What the Samurai maiden,—brought up in the seclusion of Matsue—may have thought of the grey-haired, odd-looking little Irishman of forty-four (a patriarchal age in Japan), who was offered to her as a husband, we know not. She accepted her fate, Japanese fashion, and as the years went by and she began to appreciate his gentlemanly breeding and chivalry, inherited as was hers from generations of well-bred ancestors, the fear and bewilderment with which he filled her during these first years of marriage, changed to a profound and true affection, indeed, to an almost reverential respect for the Gakusha (learned person) who kept the pot boiling so handsomely, and was run after by all the American and English tourists at Tokyo.
So far as we can judge now, Setsu Koizumi can never have had any of the exotic charm of the butterfly maidens of Kunisada, or the irresistible fascination ascribed to her countrywomen by foreign male visitors to Japan. The Izumo type is not a good-looking one,—the complexion darker and less fresh than that of the Tokyo women—but comely, with the comeliness of truth, common-sense and goodness she always must have been.
Tender and true, as her Yerbina, or personal, name, "Setsu," signifies, she had learned in self-denial and poverty the virtues of patience and self-restraint—a daughter of Japan—one of a type fast becoming extinct—who deemed it a fault to allow her personal trials to wound other hearts.
She may not have been obliged to submit to the trials of most Japanese wives, the whims and tyranny, for instance, of her father- and mother-in-law, or the drudgery to provide for, or wait upon a numerous Japanese household; but from many indications we know that her life sometimes was not by any means a bed of roses. Humorous, and at the same time pathetic, are her reminiscences of these first days of marriage, as related in later life.
"He was such an intense nature," she says, "and so completely absorbed in his work of writing that it made him appear strange and even outlandish in ordinary life. He even acknowledged himself that he must look like a madman."
During the course of his life, when undergoing any severe mental or physical strain, Hearn was subject to periods of hysterical trance, during which he lost consciousness of surrounding objects. There is a host of superstitions amongst the Japanese connected with trances or fainting fits. Each human being is supposed to possess two souls. When a person faints they believe that one soul is withdrawn from the body, and goes on all sorts of unknown and mysterious errands, while the other remains with the envelope to which it belongs; but when this takes place a man goes mad; mad people are those who have lost one of their souls. On first seeing her husband in this condition, the little woman was so terrified that she hastened to Nishida Sentaro to seek advice. "He always acted for us as middle-man in those Matsue days, and I confess I was afraid my husband might have gone crazy. However, I found soon afterwards that it was only the time of enthusiasm in thought and writing; and I began to admire him more on that account."
The calm and material comforts of domestic life gave Hearn, for a time, a more assured equilibrium, but these trances returned again with considerable frequency in later days.
Amenomori, his secretary at Tokyo, tells a story of waking one night and seeing a light in Hearn's study. He was afraid Hearn might be ill, and cautiously opened the door and peeped in. There he saw the little genius, absorbed in his work, standing at his high desk, his nose almost touching the paper on which he wrote. Leaf after leaf was covered with his small, delicate handwriting. After a while, Amenomori goes on, he held up his head, "and what did I see? It was not the Hearn I was familiar with; his face was mysteriously white; his eyes gleamed. He appeared like one in touch with some unearthly presence."
Many other peculiarities and idiosyncrasies used to cause his wife much perturbation of soul. "He had a rare sensibility of feeling," [21]she says, "also peculiar tastes." One of his peculiar tastes, apparently, was his love of cemeteries. She could not find out what he found so interesting in ancient epitaphs and verses. When at Kumamoto he told her that he had "found a pleasant place." When he offered to take her there, she found that it was through a dark path leading to a cemetery. He said, "Stop and listen. Do you hear the voices of the frogs and the Uguisu singing?" The poor little woman could only tremble at the dark and the eerieness.
[ [21] It is well to remember that Mrs. Hearn cannot speak or write a word of English; all her "Reminiscences" are transcribed for her by the Japanese poet, Yone Noguchi.