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Letters from The Raven 
 
Letters from The Raven 
 
 BEING THE CORRESPONDENCE OF 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn with 
 Henry Watkin 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 CRITICAL COMMENT BY THE EDITOR 
 
 MILTON BRONNER 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Brentano's 
 1907 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY BRENTANO S 
 
 lew* 
 
 jllBRARYof CON»G*FSS~ 
 I two Cooler Received 
 
 OCT §1 I90f 
 
 jConynehf Entrv 
 Uutf2M, /4*7 
 
 CLASS.4 XXc, No. 
 
 GO FY &. 
 
 D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON 
 
To 
 
 My Sweethearts Three 
 
 Marian, May 
 
 and 
 
 Motherkin 
 
Contents 
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 LETTERS FROM THE RAVEN 21 
 
 LETTERS TO A LADY 1 1 3 
 
 LETTERS OF OZIAS MIDWINTER I 5 5 
 
Introduction 
 
Introduction 
 
 IT is felt that no apology is necessary for offer- 
 ing to the interested public, even though it be 
 a limited one, the letters and extracts from let- 
 ters which appear in this little volume. In a day 
 when the letters of Aubrey Beardsley — who was 
 a draughtsman rather than a writer — are gravely 
 offered to possible readers by a great publishing 
 house, it is surely allowable to present for the first 
 time epistles of a really great author. No excuse 
 was offered for printing such things as: "Thank 
 you so much. It was very good of you to call." 
 If this tells us anything concerning the unfortu- 
 nate young master of white and black, I am un- 
 able to discern it. I feel quite sure that no one can 
 make the same objection to the correspondence 
 herewith given. It tells us many things concern- 
 ing Hearn's life and moods and aspirations that 
 otherwise would have been unknown to us. He 
 wrote to Mr. Henry Watkin as to his dearest 
 friend. In his letters, we get what we do not find 
 elsewhere. We have here facts without which his 
 future biographer would be at a loss. 
 
 If there be any repetitions in the sections which 
 follow, the indulgence of the reader is craved. Such 
 
10 
 
 Introduction 
 
 as they are, they were written at widely separated 
 intervals in the hope that material might be fi- 
 nally gathered for a "Life and Letters of Hearn." 
 This hope has so far been frustrated, but it is felt 
 that much is here offered that will lead to a better 
 understanding and appreciation of this famous 
 writer. The endeavor of the editor has been so 
 far as possible to let Hearn tell his own story, 
 giving only enough comment to make clear what 
 Hearn himself had to say. 
 
 In writing of their beloved R. L. S., enthu- 
 siasts tell us Stevenson is endeared to mankind 
 not only because of his writings, but also because 
 of his dauntless cheerfulness in the face of in- 
 curable disease. Hearn, in another field, was 
 equally charming in his work and, in the face of 
 another danger, equally dauntless. From the first 
 he was confronted by the possible fate of the 
 sightless. At best he had but a pearly vision of 
 the world. The mere labor of writing was a physi- 
 cal task with him, demanding hours for the com- 
 position of a single letter. Yet he accomplished 
 almost two score volumes, none of which is 
 carelessly written. Seeing as through a ghostly 
 vapor, in his books he revelled in color as few 
 writers of our day have been able to do. How he 
 
Introduction u 
 
 managed to see, or rather to comprehend, all the 
 things he so vividly described, was one of his 
 secrets. 
 
 The best work of his life was commenced at 
 the age of forty, when he arrived in Japan. He 
 had many qualifications for his chosen field. 
 During the long, lazy two years in Martinique he 
 had literally soaked his mind, as it were, with 
 Oriental philosophy. When he came to Japan he 
 was weary of wandering, and the courtesy, gentle- 
 ness and kindliness of the natives soon convinced 
 him that they were the best people in the world 
 among whom to live. A small man physically, 
 he felt at home in a nation of small men. It 
 pleased his shy, sensitive nature to think that he 
 was often mistaken for a Japanese. 
 
 To his studies and his work he brought a pro- 
 digious curiosity, a perfect sympathy, and an ad- 
 mirable style. He had an eye that observed every- 
 thing in this delightful Nippon, from the manner 
 in which the women threaded their needles to the 
 effect of Shinto and Buddhism upon the national 
 character, religion, art, and literature. Japanese 
 folk-lore, Japanese street songs and sayings, the 
 home life of the people, — everything appealed to 
 him, and the farther removed from modern days 
 
12 
 
 Introduction 
 
 and from Christianity, the stronger the appeal. 
 
 Zangwill has acutely said, in speaking of Loti's 
 famous story of Japan, "Instead of looking for 
 the soul of a people, Pierre Loti was simply look- 
 ing for a woman." 
 
 Hearn did not fail to tell us of many women, 
 but his most particular search was for just that 
 soul of a people which Loti ignored; and in the 
 hunt for that soul, he became more and more 
 impressed by that Buddhism which enabled him 
 the better to comprehend the people. His whole 
 religious life had been a wandering away from the 
 Christianity to which he was born and a finding 
 of a faith compounded of Buddhism modified 
 by paganism, and a leaven of the scientific be- 
 liefs of agnostics such as Spencer and Huxley, 
 whom he never wearied of reading and quoting. 
 In all his writings this tendency is displayed. In 
 one of the letters we see him an avowed agnostic, 
 or perhaps "pantheist" would be the better 
 word. In his little-known story of 1889, pub- 
 lished in Lippincotfs, with the Buddhist title of 
 " Karma," there is a curious tribute to a fair, pure 
 woman. It shows the hold the theory of heredity 
 and evolution and the belief in reincarnation al- 
 ready had upon him : 
 
Introdu&ion 13 
 
 "In her beauty is the resurrection of the fair- 
 est past; — in her youth, the perfection of the 
 present; — in her girl dreams, the promise of the 
 To-Be. ... A million lives have been consumed 
 that hers should be made admirable; countless 
 minds have planned and toiled and agonized that 
 thought might reach a higher and purer power in 
 her delicate brain; — countless hearts have been 
 burned out by suffering that hers might pulse for 
 joy ; — innumerable eyes have lost their light that 
 hers might be filled with witchery ; — innumerable 
 lips have prayed that hers might be kissed." 
 
 On his first day in the Orient he visited a tem- 
 ple and made an offering, recording the follow- 
 ing conversation, which gives an admirable in- 
 sight into his religious beliefs:* 
 
 "'Are you a Christian?' 
 
 "And I answered truthfully/ No.' 
 
 " f Are you a Buddhist?' 
 
 "'Not exactly.' 
 
 "'Why do you make offerings if you do not 
 believe in Buddha?' 
 
 "'I revere the beauty of his teaching, and the 
 faith of those who follow it.'" 
 
 *This and several other extracts are from that delightful 
 book, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 
14 Introduction 
 
 From this by degrees he reached to a pure Bud- 
 dhism, tempered, however, by a strange, romantic 
 half belief, half love for the old pagan gods, feel- 
 ing himself at heart a pagan, too: 
 
 " For these quaint Gods of Roads and Gods 
 of Earth are really living still, though so worn and 
 mossed and feebly worshipped. In this brief mo- 
 ment, at least, I am really in the Elder World, 
 — perhaps just at that epoch of it when the pri- 
 mal faith is growing a little old-fashioned, crum- 
 bling slowly before the corrosive influence of a 
 new philosophy; and I know myself a pagan still, 
 loving these simple old gods, these gods of a peo- 
 ple's childhood. And they need some love, these 
 naif, innocent, ugly gods. The beautiful divini- 
 ties will live forever by that sweetness of woman- 
 hood idealized in the Buddhist art of them: eter- 
 nal are Kwannon and Benten; they need no help 
 ofman ;they will compel reverence when the great 
 temples shall all have become voiceless andpriest- 
 less as this shrine of Koshin is. But these kind, 
 queer, artless, mouldering gods, who have given 
 ease to so many troubled minds, who have glad- 
 dened so many simple hearts, who have heard 
 so many innocent prayers, — how gladly would 
 I prolong their beneficent lives in spite of the so- 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 called 'laws of progress' and the irrefutable phi- 
 losophy of evolution. " 
 
 It is the combination of the various beliefs 
 here shadowed that explains the unique note he 
 brought into our literature. The man who was at 
 once a follower of Spencer and of Buddha, with a 
 large sympathy for the old folk-religion, brought 
 forth an embodied thought entirely new to the 
 world. Nothing like it had ever been produced 
 before. Its like may never be produced again. He 
 endeavored to reconcile the evolutional theory 
 of inherited tendencies with the Buddhist be- 
 lief in reincarnation, — one lengthening chain of 
 lives, — and with the worship of the dead as seen 
 in pure Shinto, for "is not every action indeed 
 the work of the Dead who dwell within us?" 
 
 It was this queer combination that gave a 
 strange charm, a moving magic, to various pas- 
 sages in his books. For the rest, his work and 
 method of labor, may best be described in his 
 own words when speaking of Japanese artists. 
 He writes: 
 
 "The foreign artist will give you realistic re- 
 flections of what he sees; but he will give you no- 
 thing more. The Japanese artist gives you that 
 which he feels, — the mood of a season, the pre- 
 
16 Introduction 
 
 cise sensation of an hour and place; his work is 
 qualified by a power ofsuggestiveness rarely found 
 in the art of the West. The Occidental painter 
 renders minute detail; he satisfies the imagination 
 he evokes. But his Oriental brother either sup- 
 presses or idealizes detail, — steeps his distances 
 in mist, bands his landscapes with cloud, makes 
 of his experience a memory in which only the 
 strange and the beautiful survive, with their sensa- 
 tions. He surpasses imagination, excites it, leaves 
 it hungry with the hunger of charm perceived in 
 glimpses only. Nevertheless in such glimpses he 
 is able to convey the feeling of a time, the char- 
 acter of a place, after a fashion that seems magi- 
 cal. He is a painter of recollections and sensa- 
 tions rather than of clear-cut realities; and in this 
 lies the secret of his amazing power." 
 
 It has often been asked, "These books are 
 beautiful as prose, but do they give us Japan?" 
 Some have said he saw Japan with the eyes of a 
 lover and was thus deceived. Captain F. Brink- 
 ley, an authority on Oriental matters and for years 
 editor of the most important English paper in 
 the Orient, has expressed, to the present writer, 
 his skepticism concerning the entire verity of 
 some of Hearts pictures. On the other hand, 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 here is what two Japanese writers say : Mr. Yone 
 Noguchi, himself a poet of no mean abilities, 
 writes of Hearn:" I like to vindicate Hearn from 
 the criticism that his writing is about one third 
 Japanese and two thirds Hearn. Fortunately his 
 two thirds Hearn is also Japanese." 
 
 This is heartily seconded by Mr. Adachi Kin- 
 nosuke: "So truly did he write of us and of our 
 land, that the West, which is always delighted to 
 fall in love with counterfeits in preference to the 
 genuine, did not believe him ; made merry at his 
 expense, told him that he was a dreamer, that 
 his accounts were too rose-colored. We of the 
 soil only marvelled. Of him we have said that he 
 is more of Nippon than ourselves." 
 
 No fitter close to this introduction may be 
 given than Noguchi's prose elegy sent to Ame- 
 rica from Tokio several days after Hearn's in- 
 terment: 
 
 "Truly he was a delicate, easily broken Japa- 
 nese vase, old as the world, beautiful as a cherry 
 blossom. Alas ! that wonderful vase was broken. 
 He is no more with us. Surely we could better 
 lose two or three battle-ships at Port Arthur than 
 Lafcadio Hearn." 
 
Letters from The Raven 
 
Letters from The Raven 
 
 TAKE up any book written by Lafcadio 
 Hearn concerning Japan, and you will find 
 the most delicate interpretation of the life of the 
 people, their religion, their folk-songs, their cus- 
 toms, expressed in English that it is a delight 
 to read. Upon further examination you will no- 
 tice the calm, the serenity, the self-poise of the 
 writer. It is as though, miraculously finding utter- 
 ance, he were one of those stone Buddhas erected 
 along the Japanese highways. He seems to have 
 every attribute of a great writer save humor. There 
 is hardly a smile in any of his books on Japan. 
 One would say that the author was a man who 
 never knew what gaiety was. One would judge 
 that his life had lain in quiet places always, with- 
 out any singular sorrow or suffering, without any 
 struggle for existence. Judged by what Hearn 
 told the world at large, the impression would be 
 a correct one. 
 
 He was shy by nature. He did not take the 
 world into his confidence. Hewas not one to harp 
 on his own troubles and ask the world to sym- 
 pathize with him. The world had dealt him some 
 very hard blows,- — blows which hurt sorely, — 
 
22 
 
 Letters from The Raven 
 
 and so, while he gave the public his books, he kept 
 himself to himself. He transferred the aroma of 
 Japan to his writings. He did not sell the reader 
 snap-shots of his own personality. jTo one man 
 only perhaps in the whole world did the little 
 Greek-Irishman reveal his inner thoughts, and he 
 was one who thirty-eight years ago opened his heart 
 and his home to the travel-stained, poverty-bur- 
 dened lad of nineteen, who had run away from a 
 monastery in Wales and who still had part of his 
 monk's garb for clothing when he reached America. 
 
 Hearn never discussed his family affairs very 
 extensively, but made it clear that his father was a 
 surgeon in the crack Seventy-sixth Regiment of 
 British Infantry, and his mother a Greek woman 
 of Cherigo in the Ionian Islands. The social cir- 
 cle to which his father belonged frowned on the 
 misalliance, and when the wife and children arrived 
 in England, after the father's death, the aristo- 
 cratic relatives soon made the strangers feel that 
 they were anything but welcome. 
 
 The young Lafcadio was chosen for the priest- 
 hood, and after receiving his education partly in 
 France and partly in England, he was sent to a 
 monastery in Wales. As he related afterwards, he 
 was in bad odor there from the first. Even as a 
 
Letters from The Raven 23 
 
 boy he had the skeptical notions about things re- 
 ligious that were to abide with him for long years 
 after and change him to an ardent materialist un- 
 til he fell under the influence of Buddhism. One 
 day, after a dispute with the priests, and in disgust 
 with the course in life that had been mapped out 
 for him, the boy took what money he could get 
 and made off to America. After sundry adven- 
 tures, concerning which he was always silent, he 
 arrived in Cincinnati in 1869, hungry, tired, un- 
 kempt, — a boy without a trade, without friends, 
 without money. In some way he made the ac- 
 quaintance of a Scotch printer, and this man in 
 turn introduced him to Henry Watkin, an Eng- 
 lishman, largely self-educated, of broad culture 
 and wide reading, of singular liberality of views, 
 and a lover of his kind. Watkin at this time ran 
 a printing shop. 
 
 Left alone with the lad, who had come across 
 the seas to be as far away as possible from his fa- 
 ther's people, the man of forty-five surveyed the 
 boy of nineteen and said," Well, my young man, 
 how do you expect to earn a living?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Have you any trade?" 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
24 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "Can you do anything at all?" 
 
 " Yes, sir; I might write," was the eager reply. 
 
 "Umph!" said Watkin; "better learn some 
 bread-winning trade and put off writing until 
 later." 
 
 After this Hearn was installed as errand boy 
 and helper. He was not goodly to look upon. His 
 body was unusually puny and under-sized. The 
 softness of his tread had something feline and 
 feminine in it. His head, covered with long black 
 hair, was full and intellectual, save for two de- 
 fects, a weak chin and an eye of the variety known 
 as "pearl," — large and white and bulbous, so that 
 it repelled people upon a first acquaintance. 
 
 Hearn felt deeply the effect his shyness, his 
 puny body, and his unsightly eye had upon peo- 
 ple, and this feeling served to make him even 
 more diffident and more melancholy than he was 
 by nature. However, as with many melancholy- 
 natured souls, he had an element of fun in him, 
 which came out afterwards upon his longer ac- 
 quaintance with the first man who had given him 
 a helping hand. 
 
 Hearn swept the floor of the printing shop 
 and tried to learn the printer's craft, but failed, 
 He slept in a little room back of the shop and 
 
Letters from The Raven 25 
 
 ate his meals in the place with Mr. Watkin. He 
 availed himself of his benefactor's library, and read 
 Poe and volumes on free thought, delighted to 
 find a kindred spirit in the older man. Together 
 they often crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky 
 to hear lectures on spiritualism and laugh about 
 them. Their companionship was not broken when 
 Mr. Watkin secured for the boy a position with 
 a Captain Barney, who edited and published a 
 commercial paper, for which Hearn solicited ad- 
 vertisements and to which he began also to con- 
 tribute articles. One of these — a singular com- 
 position for such a paper — was a proposal to 
 cross the Atlantic in a balloon anchored to a 
 floating buoy. It was later in the year that he 
 secured a position as a reporter on the Enquirer, 
 through some "feature" articles he shyly depos- 
 ited upon the editor's desk, making his escape 
 before the great man had caught him in the act. 
 It was not long before the latent talent in the 
 youth began to make itself manifest. He was not 
 a rapid writer. On the contrary, he was exceed- 
 ingly slow, but his product was written in English 
 that no reporter then working in Cincinnati ap- 
 proached. His fellow reporters soon became jeal- 
 ous of him. They were, moreover, repelled by his 
 
26 Letters from The Raven 
 
 personal appearance and chilled by his steady re- 
 fusal to see the fun of getting drunk. Finding lack 
 of congeniality among the young men of his own 
 age and occupation, among whom he was to work 
 for seven more years, his friendship with Mr. 
 Watkin became all the stronger, so that he came 
 to look upon the latter as the one person in Cin- 
 cinnati upon whom he could count for unselfish 
 companionship and sincere advice. Hearn's Cin- 
 cinnati experiences ended with his service on the 
 Enquirer. Before that he had been proofreader 
 to a publishing house and secretary to Cincin- 
 nati's public librarian. He was also for a time on 
 the staff of the Commercial. It was while on the 
 Enquirer that he accomplished several journa- 
 listic feats that are still referred to in gatherings 
 of oldtime newspaper men of Cincinnati. One 
 was a grisly description of the charred body of 
 a murdered man, the screed being evidently in- 
 spired by recollections of Poe. The other was an 
 article describing Cincinnati as seen from the top 
 of a high church steeple, the joke of it being that 
 Hearn, by reason of his defective vision, could 
 see nothing even after he had made his perilous 
 climb. It was in the last days of his stay in Cin- 
 cinnati that he, with H. F. Farny, the painter, 
 
Letters from The Raven 27 
 
 issued a short-lived weekly known as Giglampz. 
 Farny, not yet famous as an Indian painter, con- 
 tributed the drawings, and Hearn the bulk of 
 the letter press for the journal, which modestly 
 announced that it was going to eclipse Punch 
 and all the other famous comic weeklies. Hearn, 
 always sensitive,- practically withdrew from the 
 magazine when Farny took the very excusable 
 liberty of changing the title of one of the essays 
 of the former. Farny thought the title offen- 
 sive to people of good taste, and said so. Hearn 
 apparently acquiesced, but brooded over the 
 "slight," and never again contributed to the 
 weekly. Shortly afterwards it died. It is doubt- 
 ful whether there are any copies in existence. 
 Many Cincinnati collectors have made rounds 
 of the second-hand book-shops in a vain search 
 for stray numbers. 
 
 Early in their acquaintance Watkin and 
 Hearn called each other by endearing names 
 which were adhered to throughout the long years 
 of their correspondence. Mr. Watkin, with his 
 leonine head, was familiarly addressed as "Old 
 Man " or " Dad ; " while the boy, by virtue of his 
 dark hair and coloring, the gloomy cast of his 
 thoughts, and his deep love for Poe, was known 
 
28 Letters from The Raven 
 
 as "The Raven/' a name which caught his fancy. 
 Indeed, a simple little drawing of the bird stood 
 for many years in place of a signature to anything 
 he chanced to write to Mr. Watkin. In spite of 
 their varying lines of work, the two were often 
 together. When "The Raven" was prowling the 
 city for news, he was often accompanied by his 
 "Dad." Not infrequently, when the younger man 
 had no especial task, he would come to Mr. Wat- 
 kin's office and read some books there. One of 
 these, whose title and author Mr. Watkin has 
 forgotten, fascinated at the same time that it re- 
 pelled Hearn by its grim and ghastly stories of 
 battle, murder, and sudden death. One night Mr. 
 Watkin left him reading in the office. When he 
 opened the place the next morning he found this 
 note from Hearn: 
 
 "10 p.m. These stories are positively so hor- 
 rible that even a materialist feels rather unplea- 
 santly situated when left alone with the thoughts 
 conjured up by this dreamer of fantastic dreams. 
 The brain-chambers of fancy become thronged 
 with goblins. I think I shall go home." 
 
 For. signature there was appended a very black 
 and a very thoughtful-looking raven. 
 
 It was also in these days that Hearn indulged 
 
Letters from The Raven 29 
 
 in his little pleasantries with Mr. Watkin. Hardly 
 a day passed without a visit to the printing office. 
 When he did not find his friend, he usually left 
 a card for him, on which was some little drawing, 
 
 A PENCIL SKETCH BY HEARN LEFT AT MR. WATKIN S 
 SHOP AT THE BEGINNING OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Hearn having quite a talent in this direction, — 
 a talent that he never afterward developed. Of 
 course some of the cards were just as nonsen- 
 sical as the nonsense verses friends often write 
 to each other. They are merely quoted to show 
 Hearn's fund of animal spirits at the time. 
 
 Mr. Watkin one day left a card forpossible cus- 
 tomers : " Gone to supper. H. W." Hearn passed 
 by and wrote on the opposite side of the card: 
 "Gone to get my sable plumage plucked. " The 
 inevitable raven followed as signature. It was 
 
30 Letters from The Raven 
 
 Hearn's way of saying he had come to see Mr. 
 Watkin and had then gone to a barber shop to 
 have his hair cut. Once he omitted the raven and 
 signed his note, "Kaw." 
 
 FACSIMILE OF ONE OF THE CARDS HEARN LEFT AT 
 MR. WATKIN'S SHOP 
 
 On another occasion when Mr. Watkin came 
 to the office he found a note informing him that 
 he was "a flabbergasted ichthyosaurus and an 
 antediluvian alligator" for not being on hand. 
 
 The influence of Poe was strong upon him 
 even in this nonsense. Hearn waited for his friend 
 one night until a late hour. The shop was quite 
 lonely, as it was the only open one in a big build- 
 ing on a more or less deserted street. The quiet 
 became oppressive, and the little man left because 
 "these chambers are cursed with the Curse of 
 Silence. And the night, which is the Shadow of 
 God, waneth." 
 
Letters from The Raven 31 
 
 Mr. Watkin had a dog. Hearn did not like 
 the animal, and it seemed to reciprocate the feel- 
 ing. One of Hearn's notes was largely devoted 
 to the little beast. When he so chose Hearn could 
 make a fairly good drawing. This particular note 
 was adorned with rude piclures of an animal sup- 
 posed to be a dog. The teeth were made the most 
 prominent feature. The pictures were purposely 
 made in a childish style, and used for the word 
 "dog." 
 
 "Dear Nasty Cross Old Man! 
 
 "I tried to find you last night. 
 
 "You were not in apparently. 
 
 " I shook the door long and violently, and lis- 
 tened. 
 
 " I did not hear the [dog] bark. 
 
 "Perhaps you were not aware that the night 
 you got so infernally mad I slipped a cooked beef- 
 steak strongly seasoned with Strychnine under 
 the door. 
 
 "I was glad that the [dog] did not bark. 
 
 "I susped: the [dog] will not bark any more! 
 
 " I think the [dog] must have gone to that 
 Bourne from which no traveller returneth. 
 
 "I hope the [dog] is dead." 
 

 32 Letters from The Raven 
 
 The note is signed with the usual drawing of 
 a raven. On still another occasion he wrote the 
 following farrago : 
 
 "I came to see you— to thank you — to re- 
 monstrate with you — to demonstrate matters syl- 
 logistically and phlebotomically. Gone! ! ! Then 
 I departed, wandering among the tombs of Me- 
 mory, where the Ghouls of the Present gnaw the 
 black bones of the Past. Then I returned and 
 crept to the door and listened to see if I could 
 hear the beating of your hideous heart." 
 
 These little notes are not presented here for 
 any intrinsic merit; they are given simply to 
 show how different was the real Hearn from the 
 shy, silent, uncommunicative, grave, little re- 
 porter. 
 
 His notes were but precursors to the letters in 
 which he was most truly to reveal himself. Unlike 
 the epistles of great writers that so frequently 
 find theirway into print, Hearn's letters were not 
 written with an eye to publication. They were 
 written solely for the interest of their recipient. 
 They were in the highest form of the true letter, 
 —written talks with the favorite friend, couched 
 usually in the best language the writer knew how 
 to employ. They tell their own story, — the only 
 
Letters from The Raven 33 
 
 story of Hearn's life, — a story often of hopeless 
 search for bread-winning work; of bitter glooms 
 and hysterical pleasures; of deep enjoyment of 
 Louisiana autumns and West Indian and Japa- 
 nese scenes; of savage hatred of Cincinnati and 
 New Orleans, the two American cities in which 
 he had worked as a newspaper man and in which 
 he had been made to realize that he had many 
 enemies and but few friends. Everything is told 
 in these letters to Mr. Watkin, to whom he 
 poured out his thoughts and feelings without re- 
 serve. Hearn's first step towards bettering him- 
 self followed when he became weary of the 
 drudgery of work on the Cincinnati papers, and 
 decided, after much discussion with Mr. Watkin, 
 to resign his position and go South, the Crescent 
 City being his objective point. 
 
 It was in October, 1877, that Hearn set out 
 from Cincinnati on his way to New Orleans, 
 going by rail to Memphis, whence he took the 
 steamboat Thompson Dean down the Mississippi 
 River to his destination. While in Memphis, im- 
 patiently waiting for his steamer to arrive, and 
 afterwards in New Orleans, Hearn kept himself 
 in touch with his friend in Cincinnati by means 
 of a series of messages hastily scribbled on postal 
 
34 Letters from The Raven 
 
 cards. Many of these reflected the animal spirits 
 of the young man of twenty-seven, who had still 
 preserved a goodly quantity of his boyishness, 
 though he felt, as he said, as old as the moon. 
 But not all of the little messages were gay. The 
 tendency to despondency and morbidity, which 
 had partially led Mr. Watkin to dub Hearn 
 "The Raven," now showed itself. The first of 
 these cards, which Mr. Watkin has preserved, 
 was sent from Memphis on October 28, 1 877. It 
 bears two drawings of a raven. In one the eyes 
 are very thoughtful. The raven is scratching its 
 head with its claws, and below is the legend, "In 
 a dilemma at Memphis. " The other raven is 
 merely labelled, " Remorseful ." The next was sent 
 on October 29. Hearn had begun to worry. He 
 wrote: 
 
 "Dear O. M. [Old Man]: Did not stop at 
 Louisville. Could n't find out -anything about 
 train. Am stuck at Memphis for a week waiting 
 for a boat. Getting d — d poor. New Orleans far 
 off. Five hundred miles to Vicksburg. Board two 
 dollars per day. Trouble and confusion. Flabber- 
 gasted. Mixed up. Knocked into a cocked hat." 
 
 The raven, used as the signature, wears a trou 
 
Letters from The Raven 35 
 
 bled countenance. On the same day, perhaps in 
 the evening, Hearn sent still another card: 
 
 "DearO.M.: Have succeeded with enormous 
 difficulty in securing accommodations at one dol- 
 lar per diem, including a bed in a haunted room. 
 Very blue. Here is the mosquito of these parts, 
 natural size. [Hearn gives a vivid pencil drawing 
 of one, two thirds of an inch long.] I spend my 
 nights in making war upon him and my days in 
 watching the murmuring current of the Missis- 
 sippi and the most wonderful sunsets on the Ar- 
 kansaw side that I ever saw. Don't think I should 
 like to swim the Mississippi at this point. Per- 
 haps the Bean may be here on Wednesday. I 
 don't like Memphis at all, but cannot express 
 my opinion in a postal card. They have a pretty 
 fountain here — much better than that old brass 
 candlestick in Cincinnati." 
 
 The next postal card was mailed on Oclober 30, 
 and contains one of the cleverest drawings of the 
 series. Hearn says: "It has been raining all day, 
 and I have had nothing to do but look at it. 
 Half wish was back in Cincinnati." 
 
 Then follows a rude sketch of part of the Ohio 
 River and its confluence with the Mississippi. A 
 
36 Letters from The Raven 
 
 huddle of buildings represents Cincinnati. An- 
 other huddle represents Memphis. There stands 
 the raven, his eyes bulging out of his head, look- 
 ing at some object in the distance. The object is a 
 huge snail which is leaving New Orleans and is 
 labelled the 'Thompson Dean. 
 
 One of the finest of all the letters he wrote to 
 Mr. Watkin was from Memphis. It is dated Oc- 
 tober 31, 1877. In this he made a prediction 
 which afterwards came literally true. He seemed 
 to foresee that, while in his loneliness he would 
 write often to Mr. Watkin, once he became en- 
 grossed in his work and saw new sights and new 
 faces, his letters would be written at greater inter- 
 vals. 
 
 " Dear Old Dad : I am writing in a great big, 
 dreary room of this great, dreary house. It over- 
 looks the Mississippi. I hear the puffing and the 
 panting of the cotton boats and the deep calls 
 of the river traffic; but I neither hear nor see the 
 Thompson Dean. She will not be here this week, 
 I am afraid, as she only left New Orleans to-day. 
 
 £<r My room is carpetless and much larger than 
 your office. Old blocked-up stairways come up 
 here and there through the floor or down through 
 
fft 
 
Letters from The Raven 37 
 
 the ceiling, and they suddenly disappear. There 
 is a great red daub on one wall as though made 
 by a bloody hand when somebody was stagger- 
 ing down the stairway. There are only a few panes 
 of glass in the windows. I am the first tenant of 
 the room for fifteen years. Spiders are busy spin- 
 ning their dusty tapestries in every corner, and 
 between the bannisters of the old stairways. The 
 planks of the floor are sprung, and when I walk 
 along the room at night it sounds as though 
 Something or Somebody was following me in the 
 dark. And then being in the third story makes 
 it much more ghostly. 
 
 "I had hard work to get awashstand and towel 
 put in this great, dreary room; for the landlord 
 had not washed his face for more than a quarter 
 of a century, and regarded washing as an expen- 
 sive luxury. At last I succeeded with the assist- 
 ance of the barkeeper, who has taken a liking to 
 me. 
 
 "Perhaps you have seen by the paper that 
 General N. B. Forrest died here night before last. 
 To-day they are burying him. I see troops of men 
 in grey uniforms parading the streets,and the busi- 
 ness of the city is suspended in honor of the dead. 
 And they are firing weary, dreary minute guns. 
 
38 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "I am terribly tired of this dirty, dusty, ugly 
 town,- — a city only forty years old, but looking 
 old as the ragged, fissured bluffs on which it 
 stands. It is full of great houses, which were once 
 grand, but are now as waste and dreary within and 
 without as the huge building in which I am lodg- 
 ing for the sum of twenty-five cents a night. I am 
 obliged to leave my things in the barkeeper's 
 care at night for fear of their being stolen ; and he 
 thinks me a little reckless because I sleep with 
 my money under my pillow. You see the doors 
 of my room — there are three of them — lock 
 badly. . . . They are ringing those dead bells every 
 moment, — it is a very unpleasant sound. I sup- 
 pose you will not laugh if I tell you that I have 
 been crying a good deal of nights, — just like I 
 used to do when a college boy returned from va- 
 cation. It is a lonely feeling, this of finding one- 
 self alone in a strange city, where you never meet 
 a face that you know; and when all the faces you 
 did know seem to have been dead faces, disap- 
 peared for an indefinite time. I have not travelled 
 enough the last eight years, I suppose: it does 
 not do to become attached insensibly to places 
 and persons. ... I suppose you have had some 
 postal cards from me; and you are beginning to 
 
■; 
 
 Letters from The Raven 39 
 
 think I am writing quite often. I suppose I am, 
 and you know the reason why; and perhaps you 
 are thinking to yourself: 'He feels a little blue 
 now, and is accordingly very affectionate, &c; 
 but by and by he will be quite forgetful, and per- 
 haps will not write so often as at present/ 
 
 "Well, I suppose you are right. I live in and 
 by extremes and am on an extreme now. I write 
 extremely often, because I feel alone and ex- 
 tremely alone. By and by, if I get well, I shall 
 write only by weeks; and with time perhaps only 
 by months; and when at last comes the rush 
 of business and busy newspaper work, only by 
 years, — until the times and places of old friend- 
 ship are forgotten, and old faces have become 
 dim as dreams, and these little spider-threads of 
 attachments will finally yield to the long strain 
 of a thousand miles." 
 
 A postal card of November 3 says: "Will leave 
 Memphis Tuesday next, perhaps. Am begin- 
 ning to doubt the existence of the 'Thompson 
 Dean" November 13, 1877, finds Hearn over- 
 joyed to be in New Orleans. The postal card 
 bears in the left-hand corner a drawing of a door 
 labelled "228." In a window at the side of the 
 
40 Letters from The Raven 
 
 door sits the raven. On the other side is the le- 
 gend: 
 
 Raven liveth at 
 
 228 Baronne St. 
 
 New Orleans 
 Care Mrs. Bustellos 
 
 Then comes another raven, with the doggerel: 
 Indite him an epistle. 
 Dont give him particular H — . 
 
 And finally the remarks: 
 
 Pretty Louisiana! Nice Louisiana! 
 
 Hearn began to send letters to one of the Cincin- 
 nati papers, but was soon in a terrible plight, as 
 his postal card of December 9 demonstrates: 
 
 "lam in a very desperate fix here, — having no 
 credit. If you can help me a little within the next 
 few days, please try. I fear I must ask you to ask 
 Davie to sell all my books except the French 
 ones. The need of money has placed me in so 
 humiliating a position that I cannot play the part 
 of correspondent any longer. The Commercial has 
 not sent me anything, and I cannot even get 
 stamps. I landed in New Orleans with a frac- 
 tion over twenty dollars, which I paid out in ad- 
 vance." 
 
Letters from The Raven 41 
 
 Mr. Watkin was unable to make the reply he 
 desired, and was even prevented by other mat- 
 ters from answering in any way until weeks later. 
 It was this silence which caused Hearn to mail 
 a postal card, on January 13, 1878, which con- 
 tained one of his cleverest drawings. In the back- 
 ground is shown the sky with a crescent moon. 
 In the foreground, upright from a grass-grown 
 grave, stands a tombstone, bearing the inscrip- 
 tion: 
 
 h. w. 
 
 DIED 
 
 NOV. 29 
 
 1877 
 
 Perched on top of the stone is a particularly rag- 
 ged and particularly black raven. It was the last 
 gleam of fun that was to come from him for some 
 time. He was to experience some of the bitter- 
 est moments of his life, moments which explained 
 his hatred of New Orleans, as the slanders of 
 the newspapermen of Cincinnati embittered him 
 against that city. 
 
 The following seems to be the first, or one of 
 the first, letters written by him after his arrival in 
 New Orleans. As usual, it is undated: 
 
42 
 
 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "Dear Old Friend: I cannot say how glad 
 1 was to hear from you. J did not — unfortunately 
 — get your letter at Memphis; it would have 
 
 DRAWING ON A POSTAL CARD SENT TO WATKIN TO 
 REMIND HIM HE HAD NOT WRITTEN 
 
 cheered me up. I am slowly, very slowly, getting 
 better. 
 
 "The wealth of a world is here, — unworked 
 gold in the ore, one might say; the paradise of 
 the South is here, deserted and half in ruins. I 
 never beheld anything so beautiful and so sad. 
 When I saw it first — sunrise over Louisiana — 
 the tears sprang to my eyes. It was like young 
 death, — a dead bride crowned with orange flow- 
 
Letters from The Raven 43 
 
 ers, — a dead face that asked for a kiss. I cannot say 
 how fair and rich and beautiful this dead South 
 is. It has fascinated me. I have resolved to live 
 in it; I could not leave it for that chill and damp 
 Northern life again. Yes ; I think you could make 
 it pay to come here. One can do much here with 
 very little capital. The great thing is, of course, 
 the sugar-cane business. Everybody who goes 
 into it almost does well. Some make half a million 
 a year at it. The capital required to build a sugar 
 mill, &c, is of course enormous; but men often 
 begin with a few acres and become well-to-do in 
 a few years. Louisiana thirsts for emigrants as a 
 dry land for water. I was thinking of writing to 
 tell you that I 'think you could do something in 
 the way of the fruit business to make it worth 
 your while to come down, — oranges, bananas, and 
 tropical plants sell here at fabulously low prices. 
 Bananas are of course perishable freight when 
 ripe; but oranges are not, and I hear they sell at 
 fifty cents a hundred, and even less than that a 
 short distance from the city. So there are many 
 other things here one could speculate in. I think 
 with one partner North and one South, a firm 
 could make money in the fruit business here. But 
 there, you know I don't know anything about 
 
44 Letters from The Raven 
 
 business. What's the good of asking me about 
 business ? 
 
 "If you come here, you can live for almost no- 
 thing. Food is ridiculously cheap, — that is, cheap 
 food. Then there are first-class restaurants here. 
 
 FACSIMILE OF ENVELOPE ADDRESSED TO MR. WATKIN 
 pY HEARN 
 
 where the charge is three dollars for dinner. But 
 board and lodging is very cheap. . . . 
 
 " I have written twice to the Commerical, but 
 have only seen one of my letters, — the Forrest 
 letter. I have a copy. I fear the other letters will 
 not be published. Too enthusiastic, you know. 
 But I could not write coolly about beautiful Lou- 
 isiana. . . . 
 
 "Oh, you must come to New Orleans some- 
 
Letters from The Raven 45 
 
 time, — no nasty chill, no coughs and cold. The 
 healthiest climate in the world. Eternal summer. 
 
 " It is damp at nights however, and fires are lit 
 of evenings to dry the rooms. You know the land 
 is marshy. Even the dead areunburied, — they are 
 only vaulted up. The cemeteries are vaults, not 
 graveyards. Only the Jews bury their dead; and 
 their dead are buried in water. It is water three — 
 yes, two — feet underground. 
 
 "I like the people, especially the French; but 
 of course I might yet have reason to change my 
 opinion. . . . 
 
 "Would you be surprised to hear that I have 
 been visiting my uncle? Would you be aston- 
 ished to learn that I was on the verge of pov- 
 erty ? No. Then, forsooth, I will be discreet. One 
 can live here for twenty cents a day — what's the 
 odds? . . . 
 
 "Yours truly, 
 
 "The Prodigal Son " 
 
 On the reverse side of an application for a money 
 order, Hearn wrote to Watkin in i878,somecon- 
 siderable time after his arrival in New Orleans: 
 
 "I see the Cincinnati Commercial once in a 
 while, and do not find any difference in it. My 
 
46 Letters from The Raven 
 
 departure affecleth its columns not at all. In 
 sooth a man on a daily newspaper is as a grain 
 of mustard seed. Hope I may do better in New 
 Orleans. It is time for a fellow to get out of Cin- 
 cinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of 
 America. But there are some worse places than 
 Cincinnati. There is Memphis, for example." 
 
 At one period, early during his stay in New 
 Orleans, when Hearn began to look back upon 
 what he had accomplished, or rather had failed 
 to accomplish, in his life, he sank into the depths 
 of despair. As was his wont, he wrote from his 
 heart to his sole friend, depending upon him not 
 only for cheer, but for advice. Mr. Watkin re- 
 fused to take this long letter seriously, teased 
 him about it rather, and advised him not to go 
 to England, but to remain here in this country 
 and persist in one line of work. The Hearn let- 
 ter, which follows, belongs to the month of Feb- 
 ruary, 1878: 
 
 "Dear Old Man: I shall be twenty-eight 
 years old in a few days, — a very few days more; 
 and I am frightened to think how few they are. 
 I am afraid to look at the almanac to find out 
 what day The Day falls upon, — it might fall 
 
Letters from The Raven 47 
 
 upon a Friday, — and I can't shake off a super- 
 stition about it, — a superstition always outlives 
 a religion. Looking back at the file of these 
 twenty-eight years, which grow more shadowy 
 in receding, I can remember and distinguish the 
 features of at least twenty. There is an alarming 
 similarity of misery in all their faces; and how- 
 ever misty the face, the outlines of misery are 
 remarkably perceptible. Each, too, seems to be 
 a record of similar events, — thwarting of will 
 and desire in every natural way, ill success in 
 every aim, denial of almost every special wish, 
 compulsion to act upon the principle that every- 
 thing agreeable was wrong and everything dis- 
 agreeable right, unpleasant recognition of self- 
 weakness and inability to win success by indi- 
 vidual force, — not to mention enormous ad- 
 denda in the line of novel and wholly unexpected 
 disappointments. Somehow or other, whenever 
 I succeeded in an undertaking, the fruit acquired 
 seemed tasteless and vapid; but usually, when 
 one step more would have been victory, some 
 extraordinary and unanticipated obstacle rose up 
 in impassability. I must acknowledge, however, 
 that, as a general rule, the unexpected obstacle 
 was usually erected by myself; — some loss of 
 
48 Letters from The Raven 
 
 temper, impatience, extra-sensitiveness, betrayed 
 and indulged instead of concealed, might be cred- 
 ited with a large majority of failures. 
 
 "Without a renovation of individuality, how- 
 ever, I really can see no prospect, beyond the 
 twenty-eighth year, of better years — the years 
 seem to grow worse in regular succession. As to 
 the renovation, — it is hardly possible: don't 
 you think so? Sometimes I think small people 
 without great wills and great energies have no 
 business trying to do much in this wonderful 
 country ; the successful men all appear to have 
 gigantic shoulders and preponderant deport- 
 ments. When I look into the private histories 
 of the young men who achieved success in the 
 special line I have been vainly endeavoring to 
 follow to some termination, I find they generally 
 hanged themselves or starved to death, while 
 their publishers made enormous fortunes and 
 world-wide reputations after their unfortunate 
 and idealistic customers were dead. There were 
 a few exceptions, but these exceptions were cases 
 of extraordinary personal vigor and vital force. 
 So while my whole nature urges me to continue 
 as I have begun, I see nothing in prospect ex- 
 cept starvation, sickness, artificial wants, which 
 
Letters from The Raven 49 
 
 I shall never be wealthy enough to even par- 
 tially gratify, and perhaps utter despair at the 
 end. Then again, while I have not yet lost all 
 confidence in myself, I feel strongly doubtful 
 whether I shall ever have means or leisure to 
 develop the latent (possible) ability within me 
 to do something decently meritorious. Perhaps, 
 had I not been constrained to ambition by neces- 
 sity, I should never have had any such yearnings 
 about the unattainable and iridescent bubbles of 
 literary success. But that has nothing to do with 
 the question. Such is the proposition now: how 
 can I get out of hell when I have got halfway 
 down to the bottom of it? Can I carry on any 
 kind of business? I can fancy that I see you throw 
 back your head and wag your beard with a hearty 
 laugh at the mere idea, the preposterous idea! 
 
 " Can I keep any single situation for any great 
 length of time? You know I can't, — couldn't 
 stand it; hate the mere idea of it, — something 
 horribly disagreeable would be sure to happen. 
 Then again, I can't even stay in one place for 
 any healthy period of time. I can't stay any- 
 where without getting in trouble. And my heart 
 always feels like a bird, fluttering impatiently for 
 the migrating season. I think I could be quite 
 
50 Letters from The Raven 
 
 happy if I were a swallow and could have a sum- 
 mer nest in the ear of an Egyptian colossus or 
 a broken capital of the Parthenon. 
 
 "I know just exactly what I should like to do, 
 — to wander forever here and there until I got 
 very old and apish and grey, and died, — just to 
 wander where I pleased and keep myself to my- 
 self, and never bother anybody. But that I can't 
 do. Then what in the name of the Nine Incar- 
 nations of Vishnu, can I do? Please try to tell me. 
 
 "Shall I, in spite of myopia, seek for a pas- 
 sage on some tropical vessel, and sail hither and 
 thither on the main, like the ghost of Gawain 
 on a wandering wind, till I have learned all the 
 ropes and spars by heart, and know by sight the 
 various rigging of all the navies of the world? 
 
 "Shall I try to go back to England at once, 
 instead of waiting to be a millionaire? (This is a 
 seaport, remember: that is why I dread to leave 
 it for further inland towns. I feel as if I could al- 
 most catch a distant glimpse of the mighty dome 
 of St. Paul's from the levee of New Orleans.) 
 
 "Shall I begin to eat opium, and enjoy in 
 fancy all that reality refuses, and may forever 
 refuse me? 
 
 "Shall I go to Texas and start a cheap bean- 
 
Letters from The Raven 51 
 
 house — (hideous occupation!) with my pard, 
 who wants me to go there? 
 
 "Shall I cease to worry over fate and facts, 
 and go right to hell on a 2.40, till I get tired 
 even of hell and blow my highly sensitive and 
 exquisitely delicate brains out? 
 
 "Shall I try to get acquainted with Yellow 
 Jack and the Charity Hospital, — or try to get 
 to St. Louis on the next boat? Honestly, I 'd like 
 to know. I'm so tired, — so awfully, fearfully, 
 disgustingly tired of wasting my life without be- 
 ing able to help it. Don't tell me I could have 
 helped it, — I know better. No man could have 
 helped doing anything already done. I hate the 
 gilded slavery of newspaper work, — the starva- 
 tion of Bohemianism, — the bore of waiting for 
 a chance to become an insurance agent or a mag- 
 azine writer, — and oh, venerable friend, I hate a 
 thousand times worst of all to work for some- 
 body else. I hoped to become independent when 
 I came down here, — to work for myself; and I 
 have made a most damnable failure of it. In ad- 
 dition to the rest, my horrid eye is bad yet. I 
 had lost nearly half the field of vision from con- 
 gestion of the retina when I wrote you the rather 
 frantic epistles which you would not answer. 
 
52 Letters from The Raven 
 
 Now I see only in patches, but am getting along 
 better and hope to be quite well in time, — cer- 
 tainly much better. You see I can write a pretty 
 long letter to while away Sunday idleness." 
 
 Hearn had reached New Orleans at the time the 
 yellow fever was raging there, and in April, 1878, 
 he wrote reassuring his old friend that his health 
 was not endangered: 
 
 " Dear Old Man : Yellow Jack has not caught 
 me; and since I was laid up with the dengue or 
 break-bone fever, I believe I am acclimated. . . . 
 They sprinkle the streets here with watering- 
 carts filled with carbolic acid, pour lime in the 
 gutters, and make all the preparations against 
 fever possible, except the only sensible one of 
 cleaning the stinking gutters and stopping up the 
 pest-holes. Politicians make devilish bad health 
 officers. When I tell you that all of our gutters 
 are haunted by eels whose bite is certain death, 
 you can imagine how vile they are. . . . Nobody 
 works here in summer. The population would 
 starve to death anywhere else. Neither does 
 anybody think of working in the sun if they can 
 help it. That is why we have no sunstroke. The 
 horses usually wear hats." 
 
Letters from The Raven 53 
 
 After a seven months' hunt for work Hearn 
 saw some of the hardest times of his life in New 
 Orleans. The situation, as he described £t in his 
 letter to Mr. Watkin, could not have been worse 
 than when, as a waif, he wandered the streets 
 of London. It was postmarked June 14, 1878. 
 
 "Dear Old Man: Wish you would tell me 
 something wise and serviceable. I 'm completely 
 and hopelessly busted up and flattened out, but 
 I don't write this because I have any desire to 
 ask you for pecuniary assistance, — have asked 
 for that elsewhere. Have been here seven months 
 and never made one cent in the city. No possi- 
 ble prospect of doing anything in this town now 
 or within twenty-five years. Books and clothes 
 all gone, shirt sticking through seat of my pants, 
 — literary work rejected East, — get a five-cent 
 meal once in two days, — don't know one night 
 where I 'm going to sleep next, — and am d — d 
 sick with climate into the bargain. Yellow fever 
 supposed to be in the city. Newspapers expected 
 to bust up. Twenty dollars per month is a good 
 living here; but it's simply impossible to make 
 even ten. Have been cheated and swindled con- 
 siderably; and have cheated and swindled others 
 
54 Letters from The Raven 
 
 in retaliation. We are about even. D — n New 
 Orleans ! — wish I 'd never seen it. I am thinking 
 of going to Texas. How do you like the idea? — 
 to Dallas or Waco. Eyes about played out, I 
 guess. Have a sort of idea that I can be won- 
 derfully economical if I get any more good luck. 
 Can save fifteen out of twenty dollars a month — 
 under new conditions (?). Have no regular place 
 of residence now. Can't you drop a line to P. O. 
 next week, letting shining drops of wisdom drip 
 from the end of your pen?" 
 
 It was right after this in the same month, 
 when his fortunes were at the lowest ebb, that 
 things took a turn for the better, as is indicated 
 by the following, in which in jest he proposes to 
 engage in a "get-rich-quick" scheme: 
 
 "Dear Old Man: Somehow or other, when a 
 man gets right down in the dirt, he jumps up again. 
 The day after I wrote you, I got a position (with- 
 out asking for it) as assistant editor on the Item, 
 at a salary considerably smaller than that I re- 
 ceived on the Commercial (of Cincinnati), but large 
 enough to enable me to save half of it. There- 
 fore I hasten to return Will's generous favor with 
 the most sincere thanks and kindest wishes. You 
 
Letters from The Raven 55 
 
 would scarcely know me now, for my face is thin- 
 ner than a knife and my skin very dark. The 
 Southern sun has turned me into a mulatto. I 
 have ceased to wear spectacles, and my hair is wild 
 and ghastly. I am seriously thinking of going into 
 a fraud, which will pay like hell, — an advertis- 
 ing fraud: buying land by the pound and selling 
 it in boxes at one dollar per box. I have a party 
 here now who wants to furnish bulk of capital 
 and go shares. He is an old hand at the dodge. 
 It would be carried along under false names, of 
 course; and there is really no money in honest 
 
 work I think I shall see you in the fall or 
 
 spring; and when I come again to Cincinnati, it 
 will be, my dear old man, as you would wish, with 
 money in my pocket. It did me much good to 
 hear from you; for I fancied my postal card ask- 
 ing for help might have offended you; and I 
 feared you had resolved that I was a fraud. Well, 
 I am something of a fraud, but not to every- 
 body I don't like the people here at all, and 
 
 would not live here continually. But it is con- 
 venient now, for I could not live cheaper else- 
 where." 
 
 Again undated, but belonging to his early New 
 
56 Letters from The Raven 
 
 Orleans period, is the letter in which, after discuss- 
 ing some business venture he had in mind, he 
 says: 
 
 " There is a strong feeling down here that the 
 South will soon be the safest place to live in. 
 The labor troubles North promise to be some- 
 thing terrible. I assure you that few well-posted 
 newspaper men here would care to exchange lo- 
 calities until after these labor troubles have as- 
 sumed some definite shape. There is no labor 
 element here that is dangerous. 
 
 "There are some businesses which would pay 
 here : a cheap restaurant, a cheap swimming bath, 
 or a cheap laundry. Money just now could be 
 coined at any of these things. Everything else 
 here is dead. I met a highly educated Jew here 
 not long ago, who had lived and made money 
 in New Zealand, Martinique, British Columbia, 
 Panama, Sandwich Islands, Buenos Ayres, and 
 San Francisco. C I have been/ he said, 'almost 
 every place where money can be made, and I know 
 almost every dodge known to Hebrews in the 
 money-making way. But I do not see a single 
 chance to make anything in this town.' He left 
 for the North. He was from London. 
 
 " I should like to see you down here, if it were 
 
Letters from The Raven 57 
 
 not for malaria. You would not escape the reg- 
 ular marsh fever; but that is not dangerous 
 when the symptoms are recognized and promptly 
 treated. When I had it I did not know what it 
 was. I took instinctively a large dose of castor 
 oil. Sometime after I met the druggist, a good 
 old German, who sold it me. 'I never expected 
 to see you again,' he said; c you had a very bad 
 case of fever when I saw you.' 
 
 " But everybody gets that here. You live so ab- 
 stemiously and thirst so little after the flesh-pots 
 that I think you would not have much to fear. 
 I go swimming a good deal ; but I find the water 
 horribly warm. The lake seems to be situated 
 directly over the great furnace of Hell. . . . 
 
 "I'll be doubly d — d if I have the vaguest idea 
 what I shall do. I have a delightfully lazy life 
 here; and I assure you I never intend to work 
 fourteen hours a day again. But whether to leave 
 here I don't know. I 'm only making about ten 
 dollars a week, but that is better than making 
 twenty-five dollars and being a slave to a news- 
 paper. I write what I please, go when I please, 
 and quit work when I please. I have really only 
 three hours a day office duty, — mostly consumed 
 in waiting for proofs. If I stay here, I can make 
 
58 Letters from The Raven 
 
 more soon. But I don't really care a damn whether 
 I make much money or not. If I have to make 
 money by working hard for it, I shall certainly 
 remain poor. I have done the last hard work I 
 shall ever do. 
 
 "On the success of some literary work, how- 
 ever, I have a vague idea of receiving enough 
 ready money to invest in some promising little 
 specs, here, — of the nature I have already hinted 
 at. If they pay, they will pay admirably. If I lose 
 the money, I shan't die of starvation. . . . 
 
 " I shall certainly not leave here before seeing 
 Cuba. It would be a mortal sin to be so near the 
 Antilles and yet never have sailed that sapphire 
 sea yclept the Spanish Main. 
 
 "I never felt so funny in my whole life. I 
 have no ambition, no loves, no anxieties, — some- 
 times a vague unrest without a motive, some- 
 times a feeling as if my heart was winged and 
 trying to soar away, sometimes a vague longing 
 for pleasurable wanderings, sometimes a half- 
 crazy passion for a great night with wine and wo- 
 men and music. But these are much like flitting 
 dreams, and amount to little. They are ephe- 
 meral. The wandering passion is strongest of all; 
 and I feel no inclination to avail myself of the 
 
Letters from The Raven 59 
 
 only anchor which keeps the ship of a man's life 
 in port. 
 
 "Then again, — I have curiously regained me- 
 mories of long ago, which I thought utterly for- 
 gotten. Leisure lends memory a sharp definition. 
 Life here is so lazy, — nights are so liquid with 
 tropic moonlight, — days are so splendid with 
 green and gold, — summer is so languid with per- 
 fume and warmth, — that I hardly know whether 
 I am dreaming or awake. It is all a dream here, 
 I suppose, and will seem a dream even after the 
 sharp awakening of another voyage, the immor- 
 tal gods only know where. Ah ! Gods ! beautiful 
 Gods of antiquity! One can only feel you, and 
 know you, and believe in you, after living in this 
 sweet, golden air. What is the good of dreaming 
 about earthly women, when one is in love with 
 marble, and ivory, and the bronzes of two thou- 
 sand years ago? Let me be the last of the idol- 
 worshippers, O golden Venus, and sacrifice to 
 thee the twin doves thou lovest, — the birds of 
 Paphos, — the Cythendae ! " 
 
 Hearn had had his troubles with New Orleans 
 and Cincinnati newspaper men, some of whom 
 pirated his translations, while others printed slan- 
 derous stories concerning his manner of living, — 
 
60 Letters from The Raven 
 
 slanders which Mr. Watkin combated in a per- 
 sonal letter to the editor of the Commercial some 
 years after, when his attackers again became busy. 
 On July 10, 18785 Hearn wrote: 
 
 " My Dear Old Man : Was delighted to hear 
 from you. I am very glad the thing is as much of 
 a mystery to you as it is to me. I can only sur- 
 mise that it must have been a piece of spite work 
 on the part of a certain gentleman connected with 
 the N. O. Times, who printed some of my work 
 before, and got a raking for it. My position here 
 is a peculiar one, and not as stable as I should 
 like, so that if it were made to appear that I had 
 re-utilized stuff from the Item, I would certainly 
 get into trouble. I have been very ill for a week, 
 break-bone fever. I do not expect to return North 
 c broke.' c Cahlves is too scace in dis country to 
 be killed for a prodigal son/ I wish you were 
 near that I might whisper projects of colossal 
 magnitude in your ear. I am working like hell 
 to make a good raise for Europe.Will write more 
 soon. Editor away to-day and the whole paper 
 on my hands. 
 
 "Monday. Delayed posting letter. I find this cli- 
 mate terribly enervating. No one could have led 
 
Letters from The Raven 61 
 
 a more monastic life than I have done here; yet 
 I find I cannot even think energetically. The 
 mind seems to lose all power of activity. I have 
 been collecting materials for magazine articles, 
 and I can't write them out. I have only been 
 able to do mechanical work, — translating, &c, 
 and one Romanesque essay, which was succes- 
 sively rejected by three magazines. Wish I was 
 on a polar expedition. 
 
 "I have been an awfully good boy down here, 
 and have no news to tell you of amours or curi- 
 ous experiences. " 
 
 Hearn once more tells of his trouble with a Cin- 
 cinnati paper, alleging the owners failed to pay 
 him for his New Orleans correspondence, and 
 how finally he was "happily discharged." 
 
 Then he resumes : " By the way, I wrote a poem 
 for the decoration of the soldiers' graves at Chal- 
 mette National Cemetery, on the 30th inst. I 
 think it was. The poem was read by Col. Wright 
 of this city at the decoration and published in the 
 Democrat. It was the first bit of rhyme I wrote, 
 and so you must excuse it. But it is not as good 
 as — 
 
62 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "The love of H earn and Watkin, 
 What is its kin? — 
 TV is two toads encysted 
 Within one stone, 
 Two vipers twisted 
 Into one. 
 
 "Here is the poem: 
 
 " Fair flowers pass away : 
 In perfumed ruin falls the lilys urn; 
 In pallid pink decay 
 
 Moulders the rose; — all in their time return 
 To the primeval clay. 
 
 "Yet still their tiny ghosts 
 Hover about our homes on viewless wings; 
 In incense-breathing hosts 
 
 They love to haunt those stores of trifling things 
 Of which affection boasts, — 
 
 " Some curl of glossy hair, — 
 Some loving letter penned by pretty fingers, — 
 Some volume old and rare, 
 On whose time-yellow fly-leaf fondly lingers 
 The name of a woman fair. 
 
 "So in that hour 
 When brave lives fail and brave hearts cease to 
 
 beat, — 
 Each deed of power 
 
Letters from The Raven 63 
 
 Lives on to haunt our memories^ — faintly sweet 
 Like the ghost of a flower. 
 
 "Each flower we strew 
 In tribute to the brave to-day shall prove 
 A token true 
 
 Of some sweet memory of the dead we love, — 
 The Men in Blue. 
 
 "Perchance the story 
 Of Chalmette* s heroes may be lost to fame ', 
 As years wax hoary; 
 
 But Valor's Angel keeps each gallant name 
 On his Roll of Glory r 
 
 August 14, 1878, Hearn wrote a letter to the 
 man who had always cheered him and who now 
 in turn needed cheering. Business in all lines in 
 Cincinnati was bad, and Mr. Watkin was quite 
 despondent. He had written Hearn something 
 of this, and also had hinted that he might move 
 to Kansas or somewhere farther West. In return 
 he received the following letter, expressive of all 
 that was most fun-loving in its writer: 
 
 " My Dear Old Man : I think you had better 
 come here next October and rejoin your naughty 
 raven. It would not do you any harm to recon- 
 noitre. Think of the times we could have, — de- 
 
6 4 Letters from The Raven 
 
 lightful rooms with five large windows opening 
 on piazzas shaded by banana trees; dining at 
 Chinese restaurants and being served by Manila 
 waitresses, with oblique eyes and skin like gold; 
 visiting sugar-cane plantations ; scudding over to 
 Cuba; dying with the mere delight of laziness; 
 laughing at cold and smiling at the news of snow- 
 storms a thousand miles away; eating the cheap- 
 est food in the world, — and sinning the sweetest 
 kind of sins. Now you know, good old Dad, 
 nice old Dad, — you know that you are lazy and 
 ought to be still lazier. Come here and be lazy. 
 Let me be the siren voice enticing a Ulysses 
 who does not stuff wax in his ears. Don't go to 
 horrid, dreadful Kansas. Go to some outrageous 
 ruinous land, where the moons are ten times 
 larger than they are there. Or tell me to pull up 
 stakes, and I shall take unto myself the wings of 
 a bird and fly to any place but beastly Cincinnati. 
 "Money can be made here out of the poor. 
 People are so poor here that nothing pays ex- 
 cept that which appeals to poverty. But I think 
 you could make things hop around lively. Now 
 one can make thirty milk biscuits for five cents 
 and eight cups of coffee for five cents. Just think 
 of it!... 
 
Letters from The Raven 65 
 
 " Cincinnati is bad ; but it 's going to be a d — d 
 sight worse. You know that as well as I do. 
 Leave the vile hole and the long catalogue of 
 Horrid Acquaintances behind you, and come 
 down here to your own little man, — good little 
 man. Get you nice room, nice board, nice busi- 
 ness. Perhaps we might strike ile in a glorious 
 spec. Why don't you spec? You'd better spec, 
 pretty soon, or the times will get so bad that you 
 will have to get up and dust. This is a seaport. 
 There are tall ships here. They sail to Europe, — 
 to London, Marseilles, Constantinople, Smyrna. 
 They sail to the West Indies and those seaports 
 where we are going to open a cigar store or some- 
 thing of that kind. 
 
 O/;, / have seven tall ships at sea. 
 And seven more at hand; 
 And five and twenty jolly, jolly sea?nen 
 Shall be at your conunand. 
 
 May the Immortal Gods preserve you in im- 
 mortal youth." 
 
 There now follow some letters whose dates 
 it has been impossible to fix. The cancellation 
 marks on the envelopes give the months, but 
 not the years. However, there is internal evi- 
 
66 Letters from The Raven 
 
 dence to show that they belong to the period 
 between the last group and the group of 1882, 
 so that they were written in the years 1 879, 1 8 80, 
 and 1 88 1 j in all probability. The first is one 
 of the most interesting letters in the whole set. 
 The future great writer is displayed as the owner 
 of a five-cent eating-house. The letter is replete 
 with ridiculous little sketches of a bird, which 
 he claimed was a raven. In fact, in the following, 
 wherever "raven" is used, the reader must un- 
 derstand that there is a drawing of one in the 
 letter. It was written in February: 
 
 " My Dear O. M. : Your style of correspond- 
 ence — four letters a year — leads me to suppose 
 that the fate of the Raven is of little conse- 
 quence. It was therefore with surprise that I 
 heard of a letter concerning It being received 
 at the Item office. The letter warranted the as- 
 sumption that you had at least some curiosity, if 
 nothing better, in regard to It. That curiosity 
 should be gratified. The Raven keepeth a restau- 
 rant in the city of New Orleans. It is secretly in 
 business for itself. It is also in the newspaper 
 business. The reason It has gone into business 
 for itself is that It is tired of working for other 
 
Letters from The Raven 67 
 
 people. The reason that It is still in the news- 
 paper line is that the business is not yet paying, 
 and needs some financial support. The business 
 is the cheapest in N. O. All dishes are five cents. 
 Knocks the market price out of things. The 
 business has already cost about one hundred 
 dollars to set up. May pay well; may not. The 
 Raven has apartner, — a large and ferocious man, 
 who kills people that disagree with their coffee. 
 The Raven expects to settle in Cuba before long. 
 Is going there to reconnoitre in a few months, — 
 if Fortune smileth. It has mastered the elements 
 of Spanish language, and has a Spanish tutor 
 who comes every day to teach It. It has been 
 studying Spanish assiduously for six mos.; and 
 trusts to be able to establish a meson de los es- 
 trangeros^ or stranger's restaurant, in Havana, — 
 unless It is busted up pretty soon. It might be 
 busted up. As yet It has remained poor. Eco- 
 nomy is the cause thereof. It has seen little of 
 wine and women in this city. Its notions are 
 mean and stingy. It is constantly suspicious that 
 Its partner may go back on It. It is of a sus- 
 picious character. It has debts on its mind, but 
 prefers to look after its own interests at pre- 
 sent, — until It can buy some clothes. It also 
 
68 Letters from The Raven 
 
 proposes to establish another five-cent eating- 
 house here in the French quarter, sooner or 
 later, if this one pays. If the O. M. ever leaves 
 Cincinnati, he may see the Raven. Otherwise 
 he will not. If he comes to this part of the world, 
 he can obtain board cheap at the five-cent re- 
 staurant. The Raven would not object to see him 
 again, — on the contrary, he is filled with curi- 
 osity to see him. The Raven may succeed right 
 off. He may not. But he is going to succeed 
 sooner or later, even if he has to start an eating- 
 house in Hell. He sends you his respects, — re- 
 serving his affection for a later time." 
 
 Hearn enclosed with the latter a yellow hand- 
 bill advertising his restaurant. It was as follows: 
 
 "T/ie 5 cent Restaurant 
 1 60 Dryades Street 
 
 This is the cheapest eating-house in the South. It is neat, 
 orderly, and respectable as any other in New Orleans. Tou 
 can get a good meal for a couple of nickels. All dishes 5 
 cents. A large cup of pure Coffee, with Rolls, only 5 cents. 
 Everything half the price of the markets." 
 
 In a letter postmarked June 27, he again refers 
 to his knowledge of Spanish, and, what is more 
 interesting, makes his first reference to Japan, the 
 
Letters from The Raven 6 9 
 
 country where he was to achieve his best work: 
 
 "Your little Raven talks Spanish. Has a fair 
 acquaintance with the language. Just now rusty 
 for want of practice. Soon pick it up again. . . . 
 
 "Have also wild theories regarding Japan. 
 
 Splendid field in Japan Climate just like 
 
 England, — perhaps a little milder. Plenty of 
 Europeans. English, American and French pa- 
 pers. . . . 
 
 "Would not be surprised if you could make 
 N. Orleans trip pay — now that I have seen your 
 circulars. Only — remember CO. D. Everybody 
 here is a thief. Must be careful even in changing 
 a quarter not to get counterfeits or false change. 
 Horrid den of villains, robbers, mutual admira- 
 tion, — political quacks, medical quacks, literary 
 quacks, — adventurers, Spanish, Italian, Greek, 
 English, Corsican, French, Venezuelan, — Pari- 
 sian roues, Sicilian murderers, Irish ruffians. . . . 
 Couldn't be half so bad in Japan." 
 
 The censure of New Orleans people must not 
 be taken too seriously. He afterwards had some 
 very dear friends there, who changed his opinions 
 to a great extent. On November 24 came a letter 
 liberally sprinkled with drawings of the raven 
 and replete with his fun: 
 
70 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "Dear Old Man: The Raven has not found 
 letter-writing a pleasant occupation lately. It has 
 had some trouble ; It has also been studying very 
 hard; It has had Its literary work doubled, and It 
 has had little leisure time, as Its grotesque and 
 fantastic Eye is not yet in a healthy condition. 
 It cannot write at night, not in these beautiful 
 Southern Nights, which flame with stars, — the 
 'holy Night,' as the old Greek poet called it, 
 which is c all Eye, all Ear, all perfume to the stu- 
 dent/ 
 
 " The Raven would like to see you, as It could 
 tell you a great many queer things about South- 
 ern matters, which no paper has published or 
 dare publish, and about the city and about the 
 people. But It hardly hopes to see you; for after 
 this summer It will not be here. It has latterly 
 heard much of advantages held out to It in Mex- 
 ico City, where the great exposition is soon to 
 be held; and Its Spanish studies have been suc- 
 cessful. It wants to find a temporary resting-place 
 among Spanish people, and cannot stay here. It 
 would be pleased to forget Its own language for 
 a while, whether in Cuba or elsewhere. . . . The 
 Raven cannot go North, as It cannot afford to. 
 It will require all It can save to carry It through 
 
Letters from The Raven 71 
 
 troubles which await It somewhere else, — for 
 thou knowest full well that Woe is the normal 
 condition of the Raven's existence. The Raven 
 passeth Its time thusly: In the morning It aris- 
 eth with the Sun and drinketh a cup of coffee 
 and devoureth a piece of bread. Then It proceed- 
 ed to the office and conco&eth devilment for the 
 Item. Then It returneth to Its room, whose win- 
 dows are shadowed by creeping plants and clouds 
 of mosquitoes, and receiveth Its Spanish tutor. 
 Then It goeth to a Chinese restaurant, where It 
 eateth an amazing dinner, — Its bump of alimen- 
 tativeness being enormously developed. Then 
 It spendeth two hours among the second-hand 
 bookstores. It then goeth to bed, — to arise in 
 the dead vast and middle of the night and smoke 
 Its pipe. For a year It hath not smoked a cigar; 
 and Its morals are exemplary. It sendeth you Its 
 affedionate good-will and proceedeth forthwith 
 to smoke Its pipe." 
 
 Again, without any clue as to its date and with- 
 out any aid from the memory of Mr. Watkin, 
 is a small photograph of the writer, with this 
 characteristic note: 
 
 "Dear Old Dad: Would like to hear from 
 
72 Letters from The Raven 
 
 you, to see you, to chat with you. Write me a 
 line or two. As soon as I can find time, will 
 write a nice, long, chatty letter, — all about every- 
 thing you would like to hear. Am doing well. 
 New Orleans is not, however, what I hoped it 
 was. Are you well and happy ? I have thoughts 
 of cemeteries and graves, and a dear old Ghost 
 with a white beard, — a Voice of the Past. 
 " I press your hand. 
 
 " Lafcadio Hearn" 
 
 In a letter dated July 7, 1882, Hearn tells of 
 his first adventures in the book-writing line and 
 of the horrified criticisms of some of the East- 
 ern book-reviewers. All told, however, he be- 
 comes the more purposeful Hearn, the man Mr. 
 Watkin had always predicted he would be if he 
 continued at his literary work in his own way. 
 It is interesting for another reason, too, in that 
 it shows how already, in these New Orleans days, 
 Hearn was preparing himself by his studies for 
 his future life in Japan. 
 
 " My Dear Old Dad : Your letter lies before 
 me here like a white tablet of stone bearing a 
 dead name; and in my mind there is just such 
 a silence as one feels standing before a tomb, — 
 
7c "& - 
 
 y^ HZZL /^uw^- j^°^ UrcM, (AaJL~> lyexj " ^CT 4v<rKu*«X, 
 ...J^CZ, n PCT Aft] '^ ^^a,. 
 
 nv,^ ^(a^a/aZ^ ,-- fas J-T {A< ^^^ /0 
 
 FACSIMILE OF PART OF A LETTER FROM HEARN TO MR. WATKIN 
 

 
 v f i f & r * 
 
 f 
 
Letters from The Raven 73 
 
 so that I can press your hand only and say no- 
 thing. 
 
 &IMsM§fi- 
 
 A FANCIFUL PENCIL SKETCH BY HEARN 
 
 " I must go North in a few months, by way 
 of Cincinnati, and spend a week or so in the city. 
 
74 Letters from The Raven 
 
 My intention is to see Worthington about a new 
 publication. He is now in Europe. Here I make 
 thirty dollars a week for about five hours' work 
 a day, and the position appears tolerably solid; 
 but the climate is enervating, the man who re- 
 fuses to connect himself with church or clique 
 lives alone like a hermit in the Thebaids, and 
 one sickens of such a life at times. Sometimes 
 I fancy that the older I grow, the more distaste- 
 ful companionship becomes; but this may be ow- 
 ing to the situation here. Nevertheless I am feel- 
 ing very old, old almost as the Tartar of Long- 
 fellow's poem, — * three hundred and sixty years.' 
 "Imagine the heavy, rancid air of a Southern 
 swamp in midsummer, when the very clouds 
 seem like those which belonged to the atmo- 
 sphere of pregeologic periods, uncreated lead and 
 iron, — never a breath of pure air, — dust that is 
 powdered dung, — quaking ground that shakes 
 with the passage of a wagon, — heat as of a per- 
 petual vapor bath, — and at night, subtle damps 
 that fill the bones with rheumatism and poison 
 the blood. Then, when one thinks of green hills 
 and brisk winds, comes a strange despondency. 
 It is something like the outlying region through 
 which Milton's Lucifer passed, half crawling, 
 
Letters from The Raven 75 
 
 half flying, on his way to the Garden of Eden. 
 Your little reprints provoked very pleasant old 
 memories. I paid the Somebody one hundred 
 and fifty dollars for the publication/ 1 ' Have not 
 yet heard from him. The understanding is that I 
 get my money back and something besides. How- 
 ever, I shall be satisfied with the something. I 
 have had many nice notices, letters from authors 
 of some note, and a few criticisms of the true 
 Pharisaic species. I enclose one for your amuse- 
 ment. I have also built up a fine library, about 
 three hundred picked volumes, and have a little 
 money saved. Have also some ambition to try 
 the book business, — not here, but in San Fran- 
 cisco or somewhere else. However, I have no de- 
 finite plans, — only a purpose to do something 
 for myself and thus obtain leisure for a syste- 
 matic literary purpose. Were you situated like 
 me, — that is, having no large business or large 
 interests, — I think I should try to coax you to 
 seek the El Dorado of the future, where for- 
 tunes will certainly be made by practical men, — 
 Mexico, — where no one ever lights a fire, and 
 where one has only to go in the sun when he is 
 too cold, into the shade when he is too warm. 
 * Translation of Gautier's short stories. 
 
76 Letters from The Raven 
 
 But for the present I will only ask you to come 
 down here when the weather gets healthy and 
 your business will allow it. You will stay with me, 
 of course, and no expense. The trip would be 
 agreeable in the season when the air is sweet 
 with orange blossoms. 
 
 "The population here is exceedingly queer, — 
 something it is hard to describe, and something 
 which it is possible to learn only after a painful 
 experience of years. At present I may say that 
 all my acquaintances here are limited to about 
 half a dozen, with one or two friends whom I in- 
 vite to see me occasionally. Yet almost daily I 
 receive letters from people I do not know, ask- 
 ing favors which I never grant. New Orleans is 
 the best school for the study of human selfish- 
 ness I have ever been in. Buddhism teaches that 
 the second birth is to this life c as the echo to the 
 voice in the cavern, as the great footprints to 
 the steps of the elephant.' According to the teach- 
 ing of the Oriental Christ, this whole population 
 will be born again as wild beasts, — which is con- 
 soling. . . . You say you cannot write. I differ 
 with you; but it would certainly be impossible 
 for either of us to write many things we would 
 like to say. Still, you can easily drop a line from 
 
Letters from The Raven 77 
 
 time to time, even a postal card, just to let me 
 know you are well. If I do not get up to see you 
 by September, I hope to see you down. I dreamed 
 one night that I heard the ticking of the queer 
 clock, — like the longstrides of a man booted and 
 spurred. You know the clock I mean, — the long, 
 weird-faced clock. My eyes are not well, of course, 
 — never will be ; but they are better. More about 
 myself I cannot tell you in a letter, — except 
 that I suppose I have changed a little. Less de- 
 spondent, but less hopeful; wiser a little and 
 more silent; less nervous, but less merry; more 
 systematic and perhaps a good deal more selfish. 
 Not strictly economical, but coming to it stead- 
 ily; and in leisure hours studying the theories of 
 the East, the poetry of antique India, the teach- 
 ings of the wise concerning absorption and ema- 
 nation, the illusions of existence, and happiness 
 as the equivalent of annihilation. Think they were 
 wiser than the wisest of Occidental ecclesiastics. 
 "And still there is in life much sweetness and 
 much pleasure in the accomplishment of a fixed 
 purpose. Existence may be a delusion and de- 
 sire a snare, but I expect to exist long enough 
 to satisfy my desire to see thee again before en- 
 tering Nirvana. So, reaching to thee the grasp 
 
78 Letters from The Raven 
 
 of friendship across the distance of a thousand 
 miles, I remain in the hope of being always re- 
 membered sincerely as your friend. " 
 
 On September i o, 1 8 82, in reply to a letter from 
 Mr. Watkin, in which the latter said he thought 
 of going to Tampa for a rest and possibly also 
 to look around and see what the business pro- 
 spects were, Hearn filled five big sheets with all 
 the information he could gather about Tampa, 
 from facts about fleas to a glowing eulogy of the 
 moon, — "seven times larger than your cold 
 moon." 
 
 Following upon his translations of Gautier, 
 Hearn busied himself with translations from Flau- 
 bert, and sent the manuscript of the proposed 
 title-page and introduction to Mr. Watkin to set 
 up, as he was superstitious about his "Dear Old 
 Dad" bringing him luck. As usual he urged his 
 friend to visit him, drawing in a letter of Septem- 
 ber 14, 1882, the following alluring pictures: 
 
 "In October we shall have exquisite weather 
 — St. Martin's summer, the Creoles call it, — 
 something like Indian summer North. Then I 
 shall indeed hope to see you. No danger now of 
 fever; and will have a nice healthy room for you. 
 
Letters from The Raven 79 
 
 If you can't get away in October, wait till No- 
 vember, — nice and clear month generally, with 
 orange-blossom smells. Raven wants to have a 
 big talk. As for writing, don't write if it bothers 
 you. I am sure you cannot have much time and 
 must take care of your eyes. Perhaps some day we 
 can both take things more easily, and a long rest 
 by running streams, near mountain winds and in 
 a climate like unto an eternal mountain spring- 
 time. Dream of voices of birds, whisper of leaves, 
 milky quivering of stars, laughing of streams, 
 odors of pine and of savage flowers, shadows 
 of flying clouds, winds triumphantly free. Horri- 
 ble cities! vile air! abominable noises! sickness! 
 humdrum human machines! Let us strike our 
 tents! move a little nearer to Nature!" 
 
 October 26, 1882, still writing about the pro- 
 mised visit of Mr. Watkin, he sent the following : 
 
 "My Dear Old Man: As the twig is bent, 
 &c. — neither you nor I can now correct our- 
 selves of habits. We are both old. [Hearn was 
 thirty-two and Mr. Watkin fifty-nine.] I, for my 
 part, feel ancient as the moon, and regret the de- 
 parture of my youth. But I observe that all my 
 best friends have the same habit. There 's Charley 
 
80 Letters from The Raven 
 
 Johnson, — wrote me twice in five years. There's 
 the old newspaper coteries never write me at all. 
 There is myself, just as bad as anybody. When 
 somebody asked Theophile Gautier to write, he 
 answered, £ Oh, ask a carpenter to plane planks 
 
 just for fun!' It is a fact. Life's too short I 
 
 was afraid for a while that Yellow Jack was try- 
 ing to climb up this way from Pensacola; but I 
 think all danger is now over. The weather feels 
 chilly to us, — alligator-blooded and web-footed 
 dwellers of the swamp (the Dismal Swamp) : it 
 will feel warm to you. . . . 
 
 "Yes; I think a river trip down would be nicer 
 for you, as it would include rest, good living, 
 and a certain magical illusion of Southern beau- 
 ties which bewitched me into making my dwell- 
 ing-place among the frogs and bugs and the 
 everlasting mosquitoes. 'Bugs' here mean every 
 flying and crawling thing whereof the entomo- 
 logy is unknown to the people. The electric lights 
 nightly murder centillions of them." 
 
 The letter is signed as usual with the drawing 
 of a raven. As a novelty, the bird is looking at 
 a steamer bearing over the side-wheel the name 
 
 Watkin. 
 
Letters from The Raven 81 
 
 November 24, 1882, he wrote to Mr. Watkin, 
 foreshadowing the book, "Stray Leaves from 
 Strange Literatures," which was to bring him his 
 first meed of praise from all sides. Again in this 
 letter he somewhat despondently referred to his 
 being a small man in a world where, according 
 to his morbid views, big men won all the battles: 
 
 " I'm busy on a collection of Oriental legends, 
 — Brahmanic, Buddhistic, Talmudic, Arabic, 
 Chinese, and Polynesian, — which I hope to have 
 ready in the spring. I think I can get Scribner or 
 Osgood to bring it out. 
 
 "I think myself that life is worth living un- 
 der the conditions you speak of; but they are 
 very hard to obtain. I would be glad to try a 
 new climate, — a new climate is a new life, a new 
 youth. Here the problem of existence forever 
 stares one in the face with eyes of iron. Inde- 
 pendence is so hard to obtain, — the churches, the 
 societies, the organizations, the cliques, the hum- 
 bugs are all working against the man who tries 
 to preserve independence of thought and a&ion. 
 Outside of these one cannot obtain a woman's 
 society, and if obtained one is forever buried 
 in the mediocrity to which she belongs. . . . My 
 idea of perfect bliss would be ease and absolute 
 
82 Letters from The Raven 
 
 quiet, — silence, dreams, tepidness, — great quaint 
 rooms overlooking a street full of shadows and 
 emptiness, — friends in the evening, a pipe, a lit- 
 tle philosophy, wandering under the moon. . . . 
 I am beginning to imagine that to be forever in 
 the company of one woman would kill a man 
 with ennui. And I feel that I am getting old — 
 immemorially old, — older than the moon. I 
 ought never to have been born in this century, 
 I think sometimes, because I live forever in 
 dreams of other centuries and other faiths and 
 other ethics, — dreams rudely broken by the 
 sound of cursing in the street below, cursing in 
 seven different languages. I can't tell you much 
 else about myself. I live in my books, and the 
 smoke of my pipe, and ideas that nobody has any 
 right expecting a good time in this world unless 
 he be gifted with great physical strength and force 
 of will. These give success. Little phantoms of 
 men are blown about like down in the storms of 
 the human struggle: they have not enough weight 
 to keep them in place. And the Talmud says: 
 'There are three whose life is no life: the Sym- 
 pathetic man, the Irascible, and the Melan- 
 choly.' But alas! the art by which the Sorceress 
 of Colchis could recreate a body by cutting it up 
 
Letters from The Raven 83 
 
 and boiling it in a pot is lost. Don't you think 
 happiness is solely the result of perfect health 
 under normal conditions of existence? I believe 
 in the German philosopher who said that whether 
 one had a billion dollars a day or only one dol- 
 lar a week, it made no difference in regard to the 
 amount of happiness a human brain was suscep- 
 tible of. Still, it would be so nice to avoid the op- 
 posite by walling oneself up from the human spe- 
 cies, — like the Cainites, whose cities were ' walled 
 up to Heaven.'" 
 
 There now ensues in the correspondence, a si- 
 lence extending over a period of nearly five years. 
 These were busy years for Hearn. His position 
 in the New Orleans newspaper world became a 
 prominent one, and his translations of stories 
 from the French, made for the papers by which 
 he was employed, were so favorably received as to 
 give him greater confidence in his own abilities. 
 
 Early in June of the year 1887 things began 
 to take a turn for greater work for Hearn. His 
 studies of the negroes and the Creoles of Lou- 
 isiana had attracted the attention of the publish- 
 ers, and he had received some rather tempting 
 offers to do work for them. It was then that he 
 left New Orleans, going to New York by way of 
 
8 4 Letters from The Raven 
 
 Cincinnati. With all of his old shyness, his avoid- 
 ance of mere acquaintances, and his love of the 
 white-haired old gentleman, who alone in Cincin- 
 nati had understood him, Hearn spent his entire 
 day in Cincinnati in chat at Watkin's printing 
 office, which was then situated at 16 Longworth 
 Street. It was there that Hearn saw once more 
 the tall clock, whose peculiar ticking seemed to 
 have fascinated him and to which references are 
 made even in his few letters from Japan. After 
 the day with Mr. Watkin, he went direct to New 
 York, where he was the guest of his friend, Mr. 
 H. E. Krehbiel, the well-known musical critic, 
 who was then living at 438 West 57th Street. 
 From there it was that Hearn wrote to his men- 
 tor the following confession of affection and gra- 
 titude: 
 
 "Dear Old Man: A delightful trip brought 
 me safe and sound to New York, where my dear 
 friend Krehbiel was waiting to take me to his 
 cosy home. I cannot tell you how much our lit- 
 tle meeting delighted me, or how much I re- 
 gretted to depart so soon, or how differently I 
 regarded our old friendship from my old way 
 of looking at it. I was too young, too foolish, 
 
Letters from The Raven 85 
 
 and too selfish to know you as you are, when we 
 used to be together. Ten years made little ex- 
 terior change in me, but a great deal of heart- 
 change; and I saw you as you are, — noble and 
 true and frank and generous, and felt I loved you 
 more than I ever did before; felt also how much 
 I owed you, and will always owe you, — and un- 
 derstood how much allowance you had made for 
 all my horrid, foolish ways when I used to be 
 with you. Well, I am sure to see you again. I 
 am having one of the most delightful holidays 
 here I ever had in my life; and I expect to stay 
 a few weeks. If it were not for the terrible win- 
 ters, I should like to live in New York. Some 
 day I suppose I shall have to spend a good deal 
 of my time here. The houses eleven stories high, 
 that seem trying to climb into the moon, — the 
 tremendous streets and roads, — the cascading 
 thunder of the awful torrent of life, — the sense 
 of wealth-force and mind-power that oppresses 
 the stranger here, — all these form so colossal 
 a contrast with the inert and warmly colored 
 Southern life that I know not how to express my 
 impression. I can only think that I have found 
 superb material for a future story, in which the 
 influence of New York on a Southern mind may 
 
86 Letters from The Raven 
 
 be described. Well, new as these things may 
 seem to me, they are, no doubt, old and uninter- 
 esting to you, — so that I shall not bore you with 
 my impressions. I will look forward to our next 
 meeting, when during a longer stay in Cin. I can 
 tell you such little experiences of my trip as may 
 please you. I want to get into that dear little shop 
 of yours again. I dreamed of it the other night, 
 and heard the tickingof the oldclock like a man's 
 feet treading on pavement far away; and I saw 
 the Sphinx, with the mother and child in her 
 arms, move her monstrous head, and observe: 
 'The sky in New York is grey!' 
 
 "When I woke up it was grey, and it re- 
 mained grey until to-day. Even now it is not 
 like our summer blue. It looks higher and paler 
 and colder. We are nearer to God in the South, 
 just as we are nearer to Death in that terrible 
 and splendid heat of the Gulf Coast. When I 
 write God, of course I mean only the World- 
 Soul, the mighty and sweetest life of Nature, 
 the great Blue Ghost, the Holy Ghost which 
 fills planets and hearts with beauty. 
 "Believe me, Dear Old Dad, 
 
 "Affectionately, your son, 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn " 
 
Letters from The Raven 87 
 
 Below this is once more the familiar drawing 
 of the raven. 
 
 From this time on the letters came at greater 
 and greater intervals. There were only three 
 more from America and then four from Japan. 
 It was not that Hearn forgot his old friend or 
 cared less for him. But he became busier, and 
 with larger projects, newer aims, and a different 
 life, there was less time in which to indulge him- 
 self in the active correspondence of former years. 
 Between the New York group of letters and 
 those from Japan is a gap. Letters on both sides 
 had become a matter of years instead of weeks 
 or months. Mr. Watkin, with the increasing 
 weight of years on his shoulders and the increas- 
 ing cares of a business that had begun to decline 
 with the introduction of modern printing me- 
 thods, found less time to write to his Raven. 
 
 Early in July, 1887, Hearn at last departed 
 on that long-wished-for journey to the West In- 
 dies. A note, hastily scribbled to Mr. Watkin, 
 told of the arrangements: 
 
 "Dear Old Man: I leave on the Barracouta 
 for Trinidad, Sunday, at daybreak. I have been 
 travelling about a good deal, and have been si- 
 
88 Letters from The Raven 
 
 lent only because so busy and so tired when the 
 business was over. Your dear letter and your ex- 
 cellent little stamp both delighted me. I will let 
 you hear from me soon again, — that is, as soon 
 as I can get to a P. O. 
 
 "With affection, always your little Raven, 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn" 
 
 This promise of frequent letters was one he was 
 not destined to keep. Once in the West Indies, 
 he found himself so enthralled by its beauties, 
 so busy putting on paper his impressions of what 
 he was seeing and breathing and feeling, that it 
 was not until he was once more in the United 
 States that he found time to write. 
 
 September ai, 1887, he sent the following 
 from Metuchen, New Jersey: 
 
 "Dear Old Dad: After three months or so 
 in the West Indies and British Guiana, I am 
 back again in the U. S. in first-rate health and 
 spirits. I ought to have been able to write you, 
 I thought, from Martinique; but the enormous 
 and unexpected volume of work I had to do ren- 
 dered it almost impossible to write anything ex- 
 cept business letters to Harpers, and one or two 
 necessary notes to friends looking after my af- 
 
Letters from The Raven 89 
 
 fairs elsewhere. My conviction is that you and 
 I would do well to spend our lives in the An- 
 tilles. All dreams of Paradise (even Mahomet's) 
 are more than realized there by nature; — after 
 returning, I find this world all colorless, all grey, 
 and fearfully cold. I feel like an outcast from 
 heaven. But it is no use trying to tell you any- 
 thing about it in a letter. I wrote nearly three 
 hundred pages of manuscript to the Harpers 
 about it, — and I have not been able to say one 
 thousandth part. J got two little orders for stamps 
 for you at Martinique, — pencil stamps like the 
 one you made for me. One is to be c Plissonneau, 
 fils;' the other, C A. Testart.' Send bill to me, 
 and stamps to A. Testart, St. Pierre, Martinique, 
 French W. Indies. I hope to see you on my way 
 South, dear old Dad. 
 
 "Believe me always, 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn" 
 
 In view of the terrible catastrophe at St. Pierre, 
 it would be interesting to know whether Hearn's 
 friends perished in that fury of fire and lava and 
 hot ashes. Hearn's expectations about returning 
 to New Orleans were not destined to be fulfilled. 
 So successful had he been in his work for Har- 
 
90 Letters from The Raven 
 
 pers that, a week later than the date of the pre- 
 vious letter, he had the satisfaction of announ- 
 cing that he was going back to what at that time 
 seemed to him the most delightful region in the 
 world. The opening of this letter is unique, in that 
 it is the only one in which he is in the least cere- 
 monious: 
 
 "H. Watkin, Esq., Dear Old Dad: I am 
 going right back to the Tropics again, this time 
 to stay. I have quit newspapering forever. Wish 
 I could see you and chat with you before I go, 
 but I cannot get a chance this time. My address 
 will be care American Consul, St. Pierre, Mar- 
 tinique, Lesser Antilles. I may not be there all 
 the time, but that will be my headquarters, and 
 there letters will always reach me. To-day I am 
 packing, rushing around breathlessly, preparing 
 to go, — so that my letter must be brief. I did bet- 
 ter with my venture than I ever expected ; for I 
 got for my work done seven hundred dollars, 
 besides having secured material for much better 
 work. You will hear of me in the Harper's Mag- 
 azine this winter, — beginning about January and 
 February. I shall be able hereafter to rest where 
 I please; so that I shall have no trouble, when 
 
Letters from The Raven 9 i 
 
 I get to New York again, in running to Cincin- 
 nati. Of course I don't want my little plans known 
 yet, — because no one knows what might turn 
 up; but these are the present prospecls, — quite 
 bright for me. I will write from Martinique or 
 Guadeloupe, and try to coax you to go down 
 there. Good-bye for a little while, with my best 
 
 love to you. 
 
 y <C L. Hearn" 
 
 Again this promise of letters from the West 
 Indies was destined to be broken. While lotus- 
 eating, Hearn wrote few letters. He was most 
 probably busy, amid the glow and color of the 
 Antilles,studyingthe philosophical, scientific, and 
 religious works which were destined so strongly 
 to color his writings about Japan. He went to 
 the latter country in 1 890. In order that the reader 
 may have a clear understanding of events, the 
 facls in Hearn's Japanese career may be told in a 
 few words. In 1890 and 1891 he served as Eng- 
 lish teacher in the ordinary middle school and 
 the normal school of Matsue in Izumo. Next he 
 was connected with the government school at 
 Kumamoto. Then came newspaper work at Kobe, 
 and finally in 1896 he was honored by being 
 made ledurer on English literature at the Impe- 
 
92 Letters from The Raven 
 
 rial University of Tokio, which position he held 
 until 1903, when he retired, owing to increasing 
 trouble with his eyes, which had caused him anx- 
 iety all his life. He was contemplating a lecture 
 trip in the United States, but ill health pre- 
 vented. He died at his Tokio home September 
 26, 1904, and was buried September 29, with the 
 Buddhist rites, the funeral service being held at 
 the temple of Jito-in of Ichigaya. He now sleeps 
 in the lonely old cemetery of Zoshigaya in the 
 outskirts of the capital. Shortly after Hearn 
 reached Japan Mr. Watkin obtained his address, 
 and wrote him a letter telling how often he had 
 thought of him and had expected to hear from 
 him in the two years and more that had elapsed 
 since their last letters. This brought a speedy re- 
 ply, — a reply which showed that, so far as his feel- 
 ing for the old English printer was concerned, 
 there was little difference between the immature, 
 ambition-stung youth of nineteen and the well- 
 known, mature author of forty, who felt in some 
 dim way that there amid this Oriental people he 
 was destined to live and die. The reply to Mr. 
 Watkin is from Yokohama, and, contrary to 
 Hearn's previous rule, is actually dated, — April 
 25, 1890. 
 
Letters from The Raven 
 
 93 
 
 "Dear Old Dad: I was very happy to feel 
 that your dear heart thought about me; I also 
 have often found myself dreaming of you. I ar- 
 rived here, by way of Canada and Vancouver, 
 after passing some years in the West Indies. I 
 think I shall stay here some years. I have not 
 been getting rich, — quite the contrary ; but I am 
 at least preparing a foundation for ultimate inde- 
 pendence, — if I keep my health. It is very good 
 now, but I have many grey hairs, and I shall be 
 next June forty years old. 
 
 "I trust to make enough in a year or two to 
 realize my dream of a home in the West Indies; 
 if I succeed, I must try to coax you to come along, 
 and dream life away quietly where all is sun and 
 beauty. But no one ever lived who seemed more 
 a creature of circumstances than I ; I drift with va- 
 rious forces in the direction of least resistance, — 
 resolve to love nothing, and love always too much 
 for my own peace of mind, — places, things, and 
 persons, — and lo! presto! everything is swept 
 away, and becomes a dream, — like life itself. 
 
 " Perhaps there will be a great awakening; and 
 each will cease to be an Ego, but an All, and will 
 know the divinity of Man by seeing, as the veil 
 falls, himself in each and all. 
 
94 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "Here I am in the land of dreams, — sur- 
 rounded by strange Gods. I seem to have known 
 and loved them before somewhere: I burn in- 
 cense before them. I pass much of my time in 
 the temples, trying to see into the heart of this 
 mysterious people. In order to do so I have to 
 blend with them and become a part of them. It 
 is not easy. But I hope to learn the language; 
 and if I do not, in spite of myself, settle here, 
 you will see me again. If you do not, I shall be 
 under big trees in some old Buddhist cemetery, 
 with six laths above me, inscribed with prayers 
 in an unknown tongue, and a queerly carved 
 monument typifying those five elements into 
 which we are supposed to melt away. I trust all 
 is well with you, dear old Dad. Write me when 
 it will not pain your eyes. Tell me all you can 
 about yourself. Be sure that I always remember 
 you; and that my love goes to you. 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn 
 
 "I could tell you so much to make you laugh 
 if you were here; and to hear you laugh again 
 would make me very happy. " 
 
 An interval of over four years now occurred 
 before Hearn wrote once more to Cincinnati. 
 
Letters from The Raven 95 
 
 Some very decided changes had taken place in 
 his life. He had wedded a Japanese woman, he 
 had a son, and he was reputed to have become 
 a Buddhist. He had been successful with his lit- 
 erary work, his essays on things Japanese being 
 among the most noteworthy and popular articles 
 in the Atlantic Monthly \ It was at this period, when 
 Mr. Watkin thought his friend was most happy, 
 that he received a long reply from Japan in re- 
 sponse to a joint letter sent by the old gentleman 
 and his daughter, Miss Effie Watkin. It is a sin- 
 gular thing that it was not until this time that 
 Hearn ever mentioned Mr. Watkin's wife and 
 daughter. He had in truth been few times in their 
 presence. Mrs. Watkin, a woman of strong com- 
 mon sense, had found the foolish superstitions of 
 the young lad hard to bear, and he had accord- 
 ingly, when in Cincinnati, confined his particular 
 friendship to the husband and father. The letter 
 from Hearn rather surprised its recipient by rea- 
 son of its despondency. It had much of the old 
 gloomy cast of thought. For this there were two 
 potent reasons. One was his worry over his son's 
 future. The other was his worry over that Japan 
 he had learned to love so well. He felt doubtful 
 about the outcome of the war with China, — the 
 
96 Letters from The Raven 
 
 letter was written in September, 1 894, — and trou- 
 bles for the Mikado's empire always made him 
 a little sad. Singularly enough, the same feeling 
 can be traced very clearly in his book, "Japan, An 
 Attempt at Interpretation/' written in the first 
 months of the struggle with Russia. 
 
 One other word of introductory comment is 
 necessary. His seeming depreciation of his own 
 essays was only the reflection of his general 
 gloomy viewpoint at the time the letter was writ- 
 ten. Hearn was dwelling at the time at Kuma- 
 moto. 
 
 " Dear Old Dad : It delighted me to get that 
 kindest double letter from yourself and sweet- 
 hearted little daughter, — or rather delighted us. 
 My wife speaks no English, but I translated it 
 for her. She will send a letter in Japanese, which 
 Miss Effie will not be able to read, but which 
 she will keep as a curiosity perhaps. Our love to 
 you both. 
 
 "How often I have thought of you, and won- 
 dered about you, and wished I could pass with you 
 more of the old-fashioned evenings, reading an- 
 cient volumes of the Atlantic Monthly ^ — so much 
 better a magazine in those days than in these, when 
 
Letters from The Raven 97 
 
 I am regularly advertised as one of its contributors. 
 
 "I often wonder now at your infinite patience 
 with the extraordinary, superhuman foolishness 
 and wickedness of the worst pet you ever had 
 in your life. When I think of all the naughty, 
 mean, absurd, detestable things I did to vex you 
 and to scandalize you, I can't for the life of me 
 understand why you did n't want to kill me, — 
 as a sacrifice to the Gods. What an idiot I was ! 
 — and how could you be so good? — and why 
 do men change so? I think of my old self as of 
 something which ought not to have been allowed 
 to exist on the face of the earth, — and yet, in 
 my present self, I sometimes feel ghostly re- 
 minders that the old self was very real indeed. 
 Well, I wish I were near you to love you and 
 make up for all old troubles. 
 
 "I have a son. He is my torment and my 
 pride. He is not like me oralis mother. He has 
 chestnut hair and blue eyes, and is enormously 
 strong, — the old Gothic blood came out upper- 
 most. I am, of course, very anxious about him. 
 He can't become a Japanese, — his soul is all Eng- 
 lish, and his looks. I must educate him abroad. 
 Head all above the ears, — promises to be intel- 
 ligent. I shall never have another child. I feel 
 
98 Letters from The Raven 
 
 too heavily the tremendous responsibility of the 
 thing. But the boy is there, — -intensely alive; 
 and I must devote the rest of my existence to 
 him. One thing I hope for is that he will never 
 be capable of doing such foolish things as his 
 daddy used to do. His name is Kaji-wo or Ka- 
 jio. He does not cry, and has a tremendous ca- 
 pacity for growing. And he gives me the great- 
 est variety of anxiety about his future. 
 
 "When you hear that I have been able to save 
 between thirty-five hundred and four thousand 
 dollars, you will not think I have made no pro- 
 gress. But I have put all, or all that I could rea- 
 sonably do, in my wife's name. The future looks 
 very black. The rea&ion against foreign influ- 
 ence is strong; and I feel more and more every 
 day that I shall have to leave Japan eventually, 
 at least for some years. When I first met you 
 I was — nineteen. I am now forty-four! Well, I 
 suppose I must have lots more trouble before I 
 go to Nirvana. 
 
 "Efrle says you do not see my writings. My 
 book will be out by the time you get this letter, 
 — that is, my first book on Japan.* Efrie can read 
 bits of it to you. And I figure in the Atlantic 
 * Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. 
 
Letters from The Raven 99 
 
 every few months. Cheap fame; — the amazing 
 fortune I once expected does n't turn up at all. 
 I have been obliged to learn the fact that I am 
 not a genius, and that I must be content with 
 the crumbs from the table of Dives. 
 
 " But this is all Egotism. I am guilty of it only 
 because you asked for a small quantity. About 
 yourself and all who love you my letter rather 
 ought to be. Speak always well of me to John 
 Chamberlain [a journalist] . I liked him well. Do 
 you remember the long walks over the Ohio, 
 in the evening, among the fireflies and grass- 
 hoppers, to hear lectures upon spiritual things? 
 If I were near you now, I could saturate you 
 with Oriental spiritualism, — Buddhism, — every- 
 thing you would like, but after a totally novel 
 fashion. When one has lived alone five years in 
 a Buddhist atmosphere, one naturally becomes 
 penetrated by the thoughts that hover in it; my 
 whole thinking, I must acknowledge, has been 
 changed, in spite of my long studies of Spencer 
 and of Schopenhauer. I do not mean that I am a 
 Buddhist, but I mean that the inherited ances- 
 tral feelings about the universe — the Occiden- 
 tal ideas every Englishman has — have been to- 
 tally transformed. 
 
IOO 
 
 Letters from The Raven 
 
 "There is yet no fixity, however: the changes 
 continue, — and I really do not know how I shall 
 feel about the universe later on. What a pity 
 that Western education and Western ideas only 
 corrupt and spoil the Japanese, — and that the 
 Japanese peasant is now superior to the Japa- 
 nese noble! 
 
 "You have heard of the war. The Japanese 
 are a fighting race; and I think they will win all 
 the battles. But to conquer a Chinese army is not 
 the same thing as to conquer the Chinese gov- 
 ernment. The war makes us all uneasy. Japan's 
 weakness is financial. A country where it costs a 
 dollar a month to live, and where the population 
 is only forty million, is not really strong enough 
 for such an enormous job. Our hope is that sci- 
 ence and rapidity of movement may compensate 
 for smallness of resources. 
 
 " I am almost sure I shall have to seek Ame- 
 rica again. If that happens, I shall see you or 
 die. All now is doubt and confusion. But in this 
 little house all is love to you. We have your 
 picture; ... we all know you, as if you were an 
 old acquaintance. 
 
 " I wish we could be together somewhere for 
 a pleasant evening chat, hearing in the inter- 
 
Letters from The Raven 
 
 IOI 
 
 vals the office clock, like the sound of a long- 
 legged walker. I wish we could talk over all 
 the hopes and dreams of ideal societies, and the 
 reasons of the failure to realize them. I wish I 
 could tell you about the ideas of Western civili- 
 zation which are produced by a long sojourn in 
 the Orient. How pleasant to take country walks 
 again! that is, if there be any country left around 
 Cincinnati. How pleasant to read to you strange 
 stories and theories from the Far East! Still, I 
 have become so accustomed to Japanese life that 
 a return to Western ways would not be altogether 
 easy at first. What a pity I did not reach Japan 
 ten years sooner! 
 
 "Tell me, if you write again, all pleasant news 
 about old friends. Love to you always, and be- 
 lieve me ever, 
 
 "Your extremely bad and ungrateful 
 "Grey-headed boy, 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn" 
 
 Shortly after this long letter came the one writ- 
 ten by Hearn's Japanese wife, accompanied by 
 this note: 
 
 "Dear Miss Effie: Here is my wife's an- 
 swer to your most kind letter. She thanks you 
 
102 
 
 Letters from The Raven 
 
 very much for writing, — says that she knows 
 your papa well, by looking at his photograph, 
 and by hearing me talk of him; she apologizes 
 for not being able to write or speak English; 
 she hopes to see you some day, and to be shown 
 by you some of the wonders of the Western 
 world, about which she knows nothing; she 
 tells you about our little son; and finally says 
 that if she ever comes to America she will bring 
 you some curious memento from Japan. It is 
 all written in the old style of high Japanese 
 courtesy, in which your letter is called c a jewel- 
 pen letter.' Best regards and kindest love for 
 your papa. We are going to leave Kumamoto. 
 
 Will write again soon. 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn" 
 
 In 1 895 an accident befell Mr. Watkin,and,upon 
 his request, Mrs. Watkin wrote a letter to the 
 distant friend. Mrs. Watkin was rather timid 
 about it and was dubious about receiving a re- 
 ply. However, despite this feeling, she enclosed 
 some little verses of hers upon a spiritual theme. 
 In a short time she received the following reply: 
 
Letters from The Raven 103 
 
 "Kobe; — shimoyamatedori, Shichome 7 
 "Feb. 28, 1895 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Watkin: Your kind, sweet letter 
 reached me by last American mail, and gave me 
 all the pleasure you could have desired. But why 
 have you even dreamed of apologizing for writ- 
 ing to me, who love you all, and for whom every- 
 thing is comprehensible even if not wholly com- 
 prehended ? All love and good wishes to you. I 
 received the little poem, and liked it. Those mys- 
 teries in which you appear to be interested are 
 scarcely mysteries in the Far East: the immate- 
 rial world counts here for more than the visible. 
 Perhaps some day I may suddenly drop in upon 
 you all, and talk ghostliness to you, — a new 
 ghostliness, which you may like. Some hints of 
 it appear in a little book of mine, to be issued 
 about the time this letter reaches you, — 'Out of 
 the East.' 
 
 "I really think I may see you and my dear 
 old Dad again. I may be obliged erelong to re- 
 turn, at least temporarily, to America, to make 
 some money, though my home must be in Japan 
 till my boy grows up a little. He seems to be 
 very strong and bright, and queerly enough he is 
 fair. I have two souls now, which is troublesome; 
 
104 
 
 Letters from The Raven 
 
 for his every word and cry stirs strange ripples 
 in my own life, and the freedom of being re- 
 sponsible only for oneself is over forever for me. 
 Whether this be for the worse or the better in the 
 eternal order of things, the Gods must decide. 
 
 "I should like to see your new home. The 
 other one was very cosy ; but perhaps this is even 
 better. What I also want to see is No. 26 Long- 
 worth Street, and to hear the ticking of the old 
 clock that used to sound like the steps of a long- 
 legged man walking on pavement. Effie wrote me 
 a dear, pretty letter. Thank her for me. It is just 
 about seven years now since I saw Dad. I sup- 
 pose he looks now more like Homer than ever. 
 .1 have become somewhat grey, and have crow's- 
 feet around my eyes. Also I have become fat, 
 and disinclined for violent exercise. In other 
 words, I 'm getting down the shady side of the 
 hill, — and the horizon before me is already dark- 
 ening, and the winds blowing out of it, cold. And 
 I am not in the least concerned about the enig- 
 mas, — except that I wonder what my boy will do 
 if I don't live to be nearly as old as Dad. Ever 
 with all affectionate regards to him and yourself 
 and Effie, 
 
 "Lafcadio Hearn" 
 
Letters from The Raven 105 
 
 In 1 896 Mr. Watkin, partially recovered from 
 his injuries, wrote Hearn a letter, and received a 
 last one from him, — a reply in which the writer 
 finally placed the seal upon the finest friendship 
 in his history. Unlike some of his other attempts 
 at prophecy, Hearn's predictions in this last let- 
 ter failed to come true. He never saw his old 
 friend again, and the old gentleman, at the age 
 of eighty-two, now occupies a room in the Old 
 Men's Home in Cincinnati, counting among 
 his chief treasures the letters which have been 
 here presented. 
 
 "Kobe 
 
 " Nakayamatedori 
 
 u y-chome 
 
 " Bangai 1 6 
 
 "May 23, '96 
 "Dear Old Dad: How nice to get so dear a 
 letter from you! I know the cost to you of writ- 
 ing it, and my dear old father must not imagine 
 that I do not understand why he cannot write 
 often. With his little grey boy it is much the 
 same now: he finds it hard to write letters, and 
 he has very few correspondents. Why, indeed, 
 should he have many? True men are few; and 
 the autograph-hunters, and the scheming class 
 
106 Letters from The Raven 
 
 of small publishers, and the people who want 
 gratis information about commercial matters in 
 Japan are not considered by him as correspond- 
 ents. They never get any answers. I have two 
 or three dear friends in this world: is not that 
 enough? — you being oldest and dearest. To feel 
 that one has them is much. 
 
 "But I must ask many pardons. I fear Miss 
 Effie will not forgive me for not acknowledging 
 ere now the receipt of a photograph, which sur- 
 prised as much as it pleased me. To think of the 
 little girl having so developed into the fine se- 
 rious woman! How old it makes me feel! for I 
 remember Miss Effie when she was so little. 
 Please ask her to forgive me. I was away when 
 the photograph came (in Kyoto), and when I 
 returned, lazily put off writing from day to day. 
 There was, however, some excuse for my lazi- 
 ness. I have been very sick with inflammation of 
 the lungs, and am getting well very slowly. But 
 all danger is practically over. 
 
 "I see from the kind letter of protest bearing 
 your initials that the idealism which makes love 
 has never gone out of your heart when you think 
 of me. It is all much more real than any mate- 
 rialism ; see, you always predicted that I should 
 
Letters from The Raven 107 
 
 be able to do something, while extremely prac- 
 tical, materialistic people predicted that I should 
 end in jail or at the termination of a rope. And 
 your prediction seems to have been wiser, — for 
 at last, at last I am attracting a little attention in 
 England. . . . Also I see (what I did not know be- 
 fore) that some people have been writing horrid 
 things about me. I expected it, sooner or later, 
 as I have been an open enemy of the mission- 
 aries; and, besides, the least success in this world 
 must be atoned for. The price is heavy. Those 
 who ignore you when you are nobody find it 
 necessary to hate you when you disappoint their 
 expectations. But if I keep my health I need 
 not care very much. The incident only brought 
 out some of the honey in dear old Dad's heart. 
 "You ask about my boy. I can best respond 
 by sending his last photo, — nearly three years 
 old now. If I can educate him in France or Italy, 
 it would be better for him, I think. He is very 
 sensitive; and I am afraid of American or Eng- 
 lish school training for him. I only pray the Gods 
 will spare me till he is eighteen or twenty. I am 
 watching to see what he will develop; if he have 
 any natural gift, I shall try to cultivate only that 
 gift. Ornamental education is a wicked, farcical 
 
io8 Letters from The Raven 
 
 waste of time. It left me incapacitated to do any- 
 thing; and I still feel the sorrow of the sin of 
 having dissipated ten years in Latin and Greek, 
 and stuff, . . . when a knowledge of some one 
 practical thing, and of a modern language or two, 
 would have been of so much service. As it is, I 
 am only self-taught; for everything I learned in 
 school I have since had to unlearn. You helped 
 me with some of the unlearning, dear old Dad ! 
 
 " I really expect to see you. You are only sev- 
 enty-two, and hale, and I trust you have long 
 years before you, and that we shall meet. About 
 the business depression, I hear that it is passing 
 and that c flush times' are in store for the West. 
 This, I trust, will be. Oh, no ! I shall not have 
 to look for you 'in the old men's home,' — no, 
 I shall see you in your own home, — and talk 
 queer talk to you. 
 
 " For the time being (indeed, for two years) I 
 have lived altogether by literary work, without 
 breaking my little reserves, and it is likely that 
 better things are in store for me. I am anxious for 
 success, — for the boy's sake above all. To have 
 the future of others to make — to feel the respon- 
 sibilities — certainly changes the face of life. I 
 am always frightened, of course ; but I work and 
 
Letters from The Raven 109 
 
 hope. That is the best, is it not? Remember me 
 to all kind friends. Ask Effie to forgive my rude 
 silence, and all yours to believe my love and 
 constant remembrance. 
 
 " Lafcadio Hearn 
 
 "I am a Japanese citizen now (Y. Koizumi),— 
 adopted into the family of my wife. This settles 
 all legal question as to property as well as mar- 
 riage under Japanese law; and if I die, the Con- 
 sul can't touch anything belonging to my peo- 
 ple." 
 
 The rest is silence. 
 
Letters to a Lady 
 
Letters to a Lady 
 
 HEREWITH are presented letters that 
 were the outgrowth of a friendship that 
 probably meant a great deal to Lafcadio Hearn 
 at the time. In speaking of them, one inevitably 
 thinks of Prosper Merimee's " Lettres a une in- 
 connue." The later missives, too, must for years 
 to come remain "letters to an unknown," — un- 
 known to all save a few persons. It was only re- 
 cently that the natural course of events made it 
 at all possible to include them in this collection. 
 Even now the ban of silence is placed on many 
 things we would like to know. 
 
 The letters were written during the memora- 
 ble year 1876, marked by exciting political con- 
 ventions and an even more exciting national elec- 
 tion, and finally by the great Centennial Exposi- 
 tion. At this time Hearn was in his twenty-sixth 
 year. He had been in the United States for nearly 
 six years, and was at the time employed as a re- 
 porter on Mr. Murat Halstead's Cincinnati Com- 
 mercial. Although he did not like this country 
 and was at this time dreaming of returning some 
 day to Europe, he had been trying for years to 
 make a thoroughly competent newspaper repor- 
 
H4 Letters to a Lady 
 
 ter of himself. However, we gather from re- 
 marks in his letters that he was still regarded as 
 only a minor member of the staff. 
 
 Among men his chief friend remained Mr. 
 Watkin. If he had any friends among young 
 women, he has left no record of them. He seems 
 to have been more or less solitary always. He is 
 constantly telling of his constraint in social gath- 
 erings, of his inability to appear otherwise than 
 cold to those around him. Life was indeed to 
 him always a curious carnival, in which one 
 must be careful to keep on the mask, to guard the 
 tongue lest one say something redounding to 
 one's injury or discredit. 
 
 With such characteristics, we are therefore at 
 a loss to learn how his intimacy with the unknown 
 began. It may have had its origin when some 
 assignment in the line of newspaper duty took 
 him to her home. One fancies the unknown must 
 have had a keen eye for character and ability to 
 discern anything unusual, anything love-worthy, 
 in the ill-dressed, somewhat ill-featured, shy, 
 timid, little youth Hearn was at that time. It had 
 not heretofore been his good fortune to attract. 
 However that may be, the established fact of the 
 friendship remains. 
 
Letters to a Lady 115 
 
 The identity of the unknown is a secret. We 
 are told that she was a woman of culture and re- 
 finement; that she was possessed of some wealth; 
 and, finally, that she was many years older than 
 Hearn. 
 
 Merimee has been referred to. The reference 
 is forced upon us by Hearn himself. He men- 
 tions those famous "Lettres," and says he feels 
 toward his "Dear Lady" as Merimee did toward 
 his "inconnue." The comparison is not exact. 
 Indeed, it is rather a case of contrast. Like Meri- 
 mee, Hearn's motto seems to have been, with very 
 rare exceptions, "Remember to distrust;" but, 
 unlike Merimee, Hearn was not a man of wealth 
 and prominence and influence in his native land; 
 unlike Merimee, Hearn had not had all the 
 advantages wealth and culture can give; unlike 
 Merimee, he had known, and was still destined 
 to know, hard and bitter years. 
 
 With Merimee, the French stylist par excel- 
 lence, impersonality was a passion. His was an 
 impersonality that was broken down only in the 
 famous "Lettres." Hearn, on the other hand, 
 could not help injecting much of himself into his 
 books. Nor does the contrast end there. 
 
 " For her first thoughts," as Walter Pater well 
 
n6 Letters to a Lady 
 
 says of the "Lettres" and the author's attitude 
 toward the woman in the case, "Merimee is al- 
 ways pleading, but always complaining that he 
 gets only her second thoughts, — the thoughts, 
 that is, of a reserved, self-limiting nature/' 
 
 In the present collection of letters, the roles 
 are reversed. We gather from the letters that it 
 was Hearn who never let himself go, who always 
 kept himself under cautious restraint, and that 
 it was the woman who resented these second 
 thoughts, these promptings of careful medita- 
 tions rather than of fresh, warm impulses. 
 
 In Merimee the ardent lover alternated with 
 the severe critic. Hequarrelled with the unknown 
 and then had reconciliations, until at last the old 
 love passed away into a form of calm friendship. 
 In the meantime he packed his letters with keen 
 criticisms of books, society, politics, archaeology, 
 noted people, — everything that interested a citi- 
 zen of the world. 
 
 In Hearn we have the lonely little egotist, writ- 
 ing mainly about himself. In his appreciation of 
 a woman's friendship and his pride in her cordial 
 admiration, he expands and reveals some part 
 of his own thoughts, beliefs, studies. For the rest, 
 the connection, on his side at least, seems to have 
 
Letters to a Lady 117 
 
 been one of platonic friendship. The lady was 
 more or less exacting, Hearn being constantly 
 occupied in explaining away what she was quick 
 to fancy were slights. 
 
 She would seem to have been even more sen- 
 sitive than he. To speak plainly, too, there is a 
 note of evasion in his letters; despite his appre- 
 ciation of her, he seems to have seized upon his 
 newspaper work as an excuse for preventing their 
 friendship becoming something more intimate. 
 He kept things — at least in his letters — upon a 
 very formal plane. He was to the recipient, one 
 fancies, provokingly distant in his " Dear Lady " 
 form of address. There was an ominous sign in 
 the constant reference to letters returned or un- 
 opened. Indeed, there finally came the breach 
 that in the nature of things was inevitable, and 
 then all his letters were returned to him. 
 
 The young man did not destroy them. Shortly 
 afterwards he departed for the South. It is not a 
 little strange that in all the years in New Orleans 
 that followed — lean years and fat, years of bit- 
 ter poverty and of comparative prosperity — 
 Hearn preserved this batch of letters intact. 
 When nearing the age of forty and close to that 
 period when he was to sail for Japan, the more 
 
n8 Letters to a Lady 
 
 or less matured man passed judgment upon the 
 letters of his youth, found them good,and placed 
 them in the keeping of his friend. He told Mr. 
 Watkin to do with the faded missives what he 
 deemed best. In some fashion he would seem to 
 have felt that he was yet destined to accomplish 
 something in the world of literature, and to have 
 proudly thought that some day even these boy- 
 ish screeds would be eagerly read. 
 
 As for these letters, as with most of Hearn's 
 missives, they were for the most part undated, — 
 written hurriedly on any kind of paper, often on 
 mere scraps. 
 
 He places himself before us as the "Oriental 
 by birth and half by blood ;" as a lad destined for 
 Catholicism,and, instead of that, savagely attack- 
 ing the religion of his mother. We have hints of 
 the hard measure the world had dealt him and 
 how he felt like a barbarian beyond the pale of 
 polite society. He confesses himself ill at ease 
 among the cultivated classes, and we dimly feel 
 that there were in those years, before he came to 
 Cincinnati, days so bitter that they left a perma- 
 nent mark. Without religious faith, going to the 
 boyish extreme of lightly attacking Christianity, 
 he imagined himself ready to become a sort of 
 
Letters to a Lady n 9 
 
 aesthetic pagan, worshipping Venus and the other 
 gods of the antique world. As antagonistic to ac- 
 cepted pulpit teaching, he read Darwin, and pom- 
 pously and not a little solemnly announced, "I 
 accept Darwin fully." 
 
 Perhaps no inconsiderable portion of this pa- 
 ganism was caused by his youthful worship of 
 Swinburne. All young men in the late sixties and 
 early seventies, with an ear for verbal music and 
 magic, were swearing allegiance to the bard of the 
 famous "Poems and Ballads." Indeed, one feels 
 that Hearn would have been a poet himself, had 
 he but been gifted with the faculty of rhyme. 
 Much of the other equipment of the poet was 
 his in abundant measure, — the love of beauty, 
 the love of lovely words, the joy in the manifold 
 things of nature and art. 
 
 Speaking of Swinburne brings us to his read- 
 ing, and we catch a glimpse of that little shelf of 
 treasured books, — Balzacand Gautier and Rabe- 
 lais in the French ; Poe, to be sure; and — strange 
 choice — the poems of Mr. Thomas Bailey Al- 
 drich. 
 
 In these "Letters to a Lady" there is com- 
 paratively little discussion of literary subjects, save 
 the mention of the facl that he is reading, always 
 
120 Letters to a Lady 
 
 reading. Of literary criticism there is but little. 
 In one letter, indeed, we do get a reference to 
 the character of the Sultana of Aldrich's "Cloth 
 of Gold," but this is a moral rather than a lite- 
 rary discussion. The sign that he was ranging far 
 afield among other men's works, and also the 
 hint of the writer that was to be, is given in little 
 sentences dropped half unconsciously here and 
 there, — sentences that to the student of Hearn's 
 letters seem to be characteristic of his ways of 
 thought, as when he says, "Somehow the ghosts 
 of the letters I write by night laugh in my face 
 by day;" or when he speaks of his horror of 
 crowds and compares it to the terror of the de- 
 sert camel being urged toward the white walls and 
 shining minarets of the city beyond the desert; 
 or when, curiously enough, he speaks of himself 
 as seeming like a lizard in the July sun, a very 
 similar turn of thought having been employed 
 by Flaubert in one of his letters, which Hearn 
 had probably never read, even though he did 
 once plan a translation from that author. 
 
 It is only necessary in conclusion to call at- 
 tention to one more letter in this section. As a 
 matter of plain prose it would seem that the lady 
 had complained of the coldness and the dubious 
 
Letters to a Lady 121 
 
 tone of some of Hearn's letters and had returned 
 them to him. In response he wrote to her a fable 
 of a Sultan and a neighboring Sultana. He told 
 how the Sultana complained of the Sultan's mes- 
 sengers, and how the Sultan committed them to 
 death by fire. The lady was supposed, from this 
 pretty fable, to draw the conclusion that Hearn's 
 letters had been destroyed by their author. From 
 the collection herewith appended, it can be seen 
 that the fabulist availed himself of poetic license. 
 
 Dear Friend: Your last kind letter makes me 
 in some sort ashamed of my diffidence and cold- 
 ness. Yet you must be aware how peculiarly I feel 
 myself situated, — constrained, watched every- 
 where by a hundred eyes that know me, hemmed 
 in with conventionalities of which I only know 
 the value sufficiently to have my nerves on a per- 
 petual strain through fear of breaking them. I am 
 not by nature cold, — quite the reverse, indeed, 
 as many a bitter experience taught me; and I beg 
 you to attribute my manner rather to overcau- 
 tion than to indifference to the feelings of others. 
 
122 Letters to a Lady 
 
 Why, do not we all wear masks in this great car- 
 nival mummery of life, in which we all dance and 
 smile disguisedly, until the midnight of our allot- 
 ted pleasure time comes; and the King-Skeleton 
 commands, "Masks off — show your skulls"? 
 I am afraid you do not understand [me] ; or 
 rather, I feel sure you do not wholly, — for you 
 have had little opportunity. You have only seen 
 me on my best behavior; perhaps you might 
 think less of me under other circumstances, but 
 never think me a chilly phantom, though you 
 may occasionally see me only as the Shadow of 
 that which I really am. Have I been rude? Try 
 to forgive my rudeness. It was involuntary. . . . 
 I think I understood your letters; and I did not 
 form any opinion therefrom, I feel sure, which 
 you would not have liked. I wish I could be less 
 strained and conventional in company. Will try 
 my best to do better. Sincerely, 
 
 L. Hearn 
 
 ii 
 
 Dear Friend and Lady (if I may so call you): 
 Do not suppose that when I delay answering one 
 of your kind letters, the tardiness is attributable 
 
Letters to a Lady 123 
 
 to neglect or forgetfulness or inappreciation of 
 your favor. I thoroughly feel — and feel keenly 
 — every kind word or thought you have ex- 
 pressed or felt forme; I have never rendered you, 
 it is true, a single compliment worthy of those 
 I have received, — but only because I was sure 
 that you understood my feelings better than if I 
 had expressed them; I never write altogether as I 
 think, partly because I am not naturally demon- 
 strative, and while capable of more than ordi- 
 nary sensitive feeling, I have a kind of reluctance 
 to take off what I might term my little mask. 
 Don't hesitate to scold me, as you threaten, 
 should you think I deserve it. . . . 
 
 I have been busy all day among noisy crowds 
 of enthusiastic Catholics; and I shudder at the 
 thought of entering a crowd at all times, just as 
 the desert camel shudders when his driver urges 
 him toward the white walls and the shining mina- 
 rets of a city sparkling beyond the verge of the 
 silent yellow waste. Consequently I was not able 
 to write till late; and even now I am not in a 
 good writing humor. One's skull becomes peo- 
 pled with Dreams and Fantastic Things just be- 
 fore daybreak; and if you notice aught foolish 
 or absurd in these lines, please attribute them to 
 
124 Letters to a Lady 
 
 that weird influence which comes on us all — 
 
 "in the dead vast and middle of the night." 
 I must make one more visit to the Central Po- 
 lice Station ere cockcrow, — poetically speaking. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 Laf. Hearn 
 
 hi 
 
 Cincinnati, Thursday, 27, 1876 
 Dear Lady: I return by mail the very inter- 
 esting letters which you kindly left for my peru- 
 sal ; also, the list of Mr. 's collection, where- 
 of I have taken a copy. The other collectors 
 are so slow in preparing their lists that I fear 
 I shall not be able to publish a full account of 
 their contributions to the World's Exposition 
 for several days yet. ... I am very thankful for 
 your assistance in obtaining information regard- 
 ing these things. 
 
 As an English subject, and one who feels a 
 kind of home interest in European news, you 
 may feel assured that the letters from beyond the 
 "great water" interested me extremely. 
 
 The author gives a pleasant, realistic, and en- 
 tertaining picture of the brilliant social affair 
 whereof her letter treats; and her account would 
 
Letters to a Lady 125 
 
 have done credit to most foreign newspaper cor- 
 respondents, speaking from a journalistic point 
 of view. . . . 
 
 Believe me very respectfully yours, 
 
 L. Hearn 
 
 IV 
 
 There is a fragment in which is taken up the 
 matter of invitations he has refused. It is chiefly 
 interesting because of his expressed desire to re- 
 turn to Europe: 
 
 "I daily receive and pay no attention what- 
 ever to other invitations, because I know my pre- 
 sence is only desired for journalistic favors; but 
 with you I regret to be unable to accept them 
 quite as much as you could. In speaking of im- 
 pulses, I refer merely to sudden actions without 
 preparation, — such as your first note of yester- 
 day; or your action on fancying that I had been 
 talking too much; or your becoming vexed at 
 me for what I could not help. You ought to know 
 that I would do anything in my power to please 
 you or to accommodate you. . . . 
 
 "Let me also take this opportunity of thank- 
 ing you for those books again. I have been very 
 
126 Letters to a Lady 
 
 much fascinated by one of them and have not 
 only read but re-read it. It is seemingly by some 
 strange fatuity that your little invitations have 
 latterly fallen on busy days. Last week it was all 
 work; and this week I have had a very easy time 
 of it. You looked at me yesterday as if I had 
 done you some injury, and you hated to see me. 
 If you go to Europe, my best wishes go with you. 
 I hope to return there, and leave this country 
 forever some day in the remote future. 
 "Do not be offended at my letter. 
 
 "L. H." 
 
 In a letter dated "Thursday p. m., 1876" we 
 find him apologizing for some breach of etiquette. 
 He then, as usual, complains of the newspaper 
 man's lot: 
 
 "This afternoon I received your kind note. 
 One of the misfortunes of a journalistic existence 
 is the inability of a newspaper man to fulfil an 
 appointment, meet an engagement, or definitely 
 accept an invitation not immediately connected 
 with his round of regular duty, as he may at 
 any moment be ordered to the most outlandish 
 
Letters to a Lady 127 
 
 places in the pursuit of news. I think, however, 
 that I may safely accept your kind invitation to 
 dine with you on Sunday at one o'clock p.m., 
 and also to ride out to Avondale. Nothing could 
 give me greater pleasure; the more so as Sunday 
 is an inordinately dull day in the newspaper 
 sphere. I will certainly be on hand unless some- 
 thing very extraordinary should intervene to 
 prevent; and in such event I shall endeavor to 
 inform. you beforehand, so as not to cause you 
 any trouble. 
 
 "I remain, dear Lady, 
 
 "Very respectfully, 
 
 "L. Hearn" 
 
 VI 
 
 Cincinnati^ Friday^ 1876 
 Dear Lady: I very much regret that I should 
 have inadvertently worded my last note in so 
 clumsy a manner as to make it appear that in ac- 
 cepting your kind invitation I was prospectively 
 interested in nothing but "items" and thankful 
 only for the opportunity of obtaining news. In 
 mentioning that I was especially glad to accept 
 your invitation on Sunday, "as it is an especially 
 dull day for news," I simply meant that I would 
 
128 Letters to a Lady 
 
 find more leisure time on Sunday than upon any 
 other day in the week ; and would thus feel more 
 pleasure in making a call without being worried 
 by office business. I hope you will therefore con- 
 sider my rudeness the result of hurried writing 
 and clumsy phraseology rather than of deliberate 
 ignorance. 
 
 If it be agreeable to you, I will call upon you 
 at i p. m. on Sunday as per invitation. I cannot 
 definitely say, however, what I could do in the 
 way of writing an account of other collections 
 than what have already been spoken of, inasmuch 
 as I am, you know, only a reporter in the office, 
 and subject to orders from the City Editor. 
 
 As I have not written any letters except of a 
 business character for several years, please to ex- 
 cuse any apparent lack of courtesy in my note. I 
 am apt to say something malapropos without in- 
 tending. I remain, 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn 
 
 vii 
 
 Dear Lady: Excuse my tardiness in reply- 
 ing to your kind and, may I say, too complimen- 
 
Letters to a Lady 129 
 
 tary letter; for I scarcely deserve the courteous 
 interest you have expressed in regard to my- 
 self. Also let me assure you that you are very 
 much mistaken in fancying that I am so used to 
 all kinds of people as to feel no pleasure in such 
 introductions as that of Sunday evening. The 
 fact is that I was very much pleased; but am so 
 poor a hand at compliments that I feared even 
 
 to express to Miss the pleasure I felt in her 
 
 songs and playing, to wish you many happy 
 returns of your birthday, or to hint how well 
 I enjoyed the conversation of your lady sister. 
 I have not visited out since I was sixteen, — nine 
 years ago; have led a very hard and extraordi- 
 nary life previous to my connection with the 
 press, — became a species of clumsy barbarian, — 
 and in short for various reasons considered my- 
 self ostracized, tabooed, outlawed. These facts 
 should be sufficient to explain to you that I am 
 not used to all sorts of people, — not to the culti- 
 vated class of people at all, and feel all the greater 
 pleasure in such a visit as that referred to. . . . 
 I have not had time yet to conclude the en- 
 tertaining volume of travel you kindly sent me, 
 but have read sufficient to interest me extremely. 
 I find a vast number of novel and hitherto un- 
 
130 Letters to a Lady 
 
 published facts, — the results of more than ordi- 
 narily keen observation in the work. If I were 
 reviewing the book, I might feel inclined to take 
 issue with the author in respect to his views con- 
 cerning the work of the missionaries inTahiti, — 
 who have been, you know, most severely criti- 
 cised by radically minded observers; but the 
 writer's pictures are clearly defined, realistic, and 
 powerfully drawn. I must not waste your time, 
 however, with further gossip just now. 
 Believe me, dear Lady, 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 L. Hearn 
 
 VIII 
 
 Dear Lady: I am not so insusceptible to such 
 pretty flattery as yours, even though I think it 
 undeserved, as to feel otherwise than pleased. Of 
 course I am vain enough to be gratified at any- 
 thing good said of me by you or your friends. In 
 regard to enjoying music and flowers, Iwouldonly 
 say that I love everything beautiful, and can only 
 look at the social, ethical, or natural world with 
 the eyes of a pagan rather than a Christian, re- 
 vering the heathen philosophy of aesthetic sense; 
 
Letters to a Lady 131 
 
 and surely so must all who truly love the antique 
 loveliness of the Antique World, which deified all 
 fair things and worshipped only those beauties of 
 form and sense whereof it brought forth the high- 
 est types. But to speak truly, I am afraid of par- 
 ties; one's nerves are ever on a painful strain in 
 the effort to be agreeable, in the fear of doing 
 something gauche, and in the awful perplexity of 
 searching for compliments which must fall on the 
 ear as vapid and commonplace, — vanity and 
 vexation of spirit. Indeed, I much enjoyed the 
 little party the other night, because it was a home 
 circle; and I did not feel as though people were 
 scrutinizing my face, my manners, my dress, or 
 criticising my words with severe mental criticism, 
 or making the awful discovery that I cc had hands " 
 and did not know what to do with them. 
 
 I did not tell you when my vacation should 
 commence, because I did not know myself; in- 
 deed, I do not yet know. Our vacations gene- 
 rally commence about June, when each one in 
 turn takes a couple or three weeks' travel and 
 rest; but as I am the youngest and freshest 
 (in the sense of inexperience) of the staff, I 
 suppose I will have to wait my turn until the 
 others have decided. Some like to escape the hot 
 
132 Letters to a Lady 
 
 weather. I love hot weather, — the hotter the 
 better. I feel always like a lizard in the July 
 sun; and when the juice of the poison plants is 
 thickest and the venomous reptiles most active ) 
 then I, too, feel life most enjoyable, as "Elsie 
 Venner" did. Therefore I may have to wait for 
 my vacation till the golden autumn cometh; but 
 I will endeavor to get away so soon as I can, and 
 will let you know just so soon as I know myself. 
 Very respectfully yours, dear Lady, 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn 
 
 IX 
 
 Cincinnati, May 9, 1876 
 Dear Lady: I am at once gratified and sur- 
 prised to find that my little article should have 
 given you so much pleasure. Had I not been 
 very busy with a mass of matter-of-facl work last 
 evening, I should have done better justice to 
 
 Mr. 's splendid collection. That was a very 
 
 unfortunate mistake of mine in regard to his 
 name, but I shall try to correct it. 
 
 In regard to mentioning Mr. 's name, 
 
 I desire to say to you, in strict confidence, that 
 I purposely omitted it for prudential reasons. 
 Newspapers are very jealous of their employes 
 
Letters to a Lady 133 
 
 in the matter of giving compliments ; and I feared 
 that further mention just at this time might ren- 
 der it all the more difficult for me to do you a 
 reportorial kindness on some future occasion. 
 This may seem odd; but one outside the news- 
 paper circle can have no idea how particular 
 newspaper proprietors are. 
 
 With regard to my article, dear Lady, I would 
 say, in reply to your kind query, that you are 
 welcome to use it as you please. I only -regret 
 the lack of time to have improved it before it 
 appeared in the Commercial. My love for things 
 Oriental need not surprise you, as I happen to 
 be an Oriental by birth and half by blood. 
 
 I cannot definitely answer you in regard to 
 the prospective country visit, so courteously pro- 
 posed, until I see you again or hear from you. I 
 fear I shall have to postpone the pleasure until 
 the regular reporters' vacation time, — that is, if 
 it should necessitate absence from duty for any 
 considerable length of time. However, you can 
 explain further when I again have the pleasure 
 of seeing you; and if I can possibly get away, I 
 will be only too glad of so pleasant a holiday. 
 Very respectfully and gratefully, 
 
 L. Hearn 
 
i34 Letters to a Lady 
 
 Dear Lady: If I disappointed you last even- 
 ing, be sure that I myself was much more disap- 
 pointed, especially as I had to pass within a 
 stone's throw of your house without going in. I 
 believe that if you only knew how frightfully 
 busy we all are, you would have postponed the 
 invitation until next week, when I shall have 
 some leisure and hope to see you. I had expected 
 up to the last moment to be able to call, if only 
 for an hour; but a sudden appointment put it 
 out of my power. The convention is keeping us 
 all as busy as men can be. 
 
 I see you returned my letter. I know it was 
 not a satisfactory one. Somehow the ghosts of 
 the letters I write by night laugh in my face by 
 day. I either talk too freely or write too hur- 
 riedly. I will not certainly give your books away, 
 for I prize them highly and am delighted with 
 them. I had thought they were only lent. They 
 now nestle on my book-shelf along with a copy 
 of Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques," illustrated by 
 Dore, Gautier's most Pre-Raphael and wicked- 
 est work, Swinburne, Edgar Poe, Rabelais, Al- 
 drich, and some other odd books which form my 
 
Letters to a Lady 135 
 
 library. I generally read a little before going to 
 bed. 
 
 I hope to visit your farm indeed, but the 
 journalist is a creature who sells himself for a 
 salary. He is a slave to his master, and must 
 await the course of events. 
 
 No; you must not pity me or feel sorry for 
 me. What would you do if I were to write you 
 some of my up-and-down experiences and absur- 
 dities? And you cannot be of service to me ex- 
 cept I were suddenly to lose everything and not 
 know where to turn. Now I am doing very well, 
 and would be doing better but for an esca- 
 pade. . . . 
 
 Of course I will write you in P — ; I should 
 like nothing better, feeling towards you like 
 Prosper Merimee to his "inconnue." I wish I 
 could make my letters equally interesting. 
 
 I do not think that I am unfortunate in life, 
 and yet I have done everything to make me so. 
 If you only knew some of my follies, you would 
 cease perhaps to like me. Some day I will confide 
 some of my oddities to you. But don't think me 
 unfortunate because I am a skeptic. 
 
 Skepticism is hereditary on my father's side. 
 My mother, a Greek woman, was rather rever- 
 
136 Letters to a Lady 
 
 ential; she believed in the Oriental Catholicism, 
 — the Byzantine fashion of Christianity which 
 produced such hideous madonnas and idiotic- 
 looking saints in stained glass. I think being 
 skeptical enables one to enjoy life better, — to 
 live like the ancients without thought of the 
 Shadow of Death. I was once a Catholic, — at 
 least, my guardians tried to make me so, but 
 only succeeded in making me dream of all priests 
 as monsters and hypocrites, of nuns as goblins 
 in black robes, of religion as epidemic insanity, 
 useful only in inculcating ethics in coarse minds 
 by main force. Afterwards it often delighted me 
 to force a controversy upon some priest, deny 
 his basis of belief, and find him startled to dis- 
 cover that he could not attempt to establish it 
 logically. 
 
 You say," What else is there" but faith to make 
 life pleasant? Why, the majority of things that 
 faith despises. I fancy if one will only try to ana- 
 lyze the amount of comfort derived from Chris- 
 tianity by himself, he will find the candid an- 
 swer. Whence come all our arts, our loves, our 
 luxuries, our best literature, our sense of man- 
 hood to do and dare, our reverence or respect 
 for Woman, our sense of beauty, our sense of 
 
Letters to a Lady 137 
 
 humanity? Never from Christianity. From the 
 antique faiths, the dead civilizations, the lost 
 Greece and Rome, the warrior-creed of Scandi- 
 navia, the Viking's manhood and reverence for 
 woman, — his creator and goddess. Yet all faiths 
 surely have their ends in shaping and perfecting 
 this electrical machine of the human mind, and 
 preparing the field of humanity for a wider har- 
 vest of future generations, long after the worms, 
 fed from our own lives, have ceased to writhe 
 about us, as the serpents writhe among the grin- 
 ningmasks of stone on the columns of Persepolis. 
 How you must be bored by so long a letter! 
 
 [ The letter is signed by a drawing of the raven, familiar 
 in the letters to Mr. Wat kin.'] 
 
 XI 
 
 Dear Lady: There once lived an Eastern Sul- 
 tan who reigned over a city fairer than far Sa- 
 marcand. He dwelt in a gorgeous palace of the 
 most bizarre and fantastically beautiful Saracenic 
 design, — columns of chalcedony andgold-veined 
 quartz, of onyx and sardonyx, of porphyry and 
 jasper, upheld fretted arches of a fashion love- 
 lier than the arches of the Mosque of Cor- 
 
138 Letters to a Lady 
 
 dova. There were colonnades upon colonnades, 
 domes rising above courts where silver fountains 
 sang the songs of the Water-Spirit; here were 
 minarets whose gilded crescents kissed the azure 
 heaven; there were eunuchs, officers, execution- 
 ers, viziers, odalisques, women graceful of form 
 as undulating flame. 
 
 In a neighboring kingdom dwelt a sultry -eyed 
 Sultana, — a daughter of sunrise, shaped of fire 
 and snow, impulsive, generous, and far more po- 
 tent than the Sultan. Either desired to become 
 the friend of the other, but either feared to cross 
 the line of purple hills which separated the king- 
 dom. But they held communication by messen- 
 gers. The Sultana's messengers always spoke the 
 truth, yet scarcely spoke plainly, having great 
 faith in diplomatic suggestion rather than in 
 blunt and forcible utterance. The Sultan's mes- 
 sengers, on the other hand, only spoke half of the 
 truth, being fearful lest their words should be 
 overheard by the keen ears of men who desired 
 that no courtesies should be exchanged between 
 their mistress and her neighboring brother. At 
 last the Sultana became wroth with a great wrath 
 at the messengers, forasmuch as they conversed 
 only in enigmas, the Sultana being apparently 
 
Letters to a Lady 139 
 
 quite unable to imagine why they should so 
 speak. Therefore the Sultana bound the messen- 
 gers, stripped them naked, and, placing them in 
 bags, despatched them by a camel caravan to the 
 Sultan, expressing much anger at the conduct of 
 the messengers. The Sultan, being alarmed at 
 the detention of his messengers, knowing their 
 proverbial loquacity, and fearing they had turned 
 traitors, thanked Allah for their return, and 
 swore by the Beard of his Father that ere sun- 
 rise they should die the death of cravens, inas- 
 much as they had not fulfilled their duty satis- 
 factorily. He decided that they should be burnt 
 with fire, and their ashes cast into the waters of 
 the great river — 
 
 "sweeping down 
 Past carven pillars, under tamarisk groves 
 To where the broad sea sparkled" 
 
 " Kara-Mustapha," exclaimed the Sultan to his 
 trusty vizier, "I desire the death of these dogs. 
 May their fathers' graves be everlastingly defiled! 
 Let them be burnt even as we burn the bones 
 of the unclean beast. Let them be consumed in 
 the furnaces of thy kitchen, that my viands may 
 partake of a sweeter flavor." And so they died. 
 Meanwhile the Sultana repented of her wrath 
 
140 Letters to a Lady 
 
 against the messengers, and despatched a sable 
 eunuch in all haste to save them. But the eunuch 
 arrived before midday, while the prince was yet 
 in his harem dreaming of satiny-skinned houris 
 and the flowers of the valley of Nourjahad, the 
 fruits of the golden-leaved vines of Paradise, and 
 the honeyed lips of the daughters of the prophet, 
 which make mad those who kiss them with the 
 madness of furious love. And the prince, being 
 aroused by his favorite odalisque, lifted up his 
 eyes and beheld the eunuch there standing with 
 a message from the Sultana. And reading the 
 message he fell from the tapestried couch upon 
 the floor, exclaiming, "May all the Ghouls de- 
 vour my father's bones, and may they tear and 
 devour me when next I visit my mother's grave ! 
 By the beard of Allah, those messengers are not; 
 they have died the dog's death, and have van- 
 ished even as the smoke of a narghile vanisheth." 
 And a soft wind from the sensuous rosy-skied 
 South toyed and caressed the volatile dust of the 
 bones of the messengers ; the dust fructified flowers 
 of intoxicating perfume, and the spirit of the mes- 
 sengers melted into the glory of Paradise. There 
 is but one God — Mahomet is his prophet. 
 [This is signed by a crescent and with L and H interwoven.^ 
 
Letters to a Lady 141 
 
 XII 
 
 Dear Lady: I felt glad for divers reasons on re- 
 ceiving your letter and the little parcel, — firstly, 
 because I felt that you were not very angry at 
 my foolish fable; and secondly, because I always 
 feel happy on having something nice to read. I 
 had already read considerable of Darwin's "Voy- 
 ages;'' but just now I happened to desire a work 
 of just that kind in order to educate myself in 
 regard to certain ethnological points. I accept 
 Darwin fully. 
 
 I do not believe inGod — neither god of Greece 
 nor of Rome nor any other god. I do indeed re- 
 vere Woman as the creator, and I respect — yes, I 
 almost believe in — the graceful Hellenic anthro- 
 pomorphism which worshipped feminine soft- 
 ness and serpentine fascination and intoxicating 
 loveliness in the garb of Venus Anadyomene. 
 Yes, I could almost worship Aphrodite arisen, 
 were there another renaissance of the antique 
 paganism; and I feel all through me the spirit of 
 that exquisite idolatry expressed in Swinburne's 
 ode to "Our Lady of Pain." But I do not be- 
 lieve in Christ or in Christianity, — the former is 
 not a grand character in my eyes, even as a myth ; 
 
142 Letters to a Lady 
 
 the latter I abhor as antagonistic to art, to na- 
 ture, to passion, and to justice. As Theophile 
 Gautier wrote, "I have never gathered passion- 
 flowers on the rocks of Calvary; and the river 
 which flows from the flank of the Cross, making 
 a crimson girdle about the world, has never 
 bathed me with its waves." 
 
 I always take good care of books, and will re- 
 turn these you have so kindly lent me in a week 
 or two. 
 
 Dear Lady, I am very anxious to be able to 
 write that I have a week's freedom or a fortnight's 
 holiday; and I promise you to let you know as 
 soon as possible. But as yet I cannot leave my dull 
 office, — the convention keeps us awfully busy. I 
 would see you very often were it possible; but 
 I never have more than a few hours' leisure daily. 
 
 XIII 
 
 I have still your letter, — I fancied it might 
 be asked for again, but I do not like to return 
 it, dear Lady, — I had rather make a Gheber sa- 
 crifice, and immolate Eros, a smiling and willing 
 victim, to the White Lord of Fire. 
 
 No, I did not think the Sultana wicked ; for 
 
Letters to a Lady 143 
 
 I hold naught in human action to be evil save 
 that which brings sorrow or pain to others. But 
 even suppose the Sultana wicked for the sake of 
 argument: her pretty and yet needless apology 
 for the supposed mischief done was so tender, 
 delicate, and uniquely fantastic that it would 
 have earned the pardons supplicated for by ten 
 thousand such peccadilloes. I could not forget 
 it any more than I could forget the curves about 
 the carved lips of the sweet Medicean Venus; 
 it was a psychical blush of which the peculiar 
 ruddiness made one long to see its twin. 
 
 This morning I found within my room a per- 
 fumed parcel, daintily odorous, containing di- 
 verse wonderful things, including a crystal ves- 
 sel of remarkably peculiar design, very beautiful 
 and very foreign. I thought of filling it with black 
 volcanic wines, choleric and angry wine, in or- 
 der to stimulate my resolution to the point of 
 chiding the sender right severely. But the style 
 of the vessel forbade; it was ruddily clear in the 
 stained design, and icily brilliant elsewhere; it 
 suggested the cold purity of a northern land, — 
 fresh sea-breezes, fair hair, coolness of physical 
 temperature. I concluded that nothing stronger 
 than good brown ale would look at home therein; 
 
144 Letters to a Lady 
 
 and this beverage provoketh good-nature. 
 
 I don't know how to reproach the author of 
 this present properly. I shall not attempt it now. 
 But I will certainly beg and entreat that I may 
 not be favored with any more such kindnesses. 
 I don't merit them, and feel the reverse of plea- 
 sant by accepting them. Why I don't know, but 
 I never like to get presents some way or other. 
 It is remarkably odd and pretty; so was the let- 
 ter which accompanied it. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Dear Lady: Notwithstanding your threat to 
 leave my letters unopened, I will venture to write 
 you a few lines. I think that you have mis- 
 judged me; and while fancying that I was treat- 
 ing you unkindly, you actually treated me some- 
 what unfairly, — without, of course, intending it. 
 You have acted throughout, or nearly so, upon 
 sudden impulse, which was injudicious; and when 
 you found me acting in the opposite extreme, the 
 necessary lack of sympathy in our actions prompt- 
 ed you to believe that I was "heartless." Now I 
 can fully sympathize with your impulsiveness be- 
 
Letters to a Lady i 45 
 
 cause I have had similar impulses; but I have 
 been forced to control such impulses by the cau- 
 tion learned of unpleasant experiences. I will run 
 no risks that could involveyou or me, — especially 
 you. I did not for one instant (and you only as- 
 serted the contrary through a spirit of mischievous 
 reproach) think that I could not trust you with 
 my letters. But I could not trust the letters. . . . 
 I did not accept your last invitation only be- 
 cause I could not: it was of all weeks the busi- 
 est. I did not visit your home yesterday, because 
 I had an assignment at the same hour in the east 
 end, for the purpose of examining a smoke-con- 
 sumer. If you had written me the day before, I 
 could have made proper arrangements to come. 
 You must think me capable of a little meanness 
 to suppose that I would be discourteous enough 
 to desire a revanche for your impulsive expres- 
 sion of an impulse. I understand why you re- 
 turned my letter, and I could not feel offended. 
 
 xv 
 
 Dear Lady: You must not ask me to forgive 
 you, because I have nothing to forgive; and you 
 
146 Letters to a Lady 
 
 must not speak of my being angry with you, 
 because I was not angry with you at all. I wrote 
 sharply, and perhaps disagreeably, because I felt 
 that to do so would most speedily relieve you 
 from your embarrassment; and sympathized suf- 
 ficiently with your error to suffer with you. I en- 
 tered into your feelings much more thoroughly, 
 I believe, than you had any idea of, and I only 
 deferred writing last night because I was fairly 
 tired out with hard work. I have made many mis- 
 takes similar to yours; and felt similar regrets; 
 and felt my face burn as though pricked with ten 
 thousand needles, even when lying in bed in the 
 dark, to think that a friend had betrayed some 
 tender little confidence which might be turned 
 into sinister ridicule. I was very, very sorry to 
 feel that you had suffered similarly. 
 
 So, dear Lady, I feel generally very reluctant to 
 unbosom myself on paper, not knowing who 
 might behold the exposition, and sneer at it with- 
 out being capable of understanding it.Weall have 
 two natures, — the one is our every-day garb of 
 mannerism; the other we strived to keep draped, 
 like a snow-limbed statue of Psyche, half guarded 
 from unaesthetic eyes by a semi-diaphanous veil., 
 This veiled nature is delicate as the wings of a 
 
Letters to a Lady 147 
 
 butterfly, the gossamer web visible only when 
 the sunlight catches it, or the frost-flowers on a 
 window-pane. It will bear no rude touches — no 
 careless handling. It is tenderer than the mythic 
 blossom which bled when plucked, and its very 
 tenderness enhances its capacity for suffering. 
 
 You may hear many things which on the im- 
 pulse of the moment might affect you unplea- 
 santly J but you need never yield to such an im- 
 pulse. I am very well known in the city; and 
 you might often hear people speak of me, but 
 you must not think foolish things, or dream an- 
 noying dreams therefor. . . . 
 
 What a funny little bundle of pretty contra- 
 dictions your letter is ! How can I answer it? By 
 word of pen? No, not at all. I must only say 
 that I like you quite as much — well, at least 
 nearly as much — as you say that you wish. I 
 won't say "quite," because I don't know myself, 
 and how can I yet know you? 
 
 Ionikoe 
 
 XVI 
 
 Dear Lady, — I remember having once been 
 severely chided by a hoary friend of mine — a 
 
148 Letters to a Lady 
 
 white-bearded Mentor — because I had just re- 
 ceived a present from a friend, and had impul- 
 sively exclaimed, "Do tell me what I shall give 
 him in return! " "Give in return!" quoth Men- 
 tor. "What for? — to destroy your little obli- 
 gations of gratitude? — to insult your friend by 
 practically intimating that you believe he ex- 
 pected something in return? Don't send him 
 anything save thanks." Well, I didn't. But when 
 I received your exquisite little gift this morning, 
 I thought of writing, "How can I return your 
 kindness," &c; and now, calling my old friend's 
 advice to mind, I shall only say, "Thanks, dear 
 Lady." Still, flowers and me \_sic~\ have so little 
 in common, that much as I love them, I feel I 
 ought not to be near them, — just as one who 
 loves a woman so passionately that his dearest 
 wish is to kiss her footprints; or as Kingsley's 
 Norseman, who threw himself at the feet of the 
 fair-haired priestess, crying, "Trample on me! 
 spit on me! I am not worthy to be trod upon 
 by your feet." Of course this is an extravagant 
 simile; but the nature of a man is so coarse and 
 rude compared with the fragrance and beauty of 
 the flowers, that he feels in a purer atmosphere 
 when they are breathing perfume about him. 
 
Letters to a Lady 149 
 
 Flowers do seem to me like ghosts of maidens, 
 like "that maid whom Gwydion made by gla- 
 mour out of flowers." 
 
 Just fancy! — I was smoking a very poor ci- 
 gar when the basket of blossoms came up to my 
 rooms; and the odor of tobacco in the presence 
 of the flowers seemed sacrilegious. I felt like the 
 toad in Edgar Fawcett's poem. Perhaps you do 
 not know that little poem, as it has not yet been 
 published in book form. So I will quote it; but 
 do not think me sentimental. 
 
 "To a Toad 
 
 " Blue dusk, that brings the dewy hours, 
 Brings thee, of graceless form in sooth, 
 Dark stumbler at the roots of flowers, 
 Flaccid, inert, uncouth. 
 
 u Right ill can human wonder guess 
 Thy meaning or thy mission here, 
 Gray lump of mottled cla?nminess — 
 With that preposterous leer! 
 
 "But when I see thy dull bulk where 
 Luxurious roses bend and burn, 
 Or some slim lily lifts to air 
 Her frail and fragrant urn, — 
 
150 Letters to a Lady 
 
 " Of these, among the garden ways. 
 So grim a watcher dost thou seem 
 'That I, with meditative gaze 
 Look down on thee and dream 
 
 u Of thick-lipped slaves, with ebon skin^ 
 That squat in hideous dumb repose 
 And guard the drowsy ladies in 
 Their still seraglios" 
 
 And talking of little roses, luxurious roses, 1 like 
 them because of the fancies they evoke; their 
 leaves and odor seem of kinship to the lips and 
 the breath of a fair woman, — the lips of a woman 
 humid with fresh kisses as the heart of the rose is 
 humid with dews, — lips curled like the petals of 
 the pink flower, recalling those of Swinburne's 
 "Faustine" — 
 
 " Curled lips, long since half kissed away, 
 Still sweet and keen." 
 
 Dear lady, you sent me a very aesthetic pre- 
 sent; and I fear I have written you a very sen- 
 timental letter. But if you don't want such effu- 
 sions, you must not send me such flowers. I re- 
 ceived your last few lines, and feel much relieved 
 to find I have not offended you by my foolish 
 
Letters to a Lady 151 
 
 letter. I cannot sit down late at night without 
 saying something outrageous ; and I must be pos- 
 sessed by the Devil of Heterophemy. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 L. Hearn 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 "AFTER this perhaps you will recognize the 
 jlV signature Ozias Midwinter. It was taken 
 from Wilkie Collins's 'Armadale.'" This brief 
 postal-card message to his friend, Mr. Henry 
 Watkin, written from New Orleans, November 
 15,1 877, is the valuable clue that leads to a dis- 
 covery of a vein of work done by Lafcadio Hearn, 
 — work that perhaps in after years he came to 
 scorn, if not to forget. But for this information, 
 imparted to a friend by Hearn himself, the "Let- 
 ters of Ozias Midwinter" would doubtless lie un- 
 disturbed in their dusty tomb, — the files of the 
 newspaper ofyester-year.There may be those who 
 will decry this resurrection of forgotten things; 
 who will say it was the hack-work of a starving 
 man; that it were better left undisturbed. They 
 have a right to their opinion. Nevertheless, with 
 due respect to them, there are things in these 
 letters as good as anything Hearn ever wrote. 
 More than that, they reveal the whole trend of 
 his mind; they foreshadow the things that were 
 to interest him in the West Indies and in Japan, 
 — the little mysteries of life, the poetry of names, 
 the melody of folk-songs, the fascination of old 
 
156 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 things. The very adoption of the name of Ozias 
 Midwinter is significant. Already at twenty-seven 
 Hearn was too true a critic of real literature to 
 imagine for a moment that "Armadale" was a 
 book that was worth while; but there were things 
 in this practically forgotten story that appealed 
 to him with peculiar force, things that to him 
 seemed almost as if they might have been writ- 
 ten concerning himself. Hearn at times felt that 
 his very name was ugly. In "Armadale" we read, 
 "the strangely uncouth name of Ozias Mid- 
 winter; "and again: "It is so remarkably ugly that 
 it must be genuine. No sane human being would 
 assume such a name as Ozias Midwinter." 
 
 His diminutive appearance was a sore point 
 with Hearn. "Armadale" depicts Midwinter as 
 "young and slim and undersized." 
 
 There was something foreign-looking about 
 Hearn. His fictional hero was thus described: 
 " His tawny complexion, his large bright brown 
 eyes, and his black beard gave him something 
 of a foreign look. ... His dusky hands were 
 wiry and nervous." 
 
 Hearn, by reason of the peculiar appearance 
 of his eyes, more often repelled than attracted 
 people. He could therefore sympathize with 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 157 
 
 Midwinter, who says : " I produced a disagreeable 
 impression at first sight. I could n't mend it after- 
 wards." 
 
 A few more quotations will complete the pic- 
 ture and further make clear the fascination this 
 character in a poor novel had for Hearn. The 
 latter was from the start remarkably shy. He 
 avoided the generality of men. For years he had 
 been a failure in life. Everything he had tried 
 had somehow fallen far below his expectations. 
 Indeed, at the very time he was writing the Mid- 
 winter letters he was tramping the streets, going 
 from newspaper office to office in New Orleans 
 seeking work. Let us see now how these things 
 in the life of Hearn correspond with the descrip- 
 tion of Midwinter : " From first to last the man's 
 real character shrank back with a savage shyness 
 from the rector's touch." 
 
 And again: "It mattered little what he tried: 
 failure (for which nobody was ever to blame but 
 himself) was sure to be the end of it, sooner or 
 later. Friends to assist him he had none to ap- 
 ply to; and as for relations, he wished to be ex- 
 cused from speaking of them. For all he knew 
 of them they might be dead, and for all they 
 knew he might be dead." 
 
158 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 Andfinally:" Ozias Midwinter at twenty spoke 
 of his life as Ozias Midwinter at seventy might 
 have spoken, with a long weariness of years on 
 him which he had learned to bear patiently." 
 
 So much for the pseudonym. Now for the work 
 to which it was attached. In after years, when 
 Hearn had begun to attain a degree of prospe- 
 rity, he either forgot something of the hard days, 
 or, for some reason known to himself, told a 
 pleasing fiction about them. Thus, in one letter 
 that was made public shortly after his death, he 
 says he went South from Cincinnati on a vaca- 
 tion, saw the blue and gold of Southern days, and 
 determined to abide in such a climate forever. It 
 has already been made clear in his letters to Mr. 
 Watkin that he went South because the wander- 
 lust was upon him, because he had begun to hate 
 Cincinnati, because he felt that he must find more 
 congenial work elsewhere. Whatever enthusiasts 
 in Cincinnati and New Orleans may say now, he 
 was not a good reporter in the present-day ac- 
 ceptance of the term. There was, on his part, a 
 fancy for fine writing, for rhetoric, which the 
 city editors of three decades ago may have ad- 
 mired, but which at present would be most vi- 
 gorously blue-pencilled. A youthful Hearn to- 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 159 
 
 day would have a rather hard time in Cincinnati, 
 where the cry is for facts and again facts, and then 
 for brevity and then once more for brevity. If 
 Hearn did not come up to the modern standards 
 of newspaper reporting, neither did he come up 
 to the modern ideals of newspaper correspond- 
 ence. It is probable that few papers to-day would 
 tolerate the particular kind of "news letter" that 
 Hearn sent to the Cincinnati Commercial in the 
 years 1877 and 1878. It was in a day when the 
 telegraph service was not so well developed as at 
 present, and the news letters from Washington, 
 Boston, New York, New Orleans, and London 
 were a regular feature. There are few newspapers 
 to-day which contain letters by men so eminent 
 in after years as two of the Commercial corre- 
 spondents became, — Hearn and Moncure D. 
 Conway, also for some time a resident of Cin- 
 cinnati and afterwards correspondent from Lon- 
 don. 
 
 Few if any of H earn 's " news letters " made any 
 pretence at giving news. As far as the style of 
 them was concerned, they might have been writ- 
 ten for his friend Watkin alone, instead of for a 
 great Ohio valley newspaper, catering to a con- 
 siderable clientele. He chose what subjects inter- 
 
160 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 ested him, not what were presumed to interest 
 the readers of the paper. Indays when Louisiana's 
 political affairs were still in the turmoil of the 
 reconstruction period, when the North was still 
 keenly watching events in the "rebel" South, 
 Hearn had few if any references to these matters. 
 
 As near an approach as any to a news letter was 
 his first one, sent from Memphis, November 6, 
 1877, when he wrote some "Notes on Forrest's 
 Funeral." In this he related how he saw the fu- 
 neral of General N. B. Forrest, the great Con- 
 federate cavalryman, told some anecdotes of the 
 dead man's bravery and savagery, and gave his 
 ancestry and an outline of his life. 
 
 Then he proceeded: "Old citizens of Mem- 
 phis mildly described him to me as a c terror.' He 
 would knock a man down upon the least provo- 
 cation, and whether with or without weapons, 
 there were few people in the city whom he could 
 not worst in a fight. Imagine a man about six 
 feet three inches in height, very sinewy and ac- 
 tive, with a vigorous, rugged face, bright grey 
 eyes that almost always look fierce, eyebrows 
 that seem always on the verge of a frown, and 
 dark brown hair and chin beard, with strong 
 inclination to curl, and you have some idea of 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 161 
 
 Forrest's appearance before his last illness. He 
 was, further, one of the most arbitrary, imperious, 
 and determined men that it is possible to con- 
 ceive of holding a high position in a civilized 
 community. Rough, rugged, desperate, uncul- 
 tured, his character fitted him rather for the life of 
 the borderer than the planter; he seemed by nature 
 a typical pioneer, — one of those fierce and ter- 
 rible men who form in themselves a kind of pro- 
 tecting fringe to the borders of white civilization." 
 This is straightforward and vivid enough. But 
 it was impossible for this dreamer of weird dreams 
 to go through a whole letter in this fashion, and 
 so we have the following, which, well written as it 
 is, would scandalize the modern telegraph editor 
 handling the correspondence: "The same night 
 they buried him, there came a storm. From the 
 same room whence I had watched the funeral, I 
 saw the Northern mists crossing the Mississippi 
 into Arkansas like an invading army; then came 
 grey rain, and at last a fierce wind, making wild 
 charges through it all. Somehow or other the 
 queer fancy came to me that the dead Confederate 
 cavalrymen, rejoined by their desperate leader, 
 were fighting ghostly battles with the men who 
 died for 'the Union." 
 
162 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 The hustling, bustling Memphis of to-day 
 is a far different place from the decayed, war- 
 stricken town that the vagrant newspaper man 
 saw. Its ruin, its damp days and nights, depressed 
 him. In a letter of November 23, 1877, he re- 
 corded his impressions in a way that would doubt- 
 less to-day appeal strongly to the memory of the 
 older generation of Memphians, who have not 
 become used to the new order of things: 
 
 "The antiquity of the name of Memphis — 
 a name suggesting vastness and ruin — compels 
 something of a reverential feeling; and I ap- 
 proached the Memphis of the Mississippi dream- 
 ing solemnly of the Memphis of the Nile. I 
 found the great cotton mart truly Egyptian in 
 its melancholy decay, and not, therefore, wholly 
 unworthy of its appellation. Tenantless ware- 
 houses with shattered windows; poverty-stricken 
 hotels that vainly strive to keep up appearances; 
 rows of once splendid buildings, from whose fa- 
 cades the paint has almost all scaled off; mock 
 stone fronts, whence the stucco has fallen in 
 patches, exposing the humble brick reality un- 
 derneath ;dinginess, dirt, and dismal dilapidation 
 greet the eye at every turn. The city's life seems 
 to have contracted about its heart, leaving the 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 163 
 
 greater portion of its body paralyzed. Its com- 
 mercial pulse appears to beat very feebly. It gives 
 one the impression of a place that had been 
 stricken by some great misfortune beyond hope 
 of recovery. Yet Memphis still handles one fifth 
 of the annual cotton crop, — often more than a 
 million bales in a season, — and in this great 
 branch of commerce the city will always hold 
 its own, though fine buildings crumble and debts 
 accumulate and warehouses lie vacant. . . . But 
 when rain and white fogs come, the melancholy 
 of Memphis becomes absolutely Stygian: all 
 things wooden utter strange groans and crac- 
 kling sounds; all things of stone or of stucco 
 sweat as in the agony of dissolution, and beyond 
 the cloudy brow of the bluffs the Mississippi flows 
 dimly, — a spectral river, a Styx-flood, with pale 
 mists lingering like Shades upon its banks, wait- 
 ing for that ghostly ferryman, the wind." 
 
 In this letter occurred a quaint passage, illus- 
 trating at the same time the wide range of Hearn's 
 reading and the curious paths into which he had 
 allowed his mind to stray: " Elagabalus, wish- 
 ing to obtain some idea of the vastness of impe- 
 rial Rome, ordered all the cobwebs in the city 
 to be collected together and heaped up before 
 
1 64 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 him. Estimated by such a method, the size of 
 Memphis would appear vast enough to have as- 
 tonished even Elagabalus." 
 
 However, brief as was his stay in Memphis, 
 disagreeable as were most of his impressions, he 
 found time to fall in love with one little piece 
 of sculpture, thus charmingly described as "a lit- 
 tle nude Venus at the street fountain, who has 
 become all of one dusky greyish-green hue, 
 preserving her youth only in the beauty of her 
 rounded figure and unwrinkled comeliness of 
 face." In this letter he detailed something of his 
 journey down the river, chronicled his delight 
 in the Southern sunsets, and finally arrived at the 
 first of his promised lands: "The daylight faded 
 away, and the stars came out, but that warm glow 
 in the southern horizon only paled so that it 
 seemed a little further off. The river broadened 
 till it looked, with the tropical verdure of its 
 banks, like the Ganges, until at last there loomed 
 up a vast line of shadows, dotted with points of 
 light, and through a forest of masts and a host 
 of phantom-white river boats and a wilderness of 
 chimneys the 'Thompson Dean, singing her cheery 
 challenge, steamed up to the mighty levee of 
 New Orleans." 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 165 
 
 In his next letter, dated November 26, 1877, 
 he described his first impressions "at the gates 
 of the Tropics." He came across things that re- 
 minded him of London and of Paris and evoked 
 memories of his youth: 
 
 " Eighteen miles of levee ! London, with all the 
 gloomy vastness of her docks and her c river of 
 ten thousand masts,' can offer no spectacle so 
 picturesquely attractive and so varied in the at- 
 traction. "Andagain:" Canal Street, withits grand 
 breadth and imposing facades, gives one recol- 
 lections of London and Oxford Street and Re- 
 gent Street." He went to the French market, 
 still one of the great sights of the city, and could 
 not write enough about it: 
 
 "The markets of London are less brightly 
 clean and neatly arranged; the markets of Paris 
 are less picturesque." Even a cotton-press seen 
 at the cotton landing was an event to be cele- 
 brated. The thing was to him not merely a piece 
 of ingenious machinery ; it was something weird, 
 something demoniac: "Fancy a monstrous head 
 of living iron and brass, fifty feet high from its 
 junction with the ground, having jointed gaps in 
 its face like Gothic eyes, a mouth five feet wide, 
 opening six feet from the mastodon teeth in the 
 
1 66 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 lower jaw to the mastodon teeth in the upper 
 jaw. The lower jaw alone moves, as in living be- 
 ings, and it is worked by two vast iron tendons, 
 long and thick and solid as church pillars. The 
 surface of this lower jaw is equivalent to six 
 square feet. The more I looked at the thing, the 
 more I felt as though its prodigious anatomy had 
 been studied after the anatomy of some extinct 
 animal, — the way those jaws worked, the man- 
 ner in which those muscles moved. Men rolled 
 a cotton bale to the mouth of the monster. The 
 jaws opened with a low roar, and so remained. 
 The lower jaw had descended to the level with 
 the platform on which the bale was lying. It was an 
 immense plantation bale. Two black men rolled 
 it into the yawning mouth. The titan muscles 
 contracted, and the jaws closed, silently, steadily, 
 swiftly. The bale flattened, flattened, flattened 
 down to sixteen inches, twelve inches, eight 
 inches, five inches, — positively less than five 
 inches! I thought it was going to disappear al- 
 together. But after crushing it beyond five inches 
 the jaw remained stationary and the monster 
 growled like rumbling thunder. I thought the 
 machine began to look as hideous as one of those 
 horrible yawning heads which formed the gates 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 167 
 
 of the teocallis at Palenque, and through whose 
 awful jaws the sacrificial victims passed." 
 
 On December 7, 1877, he dived into more se- 
 rious and even more practical things. This man, 
 to whom colored races were always of the deep- 
 est interest, who had prowled around the negro 
 quarters ofCincinnati for songs and melodies and 
 superstitions, around the Chinese laundries for 
 chance discoveries of strange musical instruments 
 from the Orient, after a residence in the South 
 of one month, discussed a question which is still 
 agitating the country and which threatens to 
 trouble it for many years to come, — the negro 
 question. Charles Gayarre of Louisiana had writ- 
 ten an article for the North American Review en- 
 titled "The Southern Question." Hearn, who 
 certainly cannot be accused of prejudice against 
 colored peoples, agreed with the Southern writer 
 that white supremacy was necessary for Southern 
 peace and prosperity. He felt that the particular 
 menace of the whites was from the mixed breeds, 
 whose black blood had just enough alloy to make 
 them despise the simplicity and faithfulness of 
 the lowly "darky" of the old regime and aspire 
 to more rights and more privileges. Recently a 
 Southern thinker has written a book to show that, 
 
1 68 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 in the inexorable law of the survival of the fit- 
 test, the ten million negroes must be swept aside 
 by the seventy million whites of this land, and 
 finally perish from the face of the earth, as do 
 all the weaker races. Nearly three decades ago 
 Hearn came to the same conclusion, — a conclu- 
 sion not expressed without some feeling of fond- 
 ness for the race: "As for the black man, he 
 must disappear with the years. Dependent like 
 the ivy, he needs some strong oak-like friend to 
 cling to. His support has been cut from him, and 
 his life must wither in its prostrate helplessness. 
 Will he leave no trace of his past in the fields 
 made fertile by his mighty labors, no memory 
 of his presence in this fair land he made rich in 
 vain ? Ah,yes ! the echo of the sweetly melancholy 
 songs of slavery, — the weird and beautiful melo- 
 dies born in the hearts of the poor, childlike peo- 
 ple to whom freedom was destruction." 
 
 By the time he sent his next letter, dated 
 December 10, 1877, he had again been wander- 
 ing about the city. He visited the old Spanish 
 cathedral founded by Don Andre Almonaster, 
 Regidor and Alferez Real of his Most Catholic 
 Majesty. This is the church that is always re- 
 ferred to as the "French cathedral/ ' Hearn de- 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 169 
 
 scribed its two ancient tombs, — that of Almon- 
 aster, who died in 1708, and then that of the 
 French noble family of De Marigny de Mande- 
 ville, scions of which died and were buried there 
 in 1728, 1779, and 1800. Hearn had his own 
 reflections over the matter just as Irving had in 
 Westminster Abbey: 
 
 a O Knights of the Ancient Regime, the feet 
 of the plebeians are blotting out your escutch- 
 eons; the overthrowers of throned Powers pass 
 by your tombs with a smile of complacency ; the 
 callous knees of the poorest poor will erelong 
 obliterate your carven memory from the stone; 
 the very places of your dwelling have crumbled 
 out of sight and out of remembrance. The glory 
 of Versailles has passed away; c the spider taketh 
 hold with his hands, and is in the palaces of 
 Kings. ,,, 
 
 From musings in the cathedral he passed in- 
 to a disquisition on language. He held that the 
 French tongue sounded better to him from the 
 mouth of a negro than did the harsher English. 
 Southern speech flows melodiously from the ne- 
 gro's lips, being musically akin to the many-vow- 
 elled languages of Africa. The th's and thr's, the 
 difficult diphthongs and guttural rr's of Eng- 
 
170 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 lish and German, have a certain rude Northern 
 strength beyond the mastery of Ethiopian lips. 
 He finds that the Louisiana blacks speak a cor- 
 rupted French, often called " Creole," which is 
 not the Creole of the Antilles. This recalls to him 
 a memory of his childhood in England and gives 
 also a foretaste of what he was to do ten years 
 later, when H arpers gave him a chance to describe 
 what he felt and saw in the French West Indies: 
 "Yesterday evening, the first time for ten 
 years, I heard again that sweetest of all dialects, 
 the Creole of the Antilles. I had first heard it 
 spoken in England by the children of an Eng- 
 lish family from Trinidad, who were visiting re- 
 latives in the mother country, and I could never 
 forget its melody. In Martinique and elsewhere 
 it has almost a written dialect; the school-children 
 used to study the c Creole catechism/ and priests 
 used to preach to their congregations in Creole. 
 You cannot help falling in love with it after hav- 
 ing once heard it spoken by young lips, unless 
 indeed you have no poetry in your composition, 
 no music in your soul. It is the most liquid, mel- 
 low, languid language in the world. It is espe- 
 cially a language for love-making. It sounds like 
 pretty baby-talk ; it woos like the cooing of a 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 171 
 
 dove. It seems to be a mixture of French, a little 
 Spanish, and West African dialects, — those ne- 
 gro dialects that are voluminous with vowels. 
 You can imagine how smooth it is from the fact 
 that in West Indian Creole the letter r is never 
 pronounced; and the Europeans of the Indies 
 complain that once their children have learned 
 to speak Creole, it is hard to teach them to pro- 
 nounce any other language correctly. They will 
 say 'b'ed' for bread and £ t'ed' for thread. So that 
 it is a sort of wopsy-popsy-ootsy-tootsy lan- 
 guage." 
 
 And from this affectionate passage he is led to 
 speak of Creole satires. During the Republican 
 regime in New Orleans after the Civil War there 
 was a witty, bitter, and brilliant French paper 
 called Le Carillon, which designated Republicans 
 by a new term," Radicanailles," which seemed ex- 
 ceedingly satisfying to the proud aristocracy, — 
 this word compounded of "radical" and "ca- 
 naille" The paper used to print Creole satires. 
 One was on ex-Governor Antoine, in the form 
 of a parody upon "La Fille de Madame An- 
 got." Now Hearn's ambition was to write a sinu- 
 ous, silvern, poetical prose. He rarely attempted 
 verse. In his better known books on Japan his 
 
172 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 versions of Japanese songs and poems are in 
 prose. So, too, in these letters all his renderings 
 of the things that attracted him are in prose. 
 Here is his version of the satire just mentioned, 
 redolent as it is of an era of bitterness: 
 
 "In the old days before the war, I was a slave 
 at Caddo [Parish] . I tilled the earth and raised 
 sweet potatoes and water-melons. Then after- 
 wards I left the plough and took up the razor 
 to shave folks in the street, — white and black, 
 too. But that, that was before the war. 
 
 ii 
 
 "When Banks went up the river (Red River) 
 with soldiers and with cannon, I changed my 
 career. Then I became a runaway slave. I mar- 
 ried my own cousin, who is at this hour my wife. 
 She — she attended to the kitchen. I — I sought 
 for honors. But that, that was during the war. 
 
 in 
 
 "And then afterward in the custom-house men 
 called me Collector; and then Louisiana named 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 173 
 
 me her Senator; and then to show her confidence 
 the people made me Governor and called me His 
 Eminence; and that is what I am at this present 
 hour. And that, that is since the war." 
 
 From this, with the inconsequential air of a but- 
 terfly, he turned to the subject of the Greeks of 
 New Orleans, — a subjecl that must have lain near 
 to his heart by reason of the deep love he bore 
 for his Greek mother. Among the New Orleans 
 people he mentioned was one Greek gentleman: 
 " I never met a finer old man. Though more than 
 seventy years of age, his face was still as firmly 
 outlined, as clearly cut, as an antique cameo; its 
 traits recalled memories of old marbles, portraits 
 in stone of Aristophanes and Sophocles; it be- 
 spoke a grand blending of cynicism and poetry." 
 But the sons of Hellas were not all alike sat- 
 isfactory to his fastidious taste: "There are many 
 Greeks, sailors and laborers, in New Orleans; but 
 I cannot say that they inspire one with dreams 
 of Athens or of Corinth, of Panathenaic proces- 
 sions or Panhellenic games. Their faces are not 
 numismatic; their forms are not athletic. Some- 
 times you can discern a something national about 
 a Greek steamboatman, — a something charac- 
 
174 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 teristic which distinguishes him from the equally 
 swarthy Italian, Spaniard/ Dago.' But that some- 
 thing is not of antiquity; it is not inspirational. 
 It is Byzantine, and one is apt to dislike it. It re- 
 minds one of Taine's merciless criticism of the 
 faces of Byzantine art. But I have seen a few rare 
 Hellenic types here, and amongthese some beau- 
 tiful Romaic girls, — maidens with faces to remind 
 you of the gracious vase paintings of antiquity/' 
 One would think he had crammed this letter full 
 enough of topics, but he had one more. Through- 
 out his life ghost stories were an obsession with 
 him. They run all through his books on Japan. 
 Three decades ago he lamented: "In these days 
 ghosts have almost lost the power to interest us, 
 forwe have become too familiarwith their cloudy 
 faces, and familiarity begetteth contempt. An ori- 
 ginal ghost story is a luxury, and a rare luxury 
 at that." 
 
 He then toldof a house on Melpomene Street, 
 New Orleans, in which no one could dwell in 
 peace. If a person were so hardy and so skepti- 
 cal as to move in, he soon found his furniture 
 scattered, and his carpets torn up by invisible 
 hands. Ghostly feet shook the house with their 
 terrible steps; ghostly hands opened bolted doors 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 175 
 
 as if locks did not exist, — so that by and by no 
 one came to live in the old place any more: 
 
 "As the years flitted by the goblin of Decay 
 added himself to the number of the Haunters; 
 the walls crumbled, and the floors yielded, and 
 grass, livid and ghastly looking grass, forced its 
 pale way between the chinks of the planks in the 
 parlor., The windows fell into ruin, and the wind 
 entered freely to play with the ghosts, and cried 
 weirdly in the vacant room." 
 
 Then one night Chief of Police Leary and six 
 of his most stalwart men determined to stand 
 watch in the building and solve the mystery. 
 They placed candles in one of the rooms, and 
 towards midnight stood in a hollow square, with 
 Chief Leary in the middle, so that he could aid 
 his men to repel an attack from any quarter what- 
 soever. The ghosts blew out the lighted candles 
 and, to this extent, were commonplace enough. 
 But the next instant they displayed their com- 
 plete ingenuity and originality by seizing the 
 seven guardians of the peace and hurling them 
 violently against the ceiling. Hearn adds, with a 
 touch of playful humor: "The city of New Or- 
 leans would not pay the doctors' bills of men in- 
 jured while in the discharge of their duty." 
 
176 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 By December 17, 1877, he had become inter- 
 ested in the past and present of " Los Criollos," 
 the Creoles, who were to be such a fascinating 
 subject to him when he visited Martinique and 
 other enchanted isles of the Caribbean. 
 
 In this first letter on the subject he corrected 
 the common error of speaking of mulattoes, 
 quadroons, and octaroons of Louisiana as Cre- 
 oles, — a mistake which curiously enough he him- 
 self made in his book, "Ghombo Zhebes," sev- 
 eral years later. In this letter, however, he cor- 
 rectly pointed out that no person with the slight- 
 est taint of negro blood was a Creole, and that 
 the common mistake was made not only in the 
 North, but also often in the South, where they 
 should know better; not only in America, but 
 also in England, France, and Spain, the former 
 mother countries of all the West Indian colo- 
 nists. " Creole/' properly speaking, is the term ap- 
 plied to the pure-blooded offspring of Europeans 
 born in the colonies of South America or the 
 West Indies, to distinguish them from children 
 of mixed blood born in the colonies or of pure 
 blood born in the mother country. In Louisiana, 
 he pointed out that it usually meant they were of 
 French, more rarely of Spanish, descent. He paid 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 177 
 
 a tribute to the Creole society of New Orleans 
 which was made up of the descendants of all the 
 early European settlers: "Something of all that 
 was noble and true and brilliant in the almost 
 forgotten life of the dead South lives here still 
 (its atmosphere is European; its tastes are gov- 
 erned by European literature and the art culture 
 of the Old World). " Hethen quoted some of the 
 poems in the patois of Louisiana and also some 
 from Martinique that he had already picked up. 
 
 On December 22 he devoted his attention to 
 "New Orleans in Wet Weather." He had much to 
 say of its dampness and chills and fogs: "Strange 
 it is to observe the approach of one of these eerie 
 fogs on some fair night. The blue deeps above 
 glow tenderly beyond the sharp crescent of the 
 moon; the heavens seem transformed to an in- 
 finite ocean of liquid turquoise, made living with 
 the palpitating life of the throbbing stars. In this 
 limpid clearness, this yellow, tropical moonlight, 
 objects are plainly visible at a distance of miles; far 
 sounds come to the ear with marvellous distinct- 
 ness, — the clarion calls of the boats, the long, loud 
 panting of the cotton-presses, exhaling steaming 
 breath from their tireless lungs of steel. 
 
 " Suddenly sounds become fainter and fainter, 
 
178 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 as though the atmosphere were madefeeble byun- 
 accountable enchantment ; distant objects lose dis- 
 tinctness; the heaven is cloudless, but her lights, 
 low-burning and dim, no longer make the night 
 transparent, and a chill falls upon the city, such 
 as augurs the coming of a ghost. Then the ghost 
 appears; the invisible makes itself visible; a vast 
 form of thin white mist seems to clasp the whole 
 night in its deathly embrace; the face of the moon 
 is hidden as with a grey veil, and the spectral fog 
 extinguishes with its chill breath the trembling 
 flames of the stars." 
 
 ^Turning his thought to grave matters, he re- 
 fers to the elevated tombs in the cemeteries, which 
 some irreverently call "bake ovens." Then comes 
 a touch of the playful, familiar enough to those 
 who read the present volume, but rarein his other 
 books: " Fancy being asked by a sexton whether 
 you wished to have the remains of your wife or 
 child deposited in c one of them bake ovens. ,,: 
 
 Again, with a swift turn of thought and sub- 
 ject, as if in conversation with a friend or as if in 
 a letter to him, he reverts to "Beast Ben Butler" 
 and his needless brutality in having carved on one 
 of the New Orleans statues, Clay's declaration 
 against slavery and Andrew Jackson's famous 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 179 
 
 saying," Our federal Union :itmust be preserved." 
 The sight of Levantine sailors selling fruit in the 
 markets caused him to rhapsodize on the sea, 
 giving the first of those prose poems in which he 
 was to wax almost lyrical in so many of his works: 
 "If you, O reader, chance to be a child of the 
 sea; if, in earliest childhood, you listened each 
 morning and evening to that most ancient and 
 mystic hymn-chant of the waves, which none can 
 hear without awe, and which no musician can 
 learn; if you have ever watched wonderingly the 
 far sails of the fishing vessels turn rosy in the 
 blush of the sunset, or silver under the moon, or 
 golden in the glow of sunrise; if you once breathed 
 as your native air the divine breath of the ocean, 
 and learned the swimmer's art from the hoary 
 breakers, and received the Ocean god's christen- 
 ing, the glorious baptism of salt, — then per- 
 haps you know only too well why those sailors 
 of the Levant cannot seek homes within the 
 heart of the land. Twenty years may have passed 
 since your ears last caught the thunder of that 
 mighty ode of hexameters which the sea has al- 
 ways sung and will sing forever, — since your 
 eyes sought the far line where the vaulted blue 
 of heaven touches the level immensity of rolling 
 
180 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 waters, — since you breathed the breath of the 
 ocean, and felt its clear ozone living in your veins 
 like an elixir. Have you forgotten the mighty 
 measure of that mighty song? Have you forgot- 
 ten the divine saltiness of that unfettered wind? Is 
 not the spell of the sea strong upon you still? . . . 
 
 "And I think that the Levantine sailors dare 
 not dwell in the midst of the land, for fear lest 
 dreams of a shadowy sea might come upon them 
 in the night, and phantom winds call wildly to 
 them in their sleep, and they might wake to find 
 themselves a thousand miles beyond the voice 
 of the breakers." 
 
 On December 27, 1877, already deeply inter- 
 ested in the niceties of language, Hearn gave his 
 Cincinnati readers a dissertation upon the curi- 
 osities of Creole grammar, and quoted in Creole 
 a weird love-song, said to be of negro origin. He 
 doubted whether it was really composed by a ne- 
 gro, but remarked that its spirit was undoubtedly 
 African. Then he gave the following prose ver- 
 sion of this exotic: 
 
 " Since first I beheld you, Adele, 
 While dancing the calinda^ 
 I have remained faithful to the thought of you ; 
 My freedom has departed from me y 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 181 
 
 / care no longer for all other negr esses; 
 I have no heart left for the?n; — 
 You have such grace and cunning : — 
 You are like the Congo serpent. 
 
 u I love you too much, my beautiful one: — 
 / am not able to help it. 
 
 My heart has become just like a grasshopper, — 
 It does nothing but leap. 
 I have never met any woman 
 Who has so beautiful a form as yours. 
 Your eyes flash flame; 
 Your body has enchained me captive, 
 
 a Ah, you are so like the serpent-of-the-rattles 
 Who knows how to charm the little bird, 
 And who has a mouth ever ready for it 
 To serve it for a tomb. 
 I have never known any negress 
 Who could walk with such grace as you can. 
 Or who could make such beautiful gestures; 
 Your body is a beautiful doll. 
 
 "When I cannot see you, Adele, 
 I feel myself ready to die; 
 My life becomes like a candle 
 Which has almost burned itself out. 
 I cannot then find anything in the world 
 Which is able to give me pleasure : — 
 
1 82 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 / could well go down to the river 
 
 And throw myself in it that I might cease to suffer. 
 
 " Tell me if you have a man. 
 And I will make an ouanga charm for him: 
 I will make him turn into a phantom^ 
 If you will only take me for your husband. 
 I will not go to see you when you are cross; 
 Other women are mere trash to me; 
 I will make you very happy 
 And I will give you a beautiful Madras handkerchief" 
 
 He freely admitted that the poem was untrans- 
 latable, that it lost its weird beauty, its melody, 
 its liquid softness, its languor, when put into Eng- 
 lish. Then came a characteristic bit in which he 
 displayed the man who dwelt with delight upon 
 the inner meaning of words, — the delight felt 
 only by the artist in language: "I think there is 
 some true poetry in these allusions to the snake. 
 Is not the serpent a symbol of grace? Is not the 
 so-called' line of beauty' serpentine? And is there 
 not something of the serpent in the beauty of all 
 graceful women ?somethingof undulating shape- 
 liness, something of silent fascination? something 
 of Lilith and Lamia? The French have a beau- 
 tiful verb expressive of this idea, — serpenter, c to 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 183 
 
 serpent/ to curve in changing undulations like 
 a lithe snake. The French artist speaks of the 
 outlines of a beautiful human body as 'serpent- 
 ing,' curving and winding like a serpent. Do you 
 not like the word? I think it is so expressive of 
 flowinglines of elegance, — so fullofthat mystery 
 of grace which puzzled Solomon: 'the way of a 
 serpent upon a rock.'" 
 
 r On January 7, 1 878, came a picture in prose, 
 which now reminds us of William Ernest Hen- 
 ley's "London Voluntary," in which the latter 
 described the splendor of a golden October day 
 in the metropolis of the world. Here is Christmas 
 EveinNewOrleans: "Christmas Eve camein with 
 a blaze of orange glory in the west, and masses of 
 lemon-colored clouds piled up above the sunset. 
 The whole city was filled with orange-colored light, 
 just before the sun went down; and between the 
 lemon-hued clouds and the blue were faint tints 
 of green. The colors of that sunset seemed a fairy 
 mockery of the colors of the fruit booths through- 
 out the city; where the golden fruit lay piled up in 
 luxuriant heaps, and where the awnings of white 
 canvas had been replaced by long archways of 
 interwoven orange branches with the fruit still 
 glowinguponthem. Itwas an Orange Christmas." 
 
1 84 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 Then at nightfall he passed the French opera 
 house on Bourbon Street. It was "dark and dead 
 and silent," and as a matter of course the dreamer 
 had another vision: "Sometimes, when passing 
 under the sharply cut shadows of the building 
 in a night of tropical moonlight, I fancy that 
 a shadowy performance of c Don Giovanni' or 
 'Masaniello' must be going on within for the en- 
 tertainment of a ghostly audience; and that if 
 somebody would but open the doors an instant, 
 one might catch a glimpse of spectral splendor, 
 of dusky-eyed beauties long dead, — of forgot- 
 ten faces pale with the sleep of battlefields, — of 
 silks that should be mouldering in mouldering 
 chests with the fashions of twenty years ago." 
 
 And finally this letter contained the following 
 prophetic utterance concerning the new South, — 
 the South then not yet in existence, the South 
 that so nearly approximates what Hearn said it 
 would be :"Itis the picturesqueness of the South, 
 the poetry, the traditions, the legends, the su- 
 perstitions, the quaint faiths, the family prides, 
 the luxuriousness, the splendid indolence and 
 the splendid sins of the old social system which 
 have passed, or which are now passing, away for- 
 ever The new South may, perhaps, become 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 185 
 
 far richer than the old South; but there will be 
 no aristocracy, no lives of unbridled luxury, no 
 reckless splendors of hospitality, no mad pursuit 
 of costliest pleasures. The old hospitality has 
 been starved to death, and leaves no trace of its 
 former being save the thin ghost of a romance. 
 The new South will be less magnificent, though 
 wealthier; less generous, though more self-deny- 
 ing; less poetical, though more cultured. The 
 new cities will be, probably, more prosperous and 
 less picturesque than the old." 
 
 January 14, 1878, Hearn devoted his entire let- 
 ter to W. C. C.Claiborne, the first American gov- 
 ernor of Louisiana. He told in what hostile manner 
 the American was received by the haughty Creole 
 gentry, and how he was alleged to have worn his 
 hat at the theatre. It is in the comment on this 
 that Hearn most amusingly displays himselfas an 
 Englishman, with the dim-seeing eyes of a Dick- 
 ens or a saucy Kipling rather than the clear-head- 
 ed, clear-eyed American, or the adopted citizen, 
 understanding this country and its people: "I 
 fancy that wearing of the hat before those terribly 
 cultivated and excruciatingly courteous Creole au- 
 diences must have been at first a mere oversight; 
 but that poor Claiborne naturally got stubborn 
 
1 86 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 when such an outcry was raised about it and, 
 with an angry pride of manhood peculiar to good 
 American blood, swore c by the Eternal' that he 
 would wear his hat wherever he pleased. Don't 
 you almost wish you could slap him on the shoul- 
 der with that truly American slap of approba- 
 tion? "Of course that is pure Dickens, the Dick- 
 ens of "American Notes," just as is the follow- 
 ing rather amusingdescription of American news- 
 papers in the good years 1804, 1805, and 1806: 
 cc In those days the newspaper seems to have been 
 neither more nor less than a public spittoon, — 
 every man flung his quid of private opinion into 
 it." 
 
 Hearn went to look at the Claiborne graves 
 in the old St. Louis cemetery on Basin Street. 
 Throughout his life graveyards seemed to have 
 a fascination for him; but the following descrip- 
 tion of the St. Louis cemetery is interesting be- 
 cause it proves, what has often been denied, that 
 part of Hearn's boyhood was spent in Wales: 
 "This cemetery is one of the most curious, andat 
 the same time one of the most dilapidated, in the 
 world. I have seen old graveyards in the north 
 of England, and tombs in Wales, where names 
 of the dead of three hundred years ago may yet 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 187 
 
 be read upon the mossy stones; but I have never 
 seen so grim a necropolis as the ruined Creole 
 cemetery at New Orleans. There is no order 
 there, no regularity, no long piles of white obe- 
 lisks, no even ranks of grey tablets. The tombs 
 seem to jostle one another; the graveyard is a 
 labyrinth in which one may easily lose oneself. 
 Some of the tombs are Roman in size and design; 
 some are mere heaps of broken brick; some are 
 of the old-fashioned table form. ,, 
 
 Readers of Hearn's books are familiar with 
 those pages in which he speaks of Japanese fe- 
 male names, and studies appellations in general. 
 This fancy was no new thing with him. As long 
 ago as February 1 8, 1 878, he studied the curious 
 nomenclature of New Orleans streets, revealing, 
 as it does, part of the history of the city, some- 
 thing of its old gallant life, something of its old 
 classical culture. He told how Burgundy Street 
 was named after the great duke; Dauphine is, of 
 course, self-explanatory, as are Louis XV and 
 Royal and Bourbon. Governors are represented 
 by Carondelet, Galvez, and others; French and 
 Spanish piety, by such names as St. Bartholomy, 
 St. Charles, and Annunciata. The classicism, 
 which so affedled the traditions of French poetry 
 
188 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 and the French stage, is here represented by 
 streets named Calliope, Clio, Dry ades, &c. Gallan- 
 try, " often wicked gallantry, I fear," is commemo- 
 rated by a number of streets christened with " the 
 sweetest and prettiest feminine names imagin- 
 able, — Adele, Celeste, Suzette, and Annette." 
 
 Then he gave his readers some more of those 
 Creole songs he was always collecting, some of 
 which as rich treasure he was afterwards to give 
 to his friend, Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, the musical 
 critic. In this letter he told how, when for the first 
 time he read Daudet's novel, translated under the 
 title of "Sidonie,"he was charmed with the re- 
 frain of a Creole song, and determined, when in 
 New Orleans, to procure the whole poem. He 
 recorded his disappointment in being able only 
 to get one stanza, which he translated as follows : 
 
 " Others say it is your happiness; 
 I say, it is your sorrow : 
 When we are enchanted by love, 
 Farewell to all happiness ! 
 Poor little Miss Zizif 
 Poor little Miss Zizif 
 Poor little Miss Zizif 
 She has sorrow, sorrow, sorrow; — 
 She has sorrow in her heart /" 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 189 
 
 Here is another bit, which seems to the Anglo- 
 Saxon very uncouth and unpoetical when given 
 in bare, bald English, robbed of the oft-lisping 
 Creole melody : 
 
 "If thou wert a little bird, 
 And I were a little gun, 
 I would shoot thee — bang! 
 Ah, dear little 
 AAahogany jewel, 
 I love thee as a little pig loves the mud" 
 
 The next is more charming. It is only a snatch, 
 but it hints delicious romance: 
 
 " Delaide, my queen, the way is too long for me to travel; — 
 
 That way leads far up yonder. 
 
 But, little as I am, I am going to stem the stream up there. 
 
 ' I, Liron, am come,'' is what I shall say to them, 
 
 c My queen, good night; "'tis I, Liron, who have come?" 
 
 And finally there is this one, evidently of negro 
 origin, made to ridicule a mulatto girl named 
 Toucouton, who tried to pass as white: 
 
 a Ah, Toucouton! 
 I know you well: 
 Tou are like a blackamoor; 
 There is no soap 
 Which is white enough 
 To wash your skin. 
 
190 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 "When the white folks give a ball, 
 You are not able to go there ; 
 Ah, how will you be able to play the flirt! 
 Tou who so love to shine? 
 Ah) Toucouton, &c. 
 
 " Once you used to take a seat 
 Among the fashionable people ; 
 Now you must take leave, decamp. 
 Without any delay whatever. 
 Ah, Toucouton" &c. 
 
 We have seen that all these letters by Hearn 
 were as if written for his own pleasure or for the 
 pleasure of a friend, but decidedly not for a news- 
 paper clientele. After the " news "just referred to, 
 there followed two letters which would seem to 
 indicate that the patient editor besought his cor- 
 respondent to come nearer to hard, prosaic news 
 matters and treat of the turmoil of Louisiana 
 state affairs. Accordingly, on March 24, 1878, 
 there was a screed on "Louisiana as It Is," treat- 
 ing of the political questions, and finally another, 
 on March 31, scouting the possibility of forming 
 a Hayes party in Louisiana. These letters were 
 written in so half-hearted a way that it was not 
 at all surprising to see the next letter from New 
 Orleans signed by a new and more ordinary name. 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 191 
 
 Hearn was no longer the representative of the 
 paper. He went on record to the effect that he 
 quit because the paper was slow about paying him 
 money, although he demanded the arrears time 
 and time again. The chances are that the Com- 
 mercial* s readers stupidly wanted more about 
 politics and less about Creole love poetry. With 
 the close of this correspondence Hearn thus de- 
 finitely closed all connection with the Cincinnati 
 newspaper world. 
 
 We have seen now, from the Midwinter let- 
 ters, how the Hearn of New Orleans was the 
 father of the Hearn of the West Indies and of 
 Japan. Indeed, so far as his work was concerned, 
 the same subjects interested him throughout his 
 life. This is not to say that he remained at a 
 standstill. On the contrary, he was constantly 
 growing. Despite his bad eyesight, he read inces- 
 santly, and his reading took a very wide range. 
 He labored to perfect: his style. He struggled 
 with words; he used the file after a fashion to 
 remind one of what Flaubert and Stevenson 
 have told us of themselves. But with a very wise 
 knowledge of his own sympathies and limita- 
 tions, he chose exactly the topics for his pen that 
 
192 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 could most surely stir his imagination. It is a 
 little singular, some seven years after his letters 
 to the Cincinnati newspaper, to find him writing 
 practically the same kind of articles and on the 
 same subjects for Harper's Weekly. Hearn, then 
 at the age of thirty-five, anxious to have his 
 things appear in some publication with a circu- 
 lation other than purely local, and anxious like- 
 wise to eke out his slender income, managed to 
 secure a commission from the houae of Harper. 
 The firm had sent a staff artist to New Orleans to 
 draw sketches of the exposition of 1885. Hearn 
 was to supply the descriptive articles. His first 
 appeared in Harper' 's Weekly of January 3, 1885, 
 and was a straightforward account of the expo- 
 sition. Of course with a man of Hearn's tempera- 
 ment this could not last long, so it is not surpris- 
 ing to see the next letter, which appeared on 
 January 10, 1885, devoted to "The Creole Pa- 
 tois. 
 
 "Although," he writes, "the pure Creole ele- 
 ment is disappearing from the c Vie Faubon,' as 
 Creole children call the antiquated part of New 
 Orleans, it is there, nevertheless, that the patois 
 survives as a current idiom ; it is there one must 
 dwell to hear it spoken in its purity and to study 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 193 
 
 its peculiarities of intonation and construction. 
 The patois-speakinginhabitants, dwelling mostly 
 in those portions of the quadrilateral furthest from 
 the river and from the broad American bound- 
 ary of Canal Street, — which many of them never 
 cross when they can help it, — are not less bizarre 
 than the architectural background of their pic- 
 turesque existence. The visitor is surrounded by 
 a life motley-colored as those fantastic popula- 
 tions described in the Story of the Young King 
 of the Black Isles; the African ebon is least 
 visible, but of bronze browns, banana yellows, 
 orange golds, there are endless varieties, paling 
 off into faint lemon tints and even dead silver 
 whites. The paler the shade, the more strongly 
 do Latin characteristics show themselves; and the 
 oval faces, with slender cheeks and low, broad 
 brows, prevail. Sometimes in the yellower types a 
 curious Sphinx visage appears, dreamy as Egypt. 
 Occasionally also one may encounter figures so 
 lithe, so animal, as to recall the savage grace of 
 Piou's 'Satyress.' For the true colorist the con- 
 trast of a light saffron skin with dead black hair 
 and eyes of liquid jet has a novel charm, as of 
 those descriptions in the Malay poem, c Bida- 
 sari,' of 'women like statues of gold/ It is hard 
 
194 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 to persuade oneself that such types do not be- 
 long to one distinct race, the remnant of some 
 ancient island tribe, and the sound of their richly 
 vowelled Creole speech might prolong the plea- 
 sant illusion. " 
 
 Happening to mention an octoroon, the very 
 term starts him on a rhapsody: 
 
 "That word reminds one of a celebrated and 
 vanished type, — never mirrored upon canvas, yet 
 not less physically worthy of artistic preservation 
 than those amber-tinted beauties glorified in the 
 Oriental studies of I ngres, of Richter, of Gerome ! 
 Uncommonly tall were those famous beauties, 
 citrine-hued, elegant of stature as palmettoes, 
 lithe as serpents; never again will such types re- 
 appear upon American soil. Daughters of luxury, 
 artificial human growths, never organized to enter 
 the iron struggle for life unassisted and unpro- 
 tected, they vanished forever with the social sys- 
 tem which made them a place apart as for splendid 
 plants reared within a conservatory. With the fall 
 of American feudalism the dainty glass house was 
 dashed to pieces; the species it contained have 
 perished utterly ; and whatever morality may have 
 gained, one cannot help thinking that art has 
 lost something by their extinction. What figures 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 195 
 
 for designs in bronze! What tints for canvas!" 
 Then Hearn returns to the subject of the Cre- 
 oles, and speaks of the compilation of Creole 
 proverbs of the Antilles and other places, but of 
 the lack of a similar work in Louisiana. It fore- 
 shadowed his own "Ghombo Zhebes," then in 
 the making. Reading his description of the fu- 
 gitive Creole literature, one regrets that Hearn 
 did not find time and opportunity to collect it 
 as he did the proverbs. 
 
 "TheineditedCreoleliterature,"sayshe,"com- 
 prised songs, satires in rhyme, proverbs, fairy 
 tales, — almost everything commonly included 
 under the term of folk-lore. The lyrical portion of 
 it is opulent in oddities, in melancholy beauties; 
 Alphonse Daudet has frequently borrowed there- 
 from, using Creole refrains in his novels with 
 admirable effect. Some of the popular songs pos- 
 sess a unique and almost weird pathos; there is 
 a strange, naive sorrow in their burdens, as of 
 children sobbing for lonesomeness in the night. 
 Others, on the contrary, are inimitably comical. 
 There are many ditties or ballads devoted to epi- 
 sodes of old plantation life, to surreptitious frolic, 
 to description of singular industries and callings, 
 to commemoration of events which had strongly 
 
196 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 impressed the vivid imagination of negroes, — a 
 circus show, an unexpected holiday, the visit of 
 a beautiful stranger to the planter's home, or even 
 some one of those incidents indelibly marked 
 with a crimson spatter upon the fierce history of 
 Louisiana politics. " 
 
 On January 17, under the same caption, Hearn 
 continued the subject, giving some of the songs 
 and speaking of their probable African ancestry. 
 
 On January 31, once more under the general 
 title of "The New Orleans Exposition," Hearn 
 turns with avidity to musings on the Japanese 
 exhibit. Right in the beginning we have this on 
 art, remarkable,as so much of Hearn's work was, 
 for a vivid sense of color and form despite his 
 own difficulty in seeing: "What Japanese art of 
 the best era is unrivalled in — that characteristic 
 in which, according even to the confession of the 
 best French art connoisseurs, it excels all other 
 art — is movement, the rhythm, the poetry of visi- 
 ble motion. Great masters of the antique Japanese 
 schools have been known to devote a whole life- 
 time to the depiction of one kind of bird, one 
 variety of insect or reptile, alone. This speciali- 
 zation of art, as Ary Renan admirably showed us 
 in a recent essay, produced results that no Euro- 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 197 
 
 pean master has ever been able to approach. A 
 flight of gulls sweeping through the gold light 
 of a summer morning; a long line of cranes sail- 
 ing against a vermilion sky; a swallow twirling 
 its kite shape against the disk of the sun; the 
 heavy, eccentric, velvety flight of bats under the 
 moon; the fairy hoverings of moths or splen- 
 did butterflies, — these are subjects the Japanese 
 brush has rendered with a sublimity of realism 
 which might be imitated, perhaps, but never sur- 
 passed. Except in the statues of gods or goddesses 
 (Buddhas which almost compel the Christian to 
 share the religious awe of their worshippers, or 
 those charming virgins of the Japanese heaven, 
 c slenderly supple as a beautiful lily'), the Japa- 
 nese have been far from successful in delineation 
 of the human figure. But their sculpture or paint- 
 ing of animal forms amazes by its grace; their 
 bronze tortoises, crabs, storks, frogs, are not mere 
 copies of nature: they are exquisite idealizations 
 of it." 
 
 Almost every paragraph seems to foreshadow 
 some chapter in some one of Hearn's future 
 books on Japan. With a memory of his papers 
 on Japanese insects, this, written in 1885, is sig- 
 nificant: 
 
198 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 "Perhaps it is bad taste on the writer's part, 
 but the bugs and reptiles in cotton attracted his 
 attention even more than the cranes. You see a 
 Japanese tray covered with what appear to be 
 dead and living bugs and beetles, — some appar- 
 ently about to fly away; others with upturned 
 abdomen, legs shrunk up, antennae inert. They 
 are so life-like that you may actually weigh one 
 in your hand a moment before you find that it 
 is made of cotton. Everything, even to the joints 
 of legs or abdomen, is exquisitely imitated : the 
 metallic lustre of the beetle's armor is reproduced 
 by a bronze varnish. There are cotton crickets 
 with the lustre of lacquer, and cotton grasshop- 
 pers of many colors: the korogi, whose singing 
 is like to the sound of a weaver, weaving rapidly 
 ( c ko-ro-ru, ko-ro-ru'), and the kirigisi, whose 
 name is an imitation of its own note." 
 
 Or again, remembering his masterly descrip- 
 tion of an ascent of the famous Japanese moun- 
 tain, read this, written long before he had ever 
 seen it in the reality : £C Splendid silks were hang- 
 ing up everywhere, some exquisitely embroid- 
 ered with attractive compositions, figures, land- 
 scapes, and especially views of Fusiyama, the 
 matchless mountain, whose crater edges are 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 199 
 
 shaped like the eight petals of the Sacred Lotos; 
 Fusiyama, of which the great artist Houkousai 
 alone drew one hundred different views; Fusi- 
 yama, whose snows may only be compared for 
 pearly beauty to c the white teeth of a young girl/ 
 and whose summit magically changes its tints 
 through the numberless variations of light. 
 Everywhere it appears, — the wonderful moun- 
 tain, — on fans, behind rains of gold, or athwart a 
 furnace light of sunset, or against an immaculate 
 blue, or gold burnished by some wizard dawn; 
 in bronze, exhaling from its mimic crater a pillar 
 of incense smoke; on porcelain, towering above 
 stretches of vineyard and city-speckled plains, or 
 perchance begirdled by a rich cloud sash of 
 silky, shifting tints, like some beauty of Yosi- 
 wara." 
 
 At this period in his life there was not only a 
 love of Creole folk-lore and a longing for Japan, 
 but a very decided and deep interest in things 
 Chinese. Not only was Hearn preparing himself 
 for the writing of "Some Chinese Ghosts," but 
 it is altogether probable that his dreams of a 
 trip to Asia contemplated a sojourn in China as 
 well as in Japan. The daintiness, the fairy-like 
 beauty of the Island Empire won him, and China 
 
200 
 
 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 
 
 lost its chance for interpretation by a master. 
 However, in his letter of March 7, 1.885, telling 
 of " The East at New Orleans," we find this rela- 
 tive to China: 
 
 "At either side of the main entrance is a great 
 vase, carved from lips to base with complex de- 
 signs in partial relief and enamelled in divers 
 colors. In general effect of coloration the display- 
 is strictly Chinese; the dominating tone is yel- 
 low, — bright yellow, the sacred and cosmogonic 
 color according to Chinese belief. When the Mas- 
 ter of Heaven deigns to write, He writes with 
 yellow ink only, save when He takes the light- 
 ning for His brush to trace a white sentence of 
 destruction. So at least we are told in the book 
 called Kan-ing p'ien, — the 'Book of Rewards 
 and Punishments/ which further describes the 
 writing of God as being in tchouen, — those an- 
 tique 'seal-characters' now rarely seen except in 
 jewel engraving, signatures stamped on works 
 of art, or inscriptions upon monuments, — those 
 primitive ideographic characters dating back per- 
 haps to that age of which we have no historic 
 record, but of which Chinese architecture, with 
 its strange peaks and curves, offers us more than 
 a suggestion, — the great Nomad Era." 
 
Letters of Ozias Midwinter 201 
 
 There were only two more of Hearn's letters 
 on the exposition, one on March 14, on Mexico 
 at New Orleans, telling of the wax figures, de- 
 picting various Mexican types, and describing 
 the feather-work, imitated from that of the Az- 
 tecs; the other, appearing April 11, 1885, telling 
 of the government exhibit. On November 7 he 
 wound up his letters for Harper s by telling some- 
 thing about "The Last of the Voudoos," — Jean 
 Montanet, or Voudoo John, or Bayou John, who 
 had just died in New Orleans. 
 
 On March 28 and April 4 there appeared in 
 Harper's Bazar, some "Notes of a Curiosity 
 Hunter," in which he described some of the 
 things that interested him most in the Japanese 
 and Mexican exhibits. 
 
 The End 
 
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