And she, doubtless, acknowledged there was something intangible and rare in the feeling she nourished for him that raised it above that of mere friendship. Whatever he had been, whatever he had done, she cared not; she only knew that he had genius far above any of those amongst whom her lines had hitherto been cast, and, with tremendous odds against him, was offering up burnt-offerings on the altar of the shrine where she, as a neophyte, also worshipped.
Miss Elizabeth Bisland was the daughter of a Louisiana landowner, ruined, like many others, in the war. With the idea of aiding her family by the proceeds of her pen, the young girl quitted the seclusion of her parents' house in the country and bravely entered the arena of journalistic work in New Orleans.
Hearn at that time was regularly working on the staff of the Times Democrat. The faithfulness of his translations from the French, and the beauty of the style of some of his contributions, had found an appreciative circle in the Crescent City, and a clique had been formed of what were known as "Hearn's admirers."
His translations from Gautier, Maupassant, "Stray Leaves from Strange Literature," all appeared in the columns of Page Baker's newspaper. He also, under the title of "Fantastics," contributed every now and then slight sketches inspired by his French prototypes. Dreams, he called them, of a tropical city, with one twin idea running through them all—love and death. They gave him the gratification of expressing a thought that cried out within his heart for utterance, and the pleasant fancy that a few kindred minds would dream over them as upon pellets of green hashisch.
One of these was inspired by Tennyson's verse—
"My heart would hear her and beat
Had I lain for a century dead;—
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red."
The sketch appeared apparently in the columns of the Times Democrat. There Miss Bisland saw it, and in the enthusiasm of her seventeen years, wrote an appreciative letter to the author. By chance the "Fantastic" was recovered from his later correspondence. Writing to Mitchell McDonald years afterwards in Japan, we find Hearn referring to the expression "Lentor Inexpressible." "I am going to change 'Lentor Inexpressible,' which you did not like. I send you a copy of the story in which I first used it—years and years ago. Don't return the thing—it has had its day. It belongs to the Period of Gush."
Mitchell McDonald, we imagine, obeyed his injunction, and did not return the "Fantastic," but laid it away amongst his papers, and so "A Dead Love" has been saved for re-publication. It certainly is crude enough to deserve the designation of belonging to the "Period of Gush," and is distinguished by all the weakness and none of the strength of the French Impressionist school.
The idea of the spirit conquering material obstacles, a longing for the unattainable, the exceptional in life and nature, to the extent even of continued sensibility after death, are phases of thought that permeate every line, and may be found in two of Gautier's stories translated by Hearn, and in several of Baudelaire's poems.