The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 28

Student--"I am not interested in your ideas. Will you or will you not?"

Professor (flushing with anger, like Sigurd the Bishop)--"No."

Student turns his back upon professor, and walks away with the air of one going to prepare for a vendetta.

I have told you before that the first, second, and third year cla.s.ses are mixed together. But that makes no matter. The matter is that the students can change the subjects of their studies when they please, and do so occasionally by way of showing their disapproval of the professor.

"You must not teach that subject: I wish you to teach us about Greek mythology instead" is a specimen observation.

I cannot write to you about such delightful friends as the one described in your last letter, for the simple reason that I haven't any. (You know that it is very difficult for me to find sympathizers in such a frogpond as the foreign community of an open port.) The Russian professor of philosophy, although boasting a Heidelberg degree, acknowledges to me that he believes heretics ought to be burnt alive ("for the saving of their souls"), and that he hopes to see the whole world under Catholic domination. I fancy he dreams of the Russian conquest to come; and the Panslavic dream is not impossible! He is a queer man,--about fifty at least,--a bachelor. Soft and cold--snowy in fact. The Jesuit improves on acquaintance--gentle, courteous, half-sympathetic, but always on guard, like a man afraid of being struck by some human affection. The American lawyer, hard and grim, has a rough plain goodness about him--providing that he be put to no trouble.... And the German, Dr. R----, of whom I spoke rather unsympathetically before, seems to me now the finest man of the lot. There can be no question of his learning, and his dogmatism; but he gives me the solid feeling of a man honest like a great rock of black basalt--huge, hard, direct--one of those rare German types with eyes and hair blacker than a coal. His hand is broad, hard, warm always, and has something electrical in its grasp. I think I shall get fond of him, if he doesn't talk Virchow to me. (For Virchow is my _bete noir_!

I hate his name with unspeakable hatred.) At all events, to my great surprise, I find this grim dark German takes absolute pleasure in doing a kindness, and in speaking well of others. Wherefore I feel that I am unreasonable and wrong to feel repelled by his liking for Virchow.

Of course, we must all go some day, if the university doesn't go first.

But as all have big salaries, all prepare for the rainy day. I shall not complain if allowed to finish my three years--though I should prefer six. But you can imagine how unstable everything looks--with changes in the ministry of education about every twelve months,--and the political influences behind the students. I am reposing upon the safety-valves of a steam-boiler,--much cracked, with many of the rivets loose,--and the engineers studying how to be out of the way when the great whang-bang comes around.

And when it does come, may it blow me, for a moment at least, in the immediate vicinity of Ellwood Hendrick.

Ever affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, December, 1896.

DEAR OLD FELLOW,-- ... The Emperor paid us a visit the other day; and I had to don a frock-coat and a thing which inspired the Mohammedan curse,--"May G.o.d put a HAT on you!" We stood in sleet and snow--horribly cold (no overcoats allowed) and were twice permitted to bow down before His Majesty. I confess I saw only _les bottes de S. M._ He has a deep commanding voice--is above the average in height. Most of us got cold, I think--nothing more for the nonce. Lowell discovered one delicious thing in the Far East--"The Gate of Everlasting Ceremony." But the ancient ceremony was beautiful. Swallow-tails and plugs are not beautiful. My little wife tells me: "Don't talk like that: even if a robber were listening to you upon the roof of the house, he would get angry." So I am only saying this to you: "I don't see why I should be obliged to take cold, merely for the privilege of bowing to H. M." Of course this is half-jest, half-earnest. There is a reason for things--for anything except--a plug-hat!...

Affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, January, 1897.

DEAR HENDRICK,--"Sentimental Tommy" is marvellous. Gives me a very great idea of Barrie. The question with me is whether such a _milieu_ and such a suggested ancestry could produce such types as Grizel and Tommy. I am not quite sure of it: I am still under the impression that blood _will_ tell, and that children of drunkards and wh.o.r.es are not apt to prove angels--though there must be exceptions when the better inheritance dominates. However, the book has a good meaning as well as a great art, and the tendency is to recognitions of truths deeper than those of "Philistia." You were awfully good to send it; but I feel rather small--my last sending being so poor a sprat to your salmon.

Never mind. I'll send you my own book sometime this year--I _think_. It ought to be in the printer's hands by the time you get this letter. It will probably be called "A Living G.o.d, and Other Studies"--or something of that sort. But only the G.o.ds exactly know.

Half of my psychological book--or nearly half--is also written. I shall dedicate it probably to the Lady of a Myriad Souls--whose photo in a black frame decorates my j.a.panese alcove. Provided--I don't die or worse before it is finished. Any suggestions? I'm trying to explain all mysterious things which philosophers, etc., call _inexplicable_ feelings. Have you any? Please turn some over to me, and let me digest them. I've managed the _frisson_ (woman's touch), some colour-sensations, sublimities, etc. I want some mysterious feelings--some exquisitenesses,--normal only. _Parfum de jeunesse_ suggests experiences. Do you know any?...

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

KOBE, February, 1897.

DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... Oh! have you read those two marvellous things of Kipling's last--"McAndrews' Hymn," and "The Mary Gloster"? Especially the "Mary Gloster." I have no more qualified ideas about Kipling. He is to my fixed conviction the greatest of living English poets, and greater than all before him in the line he has taken. As for England, he is her modern Saga-man,--skald, scop, whatever you like: lineal descendants of those fellows to whom the Berserker used to say: "Now you just stand right here, and see us fight so that you can make a song about it."

Meanwhile the Holy Ghost has become temporarily (perhaps) disgusted with me; and I am doing nothing for three days past. Simply can't--no feelings. I can _grind_; but what's the use? I want to do something remarkable, unique, extraordinary, audacious; and I haven't the qualifications. I want sensations--dreams--glimpses. Nothing! Will I ever get another good idea? Don't know. Will I ever have any literary success?--So swings the pendulum! I fear my next book won't be as good as it ought to be....

After all, the Jesuit _is_ really the most interesting person. We are close to each other because we are so enormously far away,--just as in Wundt's colour-theory the red and violet ends of the spectrum overlap after a fashion....

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN.

(Y. KOIZUMI.)

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, May, 1897.

DEAR E. H.,--I have been reading your last over and over again--because it is very pretty indeed, one of the very prettiest letters I ever read.

There is altogether something so deliriously _a.s.sured_ about it--so full of happy confidence, that I feel quite comfortable and jolly about you ... notwithstanding the fact that I am tolerably sure you will be taken utterly away from me in the end. For this shall a man leave not only his friend, but his father and his mother,--saith the Sacred Book. You know that particular pa.s.sage makes the j.a.panese mad,--but not quite so mad as the observation: "Unless a man shall hate his father and his mother,"

etc., which has knocked the wind out of much missionary enterprise.

I can't write much more about yourself, because I don't know anything yet. So I shall talk about Tokyo.

As you know, I have been somewhat idle--for a month at least. And the loneliness thickens. And certain gentlemen make it a rule to spit upon the ground with a loud noise when I pa.s.s by. I believe the trick is not confined to the Occident, having found j.a.panese skilful at it; but these be nevertheless manners of Heidelberg doctors! Nevertheless, it won't work.

But really the conditions are very queer. I felt instinctively before going to Tokyo, that I was going into a world of intrigue; but what a world I had no conception. The foreign element appears to live in a condition of perpetual panic. Everybody is infinitely afraid of everybody else, afraid to speak not only their minds, but to speak about anything except irrelevant matters, and then only in a certain formal tone sanctioned by custom. They huddle together sometimes at parties, and talk all together loudly about nothing,--like people in the expectation of a possible catastrophe, or like folks making a noise to drive away ghosts, or fear of ghosts. Somebody, quite accidentally, observes--or rather drops an observation about facts. Instantly there is a scattering away from that man as from dynamite. He is isolated for several weeks by common consent. Then he goes to work to reform a group of his own. Gradually he collects one--and rival groups are formed. But presently some one in another party or chat talks about something as it ought to be. Bang-fizz--chaos and confusion. Then all the groups unite to isolate that wicked tongue. The man is dangerous--an intriguer--ha!

And so on--_ad lib_.

This is panic, pure and simple, and the selfishness of panic. But there is some reason for it--considering the cla.s.s of minds. We are all in j.a.pan living over earthquakes. Nothing is stable. All j.a.panese officialdom is perpetually in flux,--nothing but the throne is even temporarily fixed; and the direction of the currents depends much upon force of intrigue. They shift, like currents in the sea, off a coast of tides. But the side currents penetrate everywhere, and _clapotent_ all comers, and swirl round the writing-stool of the smallest clerk,--whose pen trembles with continual fear for his wife's and babies' rice.

Being good or clever or generous or popular or the best man for the place counts for very little. Intrigue has nothing at all to do with qualities. Popularity in the biggest sense has, of course, some value, but only the value depending upon certain alternations of the rhythm of outs-and-ins. That's all.

In the Orient intrigue has been cultivated as an art for ages, and it has been cultivated as an art in every country, no doubt. But the result of the adoption of const.i.tutional government by a race accustomed to autocracy and caste, enabled intrigue to spread like a ferment, in new forms, through every condition of society,--and almost into every household. It has become an infinite net--unbreakable, because elastic as air, though strong enough to upset ministers as readily as to oust clerks.

Future prospects--? _Degringolade_.

I feel sorry to say that I think I have been wrong about a good many of my sincere hopes and glowing predictions. Tokyo takes out of me all power to hope for a great j.a.panese future. You know how easily a society in such a state can be manipulated by shrewd foreign influence. The race must give evidence of some tremendous self-purifying and self-solidifying power, before my hopes can be restored to their former rainbow hues. At present I think it can truthfully be said that every official branch of service shows the rapidly growing weakness that means demoralization. The causes are numerous--too numerous to mention,--inadequate pay being a large one, as the best men will not take positions at $15 or $20 a month. But the great cause is utter instability and discouragement. The P. O., the telegraph-service, the railroads, etc., all are in a queer state.

And I--am as a flea in a wash-bowl. My best chance is to lie quiet and wait the coming of events. I hope to see Europe, with my boy, some day.

Well, this is only private history to amuse E. H., to make Western by contrast to Eastern life seem more beautiful to him. Affectionately,

LAFCADIO.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

TOKYO, May, 1897.

DEAR E. H.,--I am still alive in alternations of gloom and sun. I antic.i.p.ate now chiefly a national bankruptcy, or a war with Russia to upset my bank-account. There is a Buddhist text (Saddharma-Pundarika, chap. III, verse 125):--"The man whom they happen to serve is unwilling to give them much, and what he gives is soon lost. Such is the fruit of sinfulness." It would be impossible, I imagine, that I should escape some future extraordinary experience of calamity. It is simply ridiculous,--can't help seeing the absurdity of it. Otherwise I have sorrow.

For my friends have been dying quickly. Some years ago, one said to me: "You will outlive us: foreigners live longer than j.a.panese." This I did not think true, as I know many j.a.panese over eighty, and the longevity of the western farmers is sometimes extraordinary--110 years being not very rare, and 100 plentiful, as examples. But my friend was doubtless referring to the more delicate cla.s.ses--the hot-house plants, conservatory-growths, moulded by etiquette and cla.s.sical culture and home-law. And I fear he was right. Nearly all my j.a.panese friends are dead. The last case was three or four days ago,--the sweetest of little women,--a creature not seemingly of flesh and blood, but made of silk embroidery mixed with soul. She was highly accomplished--one of my wife's school friends. Married to a good man, but a man unable to care for her as she ought to have been cared for. No force to bear children: the pretty creature had never been too strong, and over-education had strained her nerves. She ought never to have been married at all. She knew she was dying, and came to bid us good-bye, laughing and lying bravely. "I must go home," she said, "but I'll soon be well and come back." She must have suffered terribly for more than a year--but she never complained, never ceased to smile, never broke down. Died soon after reaching home.

Another friend, a man, dying, tells his wife: "Open the windows (_shoji_) wide, that my friend may see the chrysanthemums in the garden." And he watches my face, laughing, while I pretend to be pleased. The beauty of his soul is finer than any chrysanthemum, and it is flitting. He wakes up in the night and calls: "Mother, did you hear from my friend? is his son well?" Then he goes to sleep again--his last words--for he is dead at sunrise. These lives are too fine and frail for the brutal civilization that is going to crush them all out--every one of them,--and prove to the future that sweetness is immoral _a la Nietzsche_: that to be unselfish is to sentence one's self to death and one's beloved to misery and probable extermination.

But then imagine beings who never, in their lives, did anything which was not--I will not say "right," that is commonplace--any single thing which was not _beautiful_! Should I write this the world would, of course, call me a liar, as it has become accustomed to do. But I could not now even write of them except to you--the wounds are raw.