Fantastics and other Fancies/Introduction

by Lafcadio Hearn

INTRODUCTION

"I am conscious they are only trivial," wrote Lafcadio Hearn from New Orleans in 1880 to his friend H. E. Krehbiel, speaking of the weird little sketches he was publishing from time to time in the columns of the Daily Item, the New Orleans newspaper which first gave him employment in the city where he spent the ten years from 1877 to 1887.

"But I fancy," he goes on, "that the idea of the fantastics is artistic. They are my impressions of the strange life of New Orleans. They are dreams of a tropical city. There is one twin-idea running through them all—Love and Death. And these figures embody the story of life here, as it impresses me. I hope to be able to take a trip to Mexico in the summer just to obtain literary material, sun-paint, tropical color, etc. There are tropical lilies which are venomous, but they are more beautiful than the frail and icy-white lilies of the North. Tell me if you received a fantastic founded upon the story of Ponce de Leon. I think I sent it in my last letter. I have not written any fantastics since except one—inspired by Tennyson's fancy,—

"'My heart would hear her and beat,
Had it lain for a century dead—
Would start and tremble under her feet—
And blossom in purple and red.'"

It was this "Fantastic," published first in the Item on October 21, 1880, and later re-written in more ornate style and published in the Times-Democrat on April 6, 1884, under the title of "L' Amour après la Mort," which is the only one of the weird little sketches that has appeared in book form, outside of those which he himself republished in Stray Leaves from Strange Literatures, and Some Chinese Ghosts.

For it was this one which he sent to a friend with the deprecatory criticism that it "belonged to the Period of Gush" and the request "to burn or tear it up after reading." He had merely enclosed it to show how and when he had first used the phrase "lentor inexpressible" to which his friend had objected.

"Fortunately his correspondent—as did most of those to whom he wrote—treasured everything in his handwriting," says his biographer, Mrs. Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore, "and the fragment which bore—my impression is—the title of 'A Dead Love' (the clipping lacks the caption) remains to give an example of some of the work that bears the flaws of his 'prentice hand, before he used his tools with the assured skill of a master." And she quotes the strange, fanciful little sketch in full, with the comment: "To his own, and perhaps other middle-aged taste, 'A Dead Love' may seem negligible, but to those still young enough, as he himself then was, to credit passion with a potency not only to survive 'the gradual furnace of the world,' but even to blossom in the dust of graves, this stigmatization as 'Gush' will seem as unfeeling as always does to the young the dry and sapless wisdom of granddams. To them any version of the Orphic myth is tinglingly credible. Yearningly desirous that the brief flower of life may never fade, such a cry finds an echo in the very roots of their inexperienced hearts. The smouldering ardor of its style, which a chastened judgment rejected, was perhaps less faulty than its author believed it to be in later years."

"It was to my juvenile admiration for this particular bit of work," she goes on, "that I owed the privilege of meeting Lafcadio Heam in the winter of 1882, and of laying the foundation of a close friendship which lasted without a break until the day of his death."

His linking of love with death in this and the other "Fantastics" was in full accord with the sombre atmosphere of the trebly stricken city to which he had come—a city with a glorious and a joyous past, but just then ruined by three horrors:—recent war, misrule under the carpet-baggers, and oft-recurring pestilence. He had come expecting much from a semi-tropical environment. He found sorrow and trouble and a wasted land; and his mood was soon in unison with the disastrous elements around him. His letter to his friend Watkin when he first came to this smitten Paradise shows how strong the impression was: "When I saw it first—sunrise over Louisiana—the tears sprang to my eyes. It was like young death—a dead bride crowned with orange flowers—a dead face that asked for a kiss. I cannot say how fair and rich and beautiful this dead South is. It has fascinated me. I have resolved to live in it; I could not leave it for that chill and damp Northern life again." From the files of the Item and the Times-Democrat over a score of these "Fantastics" have been gathered, and with them certain other fanciful little sketches that seem worth preserving, though they do not deal so directly with the mystic "twin-idea of Love and Death."

In his sympathetic Introduction to Ream's Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist, Mr. Ferris Greenslet deplores the loss of that collection of these "Fantastics" made by Hearn himself as one section of the book he evidently planned to publish under the title Ephemera, or Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist. Says Mr. Greenslet:—

"Apparently it was Hearn's intention to add to the 'Floridian Reveries' a little collection of 'Fantastics,' with such savory titles as 'Aïda,' 'The Devil's Carbuncle,' 'A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair,' 'The Fool and Venus,' etc.^[1] "This group, however, is, unfortunately, lost. From the notebook labeled upon its cover 'Fantastics' many leaves have been cut, and there remains only the paper on 'Arabian Women.'"

But for the solitary copy of the files of the Item, preserved in the office of that paper, most of these earliest bits of original fantasy wrought by the shabby, eccentric young journalist, whose passion for exquisite words was so incomprehensible to the other "newspaper boys," would have been wholly lost.

"The modest Item goes no farther than St, Louis," wrote Hearn to Krehbiel; and it was for this little two-page paper, too insignificant at that time to be preserved even in the city archives or in the public libraries, that he wrote most of the "tales of Love and Death" reproduced in this volume. Twenty-nine out of the thirty-odd are to be found only, so far as we know, in the brittle yellow pages of bound volumes of the City Item, from June, 1878, to December, 1881, to which we have been given access through the courtesy of the present owners of the New Orleans Item. The other six, some of which were rearrangements and paraphrases of earlier "Fantastics," appeared in the Times-Democrat, of which several nearly complete files exist in libraries.

Among these thirty-five brief but vitally imaginative sketches several are far superior to "L'Amour après la Mort."

The "Fantastics" proper and the "Other Fancies" have been grouped indiscriminately in chronological order, though differing greatly in spirit and in excellence of style. "The Little Red Kitten" and "At the Cemetery" are less labored in point of diction; but they are charming in their simplicity and unaffected tenderness. In the earlier of these little pictures his sympathy with our "poor brothers "—in this case "sisters "—of the animal world, from first to last a striking trait in his character, is beautifully expressed. There is delicate humor, too, as well as pathos, in the sketch. In the latter we have the glow of his feeling for the sorrow of a child, and the spring of his wonderful imagination which a few handfuls of sand not native to the spot evoke. In neither is there the least trace of the weird which is in so large a degree characteristic of most of the others. Slight as they are in texture, they seem to me to rise far above the more subtle and fanciful tales in the strength and beauty of simple truth to nature—to the best that was in his own nature.

But the others, notably "The Black Cupid," "The Undying One," "Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner," "The Fountain of Gold," "The Gypsy's Story," are not to be undervalued. There is a power of vision, an imaginative magnificence, a weird melody of word-music in them that grips the mind of the reader as in a vise.

"The Fountain of Gold" was later reproduced in the form of "A Tropical Intermezzo," recently given to a wider public in the pages of Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist. It is interesting to compare the first sketch with the finished picture. The earlier work is less dramatic, less convincing, less artistic, though full of a charm of its own. The whole design is transmuted into something immensely effective by the simple device of antiquating the language of him who tells the tale.

In a less degree the same thing may be remarked in the comparison of "A Dead Love," written for the Item, and "L'Amour après la Mort," contributed to the Times-Democrat.

In "The Tale of a Fan" may be traced, it seems to me, the germ of what he later expanded or meant to expand into "A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair," which has not been found.

But it is not alone the charm that clings about all that is weird and fanciful that gives value to this early work of Hearn's. It sheds rich light upon one phase of his development and forms an essential part of his biography; and it helps to furnish proof, along with much else of varying form and excellence, that he put forth a vast deal of literary effort in the years of his stay in New Orleans before his engagement with the Times-Democrat.

The extent and value of his work as literary editor of the Item has been wholly ignored by his biographers and critics. This is due largely to the fact that the matter he selected for publication in his earlier literary career was drawn from the Times-Democrat. But to those who have gone carefully over the files of the Item it is evident that he did far more original work for that paper than for the other. His forte was supposed by the editors of the Times-Democrat to be translation, and, with the exception of some striking editorials, his work for that paper was mostly translation. Even the Stray Leaves from Strange Literatures and Some Chinese Ghosts belong to that category.

Besides the " Fantastics," he wrote for the Item many editorials on a variety of subjects and many book reviews, dramatic criticisms, and translations both from the French and the Spanish, as well as Creole sketches and certain fanciful squibs illustrated with quaint original designs distinctly akin to those that appear in Letters from the Raven.

But unquestionably his most remarkable contributions to the Item were the "Fantastics."

From a hint given him by a traveler's tale, by a trivial street incident, by a couplet of verse, or a carven cameo in an antique shop, by an old legend, or a few grains of sand, his genius was able to create a series of vivid and mystical visions, more real to him and to his readers than the political contests or the personal gossip which fill the surrounding columns of print.

To discover these vibrant bits of poesy in their commonplace setting is like finding rare and glorious orchids in the midst of the crowfoots and black-eyed Susans that crowd the banquettes and gutters' edges of our New Orleans streets.

"He hated the routine work, and was really quite lazy about it," testifies Colonel John W. Fairfax, former owner of the Item, and Hearn's first New Orleans employer and friend. At the age of seventy-two this genial old gentleman recalls many incidents of his association with the eccentric young literary editor who for three years and a half aided him and Mark F. Bigney in the task of filling the columns of the unpretentious little paper which he had purchased from the printers and tramp journalists who were its original owners—for the Item was started on a coöperative, profit-sharing basis.

"Hearn was really quite lazy about his regular work," Colonel Fairfax insists. "We had to prod him up all the time—stick pins in him, so to speak. But when he would write one of his own little fanciful things, out of his own head—dreams—he was always dreaming—why, then he would work like mad. And people always noticed those little things of his, somehow, for they were truly lovely, wonderful. 'Fantastics' he called them."

It was Colonel Fairfax who deserves the credit of "discovering" Hearn in New Orleans, when he applied, shabby and half-starved, at the Item office for a job, just after he had written to his friend Watkin, June 14, 1878 : "Have been here seven months and never made one cent in the city. No possible prospect of doing anything in this town now or within twenty-five years."

But his next letter (undated) says—and it is evident that the impression he had made had secured him more than he had asked for: "The day after I wrote you, I got a position (without asking for it) as assistant editor on the Item, at a salary considerably smaller than that I received on the Commercial, but large enough to enable me to save half of it."

And the old gentleman appears still to regard the Hearn he recalls with the sort of half-admiring, half-contemptuous, wholly marveling affection which a fine healthy turkey-cock would feel for the "ugly duckling" just beginning to reveal himself of the breed of swans.

Apparently he and Bigney allowed Hearn considerable latitude in his choice and treatment of subject. The three years of his work in their employ show bolder and more varied editorial comment, as well as five or six times as many "Fantastics" as are to be found in the six years of his work under the Bakers, and prove that the quality of his work was already fine enough to justify Page Baker's choice of him for a place on the staff of "the new literary venture."

How these strange little blossoms of Hearn's genius attracted the admiration of lovers of beauty and won him fame and friends among professional men and scholars is told most vividly in the words of Dr. Rudolph Matas, now a surgeon of international reputation, who was Hearn's friend and early foresaw his fame.

"In those days," says he, "I was not so busy as I am now, and had more time to read the books I enjoyed, and to spend long hours in talk with Hearn.

"It was in the early eighties, I remember, that I knew him first, Whitney, of the Times-Democrat, was a friend of mine, and I asked him one day: 'Who writes those wonderful things—translations, weird sketches, and remarkable editorials—in your paper?' And he told me, 'A queer little chap, very shy—but I'll manage for you to meet him.'

"I became editor of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in 1883, and it must have been shortly before this that I first met Hearn. He was astonished to find that I knew him so well—but then, you see, I had been reading these 'Fantastics' and his wonderful book-reviews and translations, and his editorials on all sorts of unusual subjects, for a long time.

"He often came to me to get information about medical points which he needed in some of his work. He was deeply interested in Arabian studies at that time, and I was able to give him some curious facts about the practice of medicine among the Arabs, which happened to be exactly what he was seeking. Not only did he read every book on Arabia which he could find, but he actually practiced the Arabic script, and he used to write me fantastic notes, addressing me as if I had been an Arab chief.

"His capacity for reading swiftly—for getting the heart out of a book—was amazing. While others read sentences, he read paragraphs, chapters—in the time it would take an ordinary reader to finish a chapter, he would have read the whole book. And this in spite of his defective vision. With his one great near-sighted eye roving over the page, he seemed to absorb the meaning of the author—to reach his thought and divine his message with incredible rapidity. He knew books so well—knew the habits of thought of their writers, the mechanics of literature. His power of analysis was intuitive. Swiftly as he read, it would be found on questioning him afterward that nothing worth while had been overlooked, and he could refer back and find any passage unerringly.

"Both in taste and temperament he was morbid, and in many respects abnormal—in the great development of his genius in certain directions, and also in his limitations and deficiencies in other lines. His nature towered like a cloud-topping mountain on one side, while on others it was not only undeveloped—it was a cavity! I understood this better, perhaps, than others of his friends, knowing as I did the pathology of such natures, and for that reason our intercourse was singularly free and candid, for Hearn revealed himself to me with a frankness and unconventionality which would have startled another. I never judged him by conventional standards. I listened to the brilliant, erratic, intemperate outpourings of his mind, aware of his eccentricities without allowing them to blind me to the beauty and value of his really marvelous nature. For example, he would bitterly denounce his enemies—or fancied enemies—for he had an obsession of persecution—in language that was frightful to listen to—inventing unheard-of tortures for those whom he deemed plotters against him. Yet in reality he was as gentle and as tender-hearted as a woman—and as passionately affectionate. But there was an almost feminine jealousy in his nature, too, and a sensitiveness that was exaggerated to a degree that caused him untold suffering. He was singularly and unaffectedly modest about his work—curiously anxious to know the real opinion of those whose judgment he valued, on any work which he had done, while impatient of flattery or 'lionizing.' Yet with all his modesty he had, even in those days of his first successes, a high and proud respect for his work. He was too good a critic not to know his value; and he consistently refused to cheapen it by allowing it to appear in any second-rate medium—I mean, any of his literary work, as distinct from the journalistic matter he did for his daily bread. Nor would he lower himself by criticizing any book or poem which he did not consider worthy of his opinion. Thus he was obliged, in spite of his kind nature, which impelled him to do anything which a friend might ask, to refuse to criticize books of inferior worth, and he was very firm and dignified about such refusals. He would not debase his pen by using it on inferior subjects.

"At the time when I knew him best, he was already highly esteemed by many who appreciated his great gifts, while others regarded him with some jealousy and would gladly have seen him put down. From the first I recognized his genius so clearly that he used to laugh at me for my faith in his future fame. For I would often predict that he would be known to future generations as one of the great writers of the century, though it was easy to foresee that he would not receive full recognition in his life-time.

"And though he used to smile at my enthusiasm, he himself felt, I am convinced, the same certainty as to the quality of his gift, the ultimate fame that Fate held for him. It was this that made him regard his work with a reverent humility, and it was this that accounted in some degree for his extraordinary shyness, which made him shrink from being lionized or exploited by those who, at that time, would have been glad enough to entertain him and make much of him, for he had already begun to be quite an important literary person in the circles here which cared for such matters.

"But Hearn fled from social attentions as from the plague. He was by nature suspicious and he loathed flattery and pretense. "His sense of literary and artistic values was singularly sure, and it has always seemed to me that it was intuitive—a sort of instinctive feeling for beauty and truth.

"When he became acquainted with the work of Herbert Spencer,—through the enthusiasm of his friend Ernest Crosby for that philosopher and for the Darwinian theory of evolution, which we were all discussing with deep interest at that time—he used that thinker's philosophy as a foundation upon which to base his marvelous speculations as to the ultimate development of the race and the infinite truths of the universe. I used to listen in wonder while he talked by the hour along these lines, weaving the most beautiful and imaginative visions of what might be. For his theory of the universe was essentially literary rather than philosophical."

It was to Dr. Matas that "Chita" was dedicated, not only as a token of the warm admiration and affection which the sensitive soul of Hearn felt for the broad-minded young physician, but as an acknowledgment of the help Dr. Matas had given him in gathering the material for the setting of the story. The physician's cosmopolitan rearing and his scattered practice among French, Spanish, and even Filipino settlers in the region about Grand' Isle enabled him to give Hearn in each instance the appropriate phraseology in the dialect of the people he was writing about.

Some of the "Other Fancies" are noteworthy for special reasons. In "A River Reverie" one gets an odd glimpse of Mark Twain reflected in the personality of the dream-haunted Irish-Greek, who handles the visit of the humorist in so unjournalistic a way. How ruthlessly his recollections of the old river-captain would be excised by the copy-reader of the modern newspaper!

In several of these sketches Hearn gives a picture of the horrors of yellow fever which shows even more clearly than his letters how vivid was the impression made on him by that summer of 1878, when he passed through the epidemic with only an attack of the dengue, a mild form of the tropical plague.

Others of these sketches show the influence of contact with Spanish friends and acquaintances, and the strong longing for the tropics, which seems to have lasted all his life.

"Aïda" is, of course, merely the story of the well-known opera by Verdi. Hearn wrote for the Item, during the opera season of 1880, brief outlines like this of the stories of several of the operas played at the French Opera House that winter: this one is included in this volume only because it is mentioned among the "Fantastics " in the list given in Dr. George Gould's book, Concerning Lafcadio Hearn. "Hiouen-Thsang" is included for the same reason, as it is not strictly a "Fantastic."

"The Devil's Carbuncle," besides being a translation, is not a "Fantastic," according to Hearn's definition of the term: it is not a story of love and death; it is a story of greed and death.

"The Post-Office" is much more breezy and out-of-doors than any of the "Fantastics," and does not properly belong with them; but it is so charming a sketch of his visit to Grand' Isle, the place which gave him the material for his first successful original story, "Chita," that it seems worth while to reproduce it.

It has been almost a commonplace, with writers treating of Hearn's development, to date from this visit the beginnings of his interest in far-away lands. But they mistake in assigning a late date for his delight in the tropics and his longing for Japan. His articles in the Item years before go to show that from the first it was almost an instinct with him to yearn for glimpses of the Orient and the Spanish Main. Throughout the volume of the Item for 1879 the column headed "Odds and Ends" reveals his interest in Spanish-American countries. It is generally shown in translated citations or quotations from La Raza Latina.

In finding these cameo-like studies buried in the pages of the newspapers of a generation ago, and in identifying them beyond question as Hearn's, I have been aided by Mr. John S. Kendall and by my daughter, Ethel Hutson, who have been for some years gathering traces of Hearn's journalistic activities in New Orleans. To Mr. C. G. Stith, of the New Orleans Item, we are indebted for the finding of the first two or three of the "Fantastics" in that paper, after we had located Hearn's work in the Times-Democrat.

To one who has studied his way of expressing himself in his imaginative writings the internal evidence would be quite enough to prove that these "Fantastics" were woven in the brain-cells of Lafcadio Hearn. But in addition to this we have the avowal of the editor-in-chief of the Item, elicited by the praise of the Claiborne Guardian.^[2]

The author named them only "Fantastics." We have given to each its separate title, as indicated by the most striking feature in the story. To the "Other Fancies," which we have included in the collection, he gave the titles under which they now appear, and some of them he signed.

Charles Woodward Hutson.

1. Among the papers held by Dr. Gould is a memorandum of some of the "Fantastics," thus numbered:—
   1. "Aïda."
   2. Hiouen-Thsang.
   3. El Vomito.
   4. The Devil's Carbuncle.
   5. A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair.
   6. The Clock.
   7. The Fool and Venus.
   8. The Stranger. Two of these—"Aida" and "Hiouen-Thsang"—were published under those titles. Some of the others we think we have identified among the pieces entitled sim- ply "Fantastics" at the time of their publication. "The Fool and Venus" may have been meant for what we have called "Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner." "The Clock" we have not found. }}
2. In the issue of Sunday evening, September 19, 1880, appears this excerpt, with the editor's comment:—

   " FANTASTICS
   ________
   "Claiborne Guardian.
   

   "We do not remember to have ever read a series of more brilliant articles than those which occasionally appear under the above heading in that bright little paper The City Item. The writer, with a perfect command of the language, unites a vivid imagination. His fancy is as exuberant as the growth of tropical flowers, and is as pleasing as glowing and fascinating. We always turn to the editorial page for 'Fantastics' when we receive the Item. Would it be out of place to inquire who this rare genius is? It can't be that grave and dignified gentleman, M. F. Bigney. We have read many excellent sketches from his pen, but never anything like these pieces. Who is the writer that adds another to the many attractions of our prosperous and worthy exchange?"

   "We gladly comply," replies the Item editorially, "with the request of our appreciative Claiborne contemporary. The writer of 'Fantastics' is Mr. Lafcadio Hearne [sic], who has been our assistant co-laborer for nearly three years.—Ed. Item."