Letters of Lafcadio Hearn
to His Brother

My dear brother:—

I waited very anxiously for your letter; — it has made me at once very glad and very sorry, — glad to feel the reality of you, sorry to find you have had some experiences with the world not at all agreeable. But you have shown superb pluck, are independent, apparently, and in every sense of the word — a thorough man!

There was good stock in us from either the mother or the father’s side: while thinking about you, I always said to myself: “Her blood will bear him through everything, if he can keep his strength.” For I thought of you always as my double: — a highly complex nervous organization, with low vital force. Now I would imagine you stronger than I; — for you have done much beyond my power to attempt.

You do not remember the voice which told you, each night, to cross your fingers after the old Greek orthodox fashion, and utter the words, — Εν Το ονομα Του Πατρος, και Του Υιου, και του Αγιου Πνευματος. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?” She made, or had made, three little wounds upon you when a baby — to place you, according to her childish faith, under the protection of those three powers, — but especially that of Him for whom alone the nineteenth century still feels some reverence, — the Lord and Giver of Life.

And you know nothing about her? It is very strange. Perhaps there is much I do not know.

But I know that mother was a Cerigotle — belonging to one of the best families of the island Cerigo: the antique Cythera. English regiments were stationed there — including the 76th, — about ’57–58. My father was attacked by mother’s brother, terribly stabbed, and left for dead. He recovered and eloped with mother when the regiment was ordered away. You were born in Cephalonia; — I and another brother in Santa Maura, — when the other was buried, I think. We were all very dark as children, very passionate, very odd-looking, and wore gold rings in our ears. Have you not the marks yet?

I do not know much about subsequent events. I remember my mother’s interpreter, — a Miss Butcher. I remember my father taking me up on horseback when coming into town with his regiment. I remember being at a dinner with a number of men in red coats and striped trousers, and crawling about under the table, and pinching their legs. Then I remember this: —

One day my father came to my aunt’s house, to take me out for a walk. He took me into some quiet street where the houses were very high — with long flights of steps going up to the front door. Then a lady came down to meet us, all white-robed, with very bright hair, — quite slender. I thought her beautiful as an angel — perhaps partly because she kissed and petted me, and gave me a beautiful book and a toy gun. When we left the house my father told me not to tell my aunt when we had been. But my aunt found it out, and took away the book and the gun — and said that was a very wicked woman, and my father a very wicked man. She was the woman who afterwards became my father’s second wife, and died in India.

Then I remember my brother running away with my toys — tin soldiers, — and I running after him, and taking them from him, and beating him, because I was older and bigger; and everybody cried “Shame!” But I was too selfish in those days to feel a bit sorry: I only said “He took my toys!”

Later on I was told by my aunt, or grand-aunt, that my father was very wicked, — that she had disinherited him because he had got a divorce from my mother without just cause, and that she had forced him to pay back all the money she had advanced him. She said that he had got his divorce through a technicality which decided for him that the marriage, though legal abroad, in the Orient, was not legal according to English law.

She told me that my mother had married the lawyer who took her part, and who spoke Romaic, — and went to Smyrna with him. She heard nothing of her from 1858. She also told me that my mother had named me after the place of my birth — Leucadia in Santa Maura; the name, Lafcadio, in modern Greek, being nearly so pronounced. Spaniards and French people readily and naturally change it, however, into Leocadio, — by which I have been known in the West Indies and elsewhere.

— To give you details of my life would be tedious and uninteresting on paper. It has been a very varied, blundering, foolish, existence — sometimes rather shocking than creditable. A nervous breakdown before I was thirty years of age, turned my attention to the difficult art of taking care of one’s self. Before that I used always to be pretty reckless. I have no wife or children: had various temporary relationships with women, — in which I was the dupe, until I succeeded in obtaining the wisdom of experience. In short my life has been decidedly rough: I was my way into something higher and better by patient hard work. I was for seventeen years a journalist; — I am now a litterateur by occupation.

The outward events of a brother’s life have infinitely less interest, however, than those which belong to that mysterious ghostly part of us, the nature of which will probably ever remain a mystery. When I saw your photograph, I felt all my blood stir, — and I thought, “Here is this unknown being, in whom the soul of my mother lives, — who must have known the same strange impulses, the same longings, the same resolves, as I! Will he tell me of them?”

There was another Self, — would that Self interpret This? For This has always been mysterious. Were I to use the word ‘Soul’ in its limited and superannuated sense as the spirit of an individual instead of the ghost of a race, — I should say it had always seemed to me as if I had two souls: each pulling in different ways. One of these represented the spirit of mutiny — impatience of all restraint, hatred of all control, weariness of everything methodical and regular, impulses to love or hate without a thought of consequences. The other represented pride and persistence; — it had little power to use the reins before I was thirty.

When I look on the portrait of father* — I thank you very much for giving me yours, — with that rigid grim face and steel-steady eyes, I cannot feel much in my life in common with his. I respect; — I do not love him.

I could not love his Indian children by that woman with the bright hair who kissed me as a boy. The soul in me is not of him. Whatever there is of good in me — and I believe, whatever there is of deeper good in yourself, — came from that dark race-soul of which we know so little. My love of right, my hate of wrong; — my admiration for what is beautiful or true; — my capacity for faith in man or woman; — my sensitiveness to artistic things which gives me whatever little success I have; — even that language-power whose physical sign is in the large eyes of both of us, — came from Her.

What if there is “a skeleton in our closet”? Did not he make it? I think only of her. I have thought only of her, and of you, as imaging her possibly, all my life — rarely of him. It is the mother who makes us, — makes at least all that makes the nobler man: not his strength or power of calculation, but his heart and power to love. And I would rather have her portrait than a fortune.

— You know nothing of me, of course; but when you do, you will laugh at your own suggestion that I might wish my mother to be an aristocrat. I only trust he is not much more indifferent to external appearances and to social formalities than I am; — for I have the reputation of being rather an outrageous person. I have been showing your photo. to everyone, and proclaiming my good fortune. / — Today I cannot write about our meeting satisfactorily; but will do so when I hear from you again. Suppose I could go to Toledo, I would write you in advance, and telegraph you from there? — But I will write again about this. I will return you father’s picture next week.

In February I leave for the other side of the world, — Japan and China — but we are keeping the matter quiet; for literary reasons.

I would like to know all about yourself, physically — height, weight, strength. (I think you are four years younger than I.) And all about your wife, and the little one: has she great big eyes like mother’s?

Dear Brother:—

I waited a few weeks before answering your letter, to get the photograph you asked for taken. I enclose two. One is a good likeness: the other will show you the appearance of the Japanese silken robe, with its long wide sleeves, which serve the purpose of pockets. Many thanks for photo. of Gracie and Lottie: what delicious eyes your little ones have got! … By the way, since you have two photos. of me, why not send sister one? I could not get as good a one taken here, — and I looked better then than I look now: “Laf’s getting grey.”

I want to disabuse your mind of two things, — firstly, that letters about China or Japan from a person who has only been a few months there can give you the least possible idea of what those countries are; — secondly, that heathenism is an unfortunate condition of affairs. For goodness sake, don’t believe any bigoted lying stuff the missionaries write about this country: they are a much lower set than the lowest of the people they want to convert. These Japanese, even among the lowest classes, do not beat their wives or children, — do not get quarrelsomely drunk, do not fight, do not swear, take a hot bath every day of the year and sometimes two or three baths, and rank first of all the world in politeness. During two years that I have been in Japan I never saw a fight, or heard of a child being slapped. Whatever brutality there is in Japan is in the open ports among the Christian foreigners and the slums. It will be a sad day for Japan if she ever turns Christian: she will then imitate the vices and the brutalities, and hypocrisies of Christian countries.

You asked about the earthquake. It did no damage in the province where I was staying; but the city trembled. My house rocked like a steamer in a storm, and I was just on the point of running out into the garden when it stopped. I am afraid of earthquakes. It is not the danger of being crushed, but that of being held down under the fallen timbers of your house and burned alive, — for the house is almost sure to take fire.

Cholera I am not afraid of; but it broke out in one of the colleges where I was teaching, and killed a number of the teachers and pupils. I left the city soon after — being called to a higher post; but I should not have been afraid to stay. I have lived through so many epidemics in New Orleans, in the West Indies, etc, that I don’t think I have much to fear from epidemic diseases: I fear only for my wife and her people, who, being Japanese, are more in danger.

— Since I wrote you last I settled in Kumamoto, and now teach in a Government college of the highest class. My salary is $2,400 a year; and I make about $1000 additional by my writing. So I am able to lay some money by. I am, in short, better off than I ever was before — only, there is no certainty about the position. I may hold it for many years if I want, — provided the Government does not change its educational policy. However, this might happen. In any case, I will be always able, I think, to get some good position in the country, whatever happens; and I might even take a notion to become a Japanese citizen, and try to make myself independent here. Love of feeling free has been the bane of my life in many ways, and in others my greatest friend. I hate constraint more than any earthly thing. Happily my position here is free as I could wish.

— And you ask me a whole lot of questions about mother. I can answer only one: her maiden name was Rosa. All the other questions are questions which I had hoped you would be able to answer. If I had known more, I could have learned everything through the Greek Consul at New Orleans; but I did not know even the names. — Perhaps I am prejudiced in favour of mother. But I cannot help believing that whatever good qualities I have came from her —, perhaps some unfortunate ones also; — a capacity for dislike so strong that I cannot even live in the same city with a man I hate. I think you have something of the same sensitiveness, — but in a less morbid form, from what you told me in a former letter. — What most astounds me is that you never heard, or never tried to find out anything about mother. I tried. I thought also you would surely know; and I had a Spanish friend in Paris hunting for Uncle Dick, to get his address. He knew all about it. The Elwoods of Dublin, I think, knew about it; but both are dead.

The best way to find out would be through army sources, and Sister in London might help in that. Perhaps there are officers still living, who were in the 76th (now 2nd Battalion West Riding) at the same time as father. They might know. It would be really worth while to learn about our own history. Perhaps we should learn amazingly curious things.

I trust we shall see each other yet. Love to you and yours and Sister &c., and believe me ever

James Daniel Hearn: — [overwhelmed with work]

— Do not feel in the least bit annoyed about my questions. I have had letters from other persons claiming to be what you seem in good faith to be, — whose sole object was to secure an autograph.

That is my father’s photograph. I had one precisely similar. I like your photograph very much.

Had you not an uncle, who took care of you? When is he? Please tell me something about him.

You ought to have, — on the calf of each leg, — three lines made “Εν το ονομα Του Πατρος, Και Του Υιου”, etc., by our mother. Perhaps you have them without knowing it.

— Please tell me something about yourself — all you have time to tell me. I want to know all you have been doing, and are going to do. Moreover I must see you, and that before very long, as I shall be leaving the United States shortly.

— I want to get the photograph of father copied. You can get that done for me at a later day. As for a photograph of mother, if there is any way to obtain it, at any condition, I must try to get it. Still it strikes me as strange that the Doctor should have her photograph, and know nothing of her history or name.

Did you not know there were three of us? The first died a child.

Why did you never try to communicate with me before? I had friends in Paris and elsewhere trying to get upon my brother’s track.

You were misinformed as to the rich aunt, or rather grand-aunt, educating your brother for the priesthood. He had the extreme misfortune to pass some years in Catholic colleges, when the educational system chiefly consists in keeping the pupils as ignorant as possible. He is not even a Catholic. The grand-aunt in question did not leave her property to the church, but was the victim of a Jesuitical adventurer, who bankrupted in London after risking her fortune in business. His name was Henry Molyneux.

— What are you doing? I heard that my brother had been brought up as a civil engineer. Have you any profession? And, of all places in the world, how came you to drift to Bradner, Ohio? Are you married?

Please write me a good long letter; — tell me all about yourself. I have been hunting after you a good deal more energetically than you seem to have been looking after me. I think I should be very fond of my brother, — once quite sure about him.

Dear brother:—

Thanks for kindest letter and enclosures. I received them only on the eve of my departure, — as I start tomorrow for Japan, and so write in haste.

I will be glad to please you by writing to Lilla as soon as I can, — or in any other way possible.

It pains me that I could not see you. I am, however, and must be, for several years more, a slave of contracts and opportunities. I hope to achieve independence in the future; but at present I have to obey the will of others to some extent in order to achieve success. Be sure the first visit I make on my return will be to you. You will write me from time to time, as soon as I get settled.

— It was a mistake to suppose my name “assumed”: it is the name my mother gave me. Patricio I dropped from the time of my arrival in this country.

— I think that the will left by my aunt assured me some money, which those rascals could be made to pay — if I had means to make the fight for it. However, just now that is impossible. I do not care so much about the money; but if I can make it uncomfortable for the Molyneux people some day, I certainly shall, — and if there be any money as a result, be glad to share it with you.

Best love to you, and your wife and our baby.

Dear brother:—

I was delighted to receive the photograph of your wife and baby. I like your wife’s face: full of serious kindness and gentleness, — but the baby! I can scarcely believe it is your baby: I could almost swear it was my baby! It has the eyes, sure enough … You will have to be very careful, I fear, with Miss Gracie’s eyes. Do not let her stoop over school-desks, when she is old enough to be taught, — or stoop at all, for reading and writing. If I am ever a father, I will not let my child go to school before seventeen or eighteen, — before being old enough to go to a university or practical institution of some sort. The best education is that given at home, — and many of our greatest men are, like Herbert Spencer, strangers to school-life … However, we shall have lots of time to chat and plan over this. Only, — above all things, do not forget — never to let the child strain her eyes over books. If she be near-sighted, teach her to lift what she wishes to look at as close as she pleases, never to bend down to it. With a boy, it is dangerous enough; but in the case of a girl, eyestrain is usually accompanied with other troubles. — I hope, however, all this is unnecessary, and that Gracie is not near-sighted. If she has my disposition, I can’t imagine her growing up in the country, — after reaching girlhood; — but, you see, I will keep on talking about the future! …

Really, I think that is my baby! It has my eyes, anyhow — Mother’s eyes almost. But later on they may become mother’s eyes in fact. Singular force in that Oriental blood, reproducing its characteristics so strongly in the third generation; — and dominating such elements as are mingled with it! — She has another characteristic, too, which we have — head all above the ears! I think there is something wonderful waiting to unfold within that little head of hers: she looks smarter than either of us. There is a psycho-physical theft somewhere: — I think you must have stolen some of my soul, to make Gracie with. She certainly looks more like me than you. I am going to ask her which is her father, — when I can get up there to see you.

— I sent you another photo. of myself, taken three years ago, — but more like me than the new one. If you observe it carefully, you will see I have lost one eye, and am very near-sighted with the remaining one.

I stopped writing here three days ago — having caught such a cold on the lungs that I was placed completely hors de combat. You see this is the first cold weather I have felt for nearly fourteen years; and the change is quite rude for me. But I shall be away from here March 6th.

— With regard to what you say about Mother’s treatment of us, — I must tell you that even as a child, I used to wonder at it. But my old grand-aunt, and others — the old family-servants especially — would say to me: “Don’t believe anything unkind about your mother: she loved you all as much as any mother could do: she could not help herself.” Afterwards I heard that the man whom she married, had made this condition with her: “I will go with you anywhere; — I will give up everything for you: but I will not bring up the children of that man.” Mother was in a strange country, without means, unable to speak a word of English: then, again, the boys seemed to be well provided for. I was to be the grand-aunt’s heir, — and she was quite rich; my father had made some promises regarding you. As for her never making inquiries afterwards, I doubt it — I suspect she was always informed of our whereabouts and condition, up to at least twenty years ago. But even if mother should not have afterwards exhibited such interest as we should wish regarding us, I could not blame her. She must have hated father’s memory. Neither could I blame her, or cease to love her, were I to hear she had committed any fault. Her circumstances were very peculiar and cruel, and her nature probably intensely confiding and impulsive.

I can remember seeing father only four times, — no, five. He never caressed me; and I always felt afraid of him. He was rather taciturn, I think. The one kind act I remember on his part was a long letter written to me from India — all about serpents and tigers and elephants, — printed in Roman letters with a pen, so that I could read it easily.

What you tell me about yourself is very much myself. I suspect, however, that I am almost an exaggeration of you — more a slave of my dislikes and likes, — still more easily repelled by a flaw. The longer I live the more self-control I obtain; but it comes rather through the pursuance of a policy, than through any diminution in the force of impulses.