The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 25

Exercise was difficult at first; but now I am used to it. By exercising every day, I have kept quite well.

Kazuo, except for a cold, is all a father can imagine. He talks very well now, and tries to draw a little. I must get rich for his sake if I have any brains to make money. My friends in America and England predict good fortune for me. I am not too hopeful; but I think it is much better that I hereafter devote all my efforts to writing--until I find whether I can do well by it. Should I succeed I can travel everywhere, and Kazuo's education abroad would not be a cause of anxiety.

Ever with warmest regards, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

KOBE, December, 1895.

DEAR HENDRICK,--Eyes a little better, and courage reviving. Moreover I enclose letter showing prospects in a better light. The book is to be out in spring.

My boy is beginning to talk, and to look better. He walks now. He has much changed,--always growing fairer. I shall send a photo of him as soon as I think the difference from his first chubby aspect becomes apparent enough to interest you....

What succeeds like force?--eh? See what j.a.pan has now become in the eyes of the world! Yet that war was unjust, unnecessary. It was forced upon j.a.pan. She knew her strength. Her people wished to turn that strength against European powers. Her rulers, more wisely, turned the storm against China,--just to show the West what she could do, if necessary.

Thus she has secured her autonomy. But let no man believe j.a.pan hates China. China is her teacher and her Palestine. I antic.i.p.ate a reaction against Occidental influence after this war, of a very serious kind.

j.a.pan has always hated the West--Western ideas, Western religion. She has always loved China. Free of European pressure, she will a.s.sert her old Oriental soul again. There will be no conversion to Christianity.

No! not till the sun rises in the West. And I hope to see a United Orient yet bound into one strong alliance against our cruel Western civilization. If I have been able to do nothing else in my life, I have been able at least to help a little--as a teacher and as a writer, and as an editor--in opposing the growth of what is called society and what is called civilization. It is very little, of course,--but the G.o.ds ought to love me for it. They ought to make me rich enough to go every year for six months to uncivilized lands--such as Java, Borneo, etc. If I have good luck with my books, I'll make a tropical trip next spring.

Love to you, LAFCADIO.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, January, 1896.

DEAR HENDRICK,--It is really queer, you know--this university. It is imposing to look at,--with its relics of feudalism, to suggest the picturesque past, surrounding a structure that might be in the city of Boston, or in Philadelphia, or in London, without appearing at all out of place. There is even a large, deserted, wood-shadowed Buddhist temple in the grounds!

The students have uniforms and peculiar caps with Chinese letters on them; but only a small percentage regularly wear the uniform. The old discipline has been relaxed; and there is a general return to sandals and robes and _hakama_,--the cap alone marking the university man.

About seventy-five per cent of the students ought not to be allowed in the university at all for certain branches. Some who know no European language but French attend German lectures on philosophy; some who know nothing of any European language attend lectures on philology.

What is the university, then?--is it only a mask to impose upon the intellectual West? No: it is the best j.a.pan can do, but it has the fault of being a gate to public office. Get through the university, and you have a post--a start in life. Fancy the outside Oriental pressure to force lads through--the influences intercrossing and fulminating!

Accordingly, the power within is little more than nominal. Who rules in fact? n.o.body exactly. Certainly the Directing President does not,--nor do the heads of colleges, except in minor matters of discipline.

All, or nearly all, are graduates of German, English, or French or American universities;--they know what ought to be--but they do only what they can. Something nameless and invisible, much stronger than they,--political perhaps, certainly social,--overawes the whole business.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. HEARN'S GARDEN IN TOKYO]

I ought not to say anything, and won't _except to you_. No foreign professor says much,--even after returning home. None have had just cause to complain of treatment received. Besides, if things were as they are in the West, I wouldn't be allowed to teach (there would be a demand for a "Christian" _and_ gentleman). I lecture on subjects which I do not understand; and yet without remorse, because I know just enough to steer those who know much less. After a year or two I shall probably be more fit for the position.

Studying in one cla.s.s, for a university text, Tennyson's "Princess"

(my selection); in another, "Paradise Lost,"--the students wanted it, because they heard it was difficult. They are beginning to perceive that it is unspeakably difficult for them. (Remember, they know nothing of Christian mythology or history.) I lecture on the Victorian poets, etc., and on special themes,--depending a good deal on dictation.

Only two and one half miles from the university. Seas of mud between.

One hour daily to go, and one to return by jinrikisha!--agony unspeakable. But I have one joy. No one ever dreams of coming to see me. To do so one should have webbed feet and be able to croak and to sp.a.w.n,--or else one should become a bird. It has rained for three months almost steadily;--some of the city is under water: the rest is partly under mud. And to increase the amphibious joy, half the streets are torn open to put down Western water-mains. They will yawn thus, probably, for years to come.

The professors I have seen few of. I send you two books; notice the charming pictures to "Inoshima." Florenz is a Magister Artium Liberalium of Heidelberg, I think,--fat and good-natured and a little--odd. There is a Russian professor of philosophy, Von Koeber,--a charming man and a divine pianist. There is a go-and-be-d.a.m.ned-to-you American professor of law.... There is a Jesuit priest, Emile Heck,--professor of French literature. There is a Buddhist priest, professor of Buddhism. There is an anti-Christian thinker and really great philosopher, Inoue Tetsujiro,--lectures against Western Christianity, and on Buddhism.

There is an infidel,--a renegade,--a man lost to all sense of shame and decency, called Lafcadio Hearn, professing atheism and English Literature and various villainous notions of his own.

The Jesuit I did not want to know. I am afraid of Jesuits. Out of the corner of mine cyclops-eye I looked upon him. Elegantly dressed,--with a beard enormous, bushy, majestic, black as h.e.l.l,--and a small keen bright black caressing demoniac eye. The Director, who knows not, introduced me!--oh! ah! Embarra.s.sed at the thought of my own thoughts contrasted with the perfect courtesy of the man. Blundered;--spoke atrocious French; gave myself away; got questioned without receiving any idea in return except an idea of admiration for generous courtesy and very quick piercing keenness. Felt uncomfortable all day after--talked to myself as if I had still before me the half-shut Jesuit eye and the vast and voluminous beard. _Et le fin au prochain numero,--ou plus tard._

L. H.

TO PAGE M. BAKER

KOBE, January, 1896.

DEAR PAGE,--What a pleasure your letter was--in spite of the typewriting! How shall I answer it? From the end backwards,--as the last was the most pleasant.

Of course it was _really_ long ago that we used to sit together--sometimes in your office, sometimes upon a doorstep, sometimes at a little marble-topped table somewhere over a gla.s.s of something,--and talk such talk as I never talked since. It is very nearly ten years ago. That is quite true. But you say that my flitting has been my gain, and that I have made myriads of friends by my books.

That is not quite so true as you think. You think so only because you have still the heart of the old Southern gentleman,--the real aristo.

and soldier,--the man who said exactly what he thought, and expected other people to do the same, and lived in a world where people did so.

That is why also you remain for me quite distinct and different from other men: you have never lost your ideals--therefore you can remain ideal to others, as you will always do to me. But you are enormously mistaken in supposing that I have made myriads of friends, or gained anything--except what one gains by disillusion, and the change that comes with the care and love of others: this, of course, is gain. But book-success! No: it seems to me just the reverse. The slightest success has to be very dearly paid for. It brings no friends at all, but many enemies and ill-wishers. It brings letters from autograph-hunters, and letters enclosing malicious criticisms, and letters requesting subscriptions to all sorts of shams, and letters of invitation to join respectable-humbug societies, and requests to call on people who merely want to gratify the meanest sort of curiosity,--that which views a fellow creature _only_ as a curiosity. Then, of course, there are uncounted little tricks and advertising dodges to be avoided like pitfalls,--and extravagant pretences of sympathy, often so clever as to seem really genuine, made for utilitarian purposes. Then there are all sorts of little sn.o.bberies and patronizings and disappointments. And after the work is done, it soon begins to get shabby and threadbare in memory; and I pick it up and wonder how I could have written it, and marvel how anybody could have bought it, and find that the criticisms which I didn't like were nearly all true. Sometimes I feel good, and think I have really done well; but that very soon pa.s.ses, and in a day or two I find I have been all wrong, and sure never to write anything quite right.

The fact seems to be that when ideals go away, writing becomes mere downright hard work; and the reward of the pleasure of finishing it is not for me, because I have n.o.body to talk to about it, and n.o.body to take it up, and read it infinitely better than I could do myself. The most delightful criticisms I ever had were your own readings aloud of my vagaries in the _T.-D_. office, after the proofs came down. How I should like to have that experience once more--just to hear you read something of mine quite fresh from the composition-room,--with the wet sharp inky smell still on the paper!

But I suppose I have gained otherwise. You also. For there is something in everybody--the best of him, too, isn't it?--which only unfolds in him when he has to think about his double,--the other self to which he has given existence; and then he sees things differently. I suppose you do.

I imagine you must now be ever so much more lovable than you used to be--but that you have less of yourself proportionately to give away. If I were in New Orleans I don't think that I could coax you to talk after a fixed hour: you would say, "--! it's after twelve o'clock: I must be off!"

What you write about little Miss Constance is very sweet. I hope soon to send her some j.a.panese fairy-tales written by your humble servant;--that is, I _hope_; for the Tokyo publisher is awfully slow in getting them out. You have had anxiety, I find. But the delicacy that causes it means a highly complex nervous organization; and the anxieties will be well compensated, I fancy, later on. She will become, judging from the suggestion of that gold-head in the photograph, almost too beautiful: I hope to see another photograph later on. I shall send one of Kazuo in a few days. We were terribly frightened about him,--for he caught a serious cold on the lungs; but after a few weeks he picked up well. He gets taller, and every day surprises us with some new observation. He seems to get fairer always instead of darker--n.o.body now ever takes him to be a j.a.panese boy. He is very jealous of his mother,--won't allow me to monopolize her for even five minutes; and I am no longer master in my own house. Servants and relatives and grandparents, they all obey him,--and pay no attention at all to my wishes unless they happen to be in harmony with his own. Certainly j.a.panese people are kinder to children than any other people in the world,--too good altogether.

Still, they do not spoil children,--for as a general rule they manage to make them grow up strangely, incomprehensibly obedient. I don't understand it,--except as heredity: indeed, I may as well frankly say that the longer I live in j.a.pan, the less I know about the j.a.panese.

"That is a sign," says one Oriental friend, "that you are beginning to understand. It is only when a foreigner confesses he knows nothing about us that there is some reason to expect he will understand us later on."

About the letters, I need only say, perhaps, that I shall give you the best of what I write this year (excepting, of course, essays on Buddhist philosophy, or stuff of that sort, which would be out of place, no doubt, in a newspaper). I may include a few little stories....

"Kokoro" ought to reach you next March. It is rather a crazy book; but I wish I could hear you _read_ one or two pages in it....

Ever affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO OCHIAI

KOBE, February, 1896.

DEAR OCHIAI,--I am delighted that you have taken up medicine, for two reasons. First, it will a.s.sure your independence--your ability to maintain yourself, and to help your people. Secondly, it will change all your ideas about the world we live in, and will make you large-minded in many ways, if you study well. For in these days, you cannot study medicine without studying many different branches of science--chemistry, which will oblige you to understand something of the nature of the great mystery of matter,--physiology, which will show you that the most ordinary human body is full of machinery more wonderful than any genius ever invented,--biology, which will give you perceptions of the eternal laws which shape all form and regulate all motion,--histology, which will show you that all life is shaped, after methods that no man can understand, out of one substance into millions of different forms,--embryology, which will teach you how the whole history of a species or a race is shown in the development of the individual, as organ after organ unfolds and develops in the wonderful process of growth. The study of medicine is, to a large extent, the study of the universe and of universal laws,--and makes a better man of any one who is intelligent enough to master its principles. Of course you must learn to love it,--because no man can do anything really great with a subject that he does not like. There are many very horrible things in it which you will have to face; but you must not be repelled by these, because the facts behind them are very beautiful and wonderful. There is so much in medicine--such a variety of subjects, that you will have a wide choice before you in case some particular branch should not be attractive to you.

Also do not forget that your knowledge of English will be of great use to you in medicine, and that, if you love literature, medicine will give you plenty of chance to indulge that love. (Some of our best foreign authors, you know, have been practising physicians.) In Kobe I find that some of the best j.a.panese doctors find English very useful to them, not only in their practice, but also in their private studies. But you will also have to learn German; and that language will open to you a very wonderful literature, if you like literature--not to speak of the scientific advantages of German, which are unrivalled.

Well, I trust to hear good news from you later on. Take great care of your health, I beg of you, and believe me ever anxious for your success.

Very truly always, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO SENTARO NISHIDA

KOBE, February, 1896.

DEAR NISHIDA,--I should have answered your kindest letter before now but for illness,--so I only sent a photo of Kazuo, as I had a cold in my eyes, nose, chest, back; a most atrocious and d.a.m.nable cold, which rendered any work out of the question.