Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  If I ventured to advise you I should recommend to you the simple, ordinary meters and forms native to our language.

  I await the photograph of the pretty sister — don’t fancy I’ve forgotten.

  It is 1 a. m. and I’m about to drink your health in a glass of Riesling and eat it in a pâte.

  My love to Grizzly if you ever see him. Yours ever,

  A. B.

  [Washington, D. C., January 23, 1901.]

  MY DEAR DOYLE,

  Your letter of the 16th has just come and as I am waiting at my office (where I seldom go) I shall amuse myself by replying “to onct.” See here, I don’t purpose that your attack on poor Morrow’s book shall become a “continuous performance,” nor even an “annual ceremony.” It is not “rot.” It is not “filthy.” It does not “suggest bed-pans,” — at least it did not to me, and I’ll wager something that Morrow never thought of them. Observe and consider: If his hero and heroine had been man and wife, the bed-pan would have been there, just the same; yet you would not have thought of it. Every reader would have been touched by the husband’s devotion. A physician has to do with many unpleasant things; whom do his ministrations disgust? A trained nurse lives in an atmosphere of bed-pans — to whom is her presence or work suggestive of them? I’m thinking of the heroic Father Damien and his lepers; do you dwell upon the rotting limbs and foul distortions of his unhappy charges? Is not his voluntary martyrdom one of the sanest, cleanest, most elevating memories in all history? Then it is not the bed-pan necessity that disgusts you; it is something else. It is the fact that the hero of the story, being neither physician, articled nurse, nor certificated husband, nevertheless performed their work. He ministered to the helpless in a natural way without authority from church or college, quite irregular and improper and all that. My noble critic, there speaks in your blood the Untamed Philistine. You were not caught young enough. You came into letters and art with all your beastly conventionalities in full mastery of you. Take a purge. Forget that there are Philistines. Forget that they have put their abominable pantalettes upon the legs of Nature. Forget that their code of morality and manners (it stinks worse than a bed-pan) does not exist in the serene altitude of great art, toward which you have set your toes and into which I want you to climb. I know about this thing. I, too, tried to rise with all that dead weight dragging at my feet. Well, I could not — now I could if I cared to. In my mind I do. It is not freedom of act — not freedom of living, for which I contend, but freedom of thought, of mind, of spirit; the freedom to see in the horrible laws, prejudices, custom, conventionalities of the multitude, something good for them, but of no value to you in your art. In your life and conduct defer to as much of it as you will (you’ll find it convenient to defer to a whole lot), but in your mind and art let not the Philistine enter, nor even speak a word through the keyhole. My own chief objection to Morrow’s story is (as I apprised him) its unnaturalness. He did not dare to follow the logical course of his narrative. He was too cowardly (or had too keen an eye upon his market of prudes) to make hero and heroine join in the holy bonds of bedlock, as they naturally, inevitably and rightly would have done long before she was able to be about. I daresay that, too, would have seemed to you “filthy,” without the parson and his fee. When you analyze your objection to the story (as I have tried to do for you) you will find that it all crystallizes into that — the absence of the parson. I don’t envy you your view of the matter, and I really don’t think you greatly enjoy it yourself. I forgot to say: Suppose they had been two men, two partners in hunting, mining, or exploring, as frequently occurs. Would the bed-pan suggestion have come to you? Did it come to you when you read of the slow, but not uniform, starvation of Greeley’s party in the arctic? Of course not. Then it is a matter, not of bed-pans, but of sex-exposure (unauthorized by the church), of prudery — of that artificial thing, the “sense of shame,” of which the great Greeks knew nothing; of which the great Japanese know nothing; of which Art knows nothing. Dear Doctor, do you really put trousers on your piano-legs? Does your indecent intimacy with your mirror make you blush?

  There, there’s the person whom I’ve been waiting for (I’m to take her to dinner, and I’m not married to even so much of her as her little toe) has come; and until you offend again, you are immune from the switch. May all your brother Philistines have to “Kiss the place to make it well.”

  Pan is dead! Long live Bed-Pan!

  Yours ever,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, February 17, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I send back the poems, with a few suggestions. You grow great so rapidly that I shall not much longer dare to touch your work. I mean that.

  Your criticisms of Stedman’s Anthology are just. But equally just ones can be made of any anthology. None of them can suit any one. I fancy Stedman did not try to “live up” to his standard, but to make representative, though not always the best, selections. It would hardly do to leave out Whitman, for example. We may not like him; thank God, we don’t; but many others — the big fellows too — do; and in England he is thought great. And then Stedman has the bad luck to know a lot of poets personally — many bad poets. Put yourself in his place. Would you leave out me if you honestly thought my work bad?

  In any compilation we will all miss some of our favorites — and find some of the public’s favorites. You miss from Whittier “Joseph Sturge” — I the sonnet “Forgiveness,” and so forth. Alas, there is no universal standard!

  Thank you for the photographs. Miss * * * is a pretty girl, truly, and has the posing instinct as well. She has the place of honor on my mantel. * * * But what scurvy knave has put the stage-crime into her mind? If you know that life as I do you will prefer that she die, poor girl.

  It is no trouble, but a pleasure, to go over your verses — I am as proud of your talent as if I’d made it.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [over]

  There are good reasons for preferring the regular Italian form created by Petrarch — who knew a thing or two; and sometimes good reasons for another arrangement — of the sestet rhymes. If one should sacrifice a great thought to be like Petrarch one would not resemble him.

  A. B.

  [Washington, D. C., May 2, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I am sending to the “Journal” your splendid poem on Memorial Day. Of course I can’t say what will be its fate. I am not even personally acquainted with the editor of the department to which it goes. But if he has not the brains to like it he is to send it back and I’ll try to place it elsewhere. It is great — great! — the loftiest note that you have struck and held.

  Maybe I owe you a lot of letters. I don’t know — my correspondence all in arrears and I’ve not the heart to take it up.

  Thank you for your kind words of sympathy.2 I’m hit harder than any one can guess from the known facts — am a bit broken and gone gray of it all.

  2 Concerning the death of his son Leigh.

  But I remember you asked the title of a book of synonyms. It is “Roget’s Thesaurus,” a good and useful book.

  The other poems I will look up soon and consider. I’ve made no alterations in the “Memorial Day” except to insert the omitted stanza. Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, May 9, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I send the poems with suggestions. There’s naught to say about ‘em that I’ve not said of your other work. Your “growth in grace” (and other poetic qualities) is something wonderful. You are leaving my other “pupils” so far behind that they are no longer “in it.” Seriously, you “promise” better than any of the new men in our literature — and perform better than all but Markham in his lucid intervals, alas, too rare.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, May 22, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I enclose a proof of the poem3 —
all marked up. The poem was offered to the Journal, but to the wrong editor. I would not offer it to him in whose department it could be used, for he once turned down some admirable verses of my friend Scheffauer which I sent him. I’m glad the Journal is not to have it, for it now goes into the Washington Post — and the Post into the best houses here and elsewhere — a good, clean, unyellow paper. I’ll send you some copies with the poem.

  3 “Memorial Day.”

  I think my marks are intelligible — I mean my remarks. Perhaps you’ll not approve all, or anything, that I did to the poem; I’ll only ask you to endure. When you publish in covers you can restore to the original draft if you like. I had not time (after my return from New York) to get your approval and did the best and the least I could.

  * * * * *

  My love to your pretty wife and sister. Let me know how hard you hate me for monkeying with your sacred lines.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  Yes, your poem recalled my “Invocation” as I read it; but it is better, and not too much like — hardly like at all except in the “political” part. Both, in that, are characterized, I think, by decent restraint. How * * * would, at those places, have ranted and chewed soap! — a superior quality of soap, I confess.

  A. B.

  [1825 Nineteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C., June 30, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I am glad my few words of commendation were not unpleasing to you. I meant them all and more. You ought to have praise, seeing that it is all you got. The “Post,” like most other newspapers, “don’t pay for poetry.” What a damning confession! It means that the public is as insensible to poetry as a pig to — well, to poetry. To any sane mind such a poem as yours is worth more than all the other contents of a newspaper for a year.

  I’ve not found time to consider your “bit of blank” yet — at least not as carefully as it probably merits.

  My relations with the present editor of the Examiner are not unfriendly, I hope, but they are too slight to justify me in suggesting anything to him, or even drawing his attention to anything. I hoped you would be sufficiently “enterprising” to get your poem into the paper if you cared to have it there. I wrote Dr. Doyle about you. He is a dear fellow and you should know each other. As to Scheffauer, he is another. If you want him to see your poem why not send it to him? But the last I heard he was very ill. I’m rather anxious to hear more about him.

  It was natural to enclose the stamps, but I won’t have it so — so there! as the women say.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [1825 Nineteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C., July 15, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  Here is the bit of blank. When are we to see the book? Needless question — when you can spare the money to pay for publication, I suppose, if by that time you are ambitious to achieve public inattention. That’s my notion of encouragement — I like to cheer up the young author as he sets his face toward “the peaks of song.”

  Say, that photograph of the pretty sister — the one with a downward slope of the eyes — is all faded out. That is a real misfortune: it reduces the sum of human happiness hereabout. Can’t you have one done in fast colors and let me have it? The other is all right, but that is not the one that I like the better for my wall. Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., December 16, 1901.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I enclose the poems with a few suggestions. They require little criticism of the sort that would be “helpful.” As to their merit I think them good, but not great. I suppose you do not expect to write great things every time. Yet in the body of your letter (of Oct. 22) you do write greatly — and say that the work is “egoistic” and “unprintable.” If it4 were addressed to another person than myself I should say that it is “printable” exceedingly. Call it what you will, but let me tell you it will probably be long before you write anything better than some — many — of these stanzas.

  4 “Dedication” poem to Ambrose Bierce.

  You ask if you have correctly answered your own questions. Yes; in four lines of your running comment:

  “I suppose that I’d do the greater good in the long run by making my work as good poetry as possible.”

  * * * * *

  Of course I deplore your tendency to dalliance with the demagogic muse. I hope you will not set your feet in the dirty paths — leading nowhither — of social and political “reform”.... I hope you will not follow * * * in making a sale of your poet’s birthright for a mess of “popularity.” If you do I shall have to part company with you, as I have done with him and at least one of his betters, for I draw the line at demagogues and anarchists, however gifted and however beloved.

  Let the “poor” alone — they are oppressed by nobody but God. Nobody hates them, nobody despises. “The rich” love them a deal better than they love one another. But I’ll not go into these matters; your own good sense must be your salvation if you are saved. I recognise the temptations of environment: you are of San Francisco, the paradise of ignorance, anarchy and general yellowness. Still, a poet is not altogether the creature of his place and time — at least not of his to-day and his parish.

  By the way, you say that * * * is your only associate that knows anything of literature. She is a dear girl, but look out for her; she will make you an anarchist if she can, and persuade you to kill a President or two every fine morning. I warrant you she can pronounce the name of McKinley’s assassin to the ultimate zed, and has a little graven image of him next her heart.

  Yes, you can republish the Memorial Day poem without the Post’s consent — could do so in “book form” even if the Post had copyrighted it, which it did not do. I think the courts have held that in purchasing work for publication in his newspaper or magazine the editor acquires no right in it, except for that purpose. Even if he copyright it that is only to protect him from other newspapers or magazines; the right to publish in a book remains with the author. Better ask a lawyer though — preferably without letting him know whether you are an editor or an author.

  I ought to have answered (as well as able) these questions before, but I have been ill and worried, and have written few letters, and even done little work, and that only of the pot-boiling sort.

  My daughter has recovered and returned to Los Angeles.

  Please thank Miss * * * for the beautiful photographs — I mean for being so beautiful as to “take” them, for doubtless I owe their possession to you.

  I wrote Doyle about you and he cordially praised your work as incomparably superior to his own and asked that you visit him. He’s a lovable fellow and you’d not regret going to Santa Cruz and boozing with him.

  Thank you for the picture of Grizzly and the cub of him.

  Sincerely yours, with best regards to the pretty ever-so-much-better half of you,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  P.S. * * * * * * * * * * *

  1902.

  [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., March 15, 1902.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  Where are you going to stop? — I mean at what stage of development? I presume you have not a “whole lot” of poems really writ, and have not been feeding them to me, the least good first, and not in the order of their production. So it must be that you are advancing at a stupendous rate. This last5 beats any and all that went before — or I am bewitched and befuddled. I dare not trust myself to say what I think of it. In manner it is great, but the greatness of the theme! — that is beyond anything.

  5 “The Testimony of the Suns.”

  It is a new field, the broadest yet discovered. To paraphrase Coleridge,

  You are the first that ever burst

  Into that silent [unknown] sea —

  a silent sea because no one else has burst into it in full song. True, there have been short incursions across the “border,” but only by way of episode. The tremendous phenomena
of Astronomy have never had adequate poetic treatment, their meaning adequate expression. You must make it your own domain. You shall be the poet of the skies, the prophet of the suns. Don’t fiddle-faddle with such infinitesimal and tiresome trivialities as (for example) the immemorial squabbles of “rich” and “poor” on this “mote in the sun-beam.” (Both “classes,” when you come to that, are about equally disgusting and unworthy — there’s not a pin’s moral difference between them.) Let them cheat and pick pockets and cut throats to the satisfaction of their base instincts, but do thou regard them not. Moreover, by that great law of change which you so clearly discern, there can be no permanent composition of their nasty strife. “Settle” it how they will — another beat of the pendulum and all is as before; and ere another, Man will again be savage, sitting on his naked haunches and gnawing raw bones.

  Yes, circumstances make the “rich” what they are. And circumstances make the poor what they are. I have known both, long and well. The rich — while rich — are a trifle better. There’s nothing like poverty to nurture badness. But in this country there are no such “classes” as “rich” and “poor”: as a rule, the wealthy man of to-day was a poor devil yesterday; the poor devils of to-day have an equal chance to be rich to-morrow — or would have if they had equal brains and providence. The system that gives them the chance is not an oppressive one. Under a really oppressive system a salesman in a village grocery could not have risen to a salary of one million dollars a year because he was worth it to his employers, as Schwab has done. True, some men get rich by dishonesty, but the poor commonly cheat as hard as they can and remain poor — thereby escaping observation and censure. The moral difference between cheating to the limit of a small opportunity and cheating to the limit of a great one is to me indiscernable. The workman who “skimps his work” is just as much a rascal as the “director” who corners a crop.