Shall I climb Fuji? Perhaps; but I know that at this blessed moment I could not do it. I am too soft now. Must harden up first in the sea; and then, please the gods, I’ll climb with you. The climb is simply horrid; but the view is a compensation.
I don’t know what to do with you—after that remark about Loti. Unless I can manage in the next three years to write something very extraordinary indeed, I fear you will be horribly disappointed some day. You should try to consider me as a tenth-rate author, until the literary world shall have fixed my place. And don’t for a moment imagine me modest in literary matters. I am Satanically proud—not modest at all. If I tell you that much of my work is very bad, I tell you so, not because I am modest, but because, as a professional writer, I can see bad execution where you would not see it unless I pointed it out to you. It is like an honest carpenter, who knows his trade, and will tell his customer: “That isn’t going to cost you much, because the work is bad. See! this is backed with cheap wood underneath! It looks all right only because you don’t know how we patch up these things.”
Ever most affectionately,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, April, 1898.
Dear McDonald,—Your letter came this morning (Sunday), and it rejoiced me to find that you are not yet in likelihood of being allowed to attend the Asiatic side of the smash; while, as you suggest, before you could join ... on the other side, the serious part of the campaign would be over. That torpedo squadron at Porto Rico is apparently stronger than any force of the same kind possessed by the U.S.; and although Northern seamanship must tell in a fight, machinery in itself is a formidable thing, even without anything more than mere pluck behind it. But just think how a literary narrative of a battle would sell in America! Wouldn’t L. B. & Co. make money!
How kind of you to send photo of Amenomori! (Yes; you returned the little one.) This will not fade, and is a decided improvement. I need scarcely tell you that out of a million Japanese heads, you could not find another like this. It represents the cream of the race at its intellectual best.
In writing hurriedly the other day, I forgot to answer your question about the Athenæum paper. Yes: the notice was hostile,—but not directly so; for a literary work the book was highly praised. The critic simply took the ground of denying that what I wrote about existed. I was braced with a missionary, and while the missionary’s book was accepted as unquestionable fact, mine was pronounced a volume from Laputa. The Saturday Review knew better than that.
As to the royalties given to Kipling, they are fancy rates, of course, and probably never twice the same. Publishers bid against each other for the right of issuing even a limited edition. Macmillan & Co. hold the ultimate right in all cases; but they do not often print the first edition. Jas. Lane Allen probably gets only ten per cent. He may get more; but not much more—there is no American to compare with Kipling in the market, except Henry James and Marion Crawford. Kipling probably outsells both together. James is too fine and delicate a writer—a psychological analogist of the most complex society—ever to become popular. In short, any writer’s chances of good terms, in England or America, must depend upon his popularity,—his general market value. Once that he makes a big success—that is, a sale of 20,000 copies of a book within a year and a half, suppose—he can get fancy terms for his next book.