“[Our] 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.”
The memory of their Mother Rosa, imagined by her son, and given to his brother.
“And you do not remember that dark and beautiful face, with large brown eyes like a wild deer’s, that used to bend above your cradle? 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 – Στο όνομα του Πατρός και του Υιού και του Αγίου Πνεύματος! – ‘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.<br>
Perhaps there is much I do not know, But I know that mother was a Cerigote, 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 – where 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 got the marks yet?”
Excerpted from Lafcadio Hearn’s letter to his brother James Daniel Hearn
Extolling Mother Rosa's Oriental Elements
“… [your daughter] 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”
“But I know that mother was a Cerigote, belonging to one of the best families of the island Cerigo – the antique Cythera.”
Every letter Lafcadio wrote to his brother, James Daniel, expresed a yearning to make the memory of their mother a living legacy and a liberated Spirit.
Disastrous Divorce
Rosa Cassimatis stands before an unknown Greek judge in 1857, with her lawyer Ioannis Kavalinis at her side holding the legal documents. Charles Hearn is absent. The judge is granting the divorce on the charge of “fornication of marriage,” ruling that the marriage — though legal abroad — was invalid under English law. Rosa’s devastated expression captures the moment her union is dissolved and her children are lost to her through a technicality she could not fight.
Mental Mania
Rosa once returned to the British Isles to look for her two sons there, but as Mrs. Brenane had moved from Rathmines and since the Hearn family would not reveal the boys’ whereabouts, she returned to Cerigo without having seen them.
Such bitter disappointments unhinged her mind permanently. Her insanity ultimately manifesting itself in a mania of religious zeal, she was committed to the Mental Aslyum at Corfu on March 25, 1872.