In consequence of hard work and exposure he fell seriously ill. She saved him almost from death, and while nursing him back to health they talked much of her early days and years of slavery.
His quixotic idea of legalising his connection with her surprised no one so much as the girl herself. It completely turned her head; she gave herself airs, became overbearing and quarrelsome, and Hearn found himself obliged to leave Cincinnati to escape from an impossible position.
After his death the woman made a claim upon his estate, and tried to assert her right in the American courts to the royalties on his books. The Enquirer had articles running through several issues in 1906 on the claim of Althea Foley, "who sued to secure Hearn's estate after his death." The courts decided against her on the ground that the laws of Ohio, in which state they both resided, did not recognise marriage between races. But, the court added, "there was no doubt he had gone through the ceremony of marriage with the woman Althea Foley, a mulatto, or, as she preferred to call herself, a Creole."
It made Hearn very indignant, later, when some one criticising his work called him a "decadent." Certainly at this time in Cincinnati it would have been impossible to defend him from the charge. The school of French writers who have been dubbed "decadents" and who exercised so great an influence on him were infected with a strange partiality for alien races and coloured women. Exotic oddness and strangeness, primitive impulses, as displayed in the quest of strange tongues and admiration of strange people, were a vital part of the impressionist creed, constituted, indeed, one of the most displeasing manifestations of their unwholesome opinions and fancies. Baudelaire boldly declared his preference for the women of black races. Most of Pierre Loti's earlier novels were but the histories of love affairs with women of "dusky races," either Eastern or Polynesian.
Hearn, as we have said before, was an exemplification of the theory of heredity. The fancy for mulattos, Creoles and orientals, which he displayed all his life, is most likely to be accounted for as an inheritance from his Arabian and oriental ancestors on his mother's side. He but took up the dropped threads of his barbaric ancestry.
All his life he preferred to mix in the outer confines of society; the "levee" at Cincinnati; the lower Creoles and mixed races at New Orleans; fishermen, gardeners, peasants, were chosen by preference as companions in Japan. He railed against civilisation. "The so-called improvements in civilisation have apparently resulted in making it impossible to see, hear, or find anything out. You are improving yourself out of the natural world. I want to get back amongst the monkeys and the parrots, under a violet sky, among green peaks, and an eternally lilac and luke-warm sea—where clothing is superfluous and reading too much of an exertion.... Civilisation is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery! Surely a palm two hundred feet high is a finer thing in the natural order than seventy times seven New Yorks." [11]
[11] "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Hearn was a born rebel, and every incident of his life hitherto had goaded him into further rebellion against all constituted authority. That a race should be trampled upon by one regarding itself as superior was a state of things that he could not contemplate without a protest, and by his action he protested in the most emphatic manner possible. He never took into consideration whether it was wise to do so or not. Later, when the turbulent spirit of youth had settled down to accept the discipline of social laws and conventions, he took a very different view of the racial question in the United States and confessed the want of comprehension he had displayed on the subject. Writing years afterwards to a pupil in Japan, he alludes to the unfortunate incident in Cincinnati. He resolved to take the part of some people who were looked down upon in the place where he lived. He thought that those who looked down upon them were morally wrong, so he went over to their side. Then the rest of the people stopped speaking to him, and he hated them. But he was then too young to understand. The trouble was really caused by moral questions far larger than those he had been arguing about.
Hearn was certainly correct in thinking that, from the point of view of the people amongst whom he was living, an attempt to legalise a union with a coloured woman was an unpardonable lapse from social law. Not only then, but for years afterwards, public opinion was strongly influenced against him in consequence of this lamentable incident. Even at the time of his death, in 1904, a perfect host of statements and distorted legends exaggerating all his lapses from conventional standards were raked up. Amongst other accusations, they declared that when in New Orleans he was the favoured admirer of Marie Levaux, known as "The Voodoo Queen."
Page Baker, the editor of the Times Democrat immediately came forward to defend Hearn from the charge. Referring to the Voodoo Queen, the article says: "All this wonderful tale is based upon the fact that Hearn, like every other newspaper man in New Orleans who thought there might be a story in it, entered into communication with a negro woman, who called herself 'Marie Levaux,' and pretended, falsely as was afterward shown, to know something of the mysteries of Voodooism.