In the fall of 1877, Lafcadio Hearn left his newspaper work in Cincinnati and moved to the exotic southern city of New Orleans. He would live for nearly a decade in New Orleans, writing for several newspapers, but also studying local customs and writing a cookbook about Creole cuisine. Hearn wrote editorials, and cultural reviews, for example about Zola; he also translated some French literature. In other articles he introduced Buddhism. The large number of his writings on New Orleans and its environs, also include the city's Creole population, impressionistic descriptions of places and characters, and Louisiana Voodoo. Hearn's writings for national publications, such as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine, helped create New Orleans' popular reputation as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than the rest of North America. During the time he lived there, Hearn was little known, and even now he
is little known for his writing about New Orleans except by local
cultural devotees.
[Lafcadio Hearn in 1889]
Harper's sent Hearn to the West Indies as a correspondent in 1887. He spent two years in Martinique (before traveling on to Japan, his final and most important destination) and in Martinique he wrote and published the novella based on his stay in New Orleans: Chita, a Memory of Last Island. Last Island (Isle Dernière) was a barrier island and a pleasure resort popular with wealthy vacationers southwest of New Orleans on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. It was destroyed by the Last Island Hurricane of August 10, 1856. Over 200 people perished in the storm. Every structure on the island including the hotel, a large, two-story wooden structure of considerable strength, was destroyed. Today only small pieces of several smaller islands remain and the only population consists of seabirds.
Lafcadio Hearn used these basic historical facts to create Chita, a minor masterpiece that is by turns is mysterious and tragic. In the aftermath of the hurricane, a Spanish fisherman (Feliu) wades into the Gulf to pick through debris. Among the bodies, he finds one that is still alive, a young Creole girl. Her parents are presumed to have died in the storm.
[Hearn's former home on Cleveland Avenue in New Orleans
is now a registered historic place.]
Raised by the fisherman's family, Chita grows into a strong, independent young woman. Her story is counterpointed by that of her lost father, Julien, a doctor who thinks that his daughter is dead and, as a result, devotes himself to helping others in need. When he comes to Last Island to help stem a yellow fever epidemic, he encounters Chita...
Chita has been written in the lush, ornately aesthetic style of the 1890s. It blends fact with fiction in a haunting tale that is both impressionistic in its evocation of nature and realistic in its characterizations and depictions of life in the bayou of South Louisiana. There is a strong sense of place in this novella. Yet the extinction of the island also serves as a warning: without care, even the most serene beauty may be savored only for a short time.
It is a mystery why this beautiful novella by Hearn is today so utterly forgotten...
Annotated online edition in Louisana Anthology. Chita at Gutenberg.