I am sending you Knapp’s book, as I promised, and that volume of mine which you have not read. Excuse the shabbiness of the volumes. I think Dr. Hall knows much about the curious dialect which I have used,—the Creole. Please say to him for me what you feel ought to be said.
I won’t write any more now—and I settle down forthwith to work with fresh vim and hope.
With more than grateful remembrance,
Affectionately yours,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, January, 1898.
Dear McDonald,—I have both of your kindest letters. It gave me no small pleasure to find that you liked “Youma:” you will not like it less knowing that the story is substantially true. You can see the ruins of the old house in the Quartier du Fort if you ever visit Saint-Pierre, and perhaps meet my old friend Arnoux, a survivor of the time. The girl really died under the heroic conditions described—refusing the help of the blacks, and the ladder. Of course I may have idealized her, but not her act. The incident of the serpent occurred also; but the heroine was a different person,—a plantation girl, celebrated by the historian Rufz de Lavison. I wrote the story under wretched circumstances in Martinique, near the scenes described, and under the cross with the black Christ. As for the “Sylvestre Bonnard” I believe I told you that that was translated in about ten days and published in two weeks from the time of beginning—at the wish of the Harpers. Price $115, if I remember rightly,—and no commission on sales,—but the work suffers in consequence of the haste.
How to answer your kind suggestion about pulling me “out of my shell,” I don’t well know. I like to be out of the shell—but much of that kind of thing could only result in the blue devils. After seeing men like you and the other Guardsman,—the dear doctor,—one is beset with a foolish wish to get back into the world which produced you both, back to the U. S. A.,—out of Government grind, out of the unspeakable abomination and dulness and selfishness and stupidity of mere officialism. And I can’t afford that feeling often—not yet. I have too many little butterfly-lives to love and take care of. Some day, I know, I must get back for a time. Meanwhile I must face the enemy and stand the music.