Some Chinese Ghosts

by Lafcadio Hearn

  1856

  Charles Hearn has marriage to Rosa annulled on technicality (illiterate, she had not signed the contract), and marries Alicia Goslin Crawford the following year. (Mother later remarries and has four children.) Hearn is informally adopted by Sarah Brenane, his widowed great-aunt, and lives in her house in the prosperous Dublin suburb of Rathmines.

  1862

  On the advice of Sarah Brenane’s friend and financial adviser Henry Molyneux, Hearn is sent to the Institution Ecclésiastique at Yvetot, France, a Catholic boarding school near Rouen. Guy de Maupassant, who attended the school just ­after Hearn left, wrote that it “smelled of prayers the way a fish market smells of fish.”

  1863–67

  Attends St. Cuthbert’s, a Roman Catholic preparatory school, at Ushaw, near Durham, En­gland. Injured in playground incident, ­either accidentally by a knotted rope or intentionally by a classmate’s fist, and loses vision in left eye, later calling himself “the Raven” in honor of Poe. Sarah Brenane’s affections and financial affairs are increasingly transferred to Molyneux, who suffers business setback in 1867, and Hearn is removed from St. Cuthbert’s.

  1868

  Declared Brenane’s heir upon her death, Molyneux arranges to have Hearn sent to the home of a former maid of Mrs. Brenane’s in London, where he is miserable and poor. Reads Swinburne.

  1869–71

  Molyneux, determined to end his relations with Hearn, arranges to have him sent to the United States, where he is to seek assistance from Molyneux’s ­br­other-in-law in Cincinnati. Adopts the name “Lafcadio,” and finds intermittent work in New York ­before traveling on to Cincinnati, where Molyneux’s relatives refuse to help him. Lives in crushing poverty. “I was dropped moneyless on the pavement of an American city to ­begin life,” he later writes. Often slept in the street, etc.” Befriended by En­glish printer Henry Watkin, who gives him work. Begins writing for Cincinnati news­­papers in 1871.

  1872–73

  Becomes a regular visitor to the Cincinnati Public Library; reads Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Flaubert. Works on small news­paper, the Trade List, and as a proofreader for a small publisher. Begins romantic relationship with Alethea (“Mattie”) Foley, a former slave who works in the kitchen of the boardinghouse where he lives. Contributes first articles to Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, eventually becoming a daily reporter and writing on a wide range of subjects from Henry James to the occult; develops circle of friends among ­local news­papermen including Henry Edward Krehbiel, a ­police reporter and music critic for the Cincinnati Gazette.

  1874

  Marries Alethea, prob­ably on June 14, in spite of anti-miscegenation laws which make the marriage illegal in Ohio, and against the counsel of friends. Along with Mattie’s child from a previous relationship, they take up residence together. Collaborates with French-born artist Henry Farny on Ye Giglampz: A Weekly Illustrated Journal Devoted to Art, Literature, and Satire, which runs for nine issues.

  1875–76

  Fired from Daily Enquirer in August for “deplorable moral habits” ­after revelation of marriage. Threatens to commit suicide by jumping off Vine Street Bridge into Miami Canal. Hired by the Cincinnati Commercial, writes “Levee Life,” “Gibbeted,” and many ­other reports on city life.

  1877

  Separates from Alethea, never seeing her again. (She makes an unsuccessful claim on his estate ­after his death; her role in Hearn’s life is silently omitted or pointedly denied by early biographers.) In October leaves Cincinnati for New ­Orleans. Takes train to Memphis and learns river­boat is delayed. Depressed and short of money, ­finally arrives in New ­Orleans on the Thompson Dean in November. First lives at boarding house on Baronne Street. Writes 13 articles, mainly about New ­Orleans, for the Cincinnati Commercial ­under the pen-name “Ozias Midwinter” (a character in Wilkie Collins’ 1866 novel Armadale).

  1878

  Lives in dire poverty. Hired as assistant editor for New ­Orleans Daily City Item, a ­paper committed to political reform. Befriends New ­Orleans writer and civil rights activist George Washington Cable, whose story “Jean-ah Poquelin” he had read. Accompanies Cable in collecting Creole songs of French-speaking African-Americans in New ­Orleans: “but he has the advantage of me in ­being able to write music by ear.”

  1879

  Invests earnings from work on Item in a small eatery variously called “The 5 Cent Restaurant” or “The Hard Times Restaurant”; business partner leaves town with Hearn’s capital.

  1880

  Publishes in Item approximately 180 short unsigned satirical texts illustrated with his own woodblock prints, while also publishing series of “fantastics,” literary sketches inspired by French literature and based loosely on factual material. “Times are not good here,” he writes Krehbiel. “But it is ­better to live here in sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole State of Ohio.”

  1881

  Hired as literary editor and translator for newly formed New ­Orleans Times-Dem­ocrat. Works closely with ­brothers Page Baker, editor of the ­paper, and Marion Baker, literary editor. (Elizabeth B­island, Marion Baker’s assistant, later serves as Hearn’s biographer and compiler of his correspondence.) Tells Krehbiel that his “fantastics” have no purpose “­beyond the gratification of expressing a Thought which cries out within one’s heart for utterance, and the pleasant fancy that a few kindred minds will dream over them, as upon pellets of green hascheesch.”

  1882

  Meets Mark Twain in New ­Orleans, presumably through George Washington Cable, who later joins Twain on a lecture tour. Hearn’s ­m­other, who had remarried and had four more children, dies on December 12 at the National Mental Asylum at Corfu, where she had lived for ten years. Hearn’s translation of six stories by Théophile Gautier published as One of Cleopatra’s Nights.

  1883

  At Cable’s instigation, writes “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances” for Century Magazine. Encouraged by Cable, accompanies illustrator J. O. Davidson to ­island settlement in Lake Borgne, east of New ­Orleans, aboard Susy B, a boat owned by the Times-Dem­ocrat. Submits report on unknown village of Filipino fishermen and alligator hunters to Harper’s Weekly, published as “Saint Malo” in March 31 issue. Late spring, travels among Cajun settlements on Bayou Teche west of New ­Orleans. Collaboration with Cable in collecting Creole songs comes to an end. Complains of Cable’s Chris­tian faith: “­Don’t try to conceive how I could sympathize with Cable! ­Because I never sympathized with him at all. His awful faith—which to me rep­res­ents an undeveloped mental structure—gives a neutral tint to his whole life among us. . . . But Cable is more liberal-minded than his creed; he has also rare analytical powers on a small scale.”

  1884

  August, vacations for the first time in Grand Isle (which he describes the following year as “an old-fashioned, drowsy, free-and-easy Creole ­watering-place”), in the Gulf of Mexico southwest of New ­Orleans. Around this time, Cable tells Hearn the story of the storm in 1856 that destroyed L’Ile Dernière, or Last ­Island, west of Grand Isle, the inspiration for Chita. “I was very nearly in love,” he tells Krehbiel of his encounter with a young woman of Basque descent, “not quite sure whether I am not a ­little in love still,—but I never told her so. It is so strange to find one’s self face to face with a beauty that existed in the Tertiary epoch,—300,000 years ago.” Inspired by exotic writings of Pierre Loti, considers publishing “a tiny book of purely original sketches”; publishes one of these, “Torn Letters,” a first attempt at the style of Chita, in Times-Dem­ocrat of September 14. Stray Leaves from Strange Literature published, a collection of folk tales and legends adapted from various traditions including Egyptian, Arabic, Polynesian, and Finnish.

  1885

  January to April, covers the New ­Orleans World’s Fair (the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition) for Harper’s Weekl
y and Harper’s Bazar, including several articles on the Japanese exhibit. With Cable, helps compile Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New ­Orleans, which includes “Scenes of Cable’s Romances,” for visitors to the fair. Times-Dem­ocrat leads attacks on Cable ­after publication of his “The Freedman’s Case in Equity,” which calls for end to discrimination against African-American citizens. Travels to Florida, collecting material for articles. Writes W. D. O’Connor in July: “Fiction seems to be the only certain road to the publishers’ hearts”; considers basing fiction on “ethnographic and anthropologic readings.” Ghombo Zhebes: A ­Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs, Selected from Six Creole Dialects published, along with La Cuisine Creole, a collection of recipes with commentary.

  1886

  Works on Chita, and sends first section to Harper’s Magazine in October. Reads works of Herbert Spencer and discusses Spencer’s ideas with young physician Rudolph Matas. Spencer “has completely converted me away from all ’isms, or sympathies with ’isms.”

  1887

  Resigns from Times-Dem­ocrat in May. Visits Henry Watkin in Cincinnati on way to New York to meet with editors. Stays with Krehbiel, now music critic for New York Tribune, in New York and spends time “polishing and repolishing phrase ­after phrase” of Chita. Looks up Elizabeth B­island, who has moved from New ­Orleans to New York to ­become editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Writes Matas: “I met Miss B­island again. She has expanded mentally and physically into one of the most superb women you could wish to converse with.” In July, travels to West Indies aboard the Barracouta, a “long, narrow, graceful steel steamer,” and visits St. Croix, St. Kitts, Monserrat, Dominica, and Martinique. Stays in Martinique ­until his return to New York in September, when Henry Alden at Harper’s buys his essay “A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics.” Guest of Alden’s in Metuchen, New Jersey. On September 28, writes Matas: “I am ­going back to the Tropics, prob­ably for many years . . . I find myself able to abandon journalism, with all its pettiness, cowardices, selfishnesses, forever.” Buys a camera and new clothes; in October, returns to Martinique aboard the Barracouta. Takes rooms first in city of St. Pierre, then, ­after outbreak of smallpox, rents cottage in small mountain town of Morne Rouge, over­looking “wild surges of purple and green mountains, all fissured and jagged, and stormy-­looking: a volcanic sea of peaks and craters.” Tells B­island he loves Martinique “as if it were a ­human ­being.” Some Chinese Ghosts, dedicated to Krehbiel, published. Hearn later describes it as the “early work of a man who tried to ­under­stand the Far East from books—and ­couldn’t.”

  1888

  Returning to St. Pierre in late January, learns that Alden has rejected his novella “Lys,” written during the pre­vious two months, about the shock of New York on a Creole girl from the tropics. Comments on difficulty of finding inexpensive rooms during Carnival: “I have been happy to secure one even in a rather retired street—so steep that it is ­really dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one’s balance and tumble right across the town.” Begins collecting voodoo tales from neighbors. Tells Alden in April that he has been “seriously ill,” prob­ably with typhoid. Begins sending nonfiction sketches to Alden of what will ­become Two Years in the French West Indies. Makes summer trips into the interior of Martini­que. At Grande Anse (now Lorrain), visits a plantation and hears a story, supposedly based on fact, of a slave girl entrusted with a white child during the 1848 slave rebellion, which ­becomes the basis for his short novel Youma.

  1889

  With lifting of quarantine imposed during smallpox epidemic, decides to leave Martinique. Short novel Chita: A Memory of Last ­Island published, ­after first appearing in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (April 1888). On May 8, arrives in New York. Writes Matas: “It seemed like tearing my heart out to leave Martinique.” Travels to Philadelphia by train and stays at the home of Dr. George M. Gould, an ophthalmologist and admirer of Some Chinese Ghosts, with whom he had corresponded from Martinique. Gould examines Hearn’s damaged eye. Completes Youma in Philadelphia and writes “Karma,” a short story. Returns to New York in October. Attends dinner at the Union League Club; is introduced to William Dean Howells. Relationship with Elizabeth B­island intensifies; tells Gould in November, “When I see Miss B­island I feel out of the world for a while.” Becomes friendly with Ellwood Hendrick, a young chemical engineer; later corresponds with him extensively.

  1890

  Receives ­letter from Daniel James Hearn, the younger ­brother he has never met, now a farmer in Ohio; they exchange recollections of their parents. Inspired by Percival Lowell’s Soul of the Far East, which he describes to Gould as “an astounding book,—a godlike book,” makes arrange­ments to travel to Japan, with commission from Harper and ­­Br­­others for books and magazine articles. With Harper’s illustrator C. D. Weldon, takes Canadian Pacific Railway via Montreal to Vancouver, where they board Canadian Pacific steamer Abyssinia. Arrives in Yokohama on April 12. Tours the city and its surroundings; writes “A Winter Journey to Japan” to pay for his trip, but soon quarrels with Harper’s, giving up much needed potential earnings. Works briefly as a private tutor. Through efforts of Basil Hall Chamberlain, professor of Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial University, hired as teacher at Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in Matsue, on coast of the Japan Sea in western Japan. Youma: The Story of a West Indian Slave, Two Years in the French West Indies, and translation of Anatole France’s The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard published.

  1891

  Falls ill during the winter. Consents to a marriage suggested and arranged by Nishida Sentaro, a senior colleague, with Koizumi Setsu, 22-year-old daughter of a ­local samurai family. The newlyweds rent a traditional Japanese house. Accepts invitation, unprecedented for a European, to visit Izumo Taisha, a major Shinto shrine. Late in the year, accepts teaching position in Kumamoto, on the southern ­island of Kyushu, at the Fifth Higher Middle School, where he remains three years as the only foreign teacher. Complains to Chamberlain that Kuma­moto, in contrast to Matsue, has “no ­­poetry—no courtesy—no myths—no traditions—no superstitions.” Through Chamberlain, hires translators, including Okakura Yoshi­saburo, to provide him with literal versions of Japanese ­poems and folktales.

  1892

  Travels with wife during the summer to ­little-visited Oki ­Islands, spending a month there. Writes while in transit, on August 6: “But with what hideous rapidity Japan is modernizing, ­after all!—not in costume, or architecture, or habit, but in heart and manner. The emotional nature of the race is changing. Will it ever ­become beautiful again?”

  1893

  Finishes Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, his first book on Japanese subjects. Reports considerable savings. Birth of son on November 17, named Leopold Kazuo Koizumi (known as Kazuo), in Kumamoto.

  1894

  Writes Chamberlain on September 11: “We are all tired of Kumamoto.” In October, resigns from teaching post and moves with family to Kobe, where he works as an editorial writer for the Kobe Chronicle, an En­glish-language news­paper (contributions include “The Labour Problem in America” and “The Race-Problem in America”). Suffers from eyestrain. Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan published.

  1895

  Becomes Japanese citizen, taking the name Koizumi Yakumo: “‘Eight clouds’ is the meaning of ‘Yakumo,’ and is the first part of the most ancient ­poem extant in the Japanese language,” he writes. Koizumi is wife’s family name. In December, at Chamberlain’s instigation, is ­offered Chair of En­glish Language and Literature at Tokyo Imperial University. Describes Tokyo as “the most horrible place in Japan.” Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan published.

  1896

  In September, ­begins teaching En­glish literature at Tokyo Imperial University. Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life published, which includes the stories “At a Rail­way Station” and “A Conser
vative.” Second son, Iwao, born.

  1897

  Spends summer with family in Yaizu, a modest fishing village, ­beginning an intermittent annual tradition; they also climb Mt. Fuji. Leaves Houghton Mifflin, his American publisher, alleging it invaded his privacy by publishing, without his consent, a biographical sketch as an advertisement. Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East published.

  1898

  On April 1, meets the Harvard-educated scholar of Japa­nese art Ernest Fenollosa, formerly of Tokyo Imperial University, and his wife, the writer Mary McNeil Fenollosa, who gives him germ of story of the “Mountain of Skulls,” published as “Fragment” in In Ghostly Japan. Writes Fenollosa: “I have been meditating, and ­after the meditation I came to the conclusion not to visit your charming new home again—not at least ­before the year 1900.” Takes family on summer vacation to seaside near Enoshima. A visitor writes, “Lafcadio, a good swimmer, makes somersaults in the ­water to show us his skill.” Exotics and Retrospectives published.

  1899

  In Ghostly Japan published.

  1900

  Dr. Toyama Shoichi, Hearn’s friend and patron at Tokyo Imperial University, and a supporter of foreign teachers, dies. Attends Toyama’s funeral. Shadowings published.

  1901

  Giant cedars destroyed at temple complex of Kobudera, ­behind Hearn’s house in Ushigome, where he liked to take walks. New abbot at Kobudera accelerates tree-cutting for ­­profit. Manacled inmates from nearby prison parade past Hearn’s house. A Japanese Miscellany published.

  1902

  In a ­letter, Hearn refers to changes in modern Japan as “ugly and sad.” Disgusted with modernizing tendencies in Tokyo, Hearns have a Japanese-style house built for them in partly rural neighborhood of Nishi-Okubo, known as the Gardeners’ Quarter. Wife, Setsu, manages all building arrangements. “My home,” Hearn writes, “will ­always have its atmo­sphere of thousands of years ago.” Hearn avoids company and writes intensely, sometimes through the night, rarely leaving the house. Finishes stories collected posthumously in Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) and Romance of the Milky Way (1905). Learns of the destruction of St. Pierre, in Martinique, by eruption of Mt. Pelée on May 8: “Never again will sun or moon shine upon the streets of that city;—never again will its ways be trodden;—never again will its gardens bloom—except in dreams.” In July, anxious about his situation in Japan and hoping to see his son educated in the West, asks Elizabeth B­island (now Wetmore) to see if any positions might be available for him in the United States. In November, receives ­offer from Cornell University, apparently arranged by Wetmore, to deliver lecture series on Japanese civilization. At end of year, suffers bronchitis and hemorrhage from burst blood vessel in throat. Writes Henry Watkin, “I’m getting down the shady side of the hill,—and the horizon ­before me is ­already darkening, and the winds blowing out of it, cold.” Kotto; ­Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs, published by Macmillan.