The Soul of the Great Bell

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)

From Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings

One of the journalist Lafcadio Hearn’s earliest books was a collection of

adaptations of Chinese legends—which he completed even though he actually
knew next to nothing of the Chinese language. While working on the proofs for
the book, he corresponded frequently with his friend Elizabeth Bisland, a former
colleague at the New Orleans Times Democrat who had moved in 1887 to New
York to become an editor at Vogue. (Bisland would became famous two years
later, when she raced New York World reporter Nellie Bly around the world,
attempting to beat Phileas Fogg's fictitious record in the famous Jules Verne
novel. She lost the race, although both women made the trip in less than eighty
days.) Hearn’s letters to Bisland included updates about his struggling career as
fiction writer and anecdotes about the remarkable characters he continued to
meet in New Orleans. In one letter he complained that his latest attempt to learn
Chinese had ended in failure. “My last pet was a Chinese doctor, whose name I
cannot even pronounce. He tried to teach me Chinese; but I discovered the nasal
tones almost impossible to imitate.”

His failure to learn the language didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for the “weird
beauty” of the six tales included in his book, and he instead relied on the work of
various European Sinologists to help him create his own versions and understand
the historical and linguistic allusions. “To such great explorers,” he acknowledged
in a preface, “the realm of Cathayan story belongs by right of discovery and
conquest; yet the humbler traveller who follows wonderingly after them into the
vast and mysterious pleasure-grounds of Chinese fancy may surely be permitted
to cull a few of the marvellous flowers there growing.”