The dust drifts away. Incredible! — that enchanted horse and rider have passed a ravine and are climbing another slope to unveil another conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. Another moment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and strikes the air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again — the man has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect, motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head. His face is toward us. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face and moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downward curve. It is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity. It is a hero’s salute to death and history.
Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to cheer; they are choking with emotion; they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch their weapons and press tumultuously forward into the open. The skirmishers, without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, like hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy’s now open in full chorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest, seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud, and the great shot pitch roaring down among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on its burnished arms...
Bierce has been called a Martian; a man who loved war. In a way, I think he did; he was a born fighter, and he fought, as later he wrote, with a suave fierceness, deadly, direct, and unhastening. He was also an humane and tender spirit. As typical as the foregoing paragraphs are the following lines, with which the narrative concludes:
The skirmishers return, gathering up the dead. Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside — could it not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion? Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan?
In his more genuinely horrible vein, “Chickamauga” is unrivaled; a grotesquely shocking account of a deaf-mute child who, wandering from home, encountered in the woods a host of wounded soldiers hideously crawling from the battlefield”, and thought they were playing a game. Rebuffed by the jawless man, upon whose back he tried to ride, the child ultimately returns to his home, to find it burned and his mother slain and horribly mutilated by a shell. There is nothing occult in this story, but, with others of its genre, it probes the very depths of material horror.
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is better known than many of Bierce’s tales, and here again is a form that has attracted imitators. Like a pantoum, the conclusion brings the narrative back to its beginning. A man is engaged in being hanged, in this extraordinary tale, and preparations are proceeding in a calm and businesslike manner. An order is given, and the man is dropped.
Consciousness returns, and he feels the water about him; the rope has broken, he knows, and he has fallen into the stream. He is fired upon, but escapes. After days of travel and incredible hardship, he reaches his home. His wife is in the doorway to greet him, and he springs forward with extended arms. At that instant, he feels a stunning blow on the back of his neck, a blaze of light is about him — then darkness and silence. “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”
Again there is the sense of shock, at the end, as we realize that between the instant of the hanged man’s drop and the succeeding instant of his death, he has lived days of emotion and suspense.
The tales of civilians, which make up the second half of Bierce’s greatest book, are of a piece with his war stories. Probably nothing more weirdly awful has been conceived than such tales as “A Watcher by the Dead,”
“The Man and the Snake,” and “The Boarded Window,” unless it be Stevenson’s “The Body Snatcher.” The volume entitled Can Such Things Be? contains several similar stories, although, as a whole, it is apocryphal. In “The Mocking Bird” we find again the motif of “A Horseman in the Sky;” in “The Death of Halpin Frayser” there is a haunting detail and a grewsome imagery that suggest Poe, and in “My Favorite Murder,” one of the best tales Bierce ever wrote, there is a satirical whimsicality and a cynical brutality that make the tale an authentic masterpiece of something — perhaps humor!
“A literary quality that is a consecration,” remarked one critic, of Bierce’s method and method-results. That is better than speaking of his “style,” for I think the miracle of Bierce’s fascination is as much a lack of what is called style as anything else.
The clarity and directness of his thought and expression, and the nervous strength and purity of his diction, are the most unmistakable characteristics of his manner.
Bierce the satirist is seen in nearly all of his stories, but in Fantastic Fables, and The Devil’s Dictionary we have satire bereft of romantic association; the keenest satire since Swift, glittering, bitter, venomous, but thoroughly honest. His thrusts are at and through the heart of sham. A beautiful specimen of his temper is the following fable:
An Associate Justice of the Supreme Court was sitting by a river when a traveler approached and said:
“I wish to cross. Would it be lawful to use this boat?”
“It would,” was the reply, “it is my boat.”
The traveler thanked him, and pushing the boat into the water, embarked and rowed away. But the boat sank and he was drowned.
“Heartless man!” said an Indignant Spectator, “why did you not tell him that your boat had a hole in it?” —
“The matter of the boat’s condition,” said the great jurist, “was not brought before me.” The same cynical humor is revealed in the introductory paragraphs of the story already referred to, called “My Favorite Murder.” The solemn absurdities of the law were Bierce’s frequent target; thus, in his Devil’s Dictionary, the definition of the phrase “court fool” is, laconically, “the plaintiff.” His biting wit is nowhere better evidenced than in this mocking lexicon. Bacchus, he conceives to be “a convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk;” and a Prelate is “a church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven’s aristocracy. A gentleman of God.” More humorously, a Garter is “an elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.”
In the same key are his collected epigrams, in which we learn that “woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.”
With all forms of literary expression, Bierce experimented successfully; but in verse his percentage of permanent contributions is smaller than in any other department. His output, while enormous, was for the most part ephemeral, and the wisdom of collecting even the least of his jingles may well be called into question. At least half of the hundreds of verses contained in the two volumes of his collected works given over to poetry, might have been left for collectors to discover and resurrect; and some delightful volumes of juvenilia and ana thus might have been posthumously achieved for him by the collecting fraternity. But, “someone will surely search them out and put them into circulation,” said their author, in defense of their publication in the definitive edition, and there they are, the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
Happily, in the ocean of newspaper jingles and rhymed quips there is much excellent poetry. Kipling, by some, is asserted to have derived his “Recessional” from Bierce’s “Invocation,” a noble and stately poem; and in “The Passing Show,”
“Finis Æternitatis,” and some of the sonnets we have poetry of a high order. Maugre, we have much excellent satire in many of his journalistic rhymes. Like Swift and Butler, and Pope and Byron, Bierce gibbeted a great many nobodies; but, as he himself remarks, “satire, like other arts, is its own excuse, and is not dependent for its interest on the personality of those who supply the occasion for it.” If many of Bierce’s Black Beetles in Amber seem flat, many too are as virile and keen as when
they were written; and if he flayed men alive, just as certainly he raised the moral tone of the community he dominated in a manner the value of which is perhaps measureless.
The best example of poetry, however, left us by Bierce, me judice, is that great prose poem, The Monk and the Hangman s Daughter. This work is the joint production of Bierce and G. Adolphe Danziger. The latter translated it from the German of Prof. Richard Voss and, I believe, elaborated it. Being unsure of his English, Danziger gave it over to Bierce for revision. Bierce, too, elaborated it, practically rewriting it, he testified, as well as changing it materially. There was discussion about authorship honors; but the book is a bit of literary art that is a credit to all three men, and that would be a credit to six. The world would be poorer without this delicate and lovely romance. Saturated with the color and spirit of the mediaeval days it depicts, it is as authentic a classic as Aucassin and Nicolette; and its denouement is as terrible as it is beautiful. The strange story of Ambrosius the monk, and the outcast girl Benedicta, “the hangman’s daughter,” is one of the masterpieces of literature.
Ambrose Bierce was a great writer and a great man. He was a great master of English; but it is difficult to place him. He is possibly the most versatile genius in American letters. He is the equal of Stevenson in weird, shadowy effect, and in expression he is Stevenson’s superior. Those who compare his work with that of Stephen Crane (in his war stories) have not read him understandingly. Crane was a fine and original genius, but he was, and is, the pupil where Bierce is Master. Bierce’s “style” is simpler and less spasmodic than Crane’s, and Bierce brought to his labor a first-hand knowledge of war, and an imagination more terrible even than that which gave us The Red Badge of Courage. The horrors of both men sometimes transcend artistic effect; but their works are enduring peace tracts.
It has been said that Bierce’s stories are “formula,” and it is in a measure true; but the formula is that of a master chemist, and it is inimitable. He set the pace for the throng of satirical fabulists who have since written; and his essays, of which nothing has been said, are powerful, of immense range, and of impeccable diction. His influence on the writers of his time, while unacknowledged, is wide. Rarely did he attempt anything sustained; his work is composed of keen, darting fragments. His only novel is a redaction. But who shall complain, when his fragments are so perfect?
III. THE MYSTERY
In the fall of the year 1913, Ambrose Bierce, being then some months past his seventy-first birthday anniversary, started for Mexico. He had for some time, and with keen interest, followed the fortunes of the revolutionary cause headed by Francisco Villa; and he believed that cause a just one. From various points along the line of his journey, before he reached the southern republic, Bierce wrote to his friends. In December of 1913 the last letter he is known to have written was received by his daughter. It was dated the month of its receipt, and from Chihuahua, Mexico. In it Bierce mentioned, casually enough, that he had attached himself, unofficially, to a division of Villa’s army — the exact capacity of his service is not known — and spoke of a prospective advance on Ojinaga. The rest is silence.
No further word, bearing the unmistakable stamp of authenticity, ever has come out of Mexico. There have been rumors without number, even long categorical accounts of his death at the hands of the revolutionists, but all must be called false. There is in them not the faintest ring of truth. They represent merely the inevitable speculation, and the inevitable “fakes” of unscrupulous correspondents. Typical of the innumerable “clews” offered is the following: One newspaper correspondent in El Paso reported that a second correspondent had told him that he (the second correspondent) had seen and talked with Bierce before the author passed into Mexico; that Bierce had declared he would offer his services to the revolutionary cause, and that, failing to make such a connection, he would “crawl into some out-of-the-way hole in the mountains and die.” The author of these pages hastily communicated with the second correspondent, and the second correspondent, in a positive communication, vowed that he had never seen Bierce, nor had he heard the story of Bierce’s reported utterance.
The most elaborate account of Bierce’s “death” was quoted in full from the Mexican Review, by the Washington Post, under date of April 27, 1919. Its extraordinary detail gives it a semblance of truth that other accounts have lacked, and, without intending to perpetuate a story which Bierce’s friends and relatives do not for a moment believe, I reproduce it in its ungrammatical entirety:
A short time since the Review editor was conversing with a friend, a former officer in the constitutionalist army, and casually asked him if he had ever heard of an American named Ambrose Bierce. To his surprise he replied that he had met him several times and had become quite well acquainted with him. This was due to the fact that Bierce could speak little if any Spanish, while the officer is well educated and speaks English fluently.
The latter declared that he saw and talked with Bierce several times in the vicinity of Chihuahua late in 1913 or early in 1914. Later — 1915 — he met a sergeant of Villa’s army, an old acquaintance, and this man told him about having witnessed the execution of an American who corresponded in every manner with Bierce’s description.
This affair took place near Icamole, a village in the region of Monterey and Saltillo, east of Chihuahua state, in August, 1915. The constitutionalists occupied that village while Gen. Tomas Urbina, one of Villa’s most bloodthirsty fellows, was nearby and between that place and the border.
One day an American, accompanied by a Mexican, convoying four mules, on one of which was a machine gun, while the others were loaded with ammunition, was captured on the trail, headed toward Icamole, and taken before Urbina. The Mexican told Urbina that he had been engaged by another Mexican to guide the mules and the American to the constitutionalist camp at Icamole. That was all he knew. The American apparently could not speak or understand any Spanish, and made no intelligent reply to the questions asked him.
The bloodthirsty Urbina, who was never so happy as when killing some one himself or ordering it to be done, wearied of questioning the prisoners and ordered them to be shot at once.
The two were stood up in front of a firing squad, where the Mexican threw himself on his knees, stretched out his arms, and refused to have his eyes bandaged, saying he wanted to “see himself killed.” All he asked was that his face be not mutilated, which was not done.
Seeing his companion on his knees, the American followed suit, but the Mexican told him to stand up. He did not understand what was said, but remained on his knees, arms outstretched, like his companion, and with unbandaged eyes he met his death at the hands of the firing squad. The two victims were buried by the side of the trail.
The sergeant who witnessed the affair described Bierce exactly, though he had never seen him to his knowledge. Incidentally it may be stated that Urbina himself soon after met his death by Villa’s orders at the hands of the notorious “Matador Fierro.”
It is to be doubted whether Villa ever knew about this double execution, such affairs being common enough at that time.
Inquiry is now being made for the sergeant in question, in order that further details of the affair may be secured, as well as information regarding the exact locality of the execution and the burial place of the two victims.
Only two things need to be considered in refuting the foregoing narrative. First, this is only one of a great many stories, despite its painstaking vraisemblance; and, second, the execution is dated in the fall of 1915, approximately two years after Bierce’s last letter. Had Ambrose Bierce been alive in 1915, had he been living at almost any time between the date of his last letter and the reported date of his death, he would have sent some communication to his friends and relatives. This is recognized by all who knew him best, and is the final answer to the extravagant chronicle in the Mexican Review. It may be remarked, however, in passing, that the carefully detailed account is just such a tale as might have been construc
ted by a press agent eager to lift the onus of Bierce’s disappearance from official Mexican shoulders; and of such paid press agents there have been many. It will be noted that care is taken to report also the execution of Urbina, and even to “whitewash” Villa, although I believe the propaganda to have been Carranzista.
This careful piece of imagination was followed closely by a still more carefully elaborated account of the same story. Written by James H. Wilkins, it appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin of March 24, 1920. Wilkins quotes George F. Weeks, who was probably responsible for the former story, since he was editor of the Mexican Review, speaks of Major Bierce as having been military advisor to Carranza, and dwells at length on Bierce’s alleged expressed desire to “die in battle.” One Edmundo Melero, an associate editor of the Mexican Review, is declared to have been with Bierce almost from the moment of his arrival in Mexico, but as Melero died of pneumonia the day after Wilkins arrived in Mexico City (I am quoting Wilkins’s story), Wilkins could not interview him. Fortunately, Weeks knew all that Melero could have told, and Weeks told Wilkins that Melero had been seeking a Mexican, then in Mexico City, who had been present at the attack on the mule train when Bierce was “captured” and “executed.”
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 328