Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  I don’t wonder at your surprise at my high estimate of Longfellow in a certain article. It is higher than my permanent one. I was thinking (while writing for a newspaper, recollect) rather of his fame than of his genius — I had to have a literary equivalent to Washington or Lincoln. Still, we must not forget that Longfellow wrote “Chrysaor” and, in narrative poetry (which you don’t care for) “Robert of Sicily.” Must one be judged by his average, or may he be judged, on occasion, by his highest? He is strongest who can lift the greatest weight, not he who habitually lifts lesser ones.

  As to your queries. So far as I know, Realf did write his great sonnets on the night of his death. Anyhow, they were found with the body. Your recollection that I said they were written before he came to the Coast is faulty. Some of his other things were in print when he submitted them to me (and took pay for them) as new; but not the “De Mortuis.”

  I got the lines about the echoes (I think they go this way:

  “the loon

  Laughed, and the echoes, huddling in affright,

  Like Odin’s hounds went baying down the night”)

  from a poem entitled, I think, “The Washers of the Shroud.” I found it in the “Atlantic,” in the summer of 1864, while at home from the war suffering from a wound, and — disgraceful fact! — have never seen nor heard of it since. If the magazine was a current number, as I suppose, it should be easy to find the poem. If you look it up tell me about it. I don’t even know the author — had once a vague impression that it was Lowell but don’t know.

  The compound “mulolatry,” which I made in “Ashes of the Beacon,” would not, of course, be allowable in composition altogether serious. I used it because I could not at the moment think of the right word, “gyneolatry,” or “gynecolatry,” according as you make use of the nominative or the accusative. I once made “caniolatry” for a similar reason — just laziness. It’s not nice to do things o’ that kind, even in newspapers.

  * * * * *

  I had intended to write you something of “beesness,” but time is up and it must wait. This letter is insupportably long already.

  My love to Carrie and Katie. Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., May 16, 1905.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  Bailey Millard is editor of “The Cosmopolitan Magazine,” which Mr. Hearst has bought. I met him in New York two weeks ago. He had just arrived and learning from Hearst that I was in town looked me up. I had just recommended him to Hearst as editor. He had intended him for associate editor. I think that will give you a chance, such as it is. Millard dined with me and I told him the adventures of “A Wine of Wizardry.” I shall send it to him as soon as he has warmed his seat, unless you would prefer to send it yourself. He already knows my whole good opinion of it, and he shares my good opinion of you.

  I suppose you are at your new ranch, but I shall address this letter as usual.

  * * * * *

  If you hear of my drowning know that it is the natural (and desirable) result of the canoe habit. I’ve a dandy canoe and am tempting fate and alarming my friends by frequenting, not the margin of the upper river, but the broad reaches below town, where the wind has miles and miles of sweep and kicks up a most exhilarating combobbery. If I escape I’m going to send my boat up to Saybrook, Connecticut, and navigate Long Island Sound.

  Are you near enough to the sea to do a bit of boating now and then? When I visit you I shall want to bring my canoe.

  I’ve nearly given up my newspaper work, but shall do something each month for the Magazine. Have not done much yet — have not been in the mind. Death has been striking pretty close to me again, and you know how that upsets a fellow.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, June 16, 1905.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  I’m your debtor for two good long letters. You err in thinking your letters, of whatever length and frequency, can be otherwise than delightful to me.

  No, you had not before sent me Upton Sinclair’s article explaining why American literature is “bourgeois.” It is amusingly grotesque. The political and economical situation has about as much to do with it as have the direction of our rivers and the prevailing color of our hair. But it is of the nature of the faddist (and of all faddists the ultra socialist is the most untamed by sense) to see in everything his hobby, with its name writ large. He is the humorist of observers. When Sinclair transiently forgets his gospel of the impossible he can see well enough.

  I note what you say of * * * and know that he did not use to like me, though I doubt if he ever had any antipathy to you. Six or eight years ago I tackled him on a particularly mean fling that he had made at me while I was absent from California. (I think I had not met him before.) I told him, rather coarsely, what I thought of the matter. He candidly confessed himself in the wrong, expressed regret and has ever since, so far as I know, been just and even generous to me. I think him sincere now, and enclose a letter which seems to show it. You may return it if you will — I send it mainly because it concerns your poem. The trouble — our trouble — with * * * is that he has voluntarily entered into slavery to the traditions and theories of the magazine trade, which, like those of all trades, are the product of small men. The big man makes his success by ignoring them. Your estimate of * * * I’m not disposed to quarrel with, but do think him pretty square.

  * * * * *

  Bless you, don’t take the trouble to go through the Iliad and Odyssey to pick out the poetical parts. I grant you they are brief and infrequent — I mean in the translation. I hold, with Poe, that there are no long poems — only bursts of poetry in long spinnings of metrical prose. But even the “recitativo” of the translated Grecian poets has a charm to one that it may not have to another. I doubt if anyone who has always loved “the glory that was Greece” — who has been always in love with its jocund deities, and so forth, can say accurately just how much of his joy in Homer (for example) is due to love of poetry, and how much to a renewal of mental youth and young illusions. Some part of the delight that we get from verse defies analysis and classification. Only a man without a memory (and memories) could say just what pleased him in poetry and be sure that it was the poetry only. For example, I never read the opening lines of the Pope Iliad — and I don’t need the book for much of the first few hundred, I guess — without seeming to be on a sunny green hill on a cold windy day, with the bluest of skies above me and billows of pasture below, running to a clean-cut horizon. There’s nothing in the text warranting that illusion, which is nevertheless to me a part of the Iliad; a most charming part, too. It all comes of my having first read the thing under such conditions at the age of about ten. I remember that; but how many times I must be powerfully affected by the poets without remembering why. If a fellow could cut out all that extrinsic interest he would be a fool to do so. But he would be a better critic.

  You ought to be happy in the contemplation of a natural, wholesome life at Carmel Bay — the “prospect pleases,” surely. But I fear, I fear. Maybe you can get a newspaper connection that will bring you in a small income without compelling you to do violence to your literary conscience. I doubt if you can get your living out of the ground. But I shall watch the experiment with sympathetic interest, for it “appeals” to me. I’m a trifle jaded with age and the urban life, and maybe if you can succeed in that other sort of thing I could.

  * * * * *

  As to * * * the Superb. Isn’t Sag Harbor somewhere near Saybrook, Connecticut, at the mouth of the river of that name? I’m going there for a month with Percival Pollard. Shall leave here about the first of July. If Sag Harbor is easily accessible from there, and * * * would care to see me, I’ll go and call on her. * * * But maybe I’d fall in love with her and, being now (alas) eligible, just marry her alive! — or be turned down by her, to the unspeakable wrecking of my peace! I’m only a youth — 63 on the 24th of this month — and it would be too bad if
I got started wrong in life. But really I don’t know about the good taste of being jocular about * * *. I’m sure she must be a serious enough maiden, with the sun of a declining race yellow on her hair. Eva Crawford thinks her most lovable — and Eva has a clear, considering eye upon you all.

  * * * * *

  I’m going to send up my canoe to Saybrook and challenge the rollers of the Sound. Don’t you fear — I’m an expert canoeist from boyhood. * * *

  Sincerely,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, D. C., December 3, 1905.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  I have at last the letter that I was waiting for — didn’t answer the other, for one of mine was on the way to you.

  * * * * *

  You need not worry yourself about your part of the business. You have acted “mighty white,” as was to have been expected of you; and, caring little for any other feature of the matter, I’m grateful to you for giving my pessimism and growing disbelief in human disinterestedness a sound wholesome thwack on the mazzard.

  * * * * *

  Yes, I was sorry to whack London, for whom, in his character as author, I have a high admiration, and in that of publicist and reformer a deep contempt. Even if he had been a personal friend, I should have whacked him, and doubtless much harder. I’m not one of those who give their friends carte blanche to sin. If my friend dishonors himself he dishonors me; if he makes a fool of himself he makes a fool of me — which another cannot do.

  * * * * *

  Your description of your new environment, in your other letter, makes me “homesick” to see it. I cordially congratulate you and Mrs. Sterling on having the sense to do what I have always been too indolent to do — namely as you please. Guess I’ve been always too busy “warming both hands before the fire of life.” And now, when

  “It sinks and I am ready to depart,”

  I find that the damned fire was in me and ought to have been quenched with a dash of cold sense. I’m having my canoe decked and yawl-rigged for deep water and live in the hope of being drowned according to the dictates of my conscience.

  By way of proving my power of self-restraint I’m going to stop this screed with a whole page unused.

  Sincerely yours, as ever,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  1906.

  [Washington, D. C., February 3, 1906.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  I don’t know why I’ve not written to you — that is, I don’t know why God made me what I have the misfortune to be: a sufferer from procrastination.

  * * * * *

  I have read Mary Austin’s book with unexpected interest. It is pleasing exceedingly. You may not know that I’m familiar with the kind of country she writes of, and reading the book was like traversing it again. But the best of her is her style. That is delicious. It has a slight “tang” of archaism — just enough to suggest “lucent sirups tinct with cinnamon,” or the “spice and balm” of Miller’s sea-winds. And what a knack at observation she has! Nothing escapes her eye. Tell me about her. What else has she written? What is she going to write? If she is still young she will do great work; if not — well, she has done it in that book. But she’ll have to hammer and hammer again and again before the world will hear and heed.

  As to me I’m pot-boiling. My stuff in the N. Y. American (I presume that the part of it that you see is in the Examiner) is mere piffle, written without effort, purpose or care. My department in the Cosmopolitan is a failure, as I told Millard it would be. It is impossible to write topical stuff for a magazine. How can one discuss with heart or inspiration a thing that happens two months or so before one’s comments on it will be read? The venture and the title were Hearst’s notion, but the title so handicaps me that I can do nothing right. I shall drop it.

  I’ve done three little stories for the March number (they may be postponed) that are ghastly enough to make a pig squeal.

  * * * * *

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, D. C., March 12, 1906.]

  MY DEAR GEORGE,

  First, about the “Wine,” I dislike the “privately printed” racket. Can you let the matter wait a little longer? Neale has the poem, and Neale is just now inaccessible to letters, somewhere in the South in the interest of his magazine-that-is-to-be. I called when in New York, but he had flown and I’ve been unable to reach him; but he is due here on the 23rd. Then if his mag is going to hold fire, or if he doesn’t want the poem for it, let Robertson or Josephare have a hack at it.

  Barr is amusing. I don’t care to have a copy of his remarks.

  About the pirating of my stories. That is a matter for Chatto and Windus, who bought the English copyright of the book from which that one story came. I dare say, though, the publication was done by arrangement with them. Anyhow my interests are not involved.

  I was greatly interested in your account of Mrs. Austin. She’s a clever woman and should write a good novel — if there is such a thing as a good novel. I won’t read novels.

  Yes, the “Cosmopolitan” cat-story is Leigh’s and is to be credited to him if ever published in covers. I fathered it as the only way to get it published at all. Of course I had to rewrite it; it was very crude and too horrible. A story may be terrible, but must not be horrible — there is a difference. I found the manuscript among his papers.

  It is disagreeable to think of the estrangement between * * * and his family. Doubtless the trouble arises from his being married. Yes, it is funny, his taking his toddy along with you old soakers. I remember he used to kick at my having wine in camp and at your having a bottle hidden away in the bushes.

  I had seen that group of you and Joaquin and Stoddard and laughed at your lifelike impersonation of the Drowsy Demon.

  I passed the first half of last month in New York. Went there for a dinner and stayed to twelve. Sam Davis and Homer Davenport were of the party.

  Sam was here for a few days — but maybe you don’t know Sam. He’s a brother to Bob, who swears you got your Dante-like solemnity of countenance by coming into his office when he was editing a newspaper.

  You are not to think I have thrown * * * over. There are only two or three matters of seriousness between us and they cannot profitably be discussed in letters, so they must wait until he and I meet if we ever do. I shall mention them to no one else and I don’t suppose he will to anyone but me. Apart from these — well, our correspondence was disagreeable, so the obvious thing to do was to put an end to it. To unlike a friend is not an easy thing to do, and I’ve not attempted to do it.

  Of course I approve the new lines in the “Wine” and if Neale or anybody else will have the poem I shall insert them in their place. That “screaming thing” stays with one almost as does “the blue-eyed vampire,” and is not only visible, as is she, but audible as well. If you go on adding lines to the poem I shall not so sharply deplore our failure to get it into print. As Mark Twain says: “Every time you draw you fill.”

  The “Night in Heaven” is fine work in the grand style and its swing is haunting when one gets it. I get a jolt or two in the reading, but I dare say you purposely contrived them and I can’t say they hurt. Of course the rhythm recalls Kipling’s “The Last Chanty” (I’m not sure I spell the word correctly — if there’s a correct way) but that is nothing. Nobody has the copyright of any possible metre or rhythm in English prosody. It has been long since anybody was “first.” When are you coming to Washington to sail in my canoe?

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, D. C., April 5, 1906.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  I’ve been in New York again but am slowly recovering. I saw Neale. He assures me that the magazine will surely materialize about June, and he wants the poem, “A Wine of Wizardry,” with an introduction by me. I think he means it; if so that will give it greater publicity than what you have in mind, even if the mag eventually fail. Magazines if well advertised usually sell several hundred thousand of
the first issue; the trick is to keep them going. Munsey’s “Scrap Book” disposed of a half-million. * * *

  * * * was to start for a few weeks in California about now. I hope you will see him. He is not a bad lot when convinced that one respects him. He has been treated pretty badly in this neck o’ the woods, as is every Western man who breaks into this realm of smugwumps.

  My benediction upon Carmelites all and singular — if any are all.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  Doubleday, Page & Co. are to publish my “Cynic’s Dictionary.”

  [The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., April 20, 1906.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  I write in the hope that you are alive and the fear that you are wrecked.8

  8 The San Francisco earthquake and fire had occurred April 18, 1906.

  Please let me know if I can help — I need not say how glad I shall be to do so. “Help” would go with this were I sure about you and the post-office. It’s a mighty bad business and one does not need to own property out there to be “hit hard” by it. One needs only to have friends there.

  We are helpless here, so far as the telegraph is concerned — shall not be able to get anything on the wires for many days, all private dispatches being refused.

  Pray God you and yours may be all right. Of course anything that you may be able to tell me of my friends will be gratefully received. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, D. C., May 6, 1906.]

  DEAR GEORGE,

  Your letter relieves me greatly. I had begun to fear that you had “gone before.” Thank you very much for your news of our friends. I had already heard from Eva Croffie. Also from Grizzly.