The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 25

(GIRLS) "Kardang garro."--Young-brother again.

(OLD WOMEN) "Manmal garro."--Son again.

(BOTH TOGETHER) "Mela nadjo Nunga broo."--Hereafter I shall see never.

And it is also odd to find in Jeannest that in certain Congo tribes there is a superst.i.tion precisely like the Scandinavian superst.i.tion about the h.e.l.l-shoon"--a strange coincidence in view of the fact that these negroes do not allow any save the king and the dead to wear shoes.

I am happy to have discovered a new work on the blacks of Senegambia--home of the Griots; and I expect it contains some Griot music. I have sent for it. It is quite a large volume. I am beginning to think it would be a pity to hurry our project. The subject is so vast, and so many new discoveries are daily being made, that I think we can afford to gain material by waiting. I believe we can pick up a great deal of queer African music this summer; and I feel convinced we ought to get specimens of West Indian Creole music.

I am afraid my imagination may have outstripped human knowledge in regard to negro physiology. You remember my suggestion about the possible differentia in the vocal chords of the two races. I feel more than ever convinced there _is_ a remarkable difference. I heard a negro mother the other day calling her child's name--a name of two syllables--Ella;--the first syllable was a low but very loud note, the second a very high sharp one, with a fractional note tied to its tail; and I don't believe any white throat could have uttered that extraordinary sound with such rapidity and flexibility. The Australian _Coo-eee_ was nothing to it! Well, I have been since studying Flower's "Hunterian Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of Man;" and I find that the science of comparative anatomy is scarcely yet well defined--what, then, can be said about the Comparative Physiology of Man? Nevertheless Flower is astonishing. He indicates extraordinary race-differences in the pelvic index--(the shape of the pelvis)--the length and proportion of the limbs, etc. I have been thinking of writing to him on the subject. Tell me,--do you approve of the idea?

I have also sent to Europe for some works on Oriental music.

Your affectionate friend, L.H.

Charley Johnson spent a week with me. He is the same old Charley. We had lots of fun and talk about old times. He was quite delighted with my library; nearly every volume of which is unfamiliar to ordinary readers.

I have now nearly five hundred volumes--Egyptian, a.s.syrian, Indian, Chinese, j.a.panese, African, etc., etc. Johnson seems to have become a rich man. The fact embarra.s.sed me a little bit. Somehow or other, wealth makes a sort of Chinese wall between friends. One is afraid to be one's self, or even to be as friendly as one would like toward somebody who is much better off. You know what I mean. Of course, I only speak of my private feelings; for Charley was just the same to me as in the old days.

TO W. D. O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, MARCH, 1884.

MY DEAR O'CONNOR,--What a delicious writer you are!--you do not know what pleasure your letter gave me, and how many novel combinations of ideas it evoked. I like your judgement of the _Musee Secret_; and yet ... I do not find it possible to persuade myself that the "mad excess of love" should not be indulged in by mankind. It is _immemorial_ as you say;--Love was the creator of all the great thoughts and great deeds of men in all ages. I felt somewhat startled when I first read the earliest Aryan literature to find how little the human heart had changed in so many thousand years;--the women of the great Indian epics and lyrics are not less lovable than the ideal beauties of modern romance. All the great poems of the world are but so many necklaces of word-jewelry for the throat of the _Venus Urania_; and all history is illuminated by the _Eternal Feminine_, even as the world's circle in Egyptian mythology is irradiated by Neith, curving her luminous woman's body from horizon to horizon. And has not this "mad excess" sometimes served a good purpose?

I like that legend of magnificent prost.i.tution in Perron's "Femmes Arabes," according to which a battle was won and a vast nomad people saved from extinction by the action of the beauties of the tribe, who showed themselves unclad to the hesitating warriors and promised their embraces to the survivors,--of whom not over-many were left. Neither do I think that pa.s.sion necessarily tends to enervate a people. There is an intimate relation between Strength, Health, and Beauty; they are ethnologically interlinked in one embrace,--like the _Charities_. I fancy the stout soldiers who followed Xenophon were far better judges of physical beauty than the voluptuaries of Corinth;--the greatest of the exploits of Heracles was surely an amorous one. I don't like Bacon's ideas about love: they should be adopted only by statesmen or others to whom it is a duty to remain pa.s.sionless, lest some woman entice them to destruction. Has it not sometimes occurred to you that it is only in the senescent epoch of a nation's life that love disappears?--there were no grand loves during the enormous debauch of which Rome died, nor in all that Byzantine orgy interrupted by the lightning of Moslem swords....

Again, after all, what else do we live for--ephemerae that we are? Who was it that called life "a sudden light between two darknesses"? "Ye know not," saith Krishna, in the Bhagavad-Gita, "either the moment of life's beginning or the moment of its ending: only the middle may ye perceive." It is even so: we are ephemerae, seeking only the pleasure of a golden moment before pa.s.sing out of the glow into the gloom. Would not Love make a very good religion? I doubt if mankind will ever cease to have faith--in the aggregate; but I fancy the era _must_ come when the superior intelligences will ask themselves of what avail are the n.o.blest heroisms and self-denials, since even the constellations are surely burning out, and all forms are destined to melt back into that infinite darkness of death and of life which is called by so many different names. Perhaps, too, all those myriads of suns are only golden swarms of ephemerae of a larger growth and a larger day, whose movements of attraction are due to some "mad excess of love."

The account your friend gave you of De Nerval's suicide is precisely like the details of M. de Beaulieu's picture exposed in 1859--and, I _think_, destroyed by the police for some unaccountable reason. It is described in Gautier's "Histoire du Romantisme," pp. 143-4 (note).... I am glad you notice my hand once in a while, and that you liked my De Nerval sketch and the "Women of the Sword." You speak of magazine-work.

I think the magazines are simply _inabordables_. My experiences have been disheartening. "Very good, very scholarly--_but not the kind_ we want;"--"Highly interesting--sorry we have no room for it;"--"I regret to say we cannot use it, but would advise you to send it to X--;"

"Deserves to be published; but unfortunately our rules exclude"--etc. I have an article now with the _Atlantic_--an essay upon the _Adzan_, or chant of the muezzin; its romantic history, etc. This has already been rejected by other leading magazines. Another horrible fact is that after your article is accepted, the editor rewrites it in his own way,--and then prints your name at the end of the so-created abomination. This is the plan of ----. I would like to see the ideal newspaper started we used to talk about: then we could write--eh?

So you think Dore's Raven a failure! I hope you are not altogether right. I thought so when I first looked at the plates; but the longer I examined them, the more strongly they impressed me. There is ghostly power in several. What do you think of "The Night's Plutonian Sh.o.r.e;"

and the "Home by Horror haunted"? I must say that the terminal vignette with its Sphinx-death is one of the most terrible ideas I have ever seen drawn--although its force might be augmented by larger treatment. I would like to see it taken up by that French artist who painted that beautiful "Flight into Egypt," where we see the Virgin and Child (in likeness of an Arab wanderer with her baby), slumbering between the awful granite limbs of the monster.

Your Gautier has just arrived. If you had sent me a little fortune you could not have pleased me so much. I never saw the photo before: it not only pleased, it excelled antic.i.p.ation. You know our preconceived ideas of places we should like to visit and people we should like to know, usually excel the reality; but the head of Gautier seems to me grander than I imagined. One can almost hear him speak with that mellow, golden, organ-toned voice of his which Bergerat described; and I like that barbaric luxury of his attire,--there is something at once rich and strange about it, worthy some Khan of the Golden Horde.... I really feel quite enthusiastic about my new possession.

I am glad to hear you dislike Matthew Arnold. He seems to me one of the colossal humbugs of the century: a fifth-rate poet and unutterably dreary essayist;--a sort of philosophical hermaphrodite, yet lacking even the grace of the androgyne, because there is neither enough of positivism nor of idealism in his mental make-up to give real character to it. Don't you think Edwin Arnold far the n.o.bler man and writer? I love that beautiful enthusiasm of his for the beauties of strange faiths and exotic creeds. This is the spirit that, in some happier era, may bless mankind with a universal religion in perfect harmony with the truths of science and the better nature of humanity.

You ask about this climate. One who has lived by the sea and on the mountain-tops, as I have, must spend several years here to understand how this intertropical swamp-life affects the unacclimated. The first year one becomes very sick--fevers of unfamiliar character attack him; the appet.i.te vanishes, the energies become enfeebled. The second summer one feels even worse. The third summer one can just endure without absolute sickness. The fourth, one begins to gain flesh and strength.

But the blood has completely changed, the least breath of really cool air makes one shiver, and energy never becomes quite restored. After a few years in Louisiana, hard work becomes impossible. We are all lazy, enervated, compared with you Northerners. When my Northwestern friends come down here, it seems to me like a coming of Vikings and Berserkers; they are so full of life and blood and vital electricity! But when it is cold to me, it seems frightfully warm to them; and yet we used once to work together as reporters with the thermometer 20 below zero.

Sorry to say that Leloir died before completing the ill.u.s.trations; and I suppose the subscribers to the edition will be the losers. It was to be issued in parts. Perhaps ten numbers were out. But I am not sure whether any of the engravings were printed. I based my error upon the critique of Leloir's work in _Le Livre_. It is dangerous to antic.i.p.ate!

I believe I have the very latest edition of W. W. [Walt Whitman]--1882 (Rees, Welsh & Co.), which I like very much. You did not quite understand my allusion to the Bible. I wished to imply that it was when W. W.'s verses approached that biblical metre in form, etc., that we most admired him. I agree with all you say about slang,--especially nautical slang; also about the grand irregularity of the wave-chant.

Still I'll have to write some examples of what I refer to, and will do so later.

Yours very warmly and gratefully, L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, March, 1884.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--I am sorry to be in such a hurry that I have to write a short letter; but I must signal my pleasure at seeing you coming out in public, and I have a vision of future greatness for you. As for myself, I trust I shall in a few years more obtain influence enough to be able to return some of your many kindnesses in a literary way. Eventually we may be able to pull together to a very bright goal, if I can keep my health.

I think that Osgood will announce the book about the 1st of April, but I am not sure. It would hardly do to antic.i.p.ate. I send you his letter.

The terms are not grand; but a big improvement on Worthington's. Next time I hope I will be able to work _to order_. You can return letter when you are done with it, as it forms a part of my enormous collection of letters from publishers--(199 rejections to 1 acceptation).

I expect I shall have to postpone my visit until the book is out, as I must wait here to receive and correct proofs. I have dedicated the book to Page Baker, as it was entirely through his efforts that I got a hearing from Osgood. The reader _had already rejected_ the MS. when Baker's letter came.

From the _Atlantic_ I have not yet heard. If I have good luck (which is extremely improbable) I would make the Muezzin No. 1 in a brief series of Arabesque studies, which would cost about two years' labour--at intervals. I have several subjects in mind: for example, the lives of certain outrageous Moslem Saints, and a sketch of the mulatto and quadroon slave-poets of Arabia before Mahomet; "The Ravens," as they were called from their color;--also the story of the _Ye monnat_, or those who died of love.... But these are beautiful dreams in embryo!

Yours affectionately,

L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, March, 1884.

Postal-card.

... It is related by Philostratus in his life of Apollonius of Tyana, that when Apollonius visited India, and asked the Brahmins to give him an example of (musical) magic, the Brahmins did strip themselves naked and dance in a ring, each tapping the earth with a staff, and singing a strange hymn. Then the earth within the ring rose up, quivering, even as fermenting dough,--and rose higher,--and undulated and was lost in great waves,--and elevated the singers unto the height of two cubits....

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, April, 1884.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--I read your leader with no small interest; and "the gruesome memories" were revived. The killing of the man in the Vine Street saloon, however, interested me most as a memory-reviving interest. That murderer was the most magnificent specimen of athletic manhood that I ever saw,--I suspect he was a gipsy; for he had all the characteristics of that race, and _was not a regular circus-employee_,--only a professional rider, now with one company, now with another. Did you see him when you were there? He was perhaps 6 feet 4; for his head nearly touched the top of the cell. He had a very regular handsome face, with immense black eyes; and an Oriental sort of profile:--then he seemed slender, in spite of his immense force,--such was the proportion of his figure. A cynical devil, too. I went to see him with the coroner, who showed him the piece of the dead man's skull.

He took it between his fingers, held it up to the light, handed it back to the coroner and observed; "Christ!--_he must have had a d--d rotten skull_." He was ordered to leave town within twenty-four hours as a dangerous character. It is a pity such men should be vulgar murderers and ruffians;--what superb troopers they would make! I shall never forget that splendid stature and strength as long as I live....

I don't know whether I shall ever be living in that terrible metropolis of yours. It will be impossible for me ever again to write or read by night; and hard work has become impossible. If I could ever acquire reputation enough to secure a literary position on some monthly or weekly periodical where I could take it easy, perhaps I might feel like enduring the hideous winters. But I am just now greatly troubled by the question, What shall I work for?--to what special purpose? Perhaps some good fortune may come when least expected.

Now I want to talk about our trip. I think it better not to go now. Page wants me to take a good big vacation this summer,--a long one. If I wait till it gets warm, I will be able to escape the feverish month; and if you should be in Cincinnati at the Festival, or elsewhere, I would meet you anyhow or anywhere you say. Were I to leave now I could not do so later; and I am waiting for some curious books and things which I want to bring you so that we can a.n.a.lyze them together. A month or so won't make much difference.

Will write you soon. Had to quit work for a few days on account of eye-trouble.

Yours very truly, L. HEARN.

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, May, 1884.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--I have been so busy that I have not been able to answer your last. They are sending me proofs at the rate of twenty pages a day; and you can imagine this keeps me occupied in addition to my other work.

Alas! I find that nothing written for a newspaper--at least for an American newspaper--can be perfect. My poor little book will show some journalistic weaknesses--will contain some hasty phrases or redundancies or something else which will mar it. I try my best to get it straight; but the consequences of hasty labour are perpetually before me, notwithstanding the fact that the collocation of the material occupied nearly two years. I am thinking of Bayard Taylor's terrible observation about American newspaper-work. It seems to be generally true. Still there _are_ some who write with extraordinary precision and correctness.

I think you are one of them.

What troubles my style especially is ornamentation. An ornamental style must be perfect or full of atrocious discords and incongruities; and perfect ornamentation requires slow artistic work--except in the case of men like Gautier, who never re-read a page, or worried himself about a proof. But I think I'll improve as I grow older.