TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, June, 1899.
Dear Mitchell,—Your delightful letter is with me. I did not get through that examination work till Sunday morning—had about 300 compositions to look through: then I had nearly a day’s work packing and sending out prizes which I give myself every year—not for the best English (for that depends upon natural faculty altogether), but for the best thinking, which largely depends upon study and observation.
Lo! I am a “bloated bondholder.” I am “astonished” and don’t know what to say—except that I want to hug you! About the semi-annual meeting, though—fear I shall be far away then. Unless it be absolutely necessary, I don’t think I shall be able to come. Can’t I vote by letter, or telegraph? If you make out a form, I’ll vote everything that you want, just as you want it. (By the way, I might be able to come—in case I am not more than fifty miles off. Perhaps I can’t get to where I want to go.) We’ll take counsel together. Yet, you ought to know that I hate meetings of all kinds with hatred unspeakable.
So it was a Mrs.——, not a Mr.——. I am afraid of Scotch people. However, that was a nice letter. Perhaps I ought to send her a copy of “Ghostly Japan.” But one never can tell the exact consequences of yielding to these impulses of gratitude and sympathy. My friends are enough for me—they are as rare as they are few; rare like things from the uttermost coasts,—diamonds, emeralds and opals, amethysts, rubies, and topazes from the mines of Golconda. What more could a fellow want? All the rest is useless even when it is not sham—which it generally is.
Haven’t been idle either. Am working on “The Poetry and Beauty of Japanese Female Names.” Got all the common names I want into alphabetical order, and classified. Aristocratic names remain to be done,—an awful job; but I think that I shall manage it before I get away.
Perhaps I shall not finish that dream-work for years,—perhaps I might finish it in a week. Depends upon the Holy Ghost. By the way, a thing that I had never been able to finish since I began it six years ago, and left in a drawer, has suddenly come into my present scheme,—fits the place to a “T.” So it may be with other things. I leave them to develop themselves; and if I wait long enough, they always do.
I have heard from the Society of Authors. The American public is good to me. I have only a very small public in England yet. I fancy at present that I shall do well to become only an associate of the Authors’ Society,—pay the fees,—and wait for fame, in order to take the publishers privately recommended to me. We shall see.
What a tremendous, square, heavy, settled, immoveable, mountainous thing is the English reading public! The man who can bore into the basalt of that mass must have a diamond-drill. I tell you that I feel dreadfully minute,—microscopic,—when I merely read the names of the roll of the Authors’ Society. Love to you from all of us,
Lafcadio.