The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 6

The fleeting archaic flavour of the original is not entirely lost here, and the lines are broken, yet metrical. But this is only a suggestion, and a kindly one."

This book--his first--travelled far before finding a publisher, and then only at the cost of the author bearing half the expense of publication.

Other notices had been less kind. The _Observer_, as he quotes in a letter to Mr. Hart, had declared that it was a collection of "stories of unbridled l.u.s.t without the apology of natural pa.s.sion," and that "the translation reeked with the miasma of the brothel." The _Critic_ had wasted no time upon the translator, confining itself to depreciation of Gautier, and this Hearn resented more than severity to himself, for at this period Gautier and his style were his pa.s.sionate delight, as witness the following note which accompanied a loan of a volume containing a selection from the Frenchman's poems:--

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I venture to try to give you a little novel pleasure by introducing you to the "Emaux et Camees." As you have told me you never read them, I feel sure you will experience a literary surprise. You will find in Gautier a perfection of melody, a warmth of word-colouring, a voluptuous delicacy which no English poet has ever approached and which reveal, I think, a certain capacity of artistic expression no Northern tongue can boast. What the Latin tongues yield in to Northern languages is strength; but the themes in which the Latin poets excel are usually soft and exquisite. Still you will find in the "Rondalla" some fine specimens of violence. It is the song of the Toreador Juan.

These "Emaux et Camees" const.i.tute Gautier's own pet selection from his works. I have seen nothing in Hugo's works to equal some of them.... I won't presume to offer you this copy: it is too shabby, has travelled about with me in all sorts of places for eight years. But if you are charmed by this "parfait magicien des lettres francaises" (as Baudelaire called him) I hope to have the pleasure of offering you a nicer copy....

Mr. John Albee wrote to him in connection with the book, and also the Reverend Wayland D. Ball.

"Stray Leaves from Strange Literature"--published by James R. Osgood and Company of Boston--followed in 1884 and was more kindly treated by the critics, though it brought fewer letters from private admirers, and was not very profitable--save to his reputation. In 1885 a tiny volume was issued under the t.i.tle of "Gombo Zhebes," being a collection of 350 Creole proverbs which he had made while studying the patois of the Louisiana negro--a patois of which the local name is "Gombo." These laborious studies of the grammar and oral literature of a tongue spoken only by and to negro servants in Louisiana seemed rather a work of supererogation at the time, but later during his life in the West Indies they proved of incalculable value to him in his intercourse with the inhabitants. There the patois--not having been subjected as in New Orleans to that all-absorbing solvent of the English tongue--continued to hold its own alongside the pure French of the educated Creoles, and his book would have been impossible had he not had command of the universal speech of the common people.

"Some Chinese Ghosts" had set out on its travels in search of a publisher sometime earlier, and after several rejections was finally, in the following year, accepted by Roberts Brothers. In regard to some corrections which they desired made in the text this reference has been found in a letter to his friend Krehbiel, a letter in which, however, time and the ruthless appet.i.te of bookworms have made havoc with words here and there:--

1886.

DEAR K.,--In Promethean agony I write.

Roberts Brothers, Boston, have written me that they want to publish "Chinese Ghosts;" but want me to cut out a mult.i.tude of j.a.panese, Sanscrit, Chinese, and Buddhist terms.

Thereupon unto them I despatched a colossal doc.u.ment of supplication and prayer,--citing Southey, Moore, Flaubert, Edwin Arnold, Gautier, "Hiawatha," and mult.i.tudinous singers and mult.i.tudinous songs, and the rights of prose poetry, and the supremacy of Form.

And no answer have I yet received.

How shall I sacrifice Orientalism, seeing that this my work was inspired by [fragment of a Greek word] by the Holy Spirit, by the Vast ... [probably Blue Soul] of the Universe ... but one of the facets of that million-faceted Rose-diamond which flasheth back the light of the Universal Sun? And even as Apocalyptic John I hold--

"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy G.o.d shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

Thy brother in the Holy Ghost of Art wisheth thee many benisons and victories, and the Grace that cometh as luminous rain and the Wind of Inspiration perfumed with musk and the flowers of Paradise.

Lafcadio.

This suggestion was peculiarly afflicting because of his love of exotic words, not only for their own sake, but for the colour they lent to the general scheme of decoration of his style. It was as if a painter of an Oriental picture had been asked to omit all reproduction of Eastern costumes, all representation of the architecture or utensils germane to his scene. To eliminate these foreign terms was like asking a modern actor to play "Julius Caesar" in a full-bottomed wig.

At about this period a friendship formed with Lieutenant Oscar Crosby exerted a most profound and far-reaching influence upon Hearn--an influence which continued to grow until his whole life and manner of thought were coloured by it.

Lieutenant Crosby was a young Louisianian, educated at West Point, and then stationed in New Orleans, a person of very unusual abilities, and Hearn found him a suggestive and inspiring companion. In a letter written to Ernest Crosby from j.a.pan in 1904, but a month before his death, he says:--

"A namesake of yours, a young lieutenant in the United States Army, first taught me, about twenty years ago, how to study Herbert Spencer.

To that Crosby I shall always feel a very reverence of grat.i.tude, and I shall always find myself inclined to seek the good opinion of any man bearing the name of Crosby."

To Mr. Krehbiel in the same year that he began the study of "The Principles of Ethics" he wrote:--

"Talking of change in opinions, I am really astonished at myself. You know what my fantastic metaphysics were. A friend disciplined me to read Herbert Spencer. I suddenly discovered what a waste of time all my Oriental metaphysics had been. I also discovered for the first time how to apply the little general knowledge I possessed. I also found unspeakable comfort in the sudden, and for me eternal reopening of the Great Doubt, which renders pessimism ridiculous, and teaches a new reverence for all forms of faith. In short, from the day when I finished the 'First Principles,' a totally new intellectual life opened for me; and I hope during the next few years to devour the rest of this oceanic philosophy."

He seems not, in these positive a.s.sertions, to have overestimated the great change that had come upon his mental att.i.tude. The strong breath of the great thinker had blown from off his mind the froth and ferment of youth, leaving the wine clear and strong beneath. From this time becomes evident a new seriousness in his manner, and beauty became to him not only the mere grace of form but the meaning and truth which that form was to embody.

The next book bearing his name shows the effect of this change, and the immediate success of the book demonstrated that, while his love for the exotic was to remain ingrained, he had learned to bring the exotic into vital touch with the normal.

"Chita: A Story of Last Island" had its origin in a visit paid in the summer of 1884 to Grande Isle, one of the islands lying in the Gulf of Mexico, near the mouth of the Mississippi River in the Bay of Barataria. A letter written to Page Baker while there may be inserted at this point to give some idea of the place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gentlemen's bathing houses]

DEAR PAGE,--I wish you were here; for I am sure that the enjoyment would do you a great deal of good. I had not been in sea-water for fifteen years, and you can scarcely imagine how I rejoice in it,--in fact I don't like to get out of it at all. I suppose you have not been at Grande Isle--or at least not been here for so long that you have forgotten what it looks like. It makes a curious impression on me: the old plantation cabins, standing in rows like village-streets, and neatly remodelled for more cultivated inhabitants, have a delightfully rural aspect under their shadowing trees; and there is a veritable country calm by day and night. Grande Isle has suggestions in it of several old country fishing villages I remember, but it is even still more charmingly provincial. The hotel proper, where the tables are laid,--formerly, I fancy, a sugar-house or something of that sort,--reminds one of nothing so much as one of those big English or Western barn-buildings prepared for a holiday festival or a wedding-party feast. The only distinctively American feature is the inevitable Southern gallery with white wooden pillars. An absolutely ancient purity of morals appears to prevail here:--no one thinks of bolts or locks or keys, everything is left open and nothing is ever touched. n.o.body has ever been robbed on the island. There is no iniquity. It is like a resurrection of the days of good King Alfred, when, if a man were to drop his purse on the highway, he might return six months later to find it untouched. At least that is what I am told. Still I would not _like_ to leave one thousand golden dinars on the beach or in the middle of the village. I am still a little suspicious--having been so long a dweller in wicked cities.

I was in hopes that I had made a very important discovery; viz.--a flock of really tame and innocuous cows; but the innocent appearance of the beasts is, I have just learned, a disguise for the most fearful ferocity. So far I have escaped unharmed; and Marion has offered to lend me his large stick, which will, I have no doubt, considerably aid me in preserving my life.

Couldn't you manage to let me stay down here until after the Exposition is over, doing no work and nevertheless drawing my salary regularly?... By the way, one could save money by a residence at Grande Isle. There are no temptations--except the perpetual and delicious temptation of the sea.

The insects here are many; but I have seen no frogs,--they have probably found that the sea can outroar them and have gone away jealous. But in Marion's room there is a beam, and against that beam there is the nest of a "mud-dauber." Did you ever see a mud-dauber? It is something like this when flying;--but when it isn't flying I can't tell you what it looks like, and it has the peculiar power of flying without noise. I think it is of the wasp-kind, and plasters its mud nest in all sorts of places. It is afraid of nothing--likes to look at itself in the gla.s.s, and leaves its young in our charge. There is another sociable creature--hope it isn't a wasp--which has built two nests under the edge of this table on which I write to you. There are no specimens here of the _cimex lectularius_; and the mosquitoes are not at all annoying. They buzz a little, but seldom give evidence of hunger. Creatures also abound which have the capacity of making noises of the most singular sort. Up in the tree on my right there is a thing which keeps saying all day long, quite plainly, "_Kiss, Kiss, Kiss!_"--referring perhaps to the good young married folks across the way; and on the road to the bath-house, which we travelled late last evening in order to gaze at the phosph.o.r.escent sea, there dwells something which exactly imitates the pleasant sound of ice jingling in a cut-gla.s.s tumbler.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

As for the grub, it is superb--solid, nutritious, and without stint.

When I first tasted the b.u.t.ter I was enthusiastic, imagining that those mild-eyed cows had been instrumental in its production; but I have since discovered they were not--and the fact astonishes me not at all now that I have learned more concerning the character of those cows.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

At some unearthly hour in the morning the camp-meeting quiet of the place is broken by the tolling of a bell. This means "Jump up, lazybones; and take a swim before the sun rises." Then the railroad-car comes for the bathers, pa.s.sing up the whole line of white cottages. The distance is short to the beach; Marion and I prefer to walk; but the car is a great convenience for the women and children and invalids. It is drawn by a single mule, and always accompanied by a dog which appears to be the intimate friend of the said mule, and who jumps up and barks all the gra.s.s-grown way. The ladies'

bathing-house is about five minutes' plank-walking from the men's,--where I am glad to say drawers and bathing-suits are unnecessary, so that one has the full benefit of sun-bathing as well as salt-water bathing. There is a man here called Margot or Margeaux--perhaps some distant relative of Chateau-Margeaux--who always goes bathing accompanied by a pet goose. The goose follows him just like a dog; but is a little afraid of getting into deep water. It remains in the surf presenting its stern-end to the breakers:--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The only trouble about the bathing is the ferocious sun. Few people bathe in the heat of the day, but yesterday we went in four times; and the sun nearly flayed us. This morning we held a council of war and decided upon greater moderation. There are three bars, between which the water is deep. The third bar is, I fear, too "risky" to reach, as it is nearly a mile from the other, and lies beyond a hundred-foot depth of water in which sharks are said to disport themselves. I am almost as afraid of sharks as I am of cows.... Marion made a dash for a drowning man yesterday, in answer to the cry, "Here, you fellows, help! help!" and I followed. We had instantaneous visions of a gold-medal from the Life-Saving Service, and glorious dreams of newspaper fame under the t.i.tle "Journalistic Heroism,"--for my part, I must acknowledge I had also an unpleasant fancy that the drowning man might twine himself about me, and pull me to the bottom,--so I looked out carefully to see which way he was heading. But the beatific Gold-Medal fancies were brutally dissipated by the drowning man's success in saving himself before we could reach him, and we remain as obscure as before.

_Interlude_

[Ill.u.s.tration: Miss B. B. through our lorgnette]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Miss Bisland's A No 1. Chaperone]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Agricultural Editor of the T.D.--pursued by his family

A No 2 Miss Bisland's Creole Chaperone

A No 3 Miss Bisland's Pickwickian Chaperon

I will now resume the interrupted text of my narration]

The proprietor has found what I have vainly been ransacking the world for--a civilized hat, showing the highest evolutional development of the hat as a practically useful article. I am going to make him an offer for it.