Dear Hendrick,—Verily I think I ought to be apologizing for my blues. But it is such a relief to write them betimes—when you are sure of a patient hearing. Besides, it may interest you to hear of a small professional scribbler’s ups and downs. I used only to pray for opportunity: if I could only get an audience! Now I have one—a small one. An offer of $1200 from a syndicate, which would make for me nearly $3000 here; and plenty of others. And I can’t write. That is, I can do nothing except what would lower the little reputation I have gained. In such a case the duty is plainly not to try, but to wait for the Holy Ghost,—or (as I am out of his domain) the coming of the gods. I am now in a period of mental drought, but have written half of a book that will probably be dedicated to E. H.,—or will certainly unless another incomplete book should be ready first, a book to be called perhaps “Thoughts about Feelings.”
I am quite uncertain, however, as to the realization of this latter book. Looking back through my life I find that, with the exception of West-Indian and a few New Orleans experiences, I remember nothing agreeable. It was a rule with me from boyhood to try to forget disagreeable things; and in trying to forget them I made no effort to remember the agreeable,—just because “a sorrow’s crown of sorrows is remembering happier things.” So the past is nearly a blank. Then another queer thing is my absolute ignorance of realities. Always having lived in hopes and imaginations, the smallest practical matters, that everybody should know, I don’t know anything about. Nothing, for example, about a boat, a horse, a farm, an orchard, a watch, a garden. Nothing about what a man ought to do under any possible circumstances. I know nothing but sensations and books,—and most of the sensations are not worth penning. I really ought to have become a monk or something of that kind. Still, I believe I have a new key to the explanation of sensations,—if I can find the incident to peg the essays upon,—the dummies for the new philosophical robes. So far the book of reveries consists of only two little chapters. The better part of my life might just as well never have been lived at all. I am only waking up in the hoariness of age, and my next birth will probably see me a mud-turtle or a serpent, or something else essentially torpid and speechless.
Of course, I can write and write and write; but the moment I begin to write for money, vanishes the little special colour, evaporates the small special flavour, which is ME. And I become nobody again; and the public wonders why it ever paid any attention to so commonplace a fool. So I must sit and wait for the gods.
Yet a little while, I shall be all hope and pride and confidence; and again a little while, up to my ears in the Slough of Despond. And the beautifully milled dollars and exquisitely engraved notes you talk of will stay in the pockets of practical people.
Lafcadio.
Afterthought
Dear Old Man,—Speaking on the subject of “Life”—have you read “Amiel’s Journal” (Journal Intime)? If not, I would advise you to, as its fine delicate analysis of things is in pure harmony with your own way of thinking, so far as generalities go. In it there is a paragraph about Germans, of precisely the same tenor as the paragraph in your letter; and there is an admirable analysis of “society,” with some severe but just (just at the time written) animadversions upon American society.
It seems to me, however, that neither Amiel nor anybody else has exactly told us what society means. Amiel comes very close to it. I think, however, the real truth would be more brutal.... Is not the charm (and its display) of womanly presence and power the real force? Because it is not really intellectual, this society. Intellectual societies are societies of artists, men of letters, philosophers, where absolute freedom of speech and action and dress are allowed. The polite society only delicately sniffs or nibbles at intellectual life, or else subordinates it to its fairy shows and transformation scenes. I don’t suppose for a moment that I am suggesting even the ghost of anything new,—but I wish only to suggest that I think (in view of all this) that nobody has ever, in English, dared to say what society really is as a system or display,—to cut boldly into the heart of things. I don’t mean to say it is shocking, or wrong, or anything of that sort. It is quite proper in the existing order of things, or else it wouldn’t be. But there are evolutional illustrations in it....
By the way, a Japanese friend tells me I have only one soul,—confirming the Oxford beast’s revelation. “Why?” I asked. “You have no patience. Those who have no patience have only one soul. I have four souls.” “How many souls can one have?” I enquired. “Nine,” he said. “Men who can make other men afraid of them, men of strong will: they have nine souls, or at least a great many.”