The letter might as well have said Pat left you nothing because after Mr. Anderson wrote back on my behalf—the publisher had wanted permission to include my name in a book about Lafcadio Hearn—I received a telegram, informing me that Mr. Hearn had a wife and four children in Japan. They are his rightful heirs, and no royalties or remittance of any kind would be due to me. Also, my permission is no longer required as my name will not be appearing in the forthcoming book.

“What does ‘forthcoming’ mean?” I’d asked Mr. Anderson.

“It means soon, and it also can mean truthful,” he’d replied. “They can’t just write you out of Mr. Pat’s life,” he’d fumed.

There was more than one way to arrive at the truth, Mr. Anderson and I agreed.

“There’s the court of law and the court of public opinion, and we’ll prevail in both,” vowed the optimist.

Now, isn’t that right, Miss?

Elizabeth Bisland: (1861–1929)

ELIZABETH BISLAND

(1861–1929)

. . . .

NEW YORK, 1906

[E]arly in 1874 . . . [Lafcadio Hearn] was working as a general reporter on the Cincinnati Enquirer. His work was of a kind that gave him at first no scope for his talents and must have been peculiarly unsympathetic, consisting of daily market reports, until chance opened the eyes of his employers to his capacity for better things. A peculiarly atrocious crime, still known in Cincinnati annals as the “Tan-yard Murder,” had been communicated to the office of the Enquirer at a moment when all the members of the staff, usually detailed to cover such assignments, were absent. The editor . . . was surprised by a timid request from the shy cub-reporter who turned in daily market “stuff,” to be allowed to deal with this tragedy. . . . The “copy” submitted some hours later caused astonished eyebrows, was considered worthy of “scare-heads,” and for the nine succeeding days of the life of the wonder, Cincinnati sought ardently the Hoffmannesque story whose poignantly chosen phrases set before them a grim picture that caused the flesh to crawl upon their bones.

. . . .

[I]n the latter part of [1876] . . . [Hearn] was a regular reporter for the Commercial. . . .

One of Hearn’s associates of this period, Joseph Tunison, says of his work:—. . .

“Had he been then on a New York daily his articles would have attracted bidding from rival managements, but in Cincinnati there was little, if any, encouragement for such brilliant powers as his. The Commercial took him on at twenty dollars a week. . . . [ellipsis in the original] Though he worked hard for a pittance he never slighted anything he had to do. . . . [ellipsis in the original] He was never known to shirk hardship or danger in filling an assignment. . . . [ellipsis in the original] His employers kept him at the most arduous work of a daily morning paper—the night stations—for in that field developed the most sensational events, and he was strongest in the unusual and the startling.”