I shall not thank you for my happy two days with you, and all the beautiful things that you “so beautifully did.” But I felt as if the sky had become more blue and the grass more green than could really be the case. You know what that means.
With hope to see you soon again,
Lafcadio.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, May, 1899.
Dear Mitchell,—I am still, o’ nights, holding imaginary conversations with you from the windows of a waiting train,—or listening to wonderful stories from a delightful phantom-consul. In other words, the impressions of my last days in Yokohama are still haunting me, and—I fear—creating too much desire after the flesh-pots of Egypt. But in spite of these moral and intellectual debaucheries, I have been doing fair work,—and have in hand a ghost-story of a new and pathetically penetrating kind.
Speaking of ghosts, the design for the cover is to be plum-blossoms against a grey-blue sky. Can’t say this is appropriate—the plum-blossom being the moral emblem of female virtue. A lotus in a golden lake,—a willow in rainy darkness,—would be better. But so long as I am not consulted, exact appropriateness cannot be expected; besides, it would be lost upon the public.
I’ve been thinking over all your plans and hopes for me, and I am going to blast them unmercifully. I am quite convinced that you can do nothing at all, until the day when I make a hit on my own spontaneous account. Then you can do anything. For the interval, I must be very careful not to seem anxious to want attention of any sort, and do better work than I ever did before. You will only be able to find me a literary agent—or something of that sort,—and to talk nicely about me to personal friends.
Give my most grateful, most sincere, most unchangeable regards to Dr. Bedloe. I think more on his subject than I am going to put on paper just now.
Affectionately,