Lafcadio Hearn Part 26

"Sense with keenest edge unused, Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire; Lovely feet as yet unbruised, On the ways of dark desire; Sweetest hope that lookest smiling O'er the wilderness defiling!

"Why such beauty, to be blighted, By the swarm of foul destruction?

Why such innocence delighted, When sin stalks to thy seduction?

All the litanies e'er chanted, Shall not keep thy faith undaunted.

"I have pray'd the Sainted Morning To unclasp her hands to hold thee; From resignful Eve's adorning Stol'n a robe of peace to enfold thee; With all charms of man's contriving Arm'd thee for thy lonely striving.

"Me too once unthinking Nature, --Whence Love's timeless mockery took me,-- Fas.h.i.+on'd so divine a creature, Yes, and like a beast forsook me.

I forgave, but tell the measure, Of her crime in thee, my treasure."

It seems as if he were haunted by memories of his own thwarted childhood and s.h.i.+pwrecked youth. If possible he wished to guard and protect his Benjamin from the pitfalls that had beset his path, knowing that the same dangers might prevail in Kazuo's case as in his own, and that there might be no one to protect and guard him.

A charming piece of prose, from which I give a few extracts, was found amongst Hearn's papers after his death. The ma.n.u.script, lent to me by Mrs. Atkinson, lies by my hand as I write; it is ent.i.tled "Fear."

"An old, old sea-wall, stretching between two boundless levels, green and blue. Everything is steeped in white sun; and I am standing on the wall. Along its broad and gra.s.s-grown top a boy is running towards me,--running in sandals of wood,--the sea-breeze blowing aside the long sleeves of his robe as he runs.... With what sudden incommunicable pang do I watch the gracious little figure leaping in the light.... A delicate boy, with the blended charm of two races.... And how softly vivid all things under this milky radiance,--the smiling child-face with lips apart,--the twinkle of the light quick feet,--the shadows of gra.s.ses and of little stones!...

"But quickly as he runs, the child will come no nearer to me,--the slim brown hand will never cling to mine. For this light is the light of a j.a.panese sun that set long years ago.... Never, dearest!--never shall we meet,--not even when the stars are dead!"

By the exercise of a considerable amount of diplomacy Mrs. Wetmore succeeded at this time in inducing Jacob Gould Schurmann, president of Cornell University, to enter into an arrangement with Hearn for a series of lectures on j.a.pan.

As of old, she believed him capable of conquering Fate, in spite of the despotism of fact as exemplified in the loss of eyesight and broken health; she felt sure he could interest an American audience by the material he had to offer, and the scholarly way in which he knew how to utilise it.

His answer to the suggestion of the lectures is characteristic:--

"O fairy! what have you dared to say? I am quite sure that I do _not_ know anything about j.a.panese art, or literature, or ethnology, or politics, or history. (You did not say 'politics' or 'history,' however, and that seems to be what is wanted.) But perhaps you know _what_ I know better than I myself know,--or perhaps you can give me to eat a Fairy Apple of Knowledge. At present I have no acquaintance even with the j.a.panese language: I cannot read a j.a.panese newspaper: and I have learned only enough, even of the _kana_, to write a letter home. I cannot lie--to my Fairy; therefore it is essential that I make the following declaration:--"

Then he repeats the statement made in the preface of "j.a.pan, an Interpretation." For these lectures prepared with so much industry and care were destined ultimately to go to the making of that beautiful and lucid exposition of the history and thought of a great people.

The world has to be grateful to President Schurmann for withdrawing from his contract, and cancelling the offer made to Hearn for the delivery of lectures at the university.

The excuse that illness had broken out at Cornell was hardly a sufficient one. There is little doubt that unfavourable reports of Hearn's state of health, and doubts as to the possibility of his being able to lecture in public, had drifted to Cornell, and the president, acting for the best interests of his university, did not feel justified in abiding by his proposals.

With that extraordinary mental elasticity that characterised him all his life, Hearn made the best of the situation, and set to work, polis.h.i.+ng and repolis.h.i.+ng his twenty-two lectures until they reached the high level of style that distinguishes "j.a.pan, an Interpretation." His courage was the more extraordinary as, filled with the idea that he was at last going to America, he had gone into every detail of meeting his friend. "I would go straight to your Palace of Fairy before going elsewhere," he writes to Mrs. Wetmore, "only to see you again--even for a moment--and to hear you speak in some one of the myriad voices would be such a memory for me, and you would let me 'walk about gently touching things.'..." Then in another letter comes a sigh of regret, and as it were farewell. "But your gifts, O Faery Queen have faded away, even as in the Song ... and I am also fading away."

After the failure of his projected visit to America, a suggestion was made by the University of London that he should give a series of lectures there. But here was the "Ah-ness" of things. Had Hearn's health permitted he would probably have been in England in 1905, where he would have been received with honour. The j.a.panese had fought Russia and beaten her. People became wildly enthusiastic about j.a.pan: the libraries were besieged with inquiries for Hearn's books,--just at the eleventh hour, when he had become a name, he died!

All his life his dream had been to be independent, to be able to travel.

Referring to a gentleman who was in j.a.pan, he once said, "I envy him his independence. Think of being able to live where one pleases, n.o.body's servant,--able to choose one's own studies and friends and books."

The offer of an easy post was made to Hearn about this time as professor of English in the Waseda University founded by Count Ok.u.ma. He closed with it at once, thus putting an end to all negotiations with the University of London.

His youngest child, Setsu-ko, was born this year, and all idea of leaving j.a.pan was henceforth abandoned.

In his last letter to Mrs. Wetmore, dated September, 1904--the month in which he died--he touches on the dedication he had made to her in his book, "A j.a.panese Miscellany." To the last the same sympathy and understanding reigned between them. Patiently she exhorted, comforted.

Her wise counsel and advice soothed his torn nerves and aching heart to the end. So this affection, untouched by the moth and rust of worldly intercourse, went down with him "into the dust of death."

Slowly but surely the years with their chequered story were drawing to an end. The sum of endeavour was complete, the secrets Death had in its keeping were there for the solving of this ardent, industrious spirit.

Many accounts have been published of Hearn's last hours, too many some of his friends in j.a.pan think. From all of them we glean the same impression--a calm heroic bearing towards the final mystery, a fine consideration for others, the thought of the future of his wife and children, triumphing over suffering and death.

He always rose before six. "On the morning of the 26th of September, he was smoking in his library," his wife tells us. "When I went in to say my morning greeting, 'Ohayo gozaimasu,' he seemed to be fallen in deep thought, then he said, 'It's verily strange.' I asked him what was strange, and he said, 'I dreamed an extraordinary dream last night, I made a long travel, but here I am now smoking in the library of our house at Nis.h.i.+ Okubo. Life and the world are strange.'

"'Was it in the Western country?' I asked again. 'Oh, no, it was neither in the Western country nor j.a.pan, but the strangest land,' he said."

While writing, Hearn had a habit of breaking off suddenly and walking up and down the library or along the verandah facing the garden. The day he died he stopped and looked into his wife's room next the library. In her _tokonoma_ she had just hung up a j.a.panese painting representing a moonlight scene. "Oh, what a lovely picture," he exclaimed. "I wish I could go in my dreams to such a country as that." Sad to think he had pa.s.sed into the country of dreams and moonlight before the next twelve hours were over!

Two or three days before his death one of the girls called O Saki, the daughter of Otokichi, of Yaidzu, found a cherry-blossom on a cherry-tree in the garden,--not much to look at--but it was a blossom blooming out of season, in the direction of his library; she told her fellow-servant Hana, who in turn repeated it to Mrs. Koizumi.

"I could not help telling him; he came out of the library and gazed at it for some moments, 'The flower must have been thinking that Spring is here for the weather is so warm and lovely. It is strange and beautiful, but will soon die under the approaching cold.'

"You may call it superst.i.tion if you will, but I cannot help thinking that the _Kaerizaki_, or bloom, returned out of season, appeared to bid farewell to Hearn as it was his beloved tree...."

In a letter written to Mrs. Atkinson, some months after Lafcadio's death, Mrs. Koizumi, thus describes his last hours: "On the evening of September 26th, after supper, he conversed with us pleasantly, and as he was about going to his room, a sudden aching attacked his heart. The pain lasted only some twenty minutes. After walking to and fro, he wanted to lie down; with his hands on his breast he lay very calm in bed, but in a few minutes after, as if feeling no pain at all, with a little smile about his mouth, he ceased to be a man of this side of the world. I could not believe that he died, so sudden was his fate."

CHAPTER XXVI HIS FUNERAL

"If these tendencies which make individuals and races belong, as they seem to do, to the life of the Cosmos, what strange possibilities are in order. Every life must have its eternal records in the Universal life,--every thought of good or ill or aspiration,--and the Buddhistic Karma would be a scientific, not a theoretical doctrine; all about us the thoughts of the dead, and the life of countless dead worlds would be forever acting invisibly on us."

Perhaps of all the incongruous, paradoxical incidents connected with Lafcadio Hearn's memory, none is more incongruous or paradoxical than his funeral.

It is believed by many that Yak.u.mo Koizumi (Lafcadio Hearn) died a Buddhist, though he himself explicitly declared that he subscribed to no religious formula, and detested all ecclesiasticism. When he faced the last great problem, as we see by his essay ent.i.tled "Ultimate Questions"

in the volume published after his death, his thoughts soared beyond any boundary line or limitation, set by dogmatists or theologians; all fanciful ideas of Nirvana, or Metempsychosis or ancestor wors.h.i.+p, were swept away, he was but an ent.i.ty freed from superst.i.tious and religious palliatives, facing the awful idea of infinite s.p.a.ce.

Yet--Nemesis of his own instability, revealing also how absolutely alien to his sphere of thought were the surroundings in which he had spent his latter years--at his death his body was taken possession of by priests, who prepared it for burial, sat beside it until the obsequies were over, and conducted the burial service with every fantastic accomplishment of Buddhist ceremonial, in a Buddhist temple!

A detailed account is given of the funeral by an American lady, Miss Margaret Emerson. She arrived in j.a.pan imbued with an intense admiration for Hearn's writings; and made every endeavour to meet him or hear him lecture, when one morning she saw his death announced in a Yokohama paper, accompanied by a brief notice stating that the funeral procession would start from his residence, 266, Nis.h.i.+ Okubo, at half-past one on September 29th, and would proceed to the Jitom Kobduera Temple in Ichigaya, where the Buddhist service was to be held.

It was one of those luminous j.a.panese days that had so often inspired the little artist's pen. Not even the filament of a cloud veiled the pale azure of the sky. Only the solitary cone of Fuji-yama stood out, a "ghostly apparition" between land and sea. Everywhere was life, and hope, and joy; the air full of the voices and laughter of little children, flying kites or playing with their b.a.l.l.s, amidst a flutter of shadows and flicker of sunrays, as the tawdry procession filed out under the relentless light of the afternoon sun.

He, whose idea it would have been to slip out of life unheralded and unnoticed was carried to his last resting-place preceded by a priest ringing a bell, men carrying poles, from which hung streamers of paper _gohei_; others bearing lanterns and others again wreaths, and huge bouquets of asters and chrysanthemums, while two boys in rickshas carried little cages containing birds that were to be released on the grave, symbols of the soul released from its earthly prison. Borne, palanquin-wise, upon the shoulders of six men, of the caste whose office it is to dig graves and a.s.sist at funerals, was the coffin, containing what had been the earthly envelope of that marvellous combination of good and evil tendencies, the soul of Lafcadio Hearn.

While the temple bell tolled with m.u.f.fled beat, the procession filed into the old Temple of Jitom Kobduera. The mourners divided into two groups, Hearn's wife, who, robed in white, had followed with her little daughter in a ricksha, entering by the left wing of the temple, while the male chief mourners, consisting of Kazuo, Lafcadio's eldest son, Tanabe (one of his former students at Matsue), and several university professors, went to the right.

Then followed all the elaborate ceremonial of the Buddhist burial service. The eight Buddhist priests dressed in magnificent vestments chanted the chant of the Chapter of Kwannon in the Hokkekyo.

After the addresses to the soul of the dead, the chief mourner rose and led forward Hearn's eldest son; together they knelt before the hea.r.s.e, touching their foreheads to the ground, and placed some grains of incense upon the little brazier burning between the candles. The wife, when they had retired, stepped forward, leading a little boy of seven, in a sailor suit with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and white braid. She also unwrapped some grains of incense from some tissue paper, and placed them upon the brazier. Then, after a considerable amount of bowing and chanting, the ceremony ended and the congregation left the church.

Outside it was intimated to the a.s.sembled congregation that the body would be taken next day to the Zos.h.i.+gaya Temple for the final rites of cremation in the presence of the family. Then the university students were dismissed by the professors with a few words, and the ceremony of the day was at an end.

CHAPTER X VISIT TO j.a.pAN

"Every dwelling in which a thinker lives certainly acquires a sort of soul. There are Lares and Penates more subtle than those of the antique world; these make the peace and rest of a home."