Volume I Part 37 (1/2)
TO GEORGE M GOULD
SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, April, 1889
DEAR GOULD,--I read your pamphlets with intense pleasure: that on the effect of reflex neurosis, of course, impressed me only as a curious research; but your paper on dreaestive beauty, had much more than a scientific interest for y evoked by its perusal I wonder only that you did not dwell oodness of this drea--seeolden past age, or a perfect future, were born of the thin light vanishi+ng sensations of dream The work of Gautier cited by you--”Avatar”--was my first translation from the French I never could find a publisher for it, however, and threw the MS away at last in disgust It is certainly a wonderful story; but the self-styled Anglo-Saxon has so much damnable prudery that even this innocent phantasy seems to shock his sense of the ”proper”
You will be pleased to hear my novelette has been a success with the publishers It cost me terrible work in this continual heat, set back to the States for a while to seek soot left after two years of tropical air
If you could find me in Philadelphia a very quiet room where I could write without noise for a few ; I know too many people there; and I want to be very quiet,--only to see a friend or t and then, when I aood trim for a chat I shall return to the West Indies in the winter
Address me if you have tiazine_;--for I shall have left Martinique, doubtless, by the time this reaches you
Faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN
TO JOSEPH TUNISON
NEW YORK, 1889
DEAR JOE,--By the time this reaches you I shall have disappeared
The et into all this beastly ht in some belt and whirled around madly in all directions until I have no sense left This city drives me crazy, or, if you prefer, crazier; and I have no peace of et out of it nobody can find anybody, nothing seeeomatics and riddles and confusion worse confounded: architecture and mechanics run mad One has to live by intuition and ht produce some improvement The so-called i it i out You are iet back areen peaks and an eternally lilac and lukewar too much of an exertion,--where everybody sleeps 14 hours out of the 24 This is frightful, night Blessed is savagery! Surely a pal in the natural order than seventy times seven New Yorks I came in by one door as you went out at the other Now there are cubic ranite and iron fury between us I shall at once find a hackman to take me away I am sorry not to see you--but since you live in hell what can I do? I will try to find you again this summer
Best affection, L H
TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
PHILADELPHIA, 1889
DEAR MISS BISLAND,--A week ago in New York I was asking a friend where you were, but could then obtain no satisfactory infor steps I had no tihtful whirl and roar of retted not seeing you, even while assured of being able to do so before long
It is true I have been silent with my friends: I did not write seven letters in seventeen months,--not even business letters It was very difficult to write anything in the continuous enervating heat; and I had to struggle with difficulties of the most unlooked for sort, incessantly,--until I found correspondence becoht of you very often; and wondered if you were still in that terrible metropolis I saw in Max O'Rell's book soht it must have been you I returned on the 8th froy of ”Chita”--which I often re-read afterward, and which gave an to doubt whether I could do anything else I don't think I shall write another story in the sa at things and of writing ”Chita” will soon be sent to you in book form as a souvenir of Grande Isle: it is not as short a story as it looked in the serried type of _Harper's_--willelse to send you, however, that will interest you more as to novelty,--a volume of tropical sketches
I wonder whether you could ever throw upon paper the thoughts you uttered to o,--when you said _why_ you liked Grande Isle In your few phrases you saidto express and could not,--at least it so seee beaches since; but nothing like thecharm of Grande Isle ever revealed itself I wonder if I were to see it nohether I should feel the same pleasure
Thanks for those verses!--there is a large, strong, strange beauty in the-up of eyes to look for soer able to prophesy,--to chant even one hy upon the world
Affectionately your friend, LAFCADIO HEARN
TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
PHILADELPHIA, 1889
DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Oh! what a stiff epistle, with a little sharp pointing of reproach twisting about in the tail of every letter! Really youI write:--I wrote you just as I wrote to Mr Stedman about the same matter I feel the man sometimes is much less than the work: my work, however weak, is so much better than myself, that the less said about s you do not know As for _you_ not liking personalities, that is a very different thing! Your own personality has charh to render the truth very palatable But I a you say will be nice,--though I think it would have been better not to have said it Does a portrait of an ugly et out of the Harper plan for an article on Southern writers, without hurting myself otherwise; but the candid truth is that I felt like yelling when I saw the thing--howling and screeching! Indeed I think that ely forced by ust with the visible personality Schopenhauer says a beautiful thing about the former,--that the ”I” is the dark point in consciousness,--just as the point of the retina where the sight-nerve enters is blind, and as the brain itself is without sensation, and the eye sees all but itself I am not anxious to see escalled L H
I don't know that I wrote anything clever enough to be worth your using, but it is a pleasure you should think so I can only suggest that the adoption of my poor notions would tend to ood ones--I would keep theet into print!?!