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Biography & Personal Stories
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Abandoned Thrice: The Brutal Childhood That Forged Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn, a celebrated writer of ghost stories and Japanese folklore, endured a brutal childhood. Born in Greece to an Irish father and Greek mother, he was abandoned first by his father, then his mother, and finally by the great-aunt who raised him, leaving him destitute and alone.
A Fractured Beginning
Before he became a celebrated interpreter of Japanese culture, known as Koizumi Yakumo, Lafcadio Hearn was a boy without a home. Born in 1850 on the Greek island of Lefkada to an Irish surgeon-major and a Greek noblewoman, Hearn's identity was fractured from the start. When he was just two years old, his family moved to his father's home in Dublin, Ireland—a gray, foreign world for his mother, Rosa, who spoke no English. Isolated and unhappy, she soon returned to Greece, leaving her son behind. Shortly after, his father, posted overseas, had the marriage annulled and remarried, ceasing all contact with his first family. By the age of seven, Lafcadio Hearn had been effectively abandoned by both of his parents.
A Fleeting Stability
Hearn was taken in by his father's great-aunt, Sarah Holmes Brenane, a wealthy widow who provided a period of relative stability. However, his upbringing was unconventional and lonely. He was shuttled through Catholic boarding schools, which he detested, and his formative years were marked by a tragic accident. At sixteen, a playground injury at St Cuthbert's College left him blind in his left eye. The disfigurement, combined with his unusual appearance, deepened his sense of being an outsider, a theme that would echo throughout his life and work.
He was always a wanderer and an exile. - Elizabeth Stevenson, biographer
The Final Betrayal
The fragile world Hearn knew shattered completely when his great-aunt Sarah went bankrupt, ruined by the poor financial advice of a relative. Now penniless, she could no longer care for the teenage Hearn. In a stunning fall from grace, she first sent him to live with her former maid in London's gritty East End. This was followed by the ultimate act of abandonment. At nineteen, Hearn was given a one-way ticket to Cincinnati, Ohio, and told to seek help from a distant relative who, upon his arrival, offered little more than pocket money before turning him away. He was now utterly alone, impoverished, and an outcast in a new country.
From Outcast to Icon
This crucible of abandonment and hardship forged the writer Hearn would become. His experiences fueled a deep empathy for the marginalized and a fascination with the macabre, the grotesque, and the ghostly folklore of the cultures he inhabited. After years of struggle as a journalist in Cincinnati and New Orleans, his wanderings eventually led him to Japan. There, the perpetual outsider finally found a home. He married a Japanese woman, became a Japanese citizen, and took the name Koizumi Yakumo. He dedicated the rest of his life to chronicling the myths, legends, and ghost stories of his adopted homeland, giving a voice to the spirits of a culture that had finally welcomed him. The boy abandoned by all had found his place, not among the living of his past, but in the spectral tales of his future.