Chapter XVI: Part II: Spanish. Creole music and the history of its formation (4)

Imagine old New Orleans, the dear quaint part of it, young and idealized as a master-artist might idealize it,--made all tropical, with narrower and brighter streets, all climbing up the side of a volcanic peak to a tropical forest, or descending in terraces of steps to the sea;--fancy our Creole courts filled with giant mangoes and columnar palms (a hundred feet in height sometimes); and everything painted in bright colours, and everybody in a costume of more than Oriental picturesqueness;--and astonishments of half-breed beauty;--and a grand tepid wind enveloping the city in one perpetual perfumed caress,--fancy all this, and you may have a faint idea of the sweetest, queerest, darlingest little city in the Antilles: _Saint-Pierre_, Martinique. I hope it will be my residence for the next two months,--and for the latter part of my wretched little existence. I love it as if it were a human being.

Outside are queer little French islands, with queer names--_Marie Galante_ is rather an old appellation for an island,--full of Cytherean suggestion.

We leave this very fantastic and unhealthy land--now smitten with Gold-fever as well as other maladies--to-morrow. Then will come Trinidad, with its Hindoo villages to see. Photos, bought at Demerara and St. Kitts, predict visions of Indian grace worth daring the perpendicular sun to see. I am now the only passenger. My last companion--a fine Northwestern man--goes, I fear, to leave his bones in the bush. From the interior men are being carried back to the coast to die, yet the stream pours on to the gold-mines. My miner thinks he can stand it: he has dug for African gold, under a fiercer sky. He was an odd fellow. Saw no beauty in these islands. "No, partner--if you want to see scenery see the Rockies: that's something to look at! Even the sea's afraid of them mountains,--ran away from them: you can see four thousand feet up where the sea tried to climb before it got scared!"

Sometimes the apes on board are taught the experiences of life, the advantages of civilization. Torpedoes are tied to their tails; fire-crackers surround them with circles of crepitation and flame. Also they are occasionally paralyzed by unexpected sensations of electricity;--they have made the acquaintance of a galvanic battery; they have been induced to do foolish things which resulted in sharp and unfamiliar pains and burnings. Their lives are astonishments, and prolonged spasms of terror.

The sea at night is an awful and magnificent sight. It looks infernal,--Acherontic;--black surges that break into star-spray;--an abyss full of moving lights that come and go.

Well, I can't write a good letter now;--wait till I get back to Martinique. I wanted you to _know_ I had not forgotten my promise to write. You must make a trip down here some day. It is not hotter than New York except in the sun.

_You can do whatever you wish._ You have force to do it. You have more brains in your finger-tips than some who have managed to get a big reputation. The little talk about Grande Isle that night was an absolute poem,--gave me a sense of the charm of the place such as I felt the first beautiful morning there. You don't know what you can do, _if you want to_.

I think I should do something with this novel material, it is so rich in absurd colour! But I don't feel enthusiastic now. Enthusiasm has been numbed by a long series of violent sensations and unexpected experiences. I have artistic indigestion;--going to try to dream it away at divine, paradisaical Martinique. There I will write you again. My address will be, care American Consul. But you mustn't write unless you have plenty of time;--I am only paying my debts, not trying to make you waste paper answering me.

I believe I am beginning to write absurdities: it is so hot that rain-clouds form in one's head.

Good-bye, believe the best you can of me.

Your friend,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, 1887.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I am settled here for at least a month:--wish I could settle here forever. I love this quaint, whimsical, wonderfully-coloured little town,--all its ups and downs, vistas of azure harbour and overshadowing volcanic hills,--all the stones that whisper under the myriad naked feet of this fantastic population. It pleases me to find my affection for it is not merely inspiration: the place has fascinated more than one practical American,--persuaded them to abandon ambitions, contests, popular esteem, friends, society,--and to settle here for the rest of their days, in delightful indolence and dreamy content.

In my trunk I have something for you: a Coolie girl's bracelet. It will not look so well on your arm as on hers, because its effect depends on a background of dark colour; and all this clumsy Indian jewelry is inartistically wrought. It is indeed made chiefly for economical reasons. Coolies so carry their wealth;--I saw one Hindoo wife with some $900 worth of jewelry upon her.

In the little Coolie village near Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, I sat, and looked at rudely painted Indian gods, while waiting for the silversmith to sit down before his ridiculous little anvil. All the palm-shadows, intensely black, crawled outside like tarantulas; it was a glowing day,--blindingly blue: the light of a larger sun seemed to fill the world,--a white sun,--Sirius!

"Ra!" called out the Coolie smith when I told him I wanted to look at his jewelry;--and his wife came in. She wore the Hindoo garb without the long veils: a white robe like a Greek chiton, or rather like a lady's chemise,--leaving the arms and ankles bare, and confined about the waist. I thought her very lovely,--slender and delicate,--a perfect bronze-colour: the gold-flower attached to the nostril did not impair the symmetry of the face;--extraordinary eyes and teeth. She held out her pretty round arms for examination: there were about ten silver rings upon each: the two outer ones being round, the inner eight being flat. The arm was infinitely prettier than the bracelets;--I selected one ring, and the smith opened and removed it with an iron instrument and gave it me. It had a faint musky odour: perhaps that was why the smith insisted on putting it into an absurdly small furnace, and purifying it after the Indian manner.

I wanted to buy a pair of baby bracelets;--so they brought in the baby,--a girl, and therefore (?) having a dress on. The little babies of the other sex wear nothing but circles of silver on arms and ankles. Sometimes the custom is extended; for the little wife who carried her girl baby to the post-office when I was at Demerara, carried it naked at her hip in the most primitive manner.

This Trinidad baby had absurdly large eyes,--looked supernatural: the mother's eyes magnified. She held up her little arms and I chose two rings. Then she talked to me in--Creole patois! It is the commercial dialect of the poor; and the Hindoos learn it well.

Always truly,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

There are palms here over 200 feet high. There are fish here of all the colours of marsh-sunset.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

FORT DE FRANCE, MARTINIQUE, July, 1887.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Imagine yourself turned into marble, all white,--robed after the fashion of the Directory,--standing forever on a marble pedestal, under an enormous azure day,--encircled by a ring of tall palms, graceful as Creole women,--and gazing always, always, over the summer sea, toward emerald Trois Islets.

That is _Josephine_! I think she looks just like you, "Mamzelle Josephine,"--or Zefine, if you like.

I want to tell you a little story about her,--just a little anecdote somebody told me on the street, which I want to develop into a sketch next week.

It was after the fall of the Second Empire,--after France felt the iron heel of Germany upon her throat.

Far off in this delicious little Martinique, the Republican rage made itself felt;--the huge reaction passed over the ocean like a magnetic current. So it happened, in a little while, that the Martinique politicians resolved to do that which had already been done in France,--to obliterate the memories of the Empire.

There was Mamzelle Zefine, _par exemple_!... They put a rope round her beautiful white neck. They prepared to destroy the statue.

Then Somebody rang the Church-bell--(you ought to see the sleepy little church: it makes you want to doze the moment you pass into its cool shadow). A vast crowd gathered in the Savane.

It was a crowd of women,--mostly women who had been slaves,--quadroons, mulattoesses; the house-servants, the _bonnes_, the nurses and housekeepers of the old days. (You could form no possible idea of this coloured Creole element without seeing it: it does not exist in New Orleans.) They gathered to defend Mamzelle Zefine.

When the Republican officials came with their workmen at sunrise, Mamzelle Zefine was still gazing toward Trois Islets; she was white as ever; her pure cold passionate face just as lovely: she seemed totally indifferent to what was about to happen,--she was dreaming her eternal plaintive dream.

But she could well afford to feel indifferent! About her, under the circle of the palms, surged a living sea,--a tide of angry yellow faces, above which flashed the lightning of cane-knives, axes, _couteaux de boucher_. "Ah! li vieu!--lâches! cafa'ds! pott'ons! Vos pas cabab toucher li! Touché li--yon tête fois!--Osé toucher li. Capons Républicains! Osé toucher li!"

Mamzelle Zefine still gazed plaintively toward Trois Islets. She must have seemed to that yellow population to live;--for each one she represented some young mistress, some petted child, some memory of the old colonial days. And all the love of the slave for the master--all the strange passionate senseless affection of the servant for the Creole family--was stirred to storm by the mere idea of the proposed desecration. The man who should have dared to lay an evil finger upon Josephine that day would have been torn limb from limb in the public square. The officials were frightened and foiled: they pledged their faith that the statue should not be touched.

So they took the ropes away; and they piled flowers at Mamzelle Zefine's white feet; they garlanded her; they twined the crimson jessamines of the tropics about her beautiful white throat.

And she is still here,--always in the circle of the palms, always looking to Trois Islets, always beautiful and sweet as a young Creole maiden,--dreamy, gracious, loving,--with a smile that is like some faint, sweet memory of other days.

Always,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

NEW YORK, 1887.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Thanks for the gracious little letter. I wish I could see you, and see other friends; but fate forbids. Distances are too enormous; engagements imperative; preparations for coming journey made my head whirl. For I return to the tropics, dear Miss Bisland,--probably forever: I imagine that civilization will behold me no more, except as a visitor at very long intervals. I would like to write you sometimes, praying only that my letters be not ever shown unto newspaper people. You will hear from me soon again. I am off on Friday afternoon, and have not even the necessary time to do what I ought to do in the mere matter of exceedingly small purchases, outfits, etc.

Good-bye, with best regards and something a little more, too.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

I have not seen Krehbiel at all,--was out of town when I returned, and seems to have found no time afterwards.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

NEW YORK, 1887.

Your letter reached me just at a time when everything that had seemed solid was breaking up, and substance had become Shadow. It made me very foolish,--made me cry. Your rebuke for the trivial phrase in my letter was very beautiful as well as very richly deserved. But I don't think it is a question of volition. It is necessary to obey the impulses of the Unknown for Art's sake--or rather, you _must_ obey them. The Spahi's fascination by the invisible Forces was purely physical. I think I am right in going: perhaps I am wrong in thinking of making the tropics a home. Probably it will be the same thing over again: impulse and chance compelling another change.

The carriage--no, the New York hack and hackman (no romance or sentimentality about these!)--is waiting to take me to Pier 49, East River. So I must end. But I have written such a ridiculous letter that I shan't put anybody's name to it.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, May, 1888.

DEAR GOULD,--One of your letters, I think a P. Cd., many months ago, caught me in British Guiana, another to-day finds me here. I left N. O. in June, 1887, and have been travelling since, or at least sojourning in these tropics. I have been sick, too,--have had some trouble fighting the influences of climate, trouble in trying to carry out large plans with absurdly small resources; and have been unable to do my friends justice. How could you think I could have been offended? It was only the other day, in a letter to the editor of _Harper's_, that I referred to one of your delightful colour-theories.

Praise from you I value very highly. As to impress such a mind as yours means to me a great pride and pleasure. I am delighted "Chita" pleased you.

I have written a number of sketches on the West Indies,--some of which may appear in a few months, others later on. It has been a hope of mine to make a unique book on these strange Hesperides, with their singularly mixed races; but I don't know whether I shall be able to carry the project out.

The climate is antagonistic to work. It is a benumbing power, rendering concentrated thought almost out of the question. I can now understand why the tropics have produced so little literature.

We are quarantined and isolated for the present by a long epidemic of small-pox, which among these populations means something as fatal as an Oriental plague. The whites are exempt. But the disease, although on the decline, still prevails to an extent rendering it doubtful when I can get away from here.

I would like much to hear from you when you have time. I am temporarily settled here, and everything goes well enough now, so that I can write regularly.

With best affection,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

GRAND ANSE, MARTINIQUE, June, 1888.

DEAR DR. GOULD,--I am writing you from an obscure, pretty West Indian village, seldom visited by travellers. Tall palms, and a grand roaring sea, blue as lapis lazuli in spite of its motion.

I was certainly even more pleased to hear from you than you could have been at the receipt of my letter;--for in addition to the intellectual and sympathetic pleasure of such a correspondence, the comparative rarity of friendly missives, enhancing their value, lends them certain magnetism difficult to describe,--the sensation, perhaps, of that North, and that Northern vigour of mind which has made the world what it is, and that pure keen air full of the Unknowable Something which has made the Northern Thought.

I seldom have a chance now to read or speak English; and English phrases that used to seem absolutely natural already begin to look somewhat odd to me. Were I to continue to live here for some years more, I am almost sure that I should find it difficult to write English. The resources of the intellectual life are all lacking here,--no libraries, no books in any language;--a mind accustomed to discipline becomes like a garden long uncultivated, in which the rare flowers return to their primitive savage forms, or are smothered by rank, tough growths which ought to be pulled up and thrown away. Nature does not allow you to think here, or to study seriously, or to work earnestly: revolt against her, and with one subtle touch of fever she leaves you helpless and thoughtless for months.

But she is so beautiful, nevertheless, that you love her more and more daily,--that you gradually cease to wish to do aught contrary to her local laws and customs. Slowly, you begin to lose all affection for the great Northern nurse that taught you to think, to work, to aspire. Then, after a while, this nude, warm, savage, amorous Southern Nature succeeds in persuading you that labour and effort and purpose are foolish things,--that life is very sweet without them;--and you actually find yourself ready to confess that the aspirations and inspirations born of the struggle for life in the North are all madness,--that they wasted years which might have been delightfully dozed away in land where the air is always warm, the sea always the colour of sapphire, the woods perpetually green as the plumage of a green parrot.

I must confess I have had some such experiences. It appears to me impossible to resign myself to living again in a great city and in a cold climate. Of course I shall have to return to the States for a while,--a short while, probably;--but I do not think I will ever settle there. I am apt to become tired of places,--or at least of the disagreeable facts attaching more or less to all places and becoming more and more marked and unendurable the longer one stays. So that ultimately I am sure to wander off somewhere else. You can comprehend how one becomes tired of the very stones of a place,--the odours, the colours, the shapes of Shadows, and tint of its sky;--and how small irritations become colossal and crushing by years of repetition;--yet perhaps you will not comprehend that one can actually become weary of a whole system of life, of civilization, even with very limited experience. Such is exactly my present feeling,--an unutterable weariness of the aggressive characteristics of existence in a highly organized society. The higher the social development, the sharper the struggle. One feels this especially in America,--in the nervous centres of the world's activity. One feels at least, I imagine, in the tropics, where it is such an effort just to live, that one has no force left for the effort to expand one's own individuality at the cost of another's. I clearly perceive that a man enamoured of the tropics has but two things to do:--To abandon intellectual work, or to conquer the fascination of Nature. Which I will do will depend upon necessity. I would remain in this zone if I could maintain a certain position here;--to keep it requires means. I can earn only by writing, and yet if I remain a few years more, I will have become (perhaps?) unable to write. So if I am to live in the tropics, as I would like to do, I must earn the means for it in very short order.

I gave up journalism altogether after leaving N. O. I went to Demerara and visited the lesser West Indies in July and August of last year,--returned to New York after three months with some MS.,--sold it,--felt very unhappy at the idea of staying in New York, where I had good offers,--suddenly made up my mind to go back to the tropics by the very same steamer that had brought me. I had no commission, resolved to trust to magazine-work. So far I have just been able to scrape along;--the climate numbs mental life, and the inspirations I hoped for won't come. The real--surpassing imagination--whelms the ideal out of sight and hearing. The world is young here,--not old and wise and grey as in the North; and one must not seek the Holy Ghost in it. I suspect that the material furnished by the tropics can only be utilized in a Northern atmosphere. We will talk about it together; for I will certainly call on you in Philadelphia some day.

I would not hesitate, if I were you, to begin the _magnum opus_;--the only time to hesitate would be when it is all complete, before giving to the printer. Then one may perhaps commune with one's self to advantage upon the question of what might be gained or lost by waiting for more knowledge through fresh expansions of science. But the true way to attempt an enduring work is to begin it as a duty, without considering one's self in the matter at all, but the subject only,--which you love more and more the longer you caress it, and find it taking form and colour and beauty with the patient years.

I am horribly ignorant about scientific matters; but sometimes the encouragement of a layman makes the success of the prelate.

Now, replying to your question about "Chita." "Chita" was founded on the fact of a child saved from the Lost Island disaster by some Louisiana fisher-folk, and brought up by them. Years after a Creole hunter recognized her, and reported her whereabouts to relatives. These, who were rich, determined to bring her up as young ladies are brought up in the South, and had her sent to a convent. But she had lived the free healthy life of the coast, and could not bear the convent;--she ran away from it, married a fisherman, and lives somewhere down there now,--the mother of multitudinous children.

And about my work, I can only tell you this:--I will have two illustrated articles on a West Indian trip in the _Harper's Monthly_ soon,--within four or five months. These will be followed by brief West Indian sketches. Other sketches, not suited for the magazine, will go to form a volume to be published later on. I do not correspond or write for any newspaper, and I would always let you know in advance where anything would be published written by me.

You know what the nervous cost of certain imaginative work means; and this sort of work I do not think I shall be able to do here. One has no vital energy to spare in such a climate. I cannot read Spencer here,--gave up the "Biology" (vol. II) in despair. But I did not miss the wonderful page about the evolution of the eye--hair--snail-horn--etc., etc.... I want to see anything you write that I can understand, with my limited knowledge of scientific terms and facts. And when you write again, tell me what you said of Loti in the letter I never received. Did you read his "Roman d'un Spahi"? I thought you would like it. If you do not, let me know why,--because Loti has had much literary influence upon me, and I want to know his faults as well as his merits. With love to you,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, August, 1888.

DEAR GOULD,--Many thanks for the _quid_!--the surprising _quid_. I have been waiting to send you the _quo_, which I do not like so well as one taken in New Orleans, of which I have no copy within reach. But before I tell you anything about the _quo_, I ought to scold you for your startling deception. I pictured you as a much younger man than myself--although quite conscious of meeting an intelligence much more virile and penetrating than my own, and with an experience of life larger: this did not, however, astonish me; for whatever qualities I have lie only in that one direction which pleased you and won your friendship,--moreover, I had met several _much_ younger men than myself, my mental superiors in every respect. But, all of a sudden you come upon me with such a revelation of your personality as makes me half afraid of you. I perceive that your _envergure_ is much larger than I imagined:--I mean, of course, the mental spread-of-wing; and then your advice and suggestions, while manifesting your ability to teach me much in my own line, resemble only those proffered by old experienced masters in literary guidance. It is exactly the advice of Alden, among one or two others.

Now about the _quo_. I am about five feet three inches high, and weigh about 137 pounds in good health;--fever has had me down to 126. Nothing phthisical,--36¾ inches round the chest, stripped. Was born in June (27th), 1850, in Santa Maura (the antique Leucadia), of a Greek mother. My father, Dr. Charles Bush Hearn, who spent most of his life in India, was surgeon-major of the 76th British regiment (now merged in West Riding Battalion). Do not know anything about my mother, whether alive or dead;--was last heard of (remarried) in Smyrna, about 1858-9. My father died on his return from India. There was a queer romance in the history of my father's marriage. It is not, however, of the sort to interest you in a letter. I am very near-sighted, have lost one eye, which disfigures me considerably; and my near-sightedness always prevented the gratification of a natural _penchant_ for physical exercise. I am a good swimmer; that is all.

Your advice about story-writing is capital; I am not so sure about your suggestion of plot. I cannot believe--in view of the extraordinary changes (changes involving even the whole osseous structure) wrought in the offspring of Europeans or foreigners within a single generation by the tropical climate--that anything of the parental moral character on the _father's_ side would survive with force sufficient to produce the psychical phenomena you speak of. In temperate climates these do survive astonishingly, even through generations; in the tropics, Nature moulds every new being _at once_ into perfect accord with environment, or else destroys it. The idea you speak of occurred to me also; it was abandoned after a careful study of tropical conditions. It could only be used on an _inverse_ plot,--transporting the tropical child to the North. At least, I think so, with my present knowledge on the subject,--which might be vastly improved, no doubt....

About story-writing, dear friend, you ought to know I would like to be able to do nothing else. But even in these countries, where life is so cheap, I could not make the pot--or as they call it here, the _canari_--boil by story-writing until I gain more literary success, and can obtain high prices. A story takes at least ten or twelve months to write, that is, a story of the length of "Chita." Suppose it brings only $500,--half as much as you will soon be able to obtain for a single operation! It is pretty hard to live even in the tropics on that sum. I must write sketches too. They do me other good also, involve research I might otherwise neglect. I have prepared some twelve sketches in all, which obligated investigation that will prove invaluable for a forthcoming novelette.

I like your firm, strong, sonorous letter, better than anything of the sort I ever received. The only thing I did not relish in it was the suggestion that I should prepare a lecture, or make an appearance before a private club. I would not do it for anything! I shrink from real life, however, not at all because I am pessimistic. It is a very beautiful world:--the ugliness of some humanity only exists as the shadowing that outlines the view; the nobility of man and the goodness of woman can only be felt by those who know the possibilities of degradation and corruption. Philosophically I am simply a follower of Spencer, whose mind gives me the greatest conception of Divinity I can yet expand to receive. The faultiness is not with the world, but with myself. I inherit certain susceptibilities, weaknesses, sensitivenesses, which render it impossible to adapt myself to the ordinary _milieu_; I have to make one of my own, wherever I go, and never mingle with that already made. True, I lose much knowledge, but I escape pains which, in spite of all your own knowledge, you could not wholly comprehend, for the simple reason that you _can_ mingle with men. By the way, it is no small disadvantage in life to be 5 ft. 3 in. high. I remember observing, at a great gathering of American merchant princes, that the small or insignificant looking men present might have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Success in life still largely depends upon the power to impose respect, the reserve of mere physical force; since the expansion of everybody's individuality--at the expense of everybody else's individuality--is still the law of existence.

I am not yet sure what I am going to do. One thing certain is that I am to go to South or to Central America--for monetary reasons. I may linger here long enough to finish a novelette. If not able to do so, I will perhaps be in New York before December. I left it October 2, 1887, after a stay of only three weeks, to return to the tropics. It was then impossible to visit Philadelphia. Should I go to the Continent from here, you will know at least six weeks in advance.

Thanks for the superb paper on Loti. I cannot imagine anything much finer in the way of literary analysis. But what does James want?--evolution to leap a thousand years? What he classes as sensual perceptions must be sensitized and refined supernally,--fully evolved and built up _before_ the moral ones, of which they are the physiological foundations, pedestals. Granting the doubt as to the ultimate nature of Mind, it is still tolerably positive that its development--so far as man is concerned--follows the development of the nervous system; and that very sensuousness which at once delights and scandalizes James, rather seems to me a splendid augury of the higher sensitiveness to come, in some future age of writers and poets,--the finer "_sensibility of soul_," whose creative work will caress the nobler emotions more delicately than Loti's genius ever caressed the senses of colour and form and odour.

You ask about my idea of Whitman? I have not patience for him,--not as for Emerson. Enormous _suggestiveness_ in both, rather than clear utterance. I used to like John Weiss better than Emerson. Then there is a shagginess, an uncouthness, a Calibanishness about Whitman that repels. He makes me think of some gigantic dumb being that sees things, and wants to make others see them, and cannot for want of a finer means of expression than Nature gives him. But there is manifest the rude nobility of the man,--the primitive and patriarchal soul-feeling to men and the world. Whitman lays a Cyclopean foundation on which, I fancy, some wonderful architect will yet build up some marvellous thing.... Yes, there is nonsense in Swinburne, but he is merely a melodist and colourist. He enlarges the English tongue,--shows its richness, unsuspected flexibility, admirable sponge-power of beauty-absorption. He is not to be despised by the student.

Let me pray you not to make mention of anything written to you thus, even incidentally, to newspaper folk--or to any literary folk who would not be _intimate_ friends. There are reasons, more than personal, for this suggestion, acceptance of which would remove any check on frankness.

Best love to you, from
LAFCADIO HEARN.

Speaking of Whitman, I must add that my idea of him is not consciously stable. It has changed within some years. What I like, however, was not Whitman exactly,--rather the perception of something Whitman feels, and disappoints by his attempted expression of.

After closing letter I remember you wanted to know about illustrations in magazine. They are after photos. I am sorry to say incorrect use has been made of several: the types published as _Sacratra_ were not _Sacratra_, but in two cases half-breed Coolie,--one seemingly of Southern India, showing a touch of Malay. There were other errors. It is horrible not to be able to correct one's _own_ work,--on account of irregularities in mail involved by quarantine. In the December number you will see a study of a peculiar class of young girls here. If you want, yourself, to have some particular photo of some particular thing, send word, and I will try to get it for you.

I can only work here of mornings. Nobody dreams of eating before noon: all rise with the sun. After 2 P.M., the heat and weight of the air make thinking impossible. Your head gets heavy, as if there was lead in it, and you sleep.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE,
October, 1888.

DEAR FRIEND GOULD,--I have read your delightful letter,--also, the delightful essays of James you so kindly sent me. I suspect James has not his equal as a literary chemist: the analyses of his French contemporary, Lemaître, are far less qualitative. You have made me know him as a critic;--I had only known him as a novelist. My work has been poor; it has been condensed and recondensed for the magazine till all originality has been taken out of it; finally I never had a chance to revise it in proof. I believe I have temporarily lost all creative power: it will come back to me, perhaps, when I inhale some Northern ozone.

I would like to call your attention to the article by Loti in _Fortnightly Review_--"Un Rêve," a delicious little psychological phenomenon. Have you seen "Madame Chrysanthemum"--wonderfully illustrated!

Are you perfectly, positively sure there is really a sharp distinction between moral and physical sensibilities? I doubt it. I suspect what we term the finer moral susceptibilities signify merely a more complex and perfect evolution of purely physical sensitiveness. The established distinction simply seems to me that "moral" feelings are those into which the sexual instinct does not visibly enter, or those in which some form of desire, some form of egotism, does not predominate at the cost of justice to others. There is a queer vagueness about all definitions of the moral sense. When one's physical sensibilities are fully developed and properly balanced, I do not think wickedness to others possible. The cruel and the selfish are capable of doing what is called wrong, because they are ignorant of the suffering inflicted. Thorough consciousness of the result of acting forms morality, if morality is self-restraint, self-sacrifice, incapacity to injure unnecessarily;--one who understands pain does not give it. Of course, I am not a believer in free will. I do not believe in the individual soul,--though in the manifestations of a universal human, or divine, soul, I am inclined to believe, or to have that doubt which almost admits of belief. What offends in certain writings, I suppose, is the feeling that the writer's faculties are not perfectly balanced,--that certain senses are so much more developed than others that one can suspect him of yielding to cruelties of egotism. Perhaps I may say that I would call moral feelings, as distinguished from those termed physical, the sensitiveness of perception of suffering in others,--of the consequences of acts. But can those be thoroughly developed before those which conduce to self-preservation? I imagine the reverse to be the case. By the super-refinement of the earlier sensations comes the capacity for the "higher sentiments." It is true that moral standards are very old, but those existing are also very defective. Evolutionally, egotism must precede altruism;--altruism itself being only a sort of double reflex action of egotism.--All this is very badly written; but you can catch the idea I am trying to express.

When you think of tropical Nature as cruel and splendid, like a leopard, I fancy the Orient, which is tropical largely, dominates the idea. Humanity has a great beauty in these tropics, a great charm,--that of childishness, and the goodness of childishness. As for the mysterious Nature, which is the soul of the land, it was understood by the ancient Mexicans, whose goddess of flowers, Coatlicue, was robed in a robe of serpents interwoven. She is rich in death as in life, this Nature, and lavish of both. I would love her; but I fear she is an enemy of the mind,--a hater of mental effort.

No, indeed, I did not laugh at your experiences. I have had nearly as multiform; but mine were less successful,--I was less fitted for them. I have not your advantages, nor capacities. I never learned German. It is only in America such careers are possible. I wish I could have finished like you, as a physician; for I hold, that with the modern development of medicine as an enormous interbranching system of science and philosophy, the physician is the only perfect man, mentally. Like those old Arabian physicians who affected to treat the soul, the modern knows the mind, the reason of actions, the source of impulses,--which must make him the most generous of men to the faults of others.

I don't like your plot for a medical novel at all. It involves ugliness. I believe in Théophile Gautier's idea of art, study only the beautiful;--create only ideals, therefore. You are not a realist, I am sure. Then your plot is too thin. It has not the beauty nor depth of that simple narrative about a famous painter, or writer,--I forget which,--whose imagination rendered it impossible for him to complete his medical studies. Shapes impressed themselves upon his brain as on the brain of an artist: vividly to painfulness. He was in love, engaged to be married; under the peach flesh and behind the velvet gaze, he always saw the outlined skull, the empty darkness of void orbits. He had to abandon medicine for art. A very powerful short sketch might be made of this _fact_.

I believe in a medical novel,--a wonderful medical novel. We must chat about it. Why not use a fantastic element,--anticipate discoveries hoped for,--anticipate them so powerfully as to make the reader believe you are enunciating realities?

Your objection to my idea is quite correct. I have already abandoned it. It would have to be sexual. Never could you find in the tropics that magnificent type of womanhood, which, in the New England girl, makes one afraid even to think about sex, while absolutely adoring the personality. Perfect natures inspire the love that is a fear. I don't think any love is noble without it. The tropical woman inspires a love that is half a compassion; this is always dangerous, untrustworthy, delusive--pregnant with future pains innumerable.

I don't know why you hold the work of Spencer, etc., more colourless than those of the other philosophers and scientists whom you have studied--all except beastly Hegel: there is an awful poetry to me in the revelation of which these men are the mouthpieces, as much vaster than the old thoughts as the foam of suns in the _via lactea_ is vaster than the spume of a wave on the sea-beach. Wallace I know only as a traveller and naturalist; is it the same Wallace? I am very fond of him too: he is very human, fraternal: he is not like God the Father as Spencer is. I suppose what we need is God the Holy Ghost. He is not yet come.

Flower, who wrote that interesting little book "Fashion in Deformity" and many other excellent things, could find some good texts here. I am convinced now that most of our fashions are deformities; that grace is savage, or must be savage in order to be perfect; that man was never made to wear shoes; that in order to comprehend antiquity, the secret of Greek art, one must know the tropics a little (so much has fashion invaded the rest of the world), and that the question of more or less liberty in the sex relation is like the tariff question--one of localities and conditions, scarcely to be brought under a general rule.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE,
February, 1889.

DEAR GOULD,--A letter to you has been lying on my desk for months unfinished,--I can only just gum the envelope and let it go as it is. I am obliged at intervals--thank Goodness, only at very long ones--to let all correspondence, even the most important, wait a little or risk the results of interrupting a work which exacts all one's thinking time during waking hours. This has been partly my case,--having just completed a novelette; but I have also had a good deal of trouble about other matters that left me no chance to do anything until now. I am free again,--I hope for a good long time.

Meanwhile I received your pamphlets, and read every one with more pleasure than you could readily believe a non-scientific man could feel in them. Of course, those which interested me most were:

1. That on the Homing Instinct (a much better word than the French _orientation_). 2. That on the electric light. My first experience with the light was painful; then I learned to like it (the white, not the yellow) very much and found gaslight intensely disagreeable afterward. By the way, do you correspond with Romanes, who solicits correspondence on the subject of animals? You know him, of course, the author of "Animal Intelligence" and "Mental Evolution in Animals." A man like that ought to be delighted with such a splendid and powerful suggestion as that of your pamphlet. I hope you are not too patriotic to think you cannot do better with a scientific suggestion abroad than at home. There are certain things that seem to me too worthy to remain buried in the archives of a medical society,--which ought to reach a larger scientific circle through a more eclectic medium, such as that of the superb foreign reviews, devoted to what used to be called natural history, but for which the term has long ago become too small. Still I am sure you must have heard from your paper on the homing instinct if the publication in which it appeared reached the quarters it ought to have reached.

I don't know what to tell you about myself. Since October last I have been buried in my room--facing, happily, a semi-circle of Mornes curving away into a sea like lapis lazuli--and have neither heard nor seen anything else. We had an epidemic of yellow fever which carried away many Europeans and strangers; but it is over, and the weather is delightful, if you can call weather delightful which keeps you drenched in perspiration from morning to night, and forces you to lie down and sleep in the afternoon if you dare attempt to write or read. The difficulty of work in such a climate only those who have had the experience can understand. I think my case is an experiment; almost a phenomenon,--and I am very curious to know the result by the verdict upon my work. I cannot judge it myself here. What at sundown seems good in the morning appears damnably bad; and I was obliged to give every page a test of three or four days' waiting. My novelette made itself out of an incident related to me about a case of heroism during a great negro revolt.

There is no question but that I shall be in New York this summer, for a while. It is imperative. I have to oversee work before it can be published;--that which already appeared was in terribly bad shape on account of my not having seen the proofs. Then I may be getting out a little book.

Did you see the incident in regard to the admission of a remarkable young lady doctor into the profession by the faculty of Paris,--the remarks of Charcot and others? I thought of your medical novel. There were some remarks very suggestive made. The thesis of the candidate was the position and duty of woman as a physician. You know what those French are, and what peculiar ways they have of looking at the question of women as physicians;--the Paris papers made all kinds of _observations scabreuses_; but the dignity of the girl carried her splendidly through the ordeal--an ordeal to which Americans would never put a female student.

I have a curious compilation,--"Etudes pathologiques et historiques sur l'origine et la propagation de la Fièvre Jaune" (1886),--perhaps you know it already,--by Dr. Cornilliac of Martinique. If you do not know it I will send it you from New York. It contains a great deal of valuable matter regarding the climate of the West Indies, and formative influences of that climate on races and temperament. Martinique has had several physicians of colonial celebrity,--how great I cannot estimate, being ignorant of their comparative value; but some of them have a decided charm as writers and historians. Such was Rufz de Lavison, author of a delightful history of the colony, and a work upon the _trigonocephalus_, which would not bear equal praise, I fancy. If you want any information about medical matters in Martinique, I will hunt it up for you.

I hope to see you and have a great chat with you. But the heat is great, and there is an accumulation of letters to answer, and you will forgive me for saying for the moment good-bye.

Your sincere friend,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO GEORGE M. GOULD

SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE,
April, 1889.

DEAR GOULD,--I read your pamphlets with intense pleasure: that on the effect of reflex neurosis, of course, impressed me only as a curious research; but your paper on dreams, full of truth and suggestive beauty, had much more than a scientific interest for me. There is a world of poetical ideas and romantic psychology evoked by its perusal. I wonder only that you did not dwell more upon the softness, sweetness, impalpable goodness of this dream-world in which everything--even what we usually think wrong--seems to be right. Doubtless all man's dreams of paradise, of a golden past age, or a perfect future, were born of the thin light vanishing sensations of dream. The work of Gautier cited by you--"Avatar"--was my first translation from the French. I never could find a publisher for it, however, and threw the MS. away at last in disgust. It is certainly a wonderful story; but the self-styled Anglo-Saxon has so much damnable prudery that even this innocent phantasy seems to shock his sense of the "proper."

You will be pleased to hear my novelette has been a success with the publishers. It cost me terrible work in this continual heat, small as it is; and I feel so mentally blank that I must get back to the States for a while to seek some vitality, brighten whatever blood I have got left after two years of tropical air.

If you could find me in Philadelphia a very quiet room where I could write without noise for a few months, I would try my luck there. New York is stupefying; I know too many people there; and I want to be very quiet,--only to see a friend or two now and then, when I am in good trim for a chat. I shall return to the West Indies in the winter.

Address me if you have time to write c/o H. M. Alden, Edr. _Harper's Magazine_;--for I shall have left Martinique, doubtless, by the time this reaches you.

Faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO JOSEPH TUNISON

NEW YORK, 1889.

DEAR JOE,--By the time this reaches you I shall have disappeared.

The moment I get into all this beastly machinery called "New York," I get caught in some belt and whirled around madly in all directions until I have no sense left. This city drives me crazy, or, if you prefer, crazier; and I have no peace of mind or rest of body till I get out of it. Nobody can find anybody, nothing seems to be anywhere, everything seems to be mathematics and geometry and enigmatics and riddles and confusion worse confounded: architecture and mechanics run mad. One has to live by intuition and move by steam. I think an earthquake might produce some improvement. The so-called improvements in civilization have apparently resulted in making it impossible to see, hear, or find anything out. You are improving yourselves out of the natural world. I want to get back among the monkeys and the parrots, under a violet sky among green peaks and an eternally lilac and lukewarm sea,--where clothing is superfluous and reading too much of an exertion,--where everybody sleeps 14 hours out of the 24. This is frightful, nightmarish, devilish! Civilization is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery! Surely a palm 200 feet high is a finer thing in the natural order than seventy times seven New Yorks. I came in by one door as you went out at the other. Now there are cubic miles of cut granite and iron fury between us. I shall at once find a hackman to take me away. I am sorry not to see you--but since you live in hell what can I do? I will try to find you again this summer.

Best affection,
L. H.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--A week ago in New York I was asking a friend where you were, but could then obtain no satisfactory information without taking steps I had no time to attempt. I was really glad to get out of the frightful whirl and roar of modern improvements as soon as possible, but regretted not seeing you, even while assured of being able to do so before long.

It is true I have been silent with my friends: I did not write seven letters in seventeen months,--not even business letters. It was very difficult to write anything in the continuous enervating heat; and I had to struggle with difficulties of the most unlooked for sort, incessantly,--until I found correspondence become almost impossible. But I thought of you very often; and wondered if you were still in that terrible metropolis. I saw in Max O'Rell's book some lines about a charming young lady and thought it must have been you.... I returned on the 8th from Martinique.

Dr. Matas sent me your pretty eulogy of "Chita"--which I often re-read afterward, and which gave me encouragement when I began to doubt whether I could do anything else.... I don't think I shall write another story in the same manner,--feel I have changed very much in my way of looking at things and of writing. "Chita" will soon be sent to you in book form as a souvenir of Grande Isle: it is not as short a story as it looked in the serried type of _Harper's_--will make a volume of 225 pp. I will have something else to send you, however, that will interest you more as to novelty,--a volume of tropical sketches.

I wonder whether you could ever throw upon paper the thoughts you uttered to me that evening I visited you nearly two years ago,--when you said _why_ you liked Grande Isle. In your few phrases you said much that I had been trying to express and could not,--at least it so seemed to me.... I have seen a great many strange beaches since; but nothing like the morning charm of Grande Isle ever revealed itself. I wonder if I were to see it now, whether I should feel the same pleasure....

Thanks for those verses!--there is a large, strong, strange beauty in them. There seems, you know, to be just now a straining-up of eyes to look for some singer able to prophesy,--to chant even one hymn of that cosmic faith that is stealing upon the world.

Affectionately your friend,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Oh! what a stiff epistle, with a little sharp pointing of reproach twisting about in the tail of every letter! Really you must never, never feel vexed at anything I write:--I wrote you just as I wrote to Mr. Stedman about the same matter. I feel the man sometimes is much less than the work: my work, however weak, is so much better than myself, that the less said about me the better,--then there are so many things you do not know. As for _you_ not liking personalities, that is a very different thing! Your own personality has charm enough to render the truth very palatable. But I am sure, now, from your letter anything you say will be nice,--though I think it would have been better not to have said it. Does a portrait of an ugly man make one desirous to read his book? I could not get out of the Harper plan for an article on Southern writers, without hurting myself otherwise; but the candid truth is that I felt like yelling when I saw the thing--howling and screeching! Indeed I think that my belief in the invisible personality of a man has been largely forced by my thorough disgust with the visible personality. Schopenhauer says a beautiful thing about the former,--that the "I" is the dark point in consciousness,--just as the point of the retina where the sight-nerve enters is blind, and as the brain itself is without sensation, and the eye sees all but itself. I am not anxious to see my soul; but the fact of inability to see it encourages me to believe it is better than the thing called L. H.

I don't know that I wrote anything clever enough to be worth your using, but it is a pleasure you should think so. I can only suggest that the adoption of my poor notions would tend to make me selfish about such as I might think really good ones--I would keep them out of my letters, until they could get into print!?!