Then the philosophical fairy-tales might deal with personal experiences common to all men,—impulse and sorrow and loss and hope and discovery of the hollowness of things. But the inclination only is with me,—the pushing sensation,—the vague cloud-feeling of the thing. Can you help—suggest—define—develop by a flash or two? If you can, be sweet, and tell me; and the fairy-tales shall be dedicated unto you. Indeed they shall in any case, if I can ever write them. In haste, with love,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, November, 1897.
Dear McDonald,—I can only very poorly express my real feeling at the true goodness shown me, not only in coming out to my miserable little shanty, over that muddy chaos of street,—but in making me feel so free-and-easy with you, in the charming way you accepted the horrid attempt at entertainment, and in the hundred ways by which you showed your interest and sympathy. It was more than nice—that is all I can say.
But you set some mental machinery at work too. I believe almost your first remark was your desire that I should write fiction,—and I believe I understand why you wish this. It is because you wish me to make some profit out of my pen; and, being well informed on all business matters, you know, just as well as we literary men do, that fiction is about the only material that really pays. And now I am going, after a little thinking about the matter, to answer you in kind.
Why do not men like myself write more fiction? For two reasons. The first is because they have little knowledge of life, little savoir-vivre, to help them in the study of the artificial and complex growth of modern society. The second is that, unless very exceptionally situated, they are debarred, by this very want of knowledge and skill, from mixing with that life which alone can furnish the material. Society everywhere suspects them; common life repels them. They can divine, but they must have rare chances to do that. Men like the genius Kipling belong to the great life-struggle, understand it, reflect it, and the world worships them. But dreamers who talk about preëxistence, and who think differently from common-sense folk, are quite outside of social existence. But—I can do this: You know all about the foreign life of these parts,—the shadows and the lights. You can give me, perhaps, in the course of three years, suggestions for six little stories—based upon the relations between foreigners and Japanese in this era of Meiji: studies of the life of the “open ports.” I should need only real facts—not names or dates—real facts of beauty or pathos or tragedy. There are hosts of these. All the life of the open ports is not commonplace: there are heroisms and romances in it; and there is nothing in this world nearly as wonderful as life itself. All real life is a marvel—but in Japan a marvel that is hidden as much as possible—especially hidden from dangerous chatterers like Lafcadio Hearn.
Of course I could not make a book in a few months,—not in less than two or three years; but I could make one, with the mere help of hints from a man who knows. And if that book of short stories (six would be enough to make a book) should ever be so written, I should certainly make a dedication of it to M. McD. as prettily as I could.
There is an answer to your wish so far as I can make one for the present. I shall be down to see you the next month, probably, and we can chat over matters if you have time. And I shall take care not to come when you are too busy.