The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 37

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, April, 1889.

DEAR GOULD,--I read your pamphlets with intense pleasure: that on the effect of reflex neurosis, of course, impressed me only as a curious research; but your paper on dreams, full of truth and suggestive beauty, had much more than a scientific interest for me. There is a world of poetical ideas and romantic psychology evoked by its perusal. I wonder only that you did not dwell more upon the softness, sweetness, impalpable goodness of this dream-world in which everything--even what we usually think wrong--seems to be right. Doubtless all man's dreams of paradise, of a golden past age, or a perfect future, were born of the thin light vanishing sensations of dream. The work of Gautier cited by you--"Avatar"--was my first translation from the French. I never could find a publisher for it, however, and threw the MS. away at last in disgust. It is certainly a wonderful story; but the self-styled Anglo-Saxon has so much d.a.m.nable prudery that even this innocent phantasy seems to shock his sense of the "proper."

You will be pleased to hear my novelette has been a success with the publishers. It cost me terrible work in this continual heat, small as it is; and I feel so mentally blank that I must get back to the States for a while to seek some vitality, brighten whatever blood I have got left after two years of tropical air.

If you could find me in Philadelphia a very quiet room where I could write without noise for a few months, I would try my luck there. New York is stupefying; I know too many people there; and I want to be very quiet,--only to see a friend or two now and then, when I am in good trim for a chat. I shall return to the West Indies in the winter.

Address me if you have time to write c/o H. M. Alden, Edr. _Harper's Magazine_;--for I shall have left Martinique, doubtless, by the time this reaches you.

Faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO JOSEPH TUNISON

NEW YORK, 1889.

DEAR JOE,--By the time this reaches you I shall have disappeared.

The moment I get into all this beastly machinery called "New York," I get caught in some belt and whirled around madly in all directions until I have no sense left. This city drives me crazy, or, if you prefer, crazier; and I have no peace of mind or rest of body till I get out of it. n.o.body can find anybody, nothing seems to be anywhere, everything seems to be mathematics and geometry and enigmatics and riddles and confusion worse confounded: architecture and mechanics run mad. One has to live by intuition and move by steam. I think an earthquake might produce some improvement. The so-called improvements in civilization have apparently resulted in making it impossible to see, hear, or find anything out. You are improving yourselves out of the natural world. I want to get back among the monkeys and the parrots, under a violet sky among green peaks and an eternally lilac and lukewarm sea,--where clothing is superfluous and reading too much of an exertion,--where everybody sleeps 14 hours out of the 24. This is frightful, nightmarish, devilish! Civilization is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery! Surely a palm 200 feet high is a finer thing in the natural order than seventy times seven New Yorks. I came in by one door as you went out at the other. Now there are cubic miles of cut granite and iron fury between us. I shall at once find a hackman to take me away. I am sorry not to see you--but since you live in h.e.l.l what can I do? I will try to find you again this summer.

Best affection, L. H.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--A week ago in New York I was asking a friend where you were, but could then obtain no satisfactory information without taking steps I had no time to attempt. I was really glad to get out of the frightful whirl and roar of modern improvements as soon as possible, but regretted not seeing you, even while a.s.sured of being able to do so before long.

It is true I have been silent with my friends: I did not write seven letters in seventeen months,--not even business letters. It was very difficult to write anything in the continuous enervating heat; and I had to struggle with difficulties of the most unlooked for sort, incessantly,--until I found correspondence become almost impossible. But I thought of you very often; and wondered if you were still in that terrible metropolis. I saw in Max O'Rell's book some lines about a charming young lady and thought it must have been you.... I returned on the 8th from Martinique.

Dr. Matas sent me your pretty eulogy of "Chita"--which I often re-read afterward, and which gave me encouragement when I began to doubt whether I could do anything else.... I don't think I shall write another story in the same manner,--feel I have changed very much in my way of looking at things and of writing. "Chita" will soon be sent to you in book form as a souvenir of Grande Isle: it is not as short a story as it looked in the serried type of _Harper's_--will make a volume of 225 pp. I will have something else to send you, however, that will interest you more as to novelty,--a volume of tropical sketches.

I wonder whether you could ever throw upon paper the thoughts you uttered to me that evening I visited you nearly two years ago,--when you said _why_ you liked Grande Isle. In your few phrases you said much that I had been trying to express and could not,--at least it so seemed to me.... I have seen a great many strange beaches since; but nothing like the morning charm of Grande Isle ever revealed itself. I wonder if I were to see it now, whether I should feel the same pleasure....

Thanks for those verses!--there is a large, strong, strange beauty in them. There seems, you know, to be just now a straining-up of eyes to look for some singer able to prophesy,--to chant even one hymn of that cosmic faith that is stealing upon the world.

Affectionately your friend, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Oh! what a stiff epistle, with a little sharp pointing of reproach twisting about in the tail of every letter! Really you must never, never feel vexed at anything I write:--I wrote you just as I wrote to Mr. Stedman about the same matter. I feel the man sometimes is much less than the work: my work, however weak, is so much better than myself, that the less said about me the better,--then there are so many things you do not know. As for _you_ not liking personalities, that is a very different thing! Your own personality has charm enough to render the truth very palatable. But I am sure, now, from your letter anything you say will be nice,--though I think it would have been better not to have said it. Does a portrait of an ugly man make one desirous to read his book? I could not get out of the Harper plan for an article on Southern writers, without hurting myself otherwise; but the candid truth is that I felt like yelling when I saw the thing--howling and screeching! Indeed I think that my belief in the invisible personality of a man has been largely forced by my thorough disgust with the visible personality. Schopenhauer says a beautiful thing about the former,--that the "I" is the dark point in consciousness,--just as the point of the retina where the sight-nerve enters is blind, and as the brain itself is without sensation, and the eye sees all but itself. I am not anxious to see my soul; but the fact of inability to see it encourages me to believe it is better than the thing called L. H.

I don't know that I wrote anything clever enough to be worth your using, but it is a pleasure you should think so. I can only suggest that the adoption of my poor notions would tend to make me selfish about such as I might think really good ones--I would keep them out of my letters, until they could get into print!?!

_Sub rosa_, now!... My Martinique novelette comes out--the first part--in January. I think you will like it better than "Chita:" it is more mature and more exotic by far. It will run through two numbers.

They have made some ill.u.s.trations which I have not seen, and am therefore afraid of. Unless an ill.u.s.tration either reflects precisely or surpa.s.ses the writer's imagination, it hurts rather than helps. By the way, have you ever met H.F. Farny? Farny is an Alsatian, a fine man, and a superb sketcher--though lazy as a serpent. But if you ever want imaginative drawing of a certain cla.s.s, he is one to do it.

Please don't ask me when I'm going to New York. I really can't find out.

I wish I could. I ought to be there on the 15th. But I am peculiarly situated, tied up by a business-muddle,--tangled by necessities of waiting for information,--tormented, befuddled, anxious beyond expression about an undecided plan,--shivering with cold, and longing for the tropics. All my life I have suffered with cold--all kinds of cold--psychical and physical;--I hate cold!!!!--I _never_ can resign myself to live in it!--I can't even think in it, and I would not be afraid of that Warm Place where sinners are supposed to go! Perhaps the G.A. will sentence me to everlasting sojourn in an iceberg when I have ceased to sin.

Very faithfully, and to some extent apologetically.

For you I do remain always as nice as I can be.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I can't say definitely when I shall be in New York, to have the delightful pleasure of a chat with you--something I have been looking forward to for fully a year; but I will write to tell you a few days in advance. I am drifting about with the forces of circ.u.mstance--following directions of least resistance. Just now I have a large ma.s.s (at least it looks very big to me) of MS. to amend and emend and arrange into a tropical book: you will like some things in it.

When this job is finished, in a couple of weeks, it is probable I will set to work on a short sketch or story, for which I have the material partly arranged; and then I will go to New York. It is so quiet in this beautiful great city, and my present environment is so pleasant, that I am sure of doing better work here than I could in that frightful cyclone of electricity and machinery called New York....

I am afraid you were right about the tropics, and the fascination of climate. It is still upon me, and I shall find it very difficult to conquer the temptation to return to the French colonies: the main fact which helps me is the conviction that I cannot work there,--one's memory and will blurs and fails in the incessant heat and sleepy air; and for three months before leaving I could not write a line.... My friends advise me to try the Orient next time; and I think I shall.

I have a novelette in the _Magazine_ pigeon-holes,--you will like it; but I don't know when it is going to come out.

It is not a little pleasure to know that my admiration of your verses can be an encouragement;--you have quite forgiven my ancient effort to _amend_ a stanza by spoiling it!... I think your present position will leave you time--after a while--for all you love to do, and can do so uniquely. Magazine editing is so largely a question of method and system--so far as I can learn--that I fancy you will eventually find it possible to claim a few hours every day for yourself;--and such systematic work as you must take hold of, will not, like journalistic routine, deaden aspiration. I hope you will have a greater success with the new monthly than you yourself expect, and I am sure you will if you have fair chances at all.--But I must wait for the opportunity to see you--because what one writes (at least what I myself write) on such matters sounds so fict.i.tious and flat,--though you know it comes from your sincere friend,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--It is true that I am only a small Voice;--but the Voice has been uninterruptedly in the City of Doctors and Quakers, with the exception of a much regretted interim pa.s.sed in looking at that monstrosity,--aptly described by C. D. Warner as "having been cut out with a scroll-saw,"--Atlantic City.... (May I never, never behold anything resembling it again!) I fear you must have written the address wrong--so I send you the right one. It will always do: no matter where I be. The Voice will call at 475 Fourth Avenue as soon as it can. It is not its fault that it has not so done already. Everything to be written must be finished, if possible, by the 15th prox.,--so that I can get some place where the air is blue before cold weather. I will not be able to run away from the country before Christmas anyhow.

I trust you are very, very well,--and as--everything--nice as anybody could wish, and with best regards, remain always,

Your very true and positive friend, LAFCADIO HEARN.

P.S. Now I want to see those letters which came back from the Dead Letter Office. Is it really so?

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I know I am a horrid _ignis fatuus_; but the proofs of "Chita" are only half-read, and I have no time to get away till it is all done. Then I am working on a sketch,--then there will be more proof-reading to do on the other book. But I will certainly get away in a few weeks more, and will have ever so many things to tell you.