I should be glad to entertain proposals from you for their republication — in San Francisco — and should not be exacting as to royalties, and so forth.
But the other books are “youthful indiscretions” and are “better dead.”
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., December 28,1907.]
DEAR GEORGE,
* * * * *
Please send me a copy of the new edition of “The Testimony.” I borrowed one of the first edition to give away, and want to replace it. Did you add the “Wine” to it? I’d not leave off the indefinite article from the title of that; it seems to dignify the tipple by hinting that it was no ordinary tope. It may have been witch-fermented.
I don’t “dislike” the line: “So terribly that brilliance shall enhance”; it seems merely less admirable than the others. Why didn’t I tell you so? I could not tell you all I thought of the poem — for another example, how I loved the lines:
“Where Dawn upon a pansy’s breast hath laid
A single tear, and whence the wind hath flown
And left a silence.”
* * * * *
I’m returning you, under another cover (as the ceremonial slangers say) some letters that have come to me and that I have answered. I have a lot more, most of them abusive, I guess, that I’ll dig out later. But the most pleasing ones I can’t send, for I sent them to Brisbane on his promise to publish them, which the liar did not, nor has he had the decency to return them. I’m hardly sorry, for it gave me good reason to call him a peasant and a beast of the field. I’m always grateful for the chance to prod somebody.
* * * * *
I detest the “limited edition” and “autograph copies” plan of publication, but for the sake of Howes, who has done a tremendous lot of good work on my book, have assented to Blake’s proposal in all things and hope to be able to laugh at this brilliant example of the “irony of fate.” I’ve refused to profit in any way by the book. I want Howes to “break even” for his labor.
By the way, Pollard and I had a good time in Galveston, and on the way I took in some of my old battlefields. At Galveston they nearly killed me with hospitality — so nearly that Pollard fled. I returned via Key West and Florida.
You’ll probably see Howes next Summer — I’ve persuaded him to go West and renounce the bookworm habit for some other folly. Be good to him; he is a capital fellow in his odd, amusing way.
I didn’t know there was an American edition of “The Fiends’ Delight.” Who published it and when?
Congratulations on acceptance of “Tasso and Leonora.” But I wouldn’t do much in blank verse if I were you. It betrays you (somehow) into mere straightaway expression, and seems to repress in you the glorious abundance of imagery and metaphor that enriches your rhyme-work. This is not a criticism, particularly, of “Tasso,” which is good enough for anybody, but — well, it’s just so.
I’m not doing much. My stuff in the Cosmo. comes last, and when advertisements crowd some of it is left off. Most of it gets in later (for of course I don’t replace it with more work) but it is sadly antiquated. My checks, though, are always up to date.
Sincerely10 yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
10 I can almost say “sinecurely.”
1908.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., January 19, 1908.]
MY DEAR GEORGE,
I have just come upon a letter of yours that I got at Galveston and (I fear) did not acknowledge. But I’ve written you since, so I fancy all is well.
You mention that sonnet that Chamberlain asked for. You should not have let him have it — it was, as you say, the kind of stuff that magazines like. Nay, it was even better. But I wish you’d sent it elsewhere. You owed it to me not to let the Cosmopolitan’s readers see anything of yours (for awhile, at least) that was less than great. Something as great as the sonnet that you sent to McClure’s was what the circumstances called for.
“And strict concern of relativity” — O bother! that’s not poetry. It’s the slang of philosophy.
I am still awaiting my copy of the new “Testimony.” That’s why I’m scolding.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., April 18, 1908.]
MY DEAR LORA,
I’m an age acknowledging your letter; but then you’d have been an age writing it if you had not done it for “Sloots.” And the other day I had one from him, written in his own improper person.
I think it abominable that he and Carlt have to work so hard — at their age — and I quite agree with George Sterling that Carlt ought to go to Carmel and grow potatoes. I’d like to do that myself, but for the fact that so many objectionable persons frequent the place: * * *, * * * and the like. I’m hoping, however, that the ocean will swallow * * * and be unable to throw him up.
I trust you’ll let Sloots “retire” at seventy, which is really quite well along in life toward the years of discretion and the age of consent. But when he is retired I know that he will bury himself in the redwoods and never look upon the face of man again. That, too, I should rather like to do myself — for a few months.
I’ve laid out a lot of work for myself this season, and doubt if I shall get to California, as I had hoped. So I shall never, never see you. But you might send me a photograph.
God be with you.
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C., July 11, 1908.]
N.B. If you follow the pages you’ll be able to make some sense of this screed.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
I am sorry to learn that you have not been able to break your commercial chains, since you wish to, though I don’t at all know that they are bad for you. I’ve railed at mine all my life, but don’t remember that I ever made any good use of leisure when I had it — unless the mere “having a good time” is such. I remember once writing that one’s career, or usefulness, was about ended when one thought less about how best to do his work than about the hardship of having to do it. I might have said the hardship of having so little leisure to do it. As I grow older I see more and more clearly the advantages of disadvantage, the splendid urge of adverse conditions, the uplifting effect of repression. And I’m ashamed to note how little I profited by them. I wasn’t the right kind, that is all; but I indulge the hope that you are.
No I don’t think it of any use, your trying to keep * * * and me friends. But don’t let that interfere with your regard for him if you have it. We are not required to share one another’s feelings in such matters. I should not expect you to like my friends nor hate my enemies if they seemed to you different from what they seem to me; nor would I necessarily follow your lead. For example, I loathe your friend * * * and expect his safe return because the ocean will refuse to swallow him.
* * * * *
I congratulate you on the Gilder acceptance of your sonnet, and on publication of the “Tasso to Leonora.” I don’t think it your best work by much — don’t think any of your blank verse as good as most of your rhyme — but it’s not a thing to need apology.
Certainly, I shall be pleased to see Hopper. Give me his address, and when I go to New York — this month or the next — I’ll look him up. I think well of Hopper and trust that he will not turn out to be an ‘ist of some kind, as most writers and artists do. That is because they are good feelers and poor thinkers. It is the emotional element in them, not the logical, that makes them writers and artists. They have, as a rule, sensibility and no sense. Except the big fellows.
* * * * *
Neale has in hand already three volumes of the “Collected Works,” and will have two more in about a month; and all (I hope) this year. I’m revising all the stuff and cutting it about a good deal, taking from one book stuff for another, and so forth. If Neale gets enough subscriptions he will put out all the ten volumes next year; if not I shall probably not be “here” to see th
e final one issued.
* * * * *
Glad you think better of my part in the Hunter-Hillquit “symposium.” I think I did very well considering, first, that I didn’t care a damn about the matter; second, that I knew nothing of the men I was to meet, nor what we were to talk about, whereas they came cocked and primed for the fray; and, third, that the whole scheme was to make a Socialist holiday at my expense. Of all ‘ists the Socialist is perhaps the damnedest fool for (in this country) he is merely the cat that pulls chestnuts from the fire for the Anarchist. His part of the business is to talk away the country’s attention while the Anarchist places the bomb. In some countries Socialism is clean, but not in this. And everywhere the Socialist is a dreamer and futilitarian.
But I guess I’ll call a halt on this letter, the product of an idle hour in garrulous old age.
* * * * *
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., August 7, 1908.]
MY DEAR MR. CAHILL,
Your note inquiring about “Ashes of the Beacon” interests me. You mention it as a “pamphlet.” I have no knowledge of its having appeared otherwise than as an article in the Sunday edition of the “N. Y. American” — I do not recall the date. If it has been published as a pamphlet, or in any other form, separately — that is by itself — I should like “awfully” to know by whom, if you know.
I should be pleased to send it to you — in the “American” — if I had a copy of the issue containing it, but I have not. It will be included in Vol. I of my “Collected Works,” to be published by the Neale Publishing Company, N. Y. That volume will be published probably early next year.
But the work is to be in ten or twelve costly volumes, and sold by subscription only. That buries it fathoms deep so far as the public is concerned.
Regretting my inability to assist you, I am sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C., August 14, 1908.]
DEAR GEORGE,
I am amused by your attitude toward the spaced sonnet, and by the docility of Gilder. If I had been your editor I guess you’d have got back your sonnets. I never liked the space. If the work naturally divides itself into two parts, as it should, the space is needless; if not, it is worse than that. The space was the invention of printers of a comparatively recent period, neither Petrarch nor Dante (as Gilder points out) knew of it. Every magazine has its own system of printing, and Gilder’s good-natured compliance with your wish, or rather demand, shows him to be a better fellow, though not a better poet, than I have thought him to be. As a victory of author over editor, the incident pleases.
I’ve not yet been in New York, but expect to go soon. I shall be glad to meet Hopper if he is there.
Thank you for the article from “Town Talk.” It suggests this question: How many times, and covering a period of how many years, must one’s unexplainable obscurity be pointed out to constitute fame? Not knowing, I am almost disposed to consider myself the most famous of authors. I have pretty nearly ceased to be “discovered,” but my notoriety as an obscurian may be said to be worldwide and apparently everlasting.
The trouble, I fancy, is with our vocabulary — the lack of a word meaning something intermediate between “popular” and “obscure” — and the ignorance of writers as to the reading of readers. I seldom meet a person of education who is not acquainted with some of my work; my clipping bureau’s bills were so heavy that I had to discontinue my patronage, and Blake tells me that he sells my books at one hundred dollars a set. Rather amusing all this to one so widely unknown.
I sometimes wonder what you think of Scheff’s new book. Does it perform the promise of the others? In the dedicatory poem it seems to me that it does, and in some others. As a good Socialist you are bound to like that poem because of its political-economic-views. I like it despite them.
“The dome of the Capitol roars
With the shouts of the Caesars of crime”
is great poetry, but it is not true. I am rather familiar with what goes on in the Capitol — not through the muck-rakers, who pass a few days here “investigating,” and then look into their pockets and write, but through years of personal observation and personal acquaintance with the men observed. There are no Caesars of crime, but about a dozen rascals, all told, mostly very small fellows; I can name them all. They are without power or influence enough to count in the scheme of legislation. The really dangerous and mischievous chaps are the demagogues, friends of the pee-pul. And they do all the “shouting.” Compared with the Congress of our forefathers, the Congress of to-day is as a flock of angels to an executive body of the Western Federation of Miners.
When I showed the “dome” to * * * (who had been reading his own magazine) the tears came into his voice, and I guess his eyes, as he lamented the decay of civic virtue, “the treason of the Senate,” and the rest of it. He was so affected that I hastened to brace him up with whiskey. He, too, was “squirming” about “other persons’ troubles,” and with about as good reason as you.
I think “the present system” is not “frightful.” It is all right — a natural outgrowth of human needs, limitations and capacities, instinct with possibilities of growth in goodness, elastic, and progressively better. Why don’t you study humanity as you do the suns — not from the viewpoint of time, but from that of eternity. The middle ages were yesterday, Rome and Greece the day before. The individual man is nothing, as a single star is nothing. If this earth were to take fire you would smile to think how little it mattered in the scheme of the universe; all the wailing of the egoist mob would not affect you. Then why do you squirm at the minute catastrophe of a few thousands or millions of pismires crushed under the wheels of evolution. Must the new heavens and the new earth of prophecy and science come in your little instant of life in order that you may not go howling and damning with Jack London up and down the earth that we happen to have? Nay, nay, read history to get the long, large view — to learn to think in centuries and cycles. Keep your eyes off your neighbors and fix them on the nations. What poetry we shall have when you get, and give us, The Testimony of the Races!
* * * * *
I peg away at compilation and revision. I’m cutting-about my stuff a good deal — changing things from one book to another, adding, subtracting and dividing. Five volumes are ready, and Neale is engaged in a “prospectus” which he says will make me blush. I’ll send it to you when he has it ready.
Gertrude Atherton is sending me picture-postals of Berchtesgaden and other scenes of “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter.” She found all the places “exactly as described” — the lakes, mountains, St. Bartolomae, the cliff-meadow where the edelweiss grows, and so forth. The photographs are naturally very interesting to me.
Good night.
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., September 12, 1908.]
MY DEAR MR. CAHILL,
Thank you for your good wishes for the “Collected Works” — an advertisement of which — with many blushes! — I enclose.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
P.S. — The “ad” is not sent in the hope that you will be so foolish as to subscribe — merely to “show” you. The “edition de luxe” business is not at all to my taste — I should prefer a popular edition at a possible price.
[New York, November 6, 1908.]
DEAR GEORGE,
Your letter has just been forwarded from Washington. I’m here for a few days only—”few days and full of trouble,” as the Scripture hath it. The “trouble” is mainly owling, dining and booze. I’ll not attempt an answer to your letter till I get home.
* * * * *
I’m going to read Hopper’s book, and if it doesn’t show him to be a * * * or a * * * I’ll call on him. If it does I won’t. I’m getting pretty particular in my old age; the muck-rakers, blood-boilers and little brothers-of-the-bad are not congenial.
By the way, why do you speak of my “caning” you. I did not suppose that you had joined the innumerable caravan of those who find something sarcastic or malicious in my good natured raillery in careless controversy. If I choose to smile in ink at your inconsistency in weeping for the woes of individual “others” — meaning other humans — while you, of course, don’t give a damn for the thousands of lives that you crush out every time you set down your foot, or eat a berry, why shouldn’t I do so? One can’t always remember to stick to trifles, even in writing a letter. Put on your skin, old man, I may want to poke about with my finger again.
* * * * *
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C., December 11, 1908.]
DEAR GEORGE,
* * * * *
I’m still working at my book. Seven volumes are completed and I’ve read the proofs of Vol. I.
Your account of the “movement” to free the oppressed and downtrodden river from the tyranny of the sand-bar tickled me in my lonesome rib. Surely no colony of reformers ever engaged in a more characteristic crusade against the Established Order and Intolerable Conditions. I can almost hear you patting yourselves on your aching backs as you contemplated your encouraging success in beating Nature and promoting the Cause. I believe that if I’d been there my cold heart and indurated mind would have caught the contagion of the Great Reform. Anyhow, I should have appreciated the sunset which (characteristically) intervened in the interest of Things as They Are. I feel sure that whenever you Socialers shall have found a way to make the earth stop “turning over and over like a man in bed” (as Joaquin might say) you will accomplish all the reforms that you have at heart. All that you need is plenty of time — a few kalpas, more or less, of uninterrupted daylight. Meantime I await your new book with impatience and expectation.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 321