(Letter from St. Pierre, July 30, 1887.)
I am not at all sure of my literary future,—I do not mean pecuniarily, for I never allow that question to seriously bother me: to write simply to make money is to be a d——d fraud, so long as one can aim at higher things. But I do not feel the same impulses and inspirations and power to create;—I have been passing through a sort of crisis,—out of enthusiasm into reality and I do not feel so mentally strong as I ought. The climate had much to do with it in the beginning, causing a serious weakness of memory;—that is now passed; but I feel as if mon âme avait perdu ses ailes. Perhaps something healthier and stronger may come of it; but in the meanwhile I suffer from great disquietude, and occasional very black ideas; and praise sounds to me like a malicious joke, because I feel that my work has been damnably bad. The fact that I know it has been bad, encourages me to believe I may do better, and find confidence in myself.
I have enough MS. for a volume of French colonial sketches, and do not think I will be able to do much more with Martinique for the present; but I also have accumulated material out of which something will probably grow. I would now like to attempt some Spanish studies.
Northern air will do me good, though I do not like the idea of living in it. But when, after all this stupid, brutal, never-varying heat, you steam North, and the constellations change, and the moon stands up on her feet instead of lying on her back lasciviously,—and the first grand whiff of cold air comes like the advent of a Ghost,—Lord! how one's brain suddenly clears and thrills into working order. It is like a new soul breathed into your being through the nostrils—after the Creator's fashion of animating his Adam of clay.
Perhaps you think I have been a poor correspondent. You can scarcely imagine the difficulties of maintaining a friendly chat by letter while trying to do literary work here. Most people who attempt literature here either give it up after a short time, or go to the graveyard: there are a few giants,—like Dr. Rufz de Lavison (who never finished his Études nevertheless), Davey the historian; Dessalles who suddenly disappeared leaving his history incomplete. But I fear I am no giant. At 2 or 2.30 p.m. if you try to write, your head feels as if a heated feather pillow had been stuffed into your skull. To write at all one must utilize the morning;—that is given to make the pot boil: one can write letters only at intervals, paragraph by paragraph, or between solid chapters of downright wearing-out work.
Nevertheless, one learns to love this land so much as to be quite willing to abandon anything and everything to live in it. As in the old Sunday-school hymn, "only man is vile:" nature and Woman are unspeakably sweet.
I suppose I will not be able to meet you in New York this fall: you will be too busy. Next summer it will be possible, I hope. Perhaps you will have the pleasure of a little book or two from me during the cold weather: I will revise things in New York. It has been a horrible agony to have my stuff printed without being able to see the proofs, and full of mistakes. "Chita" has been a great literary success—contrary to expectation. I find success is not decided by the press, nor by first effect on the public: opinions of literary men count much more, and these have been better than I imagined they could be. (1887)
Well, I am caught! The tropics have me, for better or worse, so long as I live. Life in a great northern city again would be a horror insupportable. Yet I have had great pain here. I have been four months without a cent of money where nobody would trust me: you know what that means, if you have ever had a rough-and-tough year or two: otherwise you could not imagine it. I have had disillusions in number. I find worst of all, there is no inspiration in the tropics,—no poetry, no aspiration, no self-sacrifice, no human effort. Now, that I can go where I like, do as I please—for I have won the fight after all,—I still prefer one year of Martinique to a thousand years of New York. What is it? Am I demoralized; or am I simply better informed than before? I don't really know. (1887)
New York, September 29, 1887.[12]
[ [12] Written during a brief stay in New York, whither he had gone in the fall of 1887.
Dear Friend Matas:—I am going back to the tropics,—probably for many years. My venture has been more successful than I ever hoped; and I find myself able to abandon journalism, with all its pettinesses, cowardices, and selfishnesses, forever. I am able hereafter to devote myself to what you always said was my forte: the study of tropical Nature—God's Nature,—violent, splendid, nude, and pure. I never hoped for such fortune. It has come unasked. I am almost afraid to think it is true. I am afraid to be happy!
c/o Dr. George M. Gould,
119 South Seventeenth St.,
Philadelphia, June 5, 1889.Dear Friend Matas:—Your letter of March 21 only reached me to-day, June 5th; but made me very glad to get it. I have been back from the West Indies about three weeks—do not know how long I shall stay. It seemed like tearing my heart out to leave Martinique; and though I am now in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, among dear friends, and with the splendid spectacle before me of man's grandest efforts—not a wild cyclone of electricity and iron like New York, but a great quiet peace—the tropical Nature with all its memories haunts me perpetually,—draws my thought back again over the azure sea and under the turquoise sky to the great palms and the volcanic hills and the beautiful brown women. I know I shall have to go back to the tropics sooner or later.
The effect of the climate, as you know, is deadly to mental work. Physically, however, I felt better in it,—less nervous than I ever was before. Only one's will to work is broken down; and it is better only to collect material there to work up elsewhere. That sort of work I am busy at just now. I have a signed contract for publication of "Chita" in book-form; and the result of my two years' absence will be forthcoming in a volume of larger size.
You know Philadelphia, I suppose, the beautiful city; and I suppose you know that physicians here form the leaders of, and give the tone to, social life. It seems to me but just that they should,—representing the highest intellectual rank of civilization when they are really worthy of the profession.
... As for other people wondering what has become of me; that is just what I want. I do not care to have any one know what I am doing till it is done.... I have happily got over a sort of crisis, however, which isolated me more than I would have liked to be isolated from the world at large: the distrust of myself.
Handwriting of Hearn in 1889. face page 63.
Concerning the value of Hearn's Martinique work, I am permitted to quote from a letter written to him on May 24, 1890, by the late Edmund C. Stedman,—and there could be no better judge and critic:
"I will not leave without telling you how much I am your debtor for the fascinating copious record of your life in the Windward Islands, and for your 'Youma'—both of which I take with me to 'Kelp Rock'—and which we shall know by heart ere long. The 'Two Years' came when I was 'moving' in New York, etc.,—so that books and letters, unacknowledged, perforce have piled up on my table. I am grateful for your remembrance and your gifts. No book could please me more than your 'Two Years.' Those Islands are my Hesperides—I had begun a series of poems and lyrics, cast in the Caribees, but your prose poems put mine to shame—and I am glad to listen to your music and leave my own unsung."