The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 32

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, February, 1898.

DEAR FRIEND,--Two or three mornings ago I woke up with a vague feeling of pleasure--a dim notion that something very pleasant had occurred the day before. Then I remembered that the pleasure had come from your unanswered letter. I kept putting off writing, nevertheless, day after day, in consequence partly of the conviction that such a letter should not be answered in a dull mood, and partly because some of my college work this past week has been more than usually complicated--involving a study of subjects that I thoroughly hate, but must try to make interesting--the literature and spirit of the eighteenth century.

Well, even now, I do not quite know what to say about your letter. To tell me that I have something of your father's spirit more than pleased me--not because I could quite believe it, but because you did. Your father must have been a very fine man, without any pettiness,--and I have more smallness in me than you can suspect. How could it be otherwise! If a man lives like a rat for twenty or twenty-five years, he must have acquired something of the disposition peculiar to house-rodents,--mustn't he? Anyhow, I could never agree to let you take all the trouble you propose to take for me merely as a matter of "thank you." I must contrive ways and means to better your proposal--not to cancel the obligation, for that could not be done, but at least to make you quite sure that I appreciate the extreme rarity of such friendship.

I am writing with hesitation to-day (chiefly, indeed, through a sense of duty to you),--for I fear that you are in trouble, and that my letter is going to reach you at the worst possible time. However, I hope you have not lost any very dear friends by that terrible accident at Havana. I think you told me that you were once on that ship, nevertheless; and I fear that you must receive some bad news. My sympathies are with you in any event.

My Boston friend is lost to me, certainly. I got a letter yesterday from him--showing the serious effect upon friendship of taking to one's self a wife,--a fashionable wife. It was meant to be exactly like the old letters;--but it wasn't. Paymaster M. M. must also some day take a wife, and ... Oh! I know what you are going to say;--they all say that!

They all a.s.sure you that they _both_ love you, and that their house will be always open to you, etc., etc., and then--they forget all about you--purposely or otherwise. Still, one ought to be grateful,--the dropping is so gently and softly done.

Affectionately ever, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO MR. AND MRS. JOHN ALBEE

TOKYO, February, 1898.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,--I am going to address you together, as that will save me from the attempt to write in two keys corresponding to the differing charm of your two letters. Certainly it gave me, as you surmised, sincere pleasure to hear from you. Mrs. Albee surprised me at the same time by a most agreeable, though I fear somewhat _generous_, reference to a forgotten letter. I think I must have penned many extravagances in those days. I _know_ it--in certain cases: anyhow I should be afraid to read my own letters to Mr. Albee over again. As for my old ambition then expressed, I don't quite know what to say. The attempt referred to led me far at one time in the wrong direction--though whatever I have learned of style has certainly been due rather to French and Spanish studies than to English ones. I have now dropped theories, nevertheless; and I simply try to do the best I can, without reference to schools.

Do you know that I had a dim notion always that Mr. Albee was a millionaire,--or at least a very wealthy dilettante?--which would be the best of reasons for never sending him a book, notwithstanding my grateful remembrance of his first generous encouragement. (_Here_ I use "generous" in the strongest meaning possible.) I am, _selfishly_, rather pleased to hear that the price of a book is sometimes for him, as for me, a question worth thinking over--because the fact permits me to offer him a volume occasionally. Otherwise indeed I wish he were rich as my fancy painted him.

You say that you have not read "all my books on j.a.pan." Any that you particularly care to read, I can send you--though I should not recommend the "Glimpses," except for reference. "Kokoro" would probably best please Mrs. Albee, and after it, "Out of the East." Hereafter I shall send a copy of every "new book" to you. Of course I shall be glad to have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Albee's "Prose Idyls"--many sincere thanks for the kind remembrance!

With kindest and best regards, faithfully ever,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO JOHN ALBEE

TOKYO, May, 1898.

DEAR MR. ALBEE,--My best thanks for the "Prose Idyls." The book leaves on the mind an impression of quiet brightness like that of a New England summer sky thinly veiled. Three idyls especially linger in my imagination,--each for a reason all its own. Hawthorne might have written "The Devil's Bargain:" it is a powerful moral fancy, and the touch of grotesque humour in it is just enough to keep it from being out of tone in the gallery of optimist studies. "The Family Mirror" is haunting: the whole effect, to my notion, being brought out by that charming reference to the damaged spot at the back. Then "A Mountain Maid" much appealed to me by its suggestion of that beautiful and mysterious _sauvagerie_, as the French call it,--that wholly instinctive shrinking from caress, which develops with the earliest budding of womanhood, but which the girl could not herself possibly explain.

Indeed I fancy that only evolutional philosophy can explain it at all.

a.n.a.logous conditions in the boy of fourteen or fifteen are well worthy of study--already I had attempted a little sketch on this subject, which _may_ be printed some day or other: "A Pair of Eyes."

My next volume will have a series of what I might call _metaphysical idyls_, perhaps, at its latter end. I fear you will think them too sombre,--now that I have felt something of the sunshine of your soul.

However, each of us can only give his own tone to the thread which he contributes to the infinite warp and woof of human thought and emotion.

Is it not so? With kindest regards to Mrs. Albee, very gratefully yours,

LAFCADIO HEARN (Y. KOIZUMI).

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, February, 1898.

DEAR McDONALD,--I must try to forget some of your beautiful letter for fear that it should give me much too good an opinion of myself. A reverse state of mind is, on the whole, much better for the writer,--I mean for any professional writer.

I believe all that you wish me to believe about your generous call--but, if friend McDonald does not think my house a poor rat-trap, that is because friend McDonald has not yet discovered what a beautiful j.a.panese house is like. Let me a.s.sure him, therefore, that it is something so dainty, so wonderful, that only by custom can one cease to be afraid to walk about in it.

Yes, as you surmised, one of your suggestions is wrong. The professional writer, however small his own powers may be, generally knows the range of literary possibilities; and I _know_ that what you wish cannot be done by any Western writer with the least hope of success. It has been extensively tried--always with the result of failure. The best attempt, perhaps, was the effort of Judith Gautier,--a very delicate French writer; but it did not succeed. As for "A Muramasa Blade," "Mito Yashiki," etc., the less said the better. In any case, it is not so much that the subject itself is immensely difficult for a foreigner, as that even supposing this difficulty mastered, the Western public would not care twopence about the result. Material is everywhere at hand. Yearly, from the j.a.panese press are issued the most wonderful and thrilling stories of j.a.panese feudal life; but a master-translation of these, accompanied with ill.u.s.trations of the finest kind, would fall dead in a Western book-market, and find its way quickly into the ten-cent boxes of second-hand dealers. And why? Simply because the Occidental reader could not feel interested in the poetry or romance of a life so remote.

No: the public want in fiction things taken raw and palpitating out of life itself,--the life they know,--the life everybody knows,--not that which is known only to a few. Stories from j.a.pan (or India or China, for that matter) must be stories about Western people among alien surroundings. And the people must not be difficult to understand; they must be people like the owner of the "Mary Gloster" in Kipling's "Seven Seas." (You ought to buy that book--and love it.) Of course, I don't mean to say that I could ever do anything of Kipling's kind--I should have to do much humbler work,--but I am indicating what I mean by "raw out of life."

As for the other suggestion,--who ever was such a pretty maker of compliments!--I can only say that I am happy to have a friend who thus thinks of me.

Gratefully, with much thanks for your charming letter,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, March, 1898.

DEAR McDONALD,--I did not think much of the t.i.tle of Morrow's book; but your judgement of the stories interested me, and the selfsame evening I began the volume--in bed. I read three quarters at a run, and the rest early in the morning. They are queer and sometimes powerful little stories--not less interesting because they are, most of them, improbable. They have the charm of the now old-fashioned stories of 1850-70,--perhaps not finished to the same extent as the _Atlantic_ stories used to be; but they make me think of them a little. (The literary centres clamour for realism to-day; but I fancy that the taste for the romantic will live a good while longer.) Then again there is a little of the old-time gold light of California days here--that will always have a charm for readers. I wonder if Morrow is a young man: if he is, I should believe him likely to do still better in the future. If he writes for money, he need not do much finer work; but if just for love of the thing, I should say that he could finish his work better than he does,--as in the study of the emotions of the man who finds his wife untrue to him, and solves a moral problem after quite an ideal fashion. The subject was splendid: it might have been made more of.--But not to criticize things--especially things which I could not do myself--I must say that I enjoyed the tales, and that they ought to have a very good sale.

Somehow your own story--the "Highbinder story"--kept riding on the back of that gold dragon all the while I was reading. The real dominated the romantic, and yet betimes made the romantic seem possible. I could feel everything to be just as it was--my experience as a police-reporter gave verisimilitude to the least detail. You are after all a knight-errant in soul,--a real knight, tilting, not against shadows and windmills, but against the dragons of corrupted law and the giants of fraud who haunt the nineteenth century. You are a survival, I fear--there are few like you: you ride alone: all the more reason that you should take every care of yourself--care of your health; I fear you are not exercising enough, keeping too confined. If you are really, as I believe, fond of your little friend, don't forget his prayer that you make health your No. 1 consideration.

Hope to be down Friday about 2 P. M. or 2.30 at latest.

Affectionately, LAFCADIO.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

MARCH, 1898.

DEAR McDONALD,--I do not feel pleased at your returning to me the money and giving me your own copy of the book. I feel mean over it. But what can one do with a man who deliberately takes off his own coat to cover his friend during a nine minutes' drive? I shall remember the _feeling_ of that coat--warmth of friendship must also have been electrical in it--until I die.

Affectionately and somewhat reproachfully,--in haste,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

I write _in haste_, so as not to keep your man waiting.

TO MITCh.e.l.l McDONALD

TOKYO, March, 1898.

DEAR McDONALD,--Just got your letter,--your more than kind letter.

Happily there is no occasion to send the telegram. I am getting well fast, and think I shall be lecturing on Monday. No: I did not minimize things. I have been laid up, but it was more painful than serious. Can't tell what it was--a painful swelling of one side of the face, and nose.

My picturesque nose suffered most. That a square mile of solid pain could be concentrated into one square inch of nose was a revelation!

Anyhow, it felt just like a severe case of frost-bite; but I suppose it was only some sort of a cold. Going to Yokohama had nothing to do with it; but the weather must have had. It was rather trying, you know, last Tuesday.