hand.'

Lafcadio was proud of his biceps, and on repeating this line he would bend his right arm and grasp the muscle with his left hand.

I often addressed him as 'The Man of Gigantic Muscle.' After he went to America I had little communication with him beyond, I think, one letter. We then drifted different ways. He was a very lovable character, extremely sympathetic and sincere."

The slight disfigurement, too,--it was never great,--was a source of perpetual distress. He imagined that others, more particularly women, found him disgusting and repugnant in consequence of the film that clouded the iris.

This accident seems to have ended his career at Ushaw, for his name appears upon the rolls for 1865, when he was in his sixteenth year, and in a letter written in j.a.pan to one of his pupils, whom he reproves for discouragement because of an interruption of his studies caused by illness, he says:--

"A little bodily sickness may come to any one. Many students die, many go mad, many do foolish things and ruin themselves for life. You are good at your studies, and mentally in sound health, and steady in your habits--three conditions which ought to mean success. You have good eyes and a clear brain. How many thousands fail for want of these?

"When I was a boy of sixteen, although my blood relations were--some of them--very rich, no one would pay anything to help me finish my education. I had to become what you never have had to become--a servant.

I partly lost my sight. I had two years of sickness in bed. I had no one to help me. And I had to educate myself in spite of all difficulties.

Yet I was brought up in a rich home, surrounded with every luxury of Western life.

"So, my dear boy, do not lie there in your bed and fret, and try to persuade yourself that you are unfortunate."

This is the only light to be found upon those three dark years between his leaving Ushaw and his arrival in America. The rupture with his grand-aunt was complete. Among the fanatic converts were not wanting those to widen the breach made by the pagan fancies of the boy. Her property, which he had been encouraged to look upon as his inheritance, was dribbling away in the hands of those whose only claim to business ability was their religious convictions, and a few years after their separation her death put an end to any efforts at reconciliation and showed what great financial sacrifices she had made in the interests of her faith. Some provision was made for him in her will, but he put forward no claims, and the property was found practically to have vanished.

To what straits the boy was driven at this time in his friendlessness there is no means of knowing. One of his companions at Ushaw says:--

"In 1866 I left Ushaw, and I am unable to recall now whether he was there at that time. I had several letters from him subsequently, at a time when he was suffering the _peine forte et dure_ of direct penury in London. In some evil quarter by the Thames poverty obliged him to take refuge in the workhouse. In a letter received from him while living in that dreadful place, he described the sights and sounds of horror which even then preferred the shade of night--of windows thrown violently open, or shattered to pieces, shrieks of agony, or cries of murder, followed by a heavy plunge in the river."

The reference in the j.a.panese letter mentioned above is the only one to be found in his correspondence, and in even the most intimate talk with friends he avoided reference to this period as one too painful for confidence. Another fragment of the autobiography--"Stars"--can, however, be guessed to refer to an experience of this cruel time.

"I take off my clothes,--few and thin,--and roll them up into a bundle, to serve me for a pillow: then I creep naked into the hay.... Oh, the delight of my hay-bed--the first bed of any sort for many a long night!--oh, the pleasure of the sense of rest! The sweet scent of the hay!... Overhead, through a skylight, I see stars--sharply shining: there is frost in the air.

"The horses, below, stir heavily at moments, and paw. I hear them breathe; and their breath comes up to me in steam. The warmth of their great bodies fills the building, penetrates the hay, quickens my blood;--their life is my fire.

"So contentedly they breathe!... They must be aware that I am here--nestling in their hay. But they do not mind;--and for that I am grateful. Grateful, too, for the warmth of their breath, the warmth of their pure bodies, the warmth of their good hay,--grateful even for those stirrings which they make in their rest, filling the dark with a.s.surance of large dumb tolerant companionship.... I wish I could tell them how thankful I am,--how much I like them,--what pleasure I feel in the power that proceeds from them, in the sense of force and life that they spread through the silence, like a large warm Soul....

"It is better that they cannot understand. For they earn their good food and lodging;--they earn the care that keeps them glossy and beautiful;--they are of use in the world. And of what use in the world am I?...

"Those sharply shining stars are suns,--enormous suns. They must be giving light to mult.i.tudes unthinkable of other worlds.... In some of those other worlds there must be cities, and creatures resembling horses, and stables for them, and hay, and small things--somewhat like rats or mice--hiding in the hay.... I know that there are a hundred millions of suns. The horses do not know. But, nevertheless, they are worth, I have been told, fifteen hundred dollars each: they are superior beings! How much am I worth?...