To go to America with some sense of security would be mental medicine; and any success that I could achieve there would make a good impression here with friends. It would mean larger experience. It would mean also an opportunity to enter some society that would protect liberal opinions. I have not said much as to the pleasure I could look forward to—that goes without saying. But I cannot be rash on the money-question, or trust to my luck as in old days. To use a Japanese expression, “my body no longer belongs to me,”—and I have had one physical warning.
Anxiety is a poison; and I do not know how much more of it I could stand. It was a friend’s treachery that broke me up recently: I worked hard against the pain—only to find my mouth full of blood. With a boy on my hands, in a far-away city, and no certainties, I don’t know that being brave would serve me much—the bodily machine has been so much strained here.
With a clear certainty ahead of being able to make some money, I could go, do good things, and return to Japan to write more books,—perhaps to receive justice also. In a few years more my boy will be strong enough to study abroad.
Very true what you say—no one can save him but himself, and unfortunately, though the oldest, he is my Benjamin. My second boy is at school, captain of his class, trusted to protect smaller boys. My eldest, taught only at home, between his father’s knees, is everything that a girl might be, that a man should not be,—except as to bodily strength,—sensitive, loving pretty things, hurt by a word, always meditating about something—yet not showing any great capacity. I taught him to swim, and make him practise gymnastics every day; but the spirit of him is altogether too gentle. A being entirely innocent of evil—what chance for him in such a world as Japan? Do you know that terribly pathetic poem of Robert Bridges’—“Pater Filio”?
That reminds me to tell you of some obligations. You are never tired of telling me that I have been able to give you some literary pleasure. How many things did you not teach me during those evening chats in New York? It was you that first introduced me to the genius of Rudyard Kipling; and I have ever since remained a fervent worshipper. It was you who taught me to see the beauty of FitzGerald’s translation, by quoting for me the stanza about the Moving Finger. And it was you who made me understand the extraordinary quaint charm of Ingelow’s “High Tide”—since expounded to many a Japanese literary class....
But this is too long a letter from
Lafcadio Hearn.