Specimen of Hearn’s MS., first draft.
With methods of work such as those of which the foregoing examples give suggestion, with increasing indifference to the external details of life, and growing concentration of esoteric thought, it was plain that literature and journalism would not suffice to sustain a family of thirteen persons. For Hearn in becoming a Japanese subject had accepted the Japanese duty of maintaining the elder members of the family into which he had been adopted, and his household included the ancestors of his son. He referred to the fact occasionally with amused impatience, but seems never to have really resented or rebelled against the filial duties which to the Western point of view might appear excessive. His eyes, too, began to give warnings that could not be ignored, and with reluctance he yielded to the necessity of earning a larger income by reëntering the Government service as a teacher. Professor Chamberlain again came to his aid and secured for him the position of Professor of English in the Imperial University of Tōkyō, where his salary was large compared to anything he had as yet received, and where he was permitted an admirable liberty as to methods of teaching.
Of his lectures an example is given in the appendix, under the title “Naked Poetry.” This, it is interesting to mention, was taken down in long-hand during its delivering by Teizabur? Inomata, who possesses five manuscript volumes of these records, for Hearn transcribed none of his lectures, delivering them without notes, and had it not been for this astonishing feat by a member of one of his classes all written record of his teaching would have been lost. Mr. Inomata is the Ochiai of the letter given on page 64 of the present volume, and was one of the pupils of the Jinjō-chūgakkō of Matsue. Another of these Matsue pupils was Masanobu Ōtani, whom Hearn assisted to pass through the university by employing him to collect data for many of his books. In the elaborately painstaking manuscript volume of information which Mr. Ōtani sent me to assist in the writing of these volumes, he says:—
“Here I want not to forget to add that I had received from him 12 yen (6 dollars) for my work each month. It was too kind of him that a poor monthly work of mine was paid with the money above mentioned. To speak frankly, however, it was not very easy for me to pass each month with the money through the three years of my university course. I had to pay 2 yen and a half as the monthly fee to the university; to pay 6 or 7 yen for my lodging and eating every month; to buy some necessary text books, and to pay for some meetings inevitable. So I was forced to make some more money beside his favour. Each month I contributed to some newspapers and magazines; I reprinted the four books of Nesfield’s grammar; I published some pamphlets. Thus I could equal the expense of each month, but I need hardly say that it was by his extraordinary favour that I could finish my study in the university. I shall never forget his extreme kindness forever and ever.”
A revelation this, confirmatory of the constant references made by Hearn to the frightful price paid in life and energy by Japan in the endeavour to assimilate a millennium of Western learning in the brief space of half a century.
From these notes by Mr. Ōtani, Mrs. Hearn, and Mr. Inomata it is possible to reconstruct his life in Tōkyō with that minuteness demanded by the professors of the “scientific school” of biography:—
“When he came to the university he immediately entered the lecture room, and at the recreation hour he was always seen in a lonely part of the college garden, smoking, and walking to and fro. No one dared disturb his meditations. He did not mingle with the other professors....
“Very regular and very diligent in his teaching, he was never absent unless ill. His hours of teaching being twelve in the week....
“He never used an umbrella....
“He liked to bathe in tepid water....
“He feared cold; his study having a large stove and double doors; he never, however, used gloves in the coldest weather.”...
And so on, to the nth power of fatigue. Personally nothing would have been so obnoxious to the man as this piling up of unimportant detail and banal ana about his private life. He was entirely free of that egotism, frequently afflicting the literary artist, which made the crowing cocks, the black beetles, and the marital infelicities of the Carlyles matters of such import as to deserve being solemnly and meticulously recorded for the benefit of an awestruck world.
At first the change of residence, the necessary interruption of the heavy work of preparing lectures, the teaching, and its attendant official duties seem to have broken the train of his inspiration—for “Gleanings in Buddha-Fields,” though published the year after his arrival in Tōkyō, had been completed while in Kōbe, and he complains bitterly in his letters that “the Holy Ghost had departed from him,” and was constantly endeavouring to find some means of renewing the fire. In a letter to his friend Amenomori he says: “But somehow, working is ‘against the grain.’ I get no thrill, no frisson, no sensation. I want new experiences, perhaps; and Tōkyō is no place for them. Perhaps the power to feel thrill dies with the approach of a man’s fiftieth year. Perhaps the only land to find the new sensations is in the Past,—floats blue-peaked under some beautiful dead sun ‘in the tropic clime of youth.’ Must I die and be born again to feel the charm of the Far East;—or will Nobushige Amenomori discover for me some unfamiliar blossom growing beside the Fountain of Immortality? Alas, I don’t know!” Indeed, in “Exotics and Retrospectives” he returned for part of his material to old memories of the West Indies, and the next four volumes—“In Ghostly Japan” (with its monstrous fantasy of the Mountain of Skulls), “Shadowings,” “A Japanese Miscellany,” and “Kotto”—show that the altar still waited for the coal, the contents of these being merely studies, masterly as they were, such as an artist might make while waiting for some great idea to form itself, worthy of a broad canvas.
As the letters show, prodigious care and patience were expended upon each of these sketches. In advising a friend he explains his own methods:—
“Now with regard to your own sketch or story. If you are quite dissatisfied with it, I think this is probably due not to what you suppose,—imperfection of expression,—but rather to the fact that some latent thought or emotion has not yet defined itself in your mind with sufficient sharpness. You feel something and have not been able to express the feeling—only because you do not yet quite know what it is. We feel without understanding feeling; and our most powerful emotions are the most undefinable. This must be so, because they are inherited accumulations of feeling, and the multiplicity of them—superimposed one over another—blurs them, and makes them dim, even though enormously increasing their strength.... Unconscious brain-work is the best to develop such latent feeling or thought. By quietly writing the thing over and over again, I find that the emotion or idea often develops itself in the process,—unconsciously. Again, it is often worth while to try to analyze the feeling that remains dim. The effort of trying to understand exactly what it is that moves us sometimes proves successful.... If you have any feeling—no matter what—strongly latent in the mind (even only a haunting sadness or a mysterious joy), you may be sure that it is expressible. Some feelings are, of course, very difficult to develop. I shall show you one of these days, when we see each other, a page that I worked at for months before the idea came clearly.... When the best result comes, it ought to surprise you, for our best work is out of the Unconscious.”
In all these studies the tendency grew constantly more marked to abandon the earlier richness of his style; a pellucid simplicity was plainly the aim of his intention. The transparent, shadowy, “weird stories” of “Kwaidan” were as unlike the splendid floridity of his West Indian studies as a Shintō shrine is unlike a Gothic cathedral. These ghostly sketches might have been made by the brush of a Japanese artist; a grey whirl of water about a phantom fish—a shadow of a pine bough across the face of a spectral moon—an outline of mountains as filmy as dreams: brief, almost childishly simple, and yet suggesting things poignant, things ineffable.
“Ants,” the last study in “Kwaidan,” was, however, of a very different character. The old Occidental fire and power was visible again; his inspiration was reillumined. Then suddenly the broad canvas was spread for him and he wrote “Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation,” one of the most astonishing reviews of the life and soul of a great nation ever attempted.
To understand the generation of this book it is necessary to explain the conditions of the last years of his life in Tōkyō. Of his private existence at this time Mrs. Hearn’s reminiscences furnish again a delightful and vivid record.
“It was on the 27th Aug., 1896, that we arrived at Tōkyō from Kōbe.
“Having heard of a house to let in Ushigome district, we went to see it. It was an old house of a pure Japanese style, without an upper story; and having a spacious garden and a lotus-pond in it, the house resembled to a Buddhist temple. Very gloomy house it was and I felt a sense of being haunted. Hearn seemed fond of the house. But we did not borrow it.
“We heard afterward that it was reputed to be haunted by the ghost; and though the house-rent was very cheap, no one would dare to borrow the house; and finally it was broken down by its owner. ‘Why then did we not inhabit that house?’ Hearn said, with regret, ‘It was very interesting house, I thought at that time!’
“At last we settled at a house at Tomihisa-chō, Ushigome district, about three miles from the university. The house was situated on a bluff, with a Buddist temple called Kobu-dera in the neighbourhood. ‘Kobu-dera’ means ‘Knots Temple,’ because all the pillars in the building have knots left, the natural wood having been used without carpenter’s planes. Formerly it was called Hagi-dera on account of many hagi[3] flowers in the garden.
“Being very fond of a temple, he often went for ambling in Kobu-dera, so that he became acquainted with a goodly old priest there, with whom he was pleased to talk on Buddhist subjects, I being always his interpreter in such a case.
“Almost every morning and every evening he took walk in Kobu-dera.
“The children always said when he was absent, ‘Papa is in Kobu-dera.’
“The following is one of his conversations in one of our ramblings there: ‘Can I not live in this temple?’ ‘I should be very glad to become a priest—I will make a good priest with large eyes and high nose!’ ‘Then you become a nun! and Kazuo a little boy priest!—how lovely he would be! We shall then every day chant the texts. Oh, a happy life!’ ‘In the next world you shall be born a nun!’
“One day we went to the temple for our usual walk. ‘O, O!’ he exclaimed in astonishment. Three large cedars had been lying on the ground. ‘Why have they cut down these trees? I see the temple people seem to be poor. They are in need of money. Oh, why have they not told me about that? I should be very much pleased to give them some amount. What a long time it must have taken to grow so large from the tiny bud! I have become a little disgusted with that old priest. Pity! he has not money, though. Poor tree!’ He was extremely sad and melancholily walked for home. ‘I feel so sad! I am no more pleasant to-day. Go and ask the people to cut no more trees,’ he said.
“After this he did not go to the temple yard any more.
“Sometime after the old priest was removed to another temple; and the younger new priest, the head of temple, began cutting trees.
“His desire was to live in a little house, in some lonely suburb, with a spacious garden full of trees. I looked for several places; at Nishi Ōkubo mura I found a house of pure Japanese style and even with no foreign styled house in the neighbourhood, for his desire was to live in the midst of genuine Japan. That the house stood in a lonely suburb and that there was a bamboo bush in the rear of house pleased him much and prompted his immediate decision. Being much afraid of cold winter, he wanted to have one room furnished with a stove newly built and that the library should open to the west. His library, with an adjoining room with a stove, and my sitting room were built. He left all else to my choice, saying, ‘I have only to write; other things I do not care for; you know better, good Mamma San!’
“It was on the 19th March, 1902, that we removed on new house at Ōkubo. He used to go to university by a jinrikisha; it took about 40 minutes. Our house was all furnished in Japanese fashion, except the stove and the glass-screen on account of the stove, instead of a paper-screen, in regard to that apartment.
“On the day we removed I was helping him arrange books in the library. Among the bamboo woods were heard the uguisu or warbler’s notes through the stillness of the place. ‘How happy!’ he said, pleased with the new abode. ‘But my heart is sorry,’ he added. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘To be happy is a cause of anxiousness to me;’ he said, ‘I would like to live long in this house. But I do not know whether I can.’
“He put too much importance to Beauty or Nicety perhaps. He was too enthusiastic for beauty, for which he wept, and for which he rejoiced, and for which he was angry. This made him shun social intercourse; this made him as if he were an eccentric person. To him meditating and writing were the sole pleasure of life; and for this he disposed of all things else. I often said: ‘You are too secluded in your room. Please go out when you like and find enjoyment anything you like.’ ‘You know my best enjoyment: thinking and writing. When I have things to write upon I am happy. While writing I forget all cares and anxieties. Therefore give me subjects to write. Talk to me more,’ he said. ‘I have talked you all things. I have no more story to tell you.’ ‘Therefore you go out, and when you come back home, tell me all you have seen and heard. Only reading books is not enough.’
“I used to tell him ghost-stories in dreary evenings, with the lamp purposely dimly lighted. He seemed always to listen as if he were withholding breath for fear. His manner, so eagerly attentive and looking fearful, made me tell the story with more emphasis. Our house was, as it were, a ghost-house on those times; I began to be haunted with fearful dreams in the night. I told him about that and he said we would stop ghost-stories for some time.
“When I tell him stories I always told him at first the mere skeleton of the story. If it is interesting, he puts it down in his note-book and makes me repeat and repeat several times.
“And when the story is interesting, he instantly becomes exceedingly serious; the colour of his face changes; his eyes wear the look of fearful enthusiasm.
“As I went on as usual the story of Okachinsan [in the begining of ‘Kotto’], his face gradually changed pale; his eyes were fixed; I felt a sudden awe. When I finished the narrative he became a little relaxed and said it was very interesting. ‘O blood!’ he repeatedly said; and asked me several questions regarding the situations, actions, etc., involved in the story. ‘In what manner was “O blood!” exclaimed? In what manner of voice? What do you think of the sound of “geta” at that time? How was the night? I think so and so. What do you think? etc.’ Thus he consulted me about various things besides the original story which I told from the book. If any one happened to see us thus talking from outside, he would surely think that we were mad.
“‘Papa, come down; supper is ready,’ three children used to say altogether to him; then ‘All right, sweet boys,’ he would say, and come to the table in a cheerful manner. But when he is very much absorbed in writing, he would say, ‘All right,’ very quickly. And whenever his answer is quick, he would not come very soon. I then go to him and say: ‘Papa San! the children are waiting for you. Please come soon, or the dishes will lose their good flavour.’
“‘What?’ he asks.
“‘The supper is ready, Papa.’
“‘I do not want supper. Didn’t I already take that? Funny!’
“‘Mercy! please awake from your dream. The little child would weep.’
“In such occasion, he is very forgetful; and takes bread only to himself. And children ask him to break bread for them. And he would take whiskey for wine or put salt into the cup of coffee. Before meal he took a very little quantity of whiskey. Later when his health was a little hurt he took wine.
“But on usual meals we were very pleasant. He tells stories from foreign papers; I from Japanese newspapers. Kiyoshi would peep from the hole of sliding-paper screen. The cat comes; the dog come under the window; and they share some sweets he gives. After meal we used to sing songs innocently and merrily.
“Often he danced or laughed heartily when he was very happy.
“In one New Year’s day it happened that one of the jinrikisha men of our house died suddenly while drinking sake in a narrow room near the portal of our house. The dead man was covered with a bed-covering. A guest came for wishing a happy new year to our home. The guest found that and said: ‘O, a drunkard sleeping on the New Year’s day. A happy fellow!’ The rikisha man, who sat near and was watching the dead, said in his vulgar tone: ‘Not a drunkard, but a Buddha!’[4] The guest was sorely astonished and went out immediately. After some days I told him this fact; he was interested to imagine the manner the guest made in astonishment. And he ordered me to repeat the conversation between the guest and the rikisha man. He often imitated the words of ‘Not a drunkard, but a Buddha,’ as being a very natural and simple utterance.
“Whenever he met with a work of any art suited to his taste, he expressed an intense admiration, even for a very small work. A man with a nice and kind heart he was! We often went to see the exhibition of pictures held occasionally in Tōkyō. If he found any piece of work very interesting to him, he spoke of it as cheap though very high in price. ‘What do you think of that?’ my husband says. ‘It is too much high price,’ I say, lest he should immediately buy it quite indifferent of prices. ‘No, I don’t mean about prices. I mean about the picture. Do you think it is very good?’ Then I answer: ‘Yes, a pretty picture, indeed, I think.’ ‘We shall then buy that picture,’ he says, ‘the price is however very cheap; let us offer more money for that.’ As to our financial matter, he was entirely trusting to me. Thus, I, the little treasurer, sometimes suffered on such occasions.
“In those innocent talks of our boys he was pleased to find interesting things. In fact his utmost pleasure was to be acquainted with a thing of beauty. How he was glad to hear my stories. Alas! he is no more! though I sometimes get amusing stories, they are now no use. Formalities were the things he most disliked. His likes and dislikes were always to the extreme. When he liked something he liked extremely. He used to wear a plain cloth; only he was particular about shirts on account of cold. When he had new suit of cloth made, he wore it after my repeated entreaties. Being fond of Japanese cloth, he always puts off foreign cloth when he comes back from without, and, sitting on the cushion so pleasantly, he smokes. At Aizu in summer, he often wore bathing cloth and Japanese sandals.
“He always chose the best and excellent quality of any kind of things, so in purchasing my dress, he often ordered according to his taste. Sometimes he was like an innocent child. One summer we went to a store selling cloth for a bathing cloth (yukata) which I wear in summer-time. The man showed us various kinds of designs, all of which he was so very fond and bought. I said that we need not so many kinds. He said: ‘But think of that. Only one yen and half for a piece. Please put on various kinds of dress, which only to see is pleasant to me.’ He bought some thirty pieces, to the amazement of the store people.
“He resented in his heart that many Japanese people, forgetting of the fact that there exist many beautiful points in things Japanese, are imitating Western style. He regretted that Japan would thus be lost. So he abhorred the foreign style which Japanese assume. He was glad that many Waseda professors wore Japanese haori and hakama. He disliked unharmonized foreign dress of Japanese lady and proud girl speaking English. We one day went to a bazar at Ueno Park. He asked the price of an article in Japanese. The storekeeper, a girl of new school, replied in English. He was displeased and drew my dress and turned away. When he became the professor of Waseda, Dean Takata invited him to his house. It was very rare that he ever accepted an invitation. At the portal, Mrs. Takata welcomed him in Japanese language. This reception greatly pleased him, so he told me when he returned home. In our home, furnitures and even the manner of maids’ hair-dressing were all in genuine Japanese style. If I happened to buy some articles of foreign taste, he would say: ‘Don’t you love Japanese arts?’ He wanted our boy put on Japanese cloths and wear geta instead of shoes. Sometimes in company with him in usual walks, one of our boys would wear shoes. He say: ‘Mamma San, look at my toes. Don’t you mind that our dear children’s toes should become disfigured in such manner as mine?’ As Kazuo’s appearance is very much like a foreigner, he taught him English. Other boys were taught and brought up in Japanese way. We kept no interpreter since our Matsue days. A Japanese guest would come to our house in Western style and smoke cigarettes, but the host receives him in Japanese cloth and does all in Japanese fashion—a curious contrast. With one glance of his nose-glass which he keeps he catches the whole appearance of any first visitor even to the smallest details of the physiognomy. He is extremely near-sighted; and the minute he takes a glance is the whole time of his observation; still his wonderfully keen observation often astonished me.
“One day I read the following story to him from a Japanese paper: ‘A certain nobleman’s old mother is extremely fond of classical Japanese ways, absolutely antagonistic to the modern manners. The maids were to wear obi in old ways. Lamps were not allowed, but paper andō was used instead. Nor soaps were to be used in this household. So maids and servants would not endure long.’ Hearn was very much delighted to learn that there still existed such a family. ‘How I like that!’ he said. ‘I would like to visit them.’ One time I said to him in joke: ‘You are not like Westerner, except in regard to your nose.’ Then he said: ‘What shall I do with this nose? But I am a Japanese. I love Japan better than any born Japanese.’
"Indeed, he loved Japan with his whole heart, but his sincere love for Japan was not very well understood by Japanese.
“When asked anything to him, he would not readily accept that; but everything he did he did it with his sincere and whole heart!
“One day he said to me: ‘Foreign people are very desirous to know of my whereabouts. Some papers have reported that Hearn disappeared from the world. What do you think of this? How funny!—disappeared from the world.’ Thus his chief pleasure was only to write, without being disturbed from without. O, while I thus talk of my dear husband’s life, I feel in myself as if I were being scolded by him why I was thus talking of him. ‘Where is Hearn now? He has disappeared from the world.’ This was his desire—unknown to the rest of the world. But though he would scold me I wish to tell about him more and more.
“When he was engaged in writing he was so enthusiastically that any small noise was a great pain to him. So I always tried to keep the house still in regard to the opening and shutting of doors, the footsteps of family, etc.; and I always chose to enter his room when necessary as I heard the sound of his pipes (tobacco-smoking pipes) and his songs in a high voice. But after removal to Ōkubo, our house was wide enough and his library was very remote from the children’s room and the portal. So he could enjoy his enjoyment in the world of calmness.
“When writing the story of ‘Miminashi Hōïchi,’ he was forgetful of the approach of evening. In the darkness of the evening twilight he was sitting on the cushion in deep thought. Outside of the paper-screens of his room, I for a trial called with a low voice, ‘Hōïchi! Hōïchi!’ ‘Yes, I am a blind man. Who are you?’ he replied from within; he had been imagining as if he himself were H?ïchi with a biwa in his hand. Whenever he writes he is entirely absorbed with the subject. On those days I one day went to the city and bought a little doll of blind priest with a biwa. I put it secretly upon his desk. As he found it he was overjoyed with it and seemed as if he met an expecting friend. When a rustling noise of fallen leaves in the garden woods he said seriously: ‘Listen! the Heike are fallen. They are the sounds of waves at Dan-no-ura.’ And he listened attentively. Indeed sometimes I thought he was mad, because he seemed too frequently he saw things that were not and heard things that were not.”
His life outside of the university and of his own home he narrowed down to a point where the public began to create legends about him, so seldom was he seen. The only person ever able to draw him forth was his friend Mitchell McDonald, whose sympathy and hospitality he constantly fled from and constantly yielded to. To Mrs. Fenollosa he wrote:
“My friends are much more dangerous than my enemies. These latter—with infinite subtlety—spin webs to keep me out of places where I hate to go ... and they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost love them. They help me to maintain the isolation absolutely essential to thinking.... Blessed be my enemies, and forever honoured all them that hate me!
“But my friends!—ah! my friends! They speak so beautifully of my work; they say they want more of it,—and yet they would destroy it! They do not know what it costs, and they would break the wings and scatter the feather-dust, even as the child that only wanted to caress the butterfly. And they speak of converse and sympathy.... And they say,—only a day—just an afternoon—but each of them says this thing. And the sum of the days is a week of work dropped forever into the Abyss.... I must not even think about people’s kind words and faces, but work, work, work, while the Scythe is sharpening within vision.”
Under the strain of constant work his eyesight again began to fail, and in 1902 he wrote to friends in America asking for aid to find work there, desiring to consult a specialist, and to bring for instruction in English his beloved Kazuo—from whom he would never be parted for a day. He was entitled to his sabbatical year of vacation from the university, and while he took advantage of it he wished to form other connections, as intrigues among those inimical to him made him fear for the tenure of his position. His family had increased by the birth of another son, and his responsibilities—with weakening lungs and eyesight—began to weigh heavily on his mind. An arrangement was made for him to lecture for a season in Cornell University at a salary of $2500, and these lectures he at once began to prepare. When, however, he applied for leave it was refused him, and an incident occurring at this juncture, of the intrusion of an English traveller into his classroom during one of his lectures—an incident which had its origin in mere curiosity,—seemed to his exacerbated imagination to have a significance out of all proportion to its real meaning; and convinced that it was intended as a slight by the authorities in their purpose to be rid of him, he resigned. The students—aware that influences were at work to rob him of his place—made some demonstrations of resentment, but finally abandoned them at his personal request.
He plunged more deeply, at once, into the preparation of his work for the American lectures, but shortly before he was to have sailed for America the authorities at Cornell withdrew from their contract on the plea that the epidemic of typhoid at Ithaca the previous summer had depleted the funds at their command.
Vigorous efforts were at once undertaken by his friends in America to repair this breach of contract by finding him employment elsewhere, with but partial success, but all these efforts were rendered useless by a sudden and violent illness, attended by bleeding from the lungs, and brought on by strain and anxiety. After his recovery the lectures prepared for Cornell were recast to form a book, but the work proved a desperate strain upon already weakened forces.
Mrs. Hearn says this:—
“Of his works, ‘Japan: an Interpretation’ seemed a great labour to him. So hard a task it was that he said at one occasion: ‘It is not difficult that this book will kill me.’ At another time he said: ‘You can imagine how hard it is to write such a big book in so short a time with no helper.’ To write was his life; and all care and difficulties he forgot while writing. As he had no work of teaching in the university, he poured forth all his forces in the work of ‘Japan.’
“When the manuscripts of ‘Japan’ were completed, he was very glad and had them packed in strong shape and wrote addresses upon the cover for mail. He was eagerly looking forward to see the new volume. A little before his death he still said that he could imagine that he could hear the sound of type-work of ‘Japan’ in America. But he was unable to see the book in his lifetime.”
To me he wrote, in that lassitude always following on the completion of creative work: “The ‘rejected addresses’ will shortly appear in book form. I don’t like the work of writing a serious treatise on sociology.... I ought to keep to the study of birds and cats and insects and flowers, and queer small things—and leave the subject of the destiny of empires to men with brains.” Despite which verdict he probably recognized it as the crowning achievement of his long effort to interpret his adopted country to the world.
Shortly after its completion he accepted the offer of the chair of English in the Waseda University, founded by Count Okuma, for he was expecting again to be a father and his pen was unable to meet all the demands upon his income. Meantime the University of London had entered into negotiation with him for a series of lectures, and it was suggested that Oxford also wished to hear him. It had always been the warmest of his desires to win recognition from his own country, and these offers were perhaps the greatest satisfaction he had ever known. But his forces were completely exhausted. The desperate hardships of his youth, the immense labours of his manhood, had burned away the sources of vitality.
On the 26th of September, 1904—shortly after completing the last letter included in these volumes, to Captain Fujisaki, who was then serving on Marshal Ōyama’s staff—while walking on the veranda in the twilight he sank down suddenly as if the whole fabric of life had crumbled within, and after a little space of speechlessness and pain, his long quest was over.
In “Kwaidan” he had written: “I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind, so that my ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji. That old cemetery behind my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living brain; even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or magnetism.... Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings so strangely far away from all the nineteenth-century part of me that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid,—deliciously afraid. Never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost,—a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell.”
In so far as was possible this was complied with. Though not a Buddhist he was buried according to Buddhist rites. One who was present at his funeral thus describes it:—
“The procession left his residence, 266 Nishi Ōkubo, at half past one and proceeded to the Jit?-in Kobu-dera Temple in Ichigaya.... First came the bearers of white lanterns and wreaths and great pyramidal bouquets of asters and chrysanthemums; next, men carrying long poles from which hung streamers of paper gohei; after them two boys in ’rickshas carrying little cages containing birds to be released, symbols of the soul released from its earthly prison....
“The emblems were all Buddhist. The portable hearse, carried by six men in blue, was a beautiful object of unpainted, perfectly fresh, white wood trimmed with blue silk tassels and with gold and silver lotus flowers at the corners.... Priests carrying food for the dead, university professors, and a multitude of students formed the end of the procession.... In the comparative darkness of the temple, against the background of black lacquer and gold, eight priests chanted a dirge. Their heads were clean-shaven and they were clothed in white, with several brilliantly tinted gauze robes imposed. After a period of chanting punctuated by the tinkling of a bell, the chief Japanese mourner arose from the other side and led forward the son. Together they knelt before the hearse, touching their foreheads to the floor, and placing some grains of incense upon the little brazier burning between the candles. A delicate perfume filled the air.... The wife next stepped forward with expressionless face—her hair done in stiff loops like carved ebony, her only ornament the magnificent white obi, reserved for weddings and funerals. She and the younger sons also burned incense. The chief mourner and the eldest son again bowed to the ground, and the ceremony was ended.”
The students presented a laurel wreath with the inscription “In memory of Lafcadio Hearn, whose pen was mightier than the sword of the victorious nation which he loved and lived among, and whose highest honour it is to have given him citizenship and, alas, a grave!” The body was then removed to a crematory, the ashes being interred at the cemetery of Zōshigaya, his tombstone bearing the inscription “Shōgaku In-den Jō-ge Hachi-un Koji,” which literally translated means: “Believing Man Similar to Undefiled Flower Blooming like Eight Rising Clouds, who dwells in Mansion of Right Enlightenment.”
Amenomori,—whom he called “the finest type of the Japanese man,”—writing of him after his death, said: “Like a lotus the man was in his heart ... a poet, a thinker, loving husband and father, and sincere friend.... Within that man there burned something pure as the vestal fire, and in that flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and poetry out of the dust, and grasped the highest themes of human thought.”
Yone Noguchi wrote: “Surely we could lose two or three battleships at Port Arthur rather than Lafcadio Hearn.”
After his death were issued a few of his last studies of Japan under the title of “A Romance of the Milky Way,” and these, with his autobiographical fragments included in this volume, conclude his work. The last of these fragments, three small pages, is named “Illusion”:—
“An old, old sea-wall, stretching between two boundless levels, green and blue;—on the right only rice-fields, reaching to the sky-line;—on the left only summer-silent sea, where fishing-craft of curious shapes are riding. Everything is steeped in white sun; and I am standing on the wall. Along its broad and grass-grown top a boy is running towards me,—running in sandals of wood,—the sea-breeze blowing aside the long sleeves of his robe as he runs, and baring his slender legs to the knee. Very fast he runs, springing upon his sandals;—and he has in his hands something to show me: a black dragonfly, which he is holding carefully by the wings, lest it should hurt itself struggling.... With what sudden incommunicable pang do I watch the gracious little figure leaping in the light,—between those summer silences of field and sea!... A delicate boy, with the blended charm of two races.... And how softly vivid all things under this milky radiance,—the smiling child-face with lips apart,—the twinkle of the light quick feet,—the shadows of grasses and of little stones!...
“But, quickly as he runs, the child will come no nearer to me,—the slim brown hand will never cling to mine. For this light is the light of a Japanese sun that set long years ago.... Never, dearest!—never shall we meet,—not even when the stars are dead!
“And yet,—can it be possible that I shall not remember?—that I shall not still see, in other million summers, the same sea-wall under the same white noon,—the same shadows of grasses and of little stones,—the running of the same little sandalled feet that will never, never reach my side?”
The compression found necessary in order to yield room for the letters, which I think will bear comparison with the most famous letters in literature, has forced me to content myself with depicting the man merely in profile and giving a bare outline of his work as an artist. It has obliged me to abandon all temptation to dwell upon his more human side, his humour, tenderness, sympathy, eccentricity, and the thousand queer, charming qualities that made up his many-faceted nature. These omissions are in great part supplied by the letters themselves, where he turns different sides of his mind to each correspondent, and where one sees in consequence a shadow of the writers themselves reflected in his own mental attitude.
In the turbid, shallow flood of the ephemeral books of our time Lafcadio Hearn’s contribution to English letters has been partially obscured. But day by day, as these sink unfruitfully into the sands of time, more clearly emerge the stern and exquisite outlines of his patient work. While still a boy he said playfully, in answer to an appeal to concede something to the vulgarer taste for the sake of popularity: “I shall stick to my pedestal of faith in literary possibilities like an Egyptian Colossus with a broken nose, seated solemnly in the gloom of my own originality.”
To that creed he held through all the bitter permutations of life, and at the end it may be fitly said of him that “despite perishing principles and decaying conventions, despite false teaching, false triumphs, and false taste, there were yet those who strove for the immemorial grandeur of their calling, who pandered to no temptation from without or from within, who followed none of the great world-voices, were dazzled by none of the great world-lights, and used their gift as stepping-stone to no meaner life; but clear-eyed and patient, neither elated nor cast down, still lifted the lamp as high as their powers allowed, still pursued art singly for her own immortal sake.”
Dear Krehbiel,—I have just received your second pleasant letter, enclosing a most interesting article on music. The illustrations interested me greatly. You could write a far more entertaining series of essays on the history of musical instruments than that centennial humbug who, as you say, did little more than merely to describe what he saw.
I have been reading in “Curiosités des Arts”—curious book now out of print—an article on the musical instruments of the Middle Ages, which is of deep interest even to such an ignoramus as myself. I would have translated it for your amusement, but, that my eyes have been so bad as to cripple me. Let me just give you an extract, and as soon as I feel better I will send the whole thing if you deem it worth while:—
“The Romans, at the termination of their conquests, had brought to this country and adopted nearly all the musical instruments they had discovered among the peoples they had conquered.
Thus Greece furnished Rome with nearly all the soft instruments of the family of flutes and of lyres; Germany and the provinces of the North, inhabited by warlike races, taught their conquerors to acquire a taste for terrible instruments, of the family of trumpets and of drums; Asia, and in particular Judæa, which had greatly multiplied the number of metallic instruments for use in ceremonies of religion, naturalized among the Romans clashing instruments of the family of bells and tam-tams; Egypt introduced the sistrum into Italy together with the worship of Isis; and no sooner had Byzantium invented the first wind organs than the new religion of Christ adopted them, that she might consecrate them exclusively to the solemnities of her worship, West and East.
“All the varieties of instruments in the known world had thus, in some sort, taken refuge in the capital of the Empire; first at Rome, then at Byzantium; when the Roman decline marked the last hour of this vast concert, then, at once ceased the orations of the Emperors in the Capitol and the festivals of the pagan gods in the temples; then were silenced and scattered those musical instruments which had taken part in the pomps of triumphs or of religious celebrations; then disappeared and became forgotten a vast number of those instruments which pagan civilization had made use of, but which became useless amidst the ruins of the antique social system.”
Following is the description of an organ,—a wonderful organ,—in a letter from St. Jerome to Dardanas,—made of fifteen pipes of brass, two air-reservoirs of elephant’s skin, and two forge bellows for the imitation of the sound of thunder. The writer compiled his essay from eighteen ancient Latin authors, eight early Italian, about ten early French, and some Spanish authors—all antiquated and unfamiliar.
As you are kindly interested in what I am doing I shall talk about Ego,—I shall talk about Me.
I am (this is not for public information) barely making a living here by my letters to the paper. I think I can make about $40 per month. This will keep me alive and comfortable. I am determined never to resume local work on a newspaper. I could not stand the gaslight; and then you know what a horrid life it is. While acting as correspondent I shall have time to study, study, study; and to write something better than police news. I have a lot of work mapped out for magazine essays; and though I never expect to make much money, I think I shall be able to make a living. So far I have had a real hard time; but I hope to do better now, as they send me money more regularly.
I do not intend to leave New Orleans, except for farther South,—the West Indies, or South America. I am studying Spanish hard and will get along well with it soon.
I think I can redeem myself socially here. I have got into good society; and as everybody is poor in the South, my poverty is no drawback.