Lafcadio Hearn

by Nina H. Kennard

A parlour-maid of Mrs. Brenane's, Catherine by name, who had accompanied her from Ireland when the old lady came over to the Molyneux's house at Redhill, had married a man of the name of Delaney, and had settled in London, near the docks, where her husband was employed as a labourer. To them Hearn went when he left Ushaw. The Delaneys were in fairly comfortable circumstances, and Hearn's account in the letters—the only ones we have of his at this time—written to his school-friend, Mr. Achilles Daunt, of the grimness of the surroundings in which his lot was cast, of the nightly sounds of horror, of windows thrown violently open, or shattered into pieces, of shrieks of agony, cries of murder, and plunges in the river, are to be ascribed to his supersensitive and excitable imagination.

The artist cannot always be tied down to the strict letter of the law. It inspires a much deeper human interest to picture genius struggling against overwhelming odds—poverty-stricken, starving—than lazily and luxuriously floating down the current of life with unlimited champagne and chicken mayonnaise on board.

Stevenson was at this time supposed to be living like a "weevil in a biscuit," when his father was only too anxious to give him an allowance. Jimmy Whistler, only a little way up the river from Hearn, at Wapping, was said to be living on "cat's meat and cheese parings," when, if he had chosen to conform to the most elementary principles of business, he might have been in easy circumstances by the sale of his work.

As to direct penury, and Hearn's statement that he "was obliged to take refuge in the workhouse," if accurate it must have been brought about by his own improvident and intractable nature and invariable refusal to submit to discipline or restraint of any kind.

Hearn's memories of his youth were extremely vague. Referring to this period of his life later, in Japan, he tells a pupil that, though some of his relations were rich, none of them offered to pay to enable him to finish his education; and though brought up in a luxurious home, surrounded by western civilisation, he was obliged to educate himself in spite of overwhelming difficulties, and in consequence of the neglect of his relations, partly lost his sight, spent two years in bed, and was forced to become a servant.

This is a remarkable case of Celtic rebellion against the despotism of fact. He never was called upon to fill the duties of a servant until he arrived in America. He never could have spent two years in bed, for there are no two years unaccounted for, either at this time or later in Cincinnati. It would not have suited the policy of those ruling his destiny to leave him in a state of destitution. A certain allowance was probably sent to Catherine Delaney, as later in Cincinnati to Mr. Cullinane, sufficient for his keep and every-day expenses.

With a knowledge of Lafcadio's methods, we can imagine that any sum given to him would probably have run through his fingers within the first hour—his last farthing spent on the purchase of a book or curio that fascinated him in a shop window. Thus he might find himself miles away from home, obliged to obtain haphazard the means of supplying himself with food and shelter. Absence of mind was characteristic of all the Hearns, and unpunctuality, until he was drilled and disciplined by official life in Japan, one of Lafcadio's conspicuous failings. We can imagine the practical ex-parlourmaid keeping his meals waiting, during the first period of his stay, and gradually, when she found that no dependence could be placed on his movements, taking no further heed or trouble, and paying no attention to his coming and going.

At various periods during the course of his life, Hearn indulged in the experiment of working his brain at the expense of his body—sometimes to the extent of seriously undermining his health, and having to submit to the necessity of knocking off work until lost ground had been made up. He held the opinion that the owner of pure "horse health" never possessed the power of discerning "half lights." In its separation of the spiritual from the physical portion of existence, severe sickness was often invaluable to the sufferer by the revelation it bestows of the psychological under-currents of human existence. From the intuitive recognition of the terrible, but at the same time glorious fact, that the highest life can only be reached by subordinating physical to spiritual influences, separating the immaterial from the material self, lies all the history of asceticism and self-suppression as the most efficacious means of developing religious and intellectual power.

Fantastic were the experiments and vagaries he indulged in now and then, as when he tried to stay the pangs of hunger at Cincinnati by opium, or when, on his first arrival in Japan, he insisted on adopting a diet of rice and lotus roots, until he discovered that endeavouring to make the body but a vesture for the soul, means irritated nerves, weak eyesight and acute dyspepsia.

Now, even as a lad, began Hearn's life of loneliness and withdrawal from communion with his fellows. Buoyed up by an undefined instinct that he possessed power of some sort, biding his time, possessing his soul in silence, and wrapping a cloak of reserve about his internal hopes and aims, he gradually turned all his thoughts into one channel.