“Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood
In the lit gloom of an enchanted wood.
The cypress there and myrtle twined their boughs.
Significant, in baleful brotherhood.
“The brooding willow whispered to the yew;
Beneath, the deadly night shade and the rue,
With immortelles self-woven into strange
Funereal shapes, and horrid nettles grew.
“No song of bird nor any drone of bees.
Nor light leaf lifted by the wholesome breeze:
The air was stagnant all, and Silence was
A living thing that breathed among the trees.
“Conspiring spirits whispered in the gloom.
Half-heard, the stilly secrets of the tomb.
With blood the trees were all adrip the leaves
Shone in the witch-light with a ruddy bloom.
“I cried aloud! — the spell, unbroken still.
Rested upon my spirit and my will.
Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless and forlorn,
I strove with monstrous presages of ill!”
The world of Ambrose Bierce, as pictured in a score or so of his best tales, is a phantasmagorical world, teeming with terrific hallucinations and illusory shades; a world where all familiar things seem to have been swallowed up in some prodigious cataclysm. It is born of an imagination that cared nothing for conventional traditions of right and wrong, but only for pure, disinterested art; an imagination that was totally untouched by any fervor for pragmatic or ethical codes. This world is never subject to principles of cause and effect; it transcends all the properties of physics and chemistry; it cannot be mapped by the aid of compass and surveying instruments. It can be compacted within a single brain, yet it stretches immeasurably beyond the confines of the known universe. Only one form of government it knows — the autocracy of forever enthroned Fear, who rules with diabolical pitilessness. No ray of light, save the “darkness visible” that comes from fitful gleams of baleful lightning, ever penetrate the vast funereal gloom that encompasses all its domain; murky night, sable as crape, enshrouds all its labrinthine mazes. Its sere, blasted wolds and bleak plains seem to have suffered a blight more drear and deadly than that wrought by a plague of locusts. It is peopled only by gibbering imps, frantic fiends, sheeted apparitions, ogreish goblins, pallid spectres and wan ghosts, who protrude their idiotically grinning countenances on every side, hoarsely croak forth in hiccoughing gasps and rasping screeches lugubrious mutterings of imminent destruction, utter derisive, mocking jeers, and shoot basilisk glances as death-dealing as Medusa’s snaky tresses: till finally, after this babbling hubbub has risen to a veritable pandemonium of doleful shrieks, these frenzied demons, wearying of malicious leers and ferocious gnashings of rage, change their riotous tones to subdued howls of anger, wail and moan their sorrow in mournful ululating dirges, and at last conclude their maniacal concert with a tumultuous surge of delirious convulsive cachinnations. Clanking skeletons, which have wrenched away from hideous gibbets or come from corrupt charnel-houses reeking with miasmatic vapors distilled from noisome pollutions, thrust forth gruesome, clammy fingers; stark corpses, hearsed in dank cerements of death or just risen from coffins immured in the pestilential putrefactions of the tomb, stalk along their dismal way, mumbling in hollow, sepulchral tones presages of impending doom, and stare blankly around with blear eyes that pour rheum down ashen, cadaverous cheeks. The very air murmurs portents of disaster, and all things seem crushed beneath a sweeping anathema. It is an infernal world, filled with heinous beings and damned with everlasting desolation.
Ambrose Bierce by Forrest Crissey
From: The Inland Printer, February 1894, page 406
THE winning of sudden literary fame through the medium of the great eastern magazines has been so frequently accomplished that it is no longer a novelty; but to make a literary reputation, coextensive with the English-speaking race, by means of routine work upon a daily newspaper published in a city of second rank in population and comparatively isolated from the literary world, is a feat which but few writers have accomplished. Among this meager number, Ambrose Bierce, of San Francisco, stands in the first rank. He is an Englishman and began his newspaper work in London ; but ill-health caused him, some twenty years ago, to desert the fogs of the great metropolis for the sunshine of the Golden Gate city. His work has appeared almost exclusively in the San Francisco Examiner, in the form of editorials, short sketches and stories and a column of caustic comment upon current events, local celebrities, etc., under the caption of “Prattle.”
Some idea of the gentle pensiveness which has pervaded Mr. Bierce’s “prattle” may be gained from the following lines taken from a metrical eulogy of the late Senator Sharon:
“Sharon, ambitious of immortal shame.
Fame’s dead-wall daubed with his illustrious name —
Served in the Senate, for our sins, his time,
Each word a folly and each vote a crime.”
This would pass for a dollar-a-line obituary poem when compared with the language in which he pays his respects to M. H. De Young, proprietor of the San Francisco Chronicle. In a volume entitled “Black Beetles in Amber,” published by the Western Author’s Publishing Company, New York, nearly two hundred of these tender compliments to his fellow San Franciscoans have been preserved in permanent form. It will, consequently, be worth while to observe the return of these compliments when Mr. Bierce passes to his reward.
Fortunately, however, this feature of his work is the least known and the least deserving.
In the brief limits of one or two newspaper columns, Mr. Bierce has produced a half-dozen sketches which give him rank, in the realm of the weird and grotesque, alongside such masters as Poe and Hoffman.
“Chicamauga” and “My Favorite Murder” are perhaps the most famous of these etchings of the horrible; but “The Watcher by the Dead” and “The Coup de Grace “ are scarcely less powerful.
In these and scores of other fugitive pieces which have been copied into thousands of papers and many magazines, there is a grim and almost brutal strength and vividness which bears the mark of absolute genius. Some of these sketches were published in book form by the London firms of Chatto & Windus and John Camden, under the titles of “Nuggets and Dust” and “Friends’ Delight,” but both volumes are practically unobtainable on the market, although much sought for by the bibliomaniac.
The most pretentious volume by Mr. Bierce yet issued is the adaptation of a German legend entitled “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” issued by F. J. Schulte & Co., Chicago. While in this book the author gives freer rein to his poetic instincts, the same penchant for the grotesque is ever present. It is scarcely to be hoped that Mr. Bierce will give to posterity a fair representation of his peculiar genius, as he is hopelessly indifferent to fame and settled in the rut of daily newspaper work.
The Mystery of Ambrose Bierce by Richard Barry
From: The Mentor, June 21, 1921
THE “cosmic journalist” we have in many incarnations. His chief embodiment was Voltaire — bitter as gall, powerful as picric, and prince of worldlings, defier of the mob whose servant he was, darling of kings whose menace he never ceased to be. His present manifestation is Arthur Brisbane, with tongue in his cheek surveying the passing show, flanked by a bust of Voltaire and a signed photograph of John L. Sullivan, beneath which he writes his phillipics against prize fighting.
However, on the American continent there was never but one cosmic journalist in the superlative sense — Ambrose Bierce.
Bierce alone stalked through this life with the superb poise, the impenetrable mystery of the Master. Already around his memory gather the myths of a legendary character. Despite the fact that he lived but yesterday and that many now here knew him fairly well the facts of his life are shrouded in mist. Edgar Allan Poe was the most romantic figure in American letters, but, in some ways, no more so than Bierce.
Ch
iefly, there is the mystery of his death. Or, is he dead? Out of Mexico, where he was last seen, came a year ago an account of his supposed execution in 1914 — a hurried execution by a casual marauding band. This is now the accepted version of his exit. We are asked to picture this erect, thin, white-haired esthete, well over seventy years of age, facing the ragged firing party calmly (of course) and with — shall we say ? — a hint of the perpetual sneer on the firm pressed lips. So be it. Thus he went from a life for which he never had much use.
Did he go consciously to such a death?
There is reason to believe so, for to the last person who saw him (except his anonymous traveling companions and the rough peons of his final days) a poetess whom he had fostered, he said, “I shall never return.”
All his life he sought death rather than evaded it. In the Civil War, during which he rose from private to the rank of Major, he exposed himself with what has been described as almost a fanatical willingness to die. Ever after he constantly sought peril. He might have said “as human life is the cheapest thing on earth, why defy Nature’s prodigality with our petty thrift?” But it took him over seventy years of wandering and suffering, and he finally had to seek the jungle of Mexico to snuff out one of the most brilliant brains of his generation.
The real mystery of Ambrose Bierce transcends the apocryphal account of his death, or the query as to the reason for his withdrawn and sheltered life in his middle years. The real question concerning him is: why was he a rebel from first to last? For he was consistent. He died as he had always lived; defiantly obscure, yet brilliantly provocative of inquiry.
He was without a rival in wielding the poniard of irony. In his hands the scalpel of cynicism penetrated every hidden recess with unerring skill. He was Juvenal, sharpened; and Swift, dramatized. De Maupassant, Poe, O. Henry, were not rivals but colleagues of equal rank in mastery of the short story. His literary skill equaled theirs, but his incisive mind cut deeper. In summoning sheer terror no one was in his class. He was the arch prince of Literary Darkness. His light shines with clinging phosphorescence, mysterious as the night, and, like it, eternal.
The Mystery of Ambrose Bierce
From: Munsey’s Magazine, June 1917, pages 71-72
The Mystery of Ambrose Bierce
Reported Killed in Mexico,
He Writes from the Front in France
THIS is about a man who went out to seek the great adventure when he should have been thinking about the life he had led and considering obedience to the scriptural law that threescore and ten years constitute the normal span of existence. Ambrose Bierce is — or was — the name of the man, and his habitat, if he is still alive, is “somewhere in France.” For when he was past his seventy-fourth birthday, and it was supposed that he had been killed in a Mexican skirmish two years before, his daughter in this country received a letter from him, telling her that he was serving in the British army, and was alive and happy and fighting. How he got there he didn’t say — which was very like him. Probably the story will not be told until the great struggle is over at last, and the youthful old soldier comes home again, as his friends are sure he will, no matter how thick the bullets fly.
It was early in 1913 that Ambrose Bierce, then seventy years of age, decided that he was entirely too young to be put on the shelf permanently. He had just collected the products of a lifetime of story-writing in a set of twelve thick volumes, and his friends supposed that he was settling into a pleasant niche as one of the deans of American letters, and preparing to spend his declining days peacefully and comfortably. One day, however, without warning to a soul, he packed a bag and hiked away to Mexico to see what Villa and the Constitutionalists had to offer in the way of excitement.
Those he left behind him were amazed. It had not occurred to them that a man like Ambrose Bierce could never be content to dwell upon the past, and that advancing years meant to him principally that there was less and less time left in which to increase his store of knowledge of the world.
There came letters telling of his travels down in Chihuahua, and of his intention of getting to a point of advantage when the American army went in, as he was sure it would eventually have to do. Then, after one of those brawls that the Mexicans are accustomed to call battles, he dropped out of sight. Some of his friends asked the War Department to search for him. Inquiries were made, and Villa’s people were enlisted in the hunt, but to all intents and appearances Ambrose Bierce had vanished from the face of the earth, and he was mourned as dead.
Some six months later came the letter from France, bringing information of his whereabouts and occupation. After that, apparently, he passed into the silences again, and all efforts to find him have been in vain. This is not strange, for very probably he has taken an assumed name. He may have an idea that if people knew where he was they would tell the British authorities how old he is, and then he wouldn’t be allowed to fight any more. Possibly, now that the United States has entered the war, he will come home to offer his services to his own flag.
“The American Swift,” as Bierce has been called, long hesitated whether to make letters or war his profession. He tried the latter first, during the Civil War, from which he emerged a major after numerous displays of courage and daring, at the age of twenty-three. Then he resigned from the army and began a literary career that brought him much fame and a modest fortune. For a time he was in California; then he spent a few years in London, where he attracted attention by a vigorous defense of the deposed French Empress Eugenie, which brought him into conflict with the militant Henri Rochefort.
After he returned to California he delved into politics, and was in the thick of many public controversies. Time passed, and his hair whitened, but his spirit he kept young and his body strong and erect.
“As long as a man is not disabled, he can go forward. Can it be anything but fear that makes him stop and finally retire? Are there signs by which he can infallibly know the struggle to be hopeless?”
That was Bierce’s creed. It was in obedience to it — and perhaps to see whether courage had crumbled with the years — that this strenuous veteran left comfort and safety behind him and placed his life once more in the hands of fortune.
Bierce: The Warrior Writer by H. M. East, Jr.
From: Overland Monthly, June 1915, pages 507-509
Bierce: The Warrior Writer
By H. M. East, Jr.
Ambrose Bierce, the storyteller, poet, novelist, essayist and lampooner, was a warrior writer. I say “was,” because it looks as if he had died on the battlefield. He joined the staff of General Villa, and has been missing since the fierce battle of Torreon, and friends have given up the old soldier scribe as dead.
Ambrose Bierce was a gallant fighter. He served in the Civil War, and was brevetted Major for bravery “in action.” Not only did he acquit himself as a brave soldier, but he looked the ideal man who can fight for the cause of his country and for an opinion or principle. He had a fine fighting face, in which glowed a pair of sharp gray eyes. His carriage was erect and military, and even after he had attained the age of over three score years and ten, he sought the battlefield, when most men would have preferred to spend their declining years by the fireside.
He was an unique man, and his books are a valuable addition to American literature, in spite of the fact that much of the material is unpleasant reading. In fact, Bierce took a certain perverse delight in being devilish. His writings have a flavor all of their own. His satirical skits, printed a decade ago, in the San Francisco Examiner and News Letter, are the fiercest lampoons ever published. He scored and scorned every one, regardless of position, whom he thought should be criticised. He did not fear to be frankly impersonal, either.
Leaving his placid Ohio home after the Civil War, he went to London, and joined some Bohemians who gathered together in a cafe in Ludgate Station. Here, with such gay dogs as Captain Mayne Reid, George Augustus Sala, and later Joaquin Miller, Ambrose Bierce drank social glasses and discussed lit
erature and life. He confessed with his usual frankness that they “went to bed too late in the forenoon. In short, we diligently, conscientiously, and with a perverse satisfaction, burned the candle of Life at both ends — and in the middle.” His cynical satire created a stir, and his writer friends called him “Bitter Bierce.’ Fortunately he had a rugged constitution, and his Bohemian life did not seriously impair his health.
He made an uncertain living by writing. For a time he was in hard luck, especially when John Hotten, a London publisher, died owing him a good sum. Bierce, through Chatto, secured a check from Hotten, but it was dated in advance, and when it became due, Hotten very ungraciously died. Bierce, however, thought it was still time to get the check cashed, went to the bank, but dropped in at his club, and over a mug of bitters related his tale of tribulation. By the time he reached the bank the news of Hotten’s death was known, and Bierce was stung! Sala wrote a brief epitaph on Hotten:
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 335