Concerning Lafcadio Hearn; With a Bibliography by Laura Stedman. George M. Gould
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of the articles, contributed as well as editorial, conveyed by his customary signature, penciled at the end or beginning of each paragraph or column which he had written. The very title of the paper itself was a witness in the same way, and shows that at that time, although Hearn kept his name concealed, he was not, as later, sensitive concerning his ocular defect.[6] It is plain that the word Giglampz refers to the large and conspicuous spectacles or eye-glasses which at that time (not later) were worn habitually by Hearn. The proof of this comes out in the illustration occupying the full first page of the initial number, and entitled:
"A Prospect of Herr Kladderadatsch,
Introducynge
Mr. Giglampz tu ye Publycke."
[6] In the first number is an editorial paragraph, written by Hearn, reading as follows:—"The public has indulged in speculation and no little levity, in regard to our name. In this as in the future conduct of this extraordinary sheet, we seek only to please ourselves. Whether the Publishing Company will declare 'Irish Dividends' in six months, or not, does not concern us. We (the editorial corps) being on a salary, look on public favour with serene indifference. The name pleases us. We look upon it in the light of a conundrum, calculated to induce reflection in simple minds. We hope some one may solve it, as we have incontinently given it up."
The scene is that of the stage of a theatre, and Kladderadatsch proudly presents Mr. Giglampz to the wildly applauding audience. The head of the obsequious Mr. Giglampz is very large compared with his body, but most conspicuous is the enormous pince-nez astride a nose of fitting proportions. Mr. Farney was even permitted to give a mere hint of the editor's facial expression.
A curious and suggestive, even a pathetic, light is thrown upon Hearn's character by the fact that this personal file of his journal with his own inscriptions, signatures, etc., was found in a second-hand book-store by Mr. Farney after Hearn left Cincinnati.
Although it is as much too long for our quoting as it was for introducing the journalistic venture, I cannot help reproducing Hearn's first editorial, the "Salutatory, By a Celebrated French Author, a Friend of Giglampz":
It was a dark and fearsome night in the month of June, 1874; and the pavements of Fourth Street were abandoned to solitude.
The lamps, dripping huge water-drops fire-tinged from their lurid glare, seemed monstrous yellow goblin-eyes, weeping phosphorescent tears.
It was raining, and the funereal sky flamed with lightning. It was such a rain as in the primeval world created verdant seas of slimy mud, subsequently condensed into that fossiliferous strata where to-day spectacled geologists find imbedded the awful remains of the titanic iguanodon, the plesiosaurus, and the icthyosaurus.
We sat motionlessly meditative in the shadows of a Gothic doorway of medieval pattern, and ruefully observed the movements of a giant rat, slaking his thirst at a water-spout. Suddenly we were aware of a pressure—a gentle pressure on our shoulder.
A hurried glance convinced us that the pressure was occasioned by the presence of a hand.
It was a long, bony, ancient hand, dried and withered to the consistency of India-rubber. It might have been compared to the hand of a mummy embalmed in the reign of Rameses III, but we felt a living warmth in its pressure, penetrating our summer linen.
The Oriental wizards occasionally need the assistance of a magic candle, in their groping amid ancient tombs—a candle which burns with a fuming stench so foul, that hungry ghouls flee dismayedly away. This candle is made of green fat—the fat of men long dead. For such a candle it is of course necessary to have a candlestick. To procure this candlestick it is necessary to cut off the right hand of a murderous criminal executed by impalement, and having carefully dried it, to insert the candle in its ghastly grasp. Now the hand laid on our shoulder strongly resembled such a hand.
The living warmth of its pressure alone restrained us from uttering a shriek of hideous fear. A cold sweat ravaged the starched bosom of our under-garment.
Suddenly a face peered out from the shadow, and the sickly glare of the flickering gas-lamp fell full upon it.
The aspect of that face immediately reassured us.
It was long to grotesqueness and meagre even to weirdness. It would have been strongly Mephistophelic but for an air of joviality that was not wholly saturnine. The eyes were deep, piercing, but "laughter-stirred," as those of Haroun Alraschid. The nose was almost satanically aquiline, but its harsh outline was more than relieved by the long smiling mouth, and the countless wrinkles of merriment that intersected one another in crow's-feet all over the ancient face. The stranger's complexion was that of caout-chouc; and his long lank locks were blacker than the plumage of those yellow-footed birds that prey upon the dead. His whole aspect was that of one who, by some eerie, occult art of self-preservation, had been enabled to live through the centuries.
"Am I not addressing the celebrated author——?" said the voice of the uncouthly-featured.
It was a half-merry, half-mocking voice—a deep voice that sounded as though conveyed from a vast distance through the medium of a pneumatic tube.
It therefore resembled in its tone the dreamily-distant voices never-slumbering Fancy hears in the hours devoted to darkness and slumber by moral people.
An enormous drop of soot-tinged water fell upon our nose, incontestably proving that we were awake; and we murmured monosyllabic assent to the stranger's query.
"It is well," replied the Unknown, with a latitudinarian smile of joy. "I have been seeking you. I need your assistance, your talent, your mental vigour so enormously manifested in your cyclopean[7] phrenological development."
[7] The contrast of this allusion to his large single eye with his morbid shyness about it of late years is noteworthy.
"Sapristi, monsieur!—permit me to inquire the nature of——"
"Attend a little, friend, and your curiosity shall be sated with ample satisfaction. I have existed as you see through all ages. I have lived under a thousand alias names, under the various régimes of a thousand civilizations, which flourished on ancient soil now covered by the mile-deep waters of foaming oceans. I have made my dwelling-place in the mighty palace-halls of Egyptian kings, in the giant cities of dead Assyria, in the residences of Aztec monarchs and Peruvian Incas, in the snow-columned temples of the Greek, and the lordly homes of the luxurious Roman. In fact, I am rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; and have been worshipped as a genius in far-sparkling planets ere this mundane sphere was first evolved from that flaming orb. In all time when individualized intelligent thought existed, I have inculcated in living beings the truth of that sublime and eternal maxim—Laugh and grow fat. To-day men must be taught this glorious truth by the Bullock Press rather than the Tongue. I want your pen, not your tongue. Write me a salutatory for my new illustrated weekly—only five cents a copy."
With these words he pressed a glazed Bristol-board card into our trembling hand, and disappeared.
By the light of the weeping street-lamps we read thereon this weird legend:
GIGLAMPZ
The title itself, the Introduction by "Kladderadatsch," and the character of the contributions and cuts make it plain that the third object of the publication, called "Satire," was designed to be much more prominent than "Art" or "Literature." Unquestionably an American Kladderadatsch was planned, and by Hearn and his friends it was supposed that the editor had a sense of humour sufficient to carry on the undertaking. I have quoted the Salutatory to show that with the favouring of youth, ambition, opportunity and the best encouragement, Hearn's mind from the first line drifted inevitably to the fearsome, the weird, the unearthly and far-away. By no power or necessity could his