Volume I Part 7 (1/2)
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Alas! the time flies too fast Soon all this will be a dreauid rocking-chairs upon the old-fashi+oned gallery,--the cows that look into one's ith the rising sun,--the dog and the oose of the ancient Margot,--thesurf upon the bar beyond which the sharks are,--the bath-bell and the bathing belles,--the air thatwith doors and s open to the sea and its everlasting song,--the exhilaration of rising with the rim of the sun And then we must return to the dust and the roar of New Orleans, to hear the ruons instead of the ruutters instead of the sharp sweet scent of pure sea wind I believe I would rather be old Margot's goose if I could Blessed goose! thou knowest nothing about the literary side of the New Orleans _Tiood tumble in the sea every day If I could live down here I should certainly live to be a hundred years old One _lives_ here In New Orleans one only exists And the boat coruous epistle
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Good-bye,--wish you were here, sincerely
Very truly, LAFCADIO HEARN
This jesting letter makes but little reference to the beauties of this tropical island, which had, however, made a profound impression upon Hearn, and later they were reproduced with astonishi+ng fidelity in the book Some distance to the ard of Grande Isle lies L'Isle Derniere, or--as it is now coh tides, but thirty years before that an island of the same character as Grande Isle, and for half a century a popular summer resort for the people of New Orleans and the planters of the coast On the 10th of August, 1856, a frightful storm swept it bare and annihilated the nu the hundreds escaping The story of the tragedy re the coast, where hardly a family escaped without the loss of some relation or friend, and on Hearn's return to New Orleans he embodied a brief story of the famous storm, with his impressions of the splendours of the Gulf, under the title of ”Torn Letters,” purporting to be the fragments of an old correspondence by one of the survivors This story--published in the _Times-Deed to enlarge it into a book, and the Harpers, who had already published soazine, where it won instant recognition fronorant of, or indifferent to, his work
Oscar Wilde once declared that life and nature constantly plagiarized from art, and would have been pleased with the confirestion afforded by the fact that nearly twenty years after the publication of ”Chita” a storm, similar to the one described in the book, swept away in its turn Grande Isle, and Les Chenieres, and a girl child was rescued by Manila fisher with one of their families for some time she was finally recovered by her father (who had believed her lost in the general catastrophe), under circuly like those invented by the author so many years before
The book was dedicated to Dr Rodolfo Matas, a Spanish physician in New Orleans, and an intie M Gould of Philadelphia, houn at about this time
It was because of the success of ”Chita” that Hearn was enabled to realize his long-nourished dreaue commission from the Harpers he left New Orleans, in 1887, and sailed for the Windward Islands The journey took him as far south as British Guiana, the fruit of which was a series of travel-sketches printed in _Harper's Magazine_ So infatuated with the Southern world of colour, light, and war to the possible profits of his books and the further ather--two months after his return from this journey, and without any definite resources, he cast himself back into the ar and unappeasable nostalgia
It was to St Pierre in the island of Martinique--the place that had most attracted hiantic undulations,” that town of bright long narrow streets rising toward a far reenwhich looks as if it had slid down the hill behind it, so strangely do the streets co to the port in a cascade ofof tiled roofs over all, and enorh it That toith ”a population fantastic, astonishi+ng,--a population of the Arabian Nightseneral dominant tint of yellow, like that of the town itselfalways relieved by the costus or chequerings which have an indescribable lu out the fine warm tints of tropical fleshthe hues of those rich costuives to her nearest of kin and her dearest,--her honey-lovers,--her insects: wasp-colours” Here, under the shadow of Mt Pelee ”coiffed with purple and lilac clouda nificent _Madras_, yellow-banded by the sun,” he remained for two years, and from his experiences there created his next book ”Two Years in the French West Indies”record of the town and the population, now as deeply buried and as utterly obliterated as was Pohteen centuries hence, could sootten town, find this book, what passionate value would he give to this record of a community of as unique a character as that of the little Graeco-Roman city! What price would be set to-day upon parchments which reproduced with such vivid fidelity the world, so long hid in darkness, of that civilization over whose calcined fraglish commentator upon the work of Lafcadio Hearn speaks of ”Chita” and ”Two Years in the French West Indies” with negligent contempt as of ”the orchid and cockatoo type of literature,” and passes on to his japanese work as the first of considerable importance Other critics have been led into the sa the cooler tones of his later pictures as a growth in power and a development of taste It is safe to say that the makers of such criticisms have not seen the lands and peoples of whom these books attempt to reproduce the charm
Those who have known tropic countries will realize how difficult is the task of reproducing theireven a faint shadow of their splendours back to eyes accustoreys and half tints of Northern lands is a labour not only arduous in itself, but ratefully received by those for whom it is undertaken A ust landscape exaggerated to the point of vulgarity, and the average critic is more likely to find satisfaction in ”A Grey Day at Annisquam”
than in the most subtly handled picture of the blaze of noon at Luxor
”Chita” is ests the journalised, but in ”Two Years in the French West Indies” the artist has at last e apprenticeshi+p Though the author hi as excuse that much of it was done when he was physically exhausted by fever and anxiety, and ”with but a half-filled stomach,” it remains one of his most admirable achieve to the tropics proved greater than he had iid exactions of all their part of the writer's pound of flesh left him at tienerosity and kindliness of the people of the now vanished city he would not have lived to return It was some memory of humble friends there that is recorded in the sixth part of the autobiographical fragments, written after the disaster at St Pierre
IN VANISHED LIGHT
A bright long narrow street rising toward a far reen of lianas: the front of a tropic wood Not a street of this age, but of the seventeenth century: a street of yellow facades, with yellow garden-walls between the facades In sharp bursts of blue light the sea appears at intervals,--blue light blazing up old, old nights of s shi+ps are visible, far below, riding in azure
Walls are lereen
Palardens into a warm blue sky--indescribably blue--that appears als, within or without the yellow vista, are steeped in a sunshi+ne electrically white,--in a radiance so powerful that it lends even to the pave only white canvas trousers, and irass,--men naked to the waist, and muscled like sculptures,--pass noiselessly with barefoot stride Soe and beautiful colours: there are skins of gold, of brown bronze, and of ruddy bronze And women pass in robes of brilliant hue,--woe-colour, banana-colour,--wo yellow as bars the belly of a wasp The warar and of cinnauava-jelly and of fresh cocoanut milk
--Into the ae, to reach a court filled with flickering e water There a little boy and a little girl run to meet me, with Creole cries of ”_Mi y!_” Each takes one of my hands;--each holds up a beautiful brown cheek to kiss In the same moment a voice, the father's voice--deep and vibrant as the tone of a great bell--calls from an inner doorway, ”_Entrez donc, e caress of that voice there comes to me such joy of sy-tried by firethe Gateway of Pearl
But all this was and is not! Never again will sun or ain will its ways be trodden;--never again will its gardens blossoain in New York in 1889, occupied with the final proofs of ”Chita” before its appearance in book for the West Indian book for the press, but in sore distress fora translation of Anatole France's ”Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard” in a feeeks by Herculean labour, in order to exist until he could earn soinal work The half-yearly payment of royalties imposed by publishers bears hardly on the author who must pay daily for the means to live For a time he visited Dr Gould in Philadelphia, but after his return to New York an arrangeo to japan for the purpose of writing articles from there, after the manner of the West Indian articles, later to be made into a book An artist was to accompany him to prepare the illustrations, and their route was by way of the Canadian Pacific Railway
His last evening in New York was spent in the company of his dear friend Mr Ellwood Hendrick, to whom many of the most valuable letters contained in the second volume ritten, and on May 8, 1890, he left for the East--never again to return