* * * * *
Thank you for Mr. Eddy’s review of “Shapes.” But he is misinformed about poor Flora Shearer. Of course I helped her — who would not help a good friend in adversity? But she went to Scotland to a brother long ago, and at this time I do not know if she is living or dead.
But here am I forgetting (momentarily) that awful wiping out of San Francisco. It “hit” me pretty hard in many ways — mostly indirectly, through my friends. I had rather hoped to have to “put up” for you and your gang, and am a trifle disappointed to know that you are all right — except the chimneys. I’m glad that tidal wave did not come, but don’t you think you’d better have a canoe ready? You could keep it on your veranda stacked with provisions and whiskey.
My letter from Ursus (written during the conflagration) expresses a keen solicitude for the Farallones, as the fire was working westward.
If this letter is a little disconnected and incoherent know, O King, that I have just returned from a dinner in Atlantic City, N. J. I saw Markham there, also Bob Davis, Sam Moffett, Homer Davenport, Bob Mackay and other San Franciscans. (Can there be a San Franciscan when there is no San Francisco? I don’t want to go back. Doubtless the new San Francisco — while it lasts — will be a finer town than the old, but it will not be my San Francisco and I don’t want to see it. It has for many years been, to me, full of ghosts. Now it is itself a ghost.)
I return the sonnets. Destruction of “Town Talk” has doubtless saved you from having the one on me turned down. Dear old fellow, don’t take the trouble to defend my memory when — or at least until —
“I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.”
I’m not letting my enemies’ attitude trouble me at all. On the contrary, I’m rather sorry for them and their insomnia — lying awake o’ nights to think out new and needful lies about me, while I sleep sweetly. O, it is all right, truly.
No, I never had any row (nor much acquaintance) with Mark Twain — met him but two or three times. Once with Stoddard in London. I think pretty well of him, but doubt if he cared for me and can’t, at the moment, think of any reason why he should have cared for me.
“The Cynic’s Dictionary” is a-printing. I shall have to call it something else, for the publishers tell me there is a “Cynic’s Dictionary” already out. I dare say the author took more than my title — the stuff has been a rich mine for a plagiarist for many a year. They (the publishers) won’t have “The Devil’s Dictionary.” Here in the East the Devil is a sacred personage (the Fourth Person of the Trinity, as an Irishman might say) and his name must not be taken in vain.
No, “The Testimony of the Suns” has not “palled” on me. I still read it and still think it one of the world’s greatest poems.
* * * * *
Well, God be wi’ ye and spare the shack at Carmel,
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C., June 11, 1906.]
DEAR GEORGE,
Your poem, “A Dream of Fear” was so good before that it needed no improvement, though I’m glad to observe that you have “the passion for perfection.” Sure — you shall have your word “colossal” applied to a thing of two dimensions, an you will.
I have no objection to the publication of that sonnet on me. It may give my enemies a transient feeling that is disagreeable, and if I can do that without taking any trouble in the matter myself it is worth doing. I think they must have renewed their activity, to have provoked you so — got up a new and fascinating lie, probably. Thank you for putting your good right leg into action themward.
What a “settlement” you have collected about you at Carmel! All manner of cranks and curios, to whom I feel myself drawn by affinity. Still I suppose I shall not go. I should have to see the new San Francisco — when it has foolishly been built — and I’d rather not. One does not care to look upon either the mutilated face of one’s mashed friend or an upstart imposter bearing his name. No, my San Francisco is gone and I’ll have no other.
* * * * *
You are wrong about Gorky — he has none of the “artist” in him. He is not only a peasant, but an anarchist and an advocate of assassination — by others; like most of his tribe, he doesn’t care to take the risk himself. His “career” in this country has been that of a yellow dog. Hearst’s newspapers and * * * are the only friends that remain to him of all those that acclaimed him when he landed. And all the sturdy lying of the former cannot rehabilitate him. It isn’t merely the woman matter. You’d understand if you were on this side of the country. I was myself a dupe in the matter. He had expressed high admiration of my books (in an interview in Russia) and when his Government released him from prison I cabled him congratulations. O, my!
Yes, I’ve observed the obviously lying estimates of the San Franciscan dead; also that there was no earthquake — just a fire; also the determination to “beat” the insurance companies. Insurance is a hog game, and if they (the companies) can be beaten out of their dishonest gains by superior dishonesty I have no objection; but in my judgment they are neither legally nor morally liable for the half that is claimed of them. Those of them that took no earthquake risks don’t owe a cent.
Please don’t send * * *’s verses to me if you can decently decline. I should be sorry to find them bad, and my loathing of the Whitmaniacal “form” is as deep as yours. Perhaps I should find them good otherwise, but the probability is so small that I don’t want to take the chance.
* * * * *
I’ve just finished reading the first proofs of “The Cynic’s Word Book,” which Doubleday, Page & Co. are to bring out in October. My dealings with them have been most pleasant and one of them whom I met the other day at Atlantic City seems a fine fellow.
I think I told you that S. O. Howes, of Galveston, Texas, is compiling a book of essays and sich from some of my stuff that I sent him. I’ve left the selection entirely to him and presented him with the profits if there be any. He’ll probably not even find a publisher. He has the work about half done. By the way, he is an enthusiastic admirer of you. For that I like him, and for much else.
I mean to stay here all summer if I die for it, as I probably shall. Luck and love to you.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., June 20, 1906.]
DEAR MR. CAHILL,
I am more sorry than I can say to be unable to send you the copy of the Builder’s Review that you kindly sent me. But before receiving your note I had, in my own interest, searched high and low for it, in vain. Somebody stole it from my table. I especially valued it after the catastrophe, but should have been doubly pleased to have it for you.
It was indeed a rough deal you San Franciscans got. I had always expected to go back to the good old town some day, but I have no desire to see the new town, if there is to be one. I fear the fire consumed even the ghosts that used to meet me at every street corner — ghosts of dear dead friends, oh, so many of them!
Please accept my sympathy for your losses. I too am a “sufferer,” a whole edition of my latest book, plates and all, having gone up in smoke and many of my friends being now in the “dependent class.” It hit us all pretty hard, I guess, wherever we happened to be.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C, August 11, 1906.]
DEAR GEORGE,
* * * * *
If your neighbor Carmelites are really “normal” and respectable I’m sorry for you. They will surely (remaining cold sober themselves) drive you to drink. Their sort affects me that way. God bless the crank and the curio! — what would life in this desert be without its mullahs and its dervishes? A matter of merchants and camel drivers — no one to laugh with and at.
Did you see Gorky’s estimate of us in “Appleton’s”? Having been a few weeks in the land, whose language he knows not a word of, he knows (by intuition of genius and a wee-bit help f
rom Gaylord Wilshire and his gang) all about us, and tells it in generalities of vituperation as applicable to one country as to another. He’s a dandy bomb-thrower, but he handles the stink-pot only indifferently well. He should write (for “The Cosmopolitan”) on “The Treason of God.”
Sorry you didn’t like my remarks in that fool “symposium.” If I said enough to make it clear that I don’t care a damn for any of the matters touched upon, nor for the fellows who do care, I satisfied my wish. It was not intended to be an “argument” at all — at least not on my part; I don’t argue with babes and sucklings. Hunter is a decentish fellow, for a dreamer, but the Hillquit person is a humorless anarchist. When I complimented him on the beauty of his neck and expressed the hope of putting a nice, new rope about it he nearly strangled on the brandy that I was putting down it at the hotel bar. And it wasn’t with merriment. His anarchist sentiments were all cut out.
I’m not familiar with the poetry of William Vaughan Moody. Can you “put me on”?
I’m sending you an odd thing by Eugene Wood, of Niagara Falls, where I met him two or three years ago. I’m sure you will appreciate it. The poor chap died the other day and might appropriately — as he doubtless will — lie in a neglected grave. You may return the book when you have read it enough. I’m confident you never heard of it.
Enclosed is your sonnet, with a few suggestions of no importance. I had not space on it to say that the superfluity of superlatives noted, is accentuated by the words “west” and “quest” immediately following, making a lot of “ests.” The verses are pleasing, but if any villain prefer them to “In Extremis” may he bite himself with a Snake!
If you’ll send me that shuddery thing on Fear — with the “clangor of ascending chains” line — and one or two others that you’d care to have in a magazine, I’ll try them on Maxwell. I suspect he will fall dead in the reading, or possibly dislocate the jaw of him with a yawn, but even so you will not have written in vain.
Have you tried anything on “Munsey”? Bob Davis is the editor, and we talked you over at dinner (where would you could have been). I think he values my judgment a little. * * *
I wish I could be blown upon by your Carmel sea-breeze; the weather here is wicked! I don’t even canoe.
My “Cynic” book is due in October. Shall send it to you.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C., September 28, 1906.]
DEAR GEORGE,
Both your letters at hand.
* * * * *
Be a “magazine poet” all you can — that is the shortest road to recognition, and all our greater poets have travelled it. You need not compromise with your conscience, however, by writing “magazine poetry.” You couldn’t.
What’s your objection to * * *? I don’t observe that it is greatly worse than others of its class. But a fellow who has for nigh upon twenty years written for yellow newspapers can’t be expected to say much that’s edifying on that subject. So I dare say I’m wrong in my advice about the kind of swine for your pearls. There are probably more than the two kinds of pigs — live ones and dead ones.
Yes, I’m a colonel — in Pennsylvania Avenue. In the neighborhood of my tenement I’m a Mister. At my club I’m a major — which is my real title by an act of Congress. I suppressed it in California, but couldn’t here, where I run with the military gang.
You need not blackguard your poem, “A Visitor,” though I could wish you had not chosen blank verse. That form seems to me suitable (in serious verse) only to lofty, not lowly, themes. Anyhow, I always expect something pretty high when I begin an unknown poem in blank. Moreover, it is not your best “medium.” Your splendid poem, “Music,” does not wholly commend itself to me for that reason. May I say that it is a little sing-songy — the lines monotonously alike in their caesural pauses and some of their other features?
By the way, I’d like to see what you could do in more unsimple meters than the ones that you handle so well. The wish came to me the other day in reading Lanier’s “The Marshes of Glynn” and some of his other work. Lanier did not often equal his master, Swinburne, in getting the most out of the method, but he did well in the poem mentioned. Maybe you could manage the dangerous thing. It would be worth doing and is, therefore, worth trying.
Thank you for the Moody book, which I will return. He pleaseth me greatly and I could already fill pages with analyses of him for the reasons therefore. But for you to say that he has you “skinned” — that is magnanimity. An excellent thing in poets, I grant you, and a rare one. There is something about him and his book in the current “Atlantic,” by May Sinclair, who, I dare say, has never heard of you. Unlike you, she thinks his dramatic work the best of what he does. I’ve not seen that. To be the best it must be mighty good.
Yes, poor White’s poetry is all you say — and worse, but, faith! he “had it in him.” What struck me was his candid apotheosis of piracy on the high seas. I’d hate the fellow who hadn’t some sneaking sympathy with that — as Goethe confessed to some sympathy with every vice. Nobody’ll ever hear of White, but (pray observe, ambitious bard!) he isn’t caring. How wise are the dead!
* * * * *
My friend Howes, of Galveston, has, I think, nearly finished compiling his book of essaylets from my stuff. Neale has definitely decided to bring out “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter.” He has the plates of my two luckless Putnam books, and is figuring on my “complete works,” to be published by subscription. I doubt if he will undertake it right away.
Au reste, I’m in good health and am growing old not altogether disgracefully.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, October 30, 1906.]
DEAR GEORGE,
I’m pained by your comments on my book. I always feel that way when praised—”just plunged in a gulf of dark despair” to think that I took no more trouble to make the commendation truer. I shall try harder with the Howes book.
* * * * *
I can’t supply the missing link between pages 101 and 102 of the “Word Book,” having destroyed the copy and proofs. Supply it yourself.
You err: the book is getting me a little glory, but that will be all — it will have no sale, for it has no slang, no “dialect” and no grinning through a horse-collar. By the, way, please send me any “notices” of it that you may chance to see out there.
* * * * *
I’ve done a ghost story for the January “Cosmopolitan,” which I think pretty well of. That’s all I’ve done for more than two months.
I return your poem and the Moody book. Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, December 5, 1906.]
DEAR GEORGE,
Your letter of Nov. 28 has just come to my breakfast table. It is the better part of the repast.
* * * * *
No, my dictionary will not sell. I so assured the publishers.
I lunched with Neale the other day — he comes down here once a month. His magazine (I think he is to call it “The Southerner,” or something like that) will not get out this month, as he expected it to. And for an ominous reason: He had relied largely on Southern writers, and finds that they can’t write! He assures me that it will appear this winter and asked me not to withdraw your poem and my remarks on it unless you asked it. So I did not.
* * * * *
In your character of bookseller carrying a stock of my books you have a new interest. May Heaven promote you to publisher!
Thank you for the Moody books — which I’ll return soon. “The Masque of Judgment” has some great work in its final pages — quite as great as anything in Faust. The passages that you marked are good too, but some of them barely miss being entirely satisfying. It would trouble you to find many such passages in the other book, which is, moreover, not distinguished for clarity. I found myself frequently prompted to ask the author: “What the devil are you
driving at?”
I’m going to finish this letter at home where there is less talk of the relative military strength of Japan and San Francisco and the latter power’s newest and most grievous affliction, Teddy Roosevelt.
AMBROSE BIERCE.
P.S. Guess the letter is finished.
1907.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., January 27, 1907.]
DEAR GEORGE,
I suppose I owe you letters and letters — but you don’t particularly like to write letters yourself, so you’ll understand.
* * * * *
Hanging before me is a water-color of a bit of Carmel Beach, by Chris Jorgensen, for which I blew in fifty dollars the other day. He had a fine exhibition of his Californian work here. I wanted to buy it all, but compromised with my desire by buying what I could. The picture has a sentimental value to me, apart from its artistic.
* * * * *
I am to see Neale in a few days and shall try to learn definitely when his magazine is to come out — if he knows. If he does not I’ll withdraw your poem. Next month he is to republish “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” with a new preface which somebody will not relish. I’ll send you a copy. The Howes book is on its travels among the publishers, and so, doubtless, will long continue.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., February 5, 1907.]
DEAR GEORGE,
Our letters “crossed” — a thing that “happens” oftener than not in my correspondence, when neither person has written for a long time. I have drawn some interesting inferences from this fact, but have no time now to state them. Indeed, I have no time to do anything but send you the stuff on the battle of Shiloh concerning which you inquire.
I should write it a little differently now, but it may entertain you as it is.
* * * * *
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 319