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 customs, expressed in English that it is a delight to read. Upon further examination you will notice the calm, the serenity, the self-poise of the writer. It is as though, miraculously finding utterance, 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, without 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. He was not one to harp on his own troubles and ask the world to sympathize with him. The world had dealt him some very hard blows,—blows which hurt sorely,—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. To 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-burdened 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 circle to which his father belonged frowned on the mesalliance, and when the wife and children arrived in England, after the father\'s death, the aristocratic relatives soon made the strangers feel that they were anything but welcome.
The young Lafcadio was chosen for the priesthood, 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 boy he had the skeptical notions about things religious that were to abide with him for long years after and change him to an ardent materialist until 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 adventures, concerning which he was always silent, he arrived in Cincinnati in 1869, hungry, tired, unkempt,—a boy without a trade, without friends, without money. In some way he made the acquaintance of a Scotch printer, and this man in turn introduced him to Henry Watkin, an Englishman, 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 father\'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."
"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 defects, 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 people, 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 acquaintance 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 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 advertisements and to which he began also to contribute articles. One of these—a singular composition 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 deposited 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 exceedingly slow, but his product was written in English that no reporter then working in Cincinnati approached. His fellow reporters soon became jealous of him. They were, moreover, repelled by his personal appearance and chilled by his steady refusal 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 Cincinnati upon whom he could count for unselfish companionship and sincere advice. Hearn\'s Cincinnati experiences ended with his service on the Enquirer. Before that he had been proofreader to a publishing house and secretary to Cincinnati\'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 journalistic 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 inspired 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 Cincinnati that he, with H. F. Farny, the painter, issued a short-lived weekly known as Giglampz. Farny, not yet famous as an Indian painter, contributed 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 offensive 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 doubtful 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 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. Watkin\'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 repelled 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 horrible that even a materialist feels rather unpleasantly 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 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, Hearn having quite a talent in this direction,-a talent that he never afterward developed. Of course some of the cards were just as nonsensical 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.
A pencil sketch by Hearn left at Mr. Watkin\'s shop at the beginning of their friendship.
Mr. Watkin one day left a card for possible customers: "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 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 building 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."
Mr. Watkin had a dog. Hearn did not like the animal, and it seemed to reciprocate the feeling. 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 pictures of an animal supposed 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 listened.
"I did not hear the [dog] bark.
"Perhaps you were not aware that the night you got so infernally mad I slipped a cooked beefsteak strongly seasoned with Strychnine under the door.
"I was glad that the [dog] did not bark.
"I suspect 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."
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 remonstrate with you—to demonstrate matters syllogistically and phlebotomically. Gone!!! Then I departed, wandering among the tombs of Memory, 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 reporter.
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 their way 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 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 Japanese 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 reserve. Hearn\'s first step towards bettering himself 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, impatiently 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 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, 1877. 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. Flabbergasted. Mixed up. Knocked into a cocked hat."
The raven, used as the signature, wears a troubled countenance. On the same day, perhaps in the evening, Hearn sent still another card:
"Dear O. M.: Have succeeded with enormous difficulty in securing accommodations at one dollar 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 Mississippi and the most wonderful sunsets on the Arkansaw side that I ever saw. Don\'t think I should like to swim the Mississippi at this point. Perhaps the Dean 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 October 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 huddle of buildings represents Cincinnati. Another huddle represents Memphis. There stands the raven, his eyes bulging out of his head, looking 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 October 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 engrossed in his work and saw new sights and new faces, his letters would be written at greater intervals.
"Dear Old Dad: I am writing in a great big, dreary room of this great, dreary house. It overlooks 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.
Facsimile of a postal card sent from Memphis
"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 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 staggering 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 spinning 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 a washstand 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 expensive luxury. At last I succeeded with the assistance 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 business of the city is suspended in honor of the dead. And they are firing weary, dreary minute guns.
"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 lodging 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 suppose 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 vacation. It is a lonely feeling, this of finding oneself 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, disappeared 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 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 perhaps 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 extremely 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 friendship 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 beginning to doubt the existence of the Thompson Dean." November 13, 1877, finds Hearn overjoyed 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 door sits the raven. On the other side is the legend:
Raven liveth at
228 Baronne St.
New Orleans
Care Mrs. Bustellos
Then comes another raven, with the doggerel:
Indite him an epistle.
Don\'t give him particular H—.
And finally the remarks:
Pretty Louisiana! Nice Louisiana!
Hearn began to send letters to one of the Cincinnati papers, but was soon in a terrible plight, as his postal card of December 9 demonstrates:
"I am 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 fraction over twenty dollars, which I paid out in advance."
Facsimile of a postal card
Mr. Watkin was unable to make the reply he desired, and was even prevented by other matters 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 contained one of his cleverest drawings. In the background is shown the sky with a crescent moon. In the foreground, upright from a grass-grown, grave, stands a tombstone, bearing the inscription:
H. W.
DIED
NOV. 29
1877
Perched on top of the stone is a particularly ragged 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 bitterest 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:
"Dear Old Friend: I cannot say how glad I was to hear from you. I did not—unfortunately—get your letter at Memphis; it would have cheered me up. I am slowly, very slowly, getting better.
Drawing on a postal card sent to Watkin to remind him he had not written
"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 flowers,—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 comedown,—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 business. What\'s the good of asking ME about business?
"If you come here, you can live for almost nothing. Food is ridiculously cheap,—that is, cheap food. Then there are first-class restaurants here, where the charge is three dollars for dinner. But board and lodging is very cheap....
Facsimile of envelope addressed to Mr. Watkin by Hearn
"I have written twice to the Commercial, 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 Louisiana....
"Oh, you must come to New Orleans sometime,—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 are unburied,—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 astonished to learn that I was on the verge of poverty? 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 1878, some considerable 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 departure affecteth 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 Cincinnati 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 refused 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 letter, which follows, belongs to the month of February, 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 upon a Friday,—and I can\'t shake off a superstition 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 however 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 ad upon the principle that everything agreeable was wrong and everything disagreeable right, unpleasant recognition of selfweakness and inability to win success by individual force,—not to mention enormous addenda 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 temper, impatience, extra-sensitiveness, betrayed and indulged instead of concealed, might be credited with a large majority of failures.
"Without a renovation of individuality, however, 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 deportments. 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: except starvation, sickness, artificial wants, which I shall never be wealthy enough to even partially 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 necessity, 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 anywhere without getting in trouble. And my heart always feels like a bird, fluttering impatiently for the migrating season. I think I could be quite happy if I were a swallow and could have a summer 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 myself, and never bother anybody. But that I can\'t do. Then what in the name of the Nine Incarnations of Vishnu, can I do? Please try to tell me.
"Shall I, in spite of myopia, seek for a passage 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 almost 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-house—(hideous occupation!) with my pact, 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 being 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 starvation of Bohemianism,—the bore of waiting for a chance to become an insurance agent or a magazine writer,—and oh, venerable friend, I hate a thousand times worst of all to work for somebody 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 addition to the rest, my horrid eye is bad yet. I had lost nearly half the field of vision from congestion of the retina when I wrote you the rather frantic epistles which you would not answer. Now I see only in patches, but am getting along better and hope to be quite well in time,—certainly 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."
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 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 possible 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 considerably; and have cheated and swindled others 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 wonderfully 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 (without asking for it) as assistant editor on the Item, at a salary considerably smaller than that I received on the Commercial (of Cincinnati), but large enough to enable me to save half of it. Therefore I hasten to return Will\'s generous favor with the most sincere thanks and kindest wishes. You would scarcely know me now, for my face is thinner 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 advertising 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 asking 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 everybody I don\'t like the people here at all, and would not live here continually. But it is convenient now, for I could not live cheaper elsewhere."
Again undated, but belonging to his early New Orleans period, is the letter in which, after discussing 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 something terrible. I assure you that few well-posted newspaper men here would care to exchange localities until after these labor troubles have assumed 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. \'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 not for malaria. You would not escape the regular 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; \'you had a very bad case of fever when I saw you.\'
"But everybody gets that here. You live so abstemiously 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 newspaper. 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 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, however, 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,—sometimes a vague unrest without a motive, sometimes a feeling as if my heart was winged and trying to soar away, sometimes a vague longing for pleasurable wanderings, sometimes a halfcrazy passion for a great night with wine and women and music. But these are much like flitting dreams, and amount to little. They are ephemeral. The wandering passion is strongest of all; and I feel no inclination to avail myself of the only anchor which keeps the ship of a man\'s life in port.
"Then again,—I have curiously regained memories of long ago, which I thought utterly forgotten. 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 perfume 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 immortal 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 thousand 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 slanderous stories concerning his manner of living,—slanders which Mr. Watkin combated in a personal letter to the editor of the Commercial some years after, when his attackers again became busy. On July 10, 1878, 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 surmise 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 \'broke.\' \'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 climate terribly enervating. No one could have led 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 successively 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 curious experiences."
Hearn once more tells of his trouble with a Cincinnati 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 Chalmette 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—
"The love of Hearn and Watkin,
What is its kin?—
It is two toads encysted
Within one stone,
Two vipers twisted
Into one.
"Here is the poem:
"Fairflowers pass away:
In perfumed ruin falls the lily\'s 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
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."
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 Oktober and rejoin your naughty raven. It would not do you any harm to reconnoitre. Think of the times we could have,—delightful 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 snowstorms a thousand miles away; eating the cheapest 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 except 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! ...
"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 business. 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 something of that kind.
Oh, I have seven tall ships at sea,
And............