This series of small sketches is typical of the clarity of language and purity of thought that invariably distinguish Hearn's work; but it lacks the realism, the keenness of choses vues, so characteristic of his Japanese sketches. There is none of the haunting, moving tragedy and ghostliness, the spiritual imagination and introspection of "Kokoro" or the "Exotics." Though polished and scholarly, showing refinement in the use of words, the interest is remote and visionary, permeated here and there also with a certain amount of Celtic sentimentality, a "Tommy Moore" flavour, somewhat too saccharine in quality. The one, for instance, called "Boutimar" treats of a very hackneyed subject, the offering of the water of youth, and life without end, to Solomon, and the sage's refusal, because of the remembrance suggested by Boutimar that he would outlive children, friends and all whom he loved; therefore "Solomon, without reply, silently put out his arm and gave back the cup.... But upon the prophet-king's rich beard, besprinkled with powder of gold, there appeared another glitter as of clear dew,—the diamond dew of the heart, which is tears."
"Chinese Ghosts," though distinguished also by that soigneux flavour that gives a slightly artificial impression, holds far more the distinctive flavour of Hearn's genius. His own soul is written into the legend of "Pu the potter." "Convinced that a soul cannot be divided, Pu entered the flame, and yielded up his ghost in the embrace of the Spirit of the Furnace, giving his life for the life of his work,—his soul for the soul of his Vase."
By the publication of the "Letters from the Raven" we are enabled to push those to Krehbiel, published by Miss Bisland, into place, and assign fairly accurate dates to each of them. He tells Mr. Watkin that he was six months before finding a fixed residence. In August, 1878, he writes inviting him to come in the autumn to pay him a visit, and telling him of delightful rooms with five large windows opening on piazzas, shaded by banana-trees. This apparently is the house in St. Louis Street, which he describes to Krehbiel. Miss Bisland places it almost at the beginning of the series, but it must have been written at a considerably later period. How picturesque and vivid is his description! With the magic of his pen he conjures up the huge archway, with its rolling echoes, the courtyard surrounded by palm-trees, their dry leaves rustling in the wind, the broad stairway guarded by a hoary dog, his own sitting-room and study, "vast enough for a carnival ball," with its five windows and glass doors opening flush with the floor and rising to the ceiling.
Gautier, the artist to whom at one time Hearn pinned his faith, is said to have observed once to an admirer of his art: "I am only a man to whom the visible world is visible." So Lafcadio Hearn, though gifted with only half the eyesight of ordinary folk, was by the prescience of his genius enabled to see not only the visible world that the Frenchman saw, but an immaterial and spiritual world as well.
CHAPTER XI
LETTERS AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
"Writing to you as a friend, I write of my thoughts and fancies, of my wishes and disappointments, of my frailties and follies and failures and successes,—even as I would write to a brother. So that sometimes what might not seem strange in words, appears very strange upon paper."
Lafcadio Hearn's thoughts, aspirations and mode of life are revealed with almost daily minuteness during this period at New Orleans—indeed, for the rest of his life, by his interchange of letters with various friends. Those contained in the three volumes published by Miss Bisland (Mrs. Wetmore) are now indisputably placed in the first rank amongst the many series from eminent people that have been given to the world during the last half-century. It is apparent in every line that no idea of publicity actuated the writing of his outpourings; indeed, we imagine that nothing would have surprised Hearn more than the manner in which his letters have been discussed, quoted, criticised. They are simply the outcome of an impulse to unburden an extraordinarily imaginative and versatile brain of its cargo of opinions, views, prejudices, beliefs; to pour, as it were, into the listening ear of an intelligent and sympathetic friend the confessions of his own intellectual struggles, his doubts and despairs. Shy, reserved, oppressed in social daily intercourse by a sense of physical disabilities, with a pen in hand and a sheet of paper in front of him, he cast off all disquieting considerations and allowed the spiritual structure of emotion and thought to show itself in the nakedness of its humanity.