The description that Hearn gives somewhere of the "sombre yellowish glow, suffusing the dark, making objects dimly visible, while the ceiling remained pitch black, as if the air were changing colour from beneath," is a phenomenon familiar to all who have suffered from eyestrain.
After Hearn's death, in a drawer of his library at Tokyo half-a-dozen envelopes were found, each containing a sketch neatly written in his small legible handwriting. He apparently had intended to construct a book of childish reminiscences after the manner of Pierre Loti's "Livre de la Pitié et a de la Mort." These sketches throw many sidelights on his early years, but, except the one named "Idolatry" they are not up to the level of his usual work. The material is too scanty, events seen through the haze of memory are thrown out of focus, unimportant incidents made too important.
"Only with much effort," he writes to Mrs. Atkinson, "can I recall scattered memories of my boyhood. It seems as if a much more artificial self were constantly trying to speak instead of the self that is in me--thus producing obvious incongruities."
"My Guardian Angel" relates the sufferings inflicted on his childish mind by a certain cousin Jane--apparently one of the Molyneux clan, a convert to the Roman Catholic church, who made the little fellow intensely unhappy by telling him that he would burn for ever in Hell fire if he did not believe in God.
When she left in the spring he hoped she might die. He was haunted by fears of her vengeance during her absence, and when she returned later, dying of consumption, he could not bear to be near to her. She left him a bequest of books, of which he hardly appreciated the value then. It included a full set of the "Waverley Novels," the works of Miss Edgworth, Martin's "Milton," Pope's "Iliad and Odyssey," some quaint translations of the "Arabian Nights," and Locke's essay on "The Human Understanding." Curiously enough, there was not a single theological book in the collection. His cousin Jane's literary tastes were apparently uninfluenced by her religious views.
In 1859, Henry Molyneux was living at Linkfield Lodge, Linkfield Lane, Redhill. The Redhill of to-day, with its acres of bricks and mortar, its smart shops, its imposing Town Hall, and Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, is a very different place from the straggling village that it was in those days. The few gentlemen's houses were occupied by business men, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway being the first in England to run fast morning and evening trains for the convenience of those who wanted to come and go daily to London.