L. Hearn.
Regards to all the boys.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1878.
My dear Krehbiel,—I received yours, with the kind wishes of Mrs. Krehbiel, which afforded me more pleasure than I can tell you,—also the Golden Hours with your instructive article on the history of the piano. It occurs to me that when completed your musical essays would form a delightful little volume, and ought certainly to find a first-class publisher. I hope you will entertain the suggestion, if it has not already occurred to you. I do not know very much about musical literature; but I fancy that no work in the English tongue has been published of a character so admirably suited to give young people a sound knowledge of the romantic history of music instruments as your essays would constitute, if shaped into a volume. The closing observations of your essay, markedly original and somewhat startling, were very entertaining. I have not yet returned your manuscript, because Robinson is devouring and digesting that Chinese play. He takes a great interest in what you write.
I send you, not without some qualms of conscience, a copy of our little journal containing a few personal remarks, written with the idea of making you known here in musical circles. I have several apologies to make in regard to the same. Firstly, the Item is only a poor little sheet, in which I am not able to obtain space sufficient to do you or your art labour justice; secondly, I beg of you to remember that if I have spoken too extravagantly from a strictly newspaper standpoint, it will not be taken malicious advantage of by anybody, as the modest Item goes no farther north than St. Louis.
The Creole rhymes I sent you were unintelligible chiefly because they were written phonetically after a fashion which I hold to be an abomination. The author, Adrien Rouquette, is the last living Indian missionary of the South,—the last of the Blackrobe Fathers, and is known to the Choctaws by the name of Charitah-Ima. You may find him mentioned in the American Encyclopædia published by the firm of Lippincott & Co. There is nothing very remarkable about his poetry, except its eccentricity. The “Chant d’un jeune Créole” was simply a personal compliment,—the author gives something of a sketch of his own life in it. It was published in Le Propagateur, a French Catholic paper, for the purpose of attracting my attention, as the old man wanted to see me, and thought the paper might fall under my observation. The other, the “Moqueur-Chanteur,”—as it ought to have been spelled,—or "Mocking Singer,” otherwise the mocking-bird, has some pretty bits of onomatopœia. (This dreamy, sunny State, with its mighty forests of cedar and pine, and its groves of giant cypress, is the natural home of the mocking-bird.) These bits of Creole rhyming were adapted to the airs of some old Creole songs, and the music will, perhaps, be the most interesting part of them.
I am writing you a detailed account of the Creoles of Louisiana, and their blending with Creole emigrants from the Canaries, Martinique, and San Domingo; but it is a subject of great latitude, and I can only outline it for you. Their characteristics offer an interesting topic, and the bastard offspring of the miscegenated French and African, or Spanish and African, dialects called Creole offer pretty peculiarities worth a volume. I will try to give you an entertaining sketch of the subject. I must tell you, however, that Creole music is mostly negro music, although often remodelled by French composers. There could neither have been Creole patois nor Creole melodies but for the French and Spanish blooded slaves of Louisiana and the Antilles. The melancholy, quavering beauty and weirdness of the negro chant are lightened by the French influence, or subdued and deepened by the Spanish.
Yes, I did send you that song as something queer. I had only hoped that the music would own the charming naiveté of the words; but I have been disappointed. But you must grant the song is pretty and has a queer simplicity of sentiment. Save it for the words. (Alas! Mélusine—according to information I have just received from Christern of New York—is dead. Poor, dear, darling Mélusine! I sincerely mourn for her with archæological and philological lament.) L’Orient is in Brittany, and the chant is that of a Breton fisher village. That it should be melancholy is not surprising; but that it should be melancholy without weirdness or sweetness is lamentable. Mélusine for 1877 had a large collection of Breton songs, with music; and I think I shall avail myself of Christern’s offer to get it. I want it for the legends; you will want, I am sure, to peep at the music. Your criticism about the resemblance of the melody to the Irish keening wail does not surprise me, although it disappointed me; for I believe the Breton peasantry are of Celtic origin. Your last letter strengthened a strange fancy that has come to me at intervals since my familiarity with the Chinese physiognomy,—namely, that there are such strong similarities between the Mongolian and certain types of the Irish face that one is inclined to suspect a far-distant origin of the Celts in the East. The Erse and the Gaelic tongues, you know, are very similar in construction, also the modern Welsh. I have heard them all, and met Irish people able to comprehend both Welsh and Gaelic from the resemblance to the Erse. I suppose you have lots of Welsh music, the music of the Bards, some of which is said to have had a Druidic origin. Tell me if you have ever come across any Scandinavian music—the terrible melody of the Berserker songs, and the Runic chants, so awfully potent to charm; the Raven song of the Sweyn maidens to which they wove the magic banner; the death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok, or the songs of the warlocks and Norse priests; the many sword-songs sung by the Vikings, etc. I suppose you remember Longfellow’s adaptation of the Heimskringla legend:—