Concerning Lafcadio Hearn; With a Bibliography by Laura Stedman. George M. Gould
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an unwelcome charge upon those Irish relations or friends of his father, in whose care he was placed. It is said that he always spoke with bitterness of his father, and with love of his mother. Beyond a certain amount of money allotted (by his father?) for his support, neither parent was evidently concerned about his upbringing and welfare, and all who should have been interested in those things made haste to rid themselves of the obligations. If the stories of his boyish "badness" were true, the lad could not be blamed for putting into practice his inherited instincts, so that the pathos of his early misfortunes only increase our sympathy for the youth and his tragedies. (I reproduce a photograph of Lafcadio and his aunt, Mrs. Justin, or Sarah, Brenane. The lad must have been at the time about eight years of age.) The "consignment" of the nineteen-year old youth to the distant relative of the family, who was then living in Cincinnati, explains the reason why, landing in New York, he finally went to Cincinnati. How long he lived in New York City and any details of his life there before he went West, may be held as beyond investigation. Mr. Tunison incidentally speaks of him during this time as "sleeping in dry-goods boxes on the street, etc.," and I have heard that he acted as a restaurant waiter. There have been published stories of a period of want and suffering endured in London before the emigration to New York City. Others concerning great scholarship and the intimate knowledge of several languages, especially French, are surely not true. Even in 1889, after the New Orleans and Martinique periods, Hearn could not speak French with ease or correctness. In Cincinnati he secured the help of a French scholar in translating Gautier's "Émaux et Camées." His want of knowledge of the Latin language is deplored in his letters and, to the last, after a dozen or more years in Japan, his inability to read a Japanese newspaper or speak the language was a source of regret to himself, of errors too numerous to mention, and of grievous limitations in his work as an interpreter. In the one field of which his taste, aptitude and function dictated a wide and stimulating acquaintance, folk-lore, he was lamentably wanting. It might seem unfitting to allude to this were it not well to be discriminating in all cases, and had not Hearn sought to reach authoritativeness in a department wherein he had not gathered the fundamental data.
CHAPTER II.—IN PERSON
WHEN, in 1889, Hearn appeared in my reception room, although I had not seen any photograph of him, and had not even known of his coming, I at once said, "You are Lafcadio?" The poor exotic was so sadly out of place, so wondering, so suffering and shy, that I am sure he would have run out of the house if I had not at once shown him an overflowing kindness, or if a tone of voice had betrayed any curiosity or doubt. It was at once agreed that he should stay with me for awhile, and there was no delay in providing him with a seat at my table and a room where he could be at his work of proof-correcting. His "Two Years in the French West Indies" was then going through the press, and an incident connected with the proof-reading illustrates how impossible it was for him, except when necessity drove, to meet any person not already known. He wished to give his reader the tune of the songs printed on pages 426–431, but he knew nothing of music. I arranged with a lady to repeat the airs on her piano as he should whistle them, and then to write them on the music-staff. When the fatal evening arrived, Hearn and I went to the lady's house, but as we proceeded his part in our chatting lapsed into silence, and he lagged behind. Although he finally dragged himself to the foot of the doorstep, after I had rung the bell, his courage failed, and before the door was opened I saw him running as if for life, half a square away!
Even before this adventure I had learned that it was useless to try to get him to lunch or dinner if any stranger were present. I think he always listened to detect the possible presence of a stranger before entering the dining-room, and he would certainly have starved rather than submit to such an ordeal. It may be readily imagined that my attempt to secure his services as a lecturer before a local literary society was a ludicrous failure. He would have preferred hanging.
I allude to this attitude of his mind from no idle or curious reason, but because it arose from logical and necessary reasons. When, later, he was in Japan, I was once importuned, and should not have yielded, to give a friend, who was about to visit Tōkyō, a note of introduction. As I warned my friend Hearn refused to see visitors.
That his extreme shyness depended upon his being unknown, and that it was united to a lack of humour, may be gathered from the fact that, when he came from Martinique, he wore a clothing which inevitably made the passers-by turn and look and smile. Long and repeated endeavours were necessary before I could get his consent to lay aside the outrageous tropical hat for one that would not attract attention. How little he recked of this appears from the tale I heard that a lot of street gamins in Philadelphia formed a queue, the leader holding by Hearn's coat-tails, and, as they marched, all kept step and sang in time, "Where, where, where did you get that hat?"
At once, upon first meeting Hearn, I instinctively recognized that upon my part the slightest sign of a desire or attempt to study him, to look upon him as an object of literary or "natural" history, would immediately put an end to our relations. Indeed, it never at that time entered my mind to think thus of him, and only since collections of his letters and biographies are threatened has it occurred to me to think over our days and months together, and to help, so far as advisable, toward a true understanding of the man and his art.
In 1889 Lafcadio was 5 feet 3 inches tall, weighed 137 pounds, and had a chest girth of 36–¾ inches.
The summer of 1889 made noteworthy changes in Hearn's character. I suspect it was his first experience in anything that might be called home-life. To his beloved pays des revenants, Martinique, his mind constantly reverted, with an Ahnung that he should never see it again. There are truth and pathos and keen self-knowledge, frankly expressed in the letters he would write me in the next room, immediately after we had chatted long together, and when he felt that the pen could better express what he shyly shrank from speaking:
Ah! to have a profession is to be rich, to have international current-money, a gold that is cosmopolitan, passes everywhere. Then I think I would never settle down in any place; would visit all, wander about as long as I could. There is such a delightful pleasantness about the first relations with people in strange places—before you have made any rival, excited any ill wills, incurred anybody's displeasure. Stay long enough in any one place and the illusion is over; you have to sift this society through the meshes of your nerves, and find perhaps one good friendship too large to pass through.
It is a very beautiful world; the ugliness of some humanity only exists as the shadowing that outlines the view; the nobility of man and the goodness of woman can only be felt by those who know the possibilities of degradation and corruption. Philosophically I am simply a follower of Spencer, whose mind gives me the greatest conception of Divinity I can yet expand to receive. The faultiness is not with the world, but with myself. I inherit certain susceptibilities, weaknesses, sensitivenesses, which render it impossible to adapt myself to the ordinary milieu; I have to make one of my own wherever I go, and never mingle with that already made. True, I love much knowledge, but I escape pains which, in spite of all your own knowledge, you could wholly comprehend, for the simple reason that you can mingle with men.
I am really quite lonesome for you, and am reflecting how much more lonesome I shall be in some outrageous equatorial country where I shall not see you any more;—also it seems to me perfectly and inexplainably atrocious to know that some day or other there will be no Gooley at—— St. That I should cease to make a shadow some day seems quite natural, because Hearney boy is only a bubble anyhow ("The earth hath bubbles")—but you, hating mysteries and seeing and feeling and knowing everything—you have no right ever to die at all. And I can't help doubting whether you will. You have almost made me believe what you do not believe yourself: that there are souls. I haven't any, I know; but I think you have—something electrical and luminous inside you that will walk about and see things always. Are you really—what I see of you—only an Envelope of something subtler and perpetual? Because if you are, I might want you to pass down some day southward—over the blue zone and the volcanic peaks like a little wind—and flutter through the palm-plumes under the all-putrefying sun—and reach down through old roots to the