Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  It was about this time, 1874, that the ubiquitous M. Rochefort escaped from New Caledonia and was, via Australia and the New World, en route for England and Eugénie. Rumors reached the Empress that this inhuman scourge was coming to invade her sanctum for the express purpose of humiliating her, and at this Chislehurst began to erect barricades. Rochefort, on arriving, announced that he would publish La Lanterne in London for a time, printing one edition in English and the other in French, the latter edition to be smuggled into France, where Rochefort was still persona non grata, and the former to be used in tormenting Eugénie. The prospect of such a state of affairs, particularly at a time when public support was sorely needed, must have worried the Empress exceedingly. She had no way of knowing what Rochefort the Lurid would say; why, for all she knew, the fellow might even question her chastity!

  When Mortimer was consulted by the Empress as to what course of action she should pursue, he recommended that she found a journal to be called The Lantern, and beat Rochefort at his own game. Mortimer saw a fine opportunity to make some money and to win the favor of the Empress, and it could all be done cheaply, for he would hire Bierce to write the copy, and it could be printed at the regular offices of Figaro. Thus it came that Bierce wrote every line of the two issues of The Lantern that appeared: one on May 17, 1874, and the other July 15, 1874. — It was a most interesting publication and boasted that it was the first newspaper in the world printed in six colors. Whether this is correct or not, the journal was certainly a handsome publication for the time, and it is interesting to note that The Wasp, a periodical Bierce edited in San Francisco, was remarkably like The Lantern in makeup.

  Bierce, in his account of The Lantern, intimates that Rochefort left London immediately upon the appearance of the magazine. It would seem now that this was not altogether the fact. Rochefort, in his memoirs, tells about his amusement over the derisive welcome given him in Punch and other “local magazines,” and comments upon the fact that he was followed by jeering mobs through the streets whenever he left his hotel.

  He states that it was his intention to publish La Lanterne in England, but adds that he actually published one or two issues there. However this may be, he left England soon and went to Geneva, where La Lanterne waved for a time in 1874.

  The Empress was delighted with the work of her kept satirist. She invited Bierce to call at Chislehurst, but unfortunately her invitation was worded in the form of a “command,” and he refused out of an avowed deference to republican habits! As a matter of harsh fact his refusal can only be designated as another of his studied gestures, because he would always be “republican” when he could at the same time be grand. The Empress being gracious if not “republican,” accepted his rebuff in good part and sent him a beautiful ivory card case as a gift.

  With the spring of 1875, Mrs. Bierce had decided to return to America and visit her mother. There was no other reason at that time for her return. Contrary to the rumors that have circulated for years, she did not leave Bierce at this time. There is abundant evidence to show that she merely planned a trip to America, and that she intended to return to London in the fall or the winter of 1875. Her departure with the babies left Bierce very lonely and despondent. Stoddard had returned to London by this time, and Bierce wrote him on June 2, 1875: “Awfully glad you are back, and want to see you very much, for I am lonely, of course, without the wife and babies.... I am struggling with more work than I can manage, and that is partly what has made me ill — for I am ill though I keep pegging away, somehow. Second, I live precariously and abominably.... As soon as I feel well enough to travel I’m coming to London till Mrs. Bierce returns, when I shall have a house somewhere in the suburbs. I have heard nothing from Mrs. Bierce since she left New York, but am expecting a letter every day from Salt Lake. I am not so ill as you suppose. It is only a cursed sort of semi-lunacy, I think, from lack of sleep, hard work, and unchristian cooking.” This letter is revealing, indeed, and scarcely needs emphasis. But two facts are quite apparent: that Mrs. Bierce intended to return to London and that Bierce intended to remain there; that he missed her greatly. The talk about “cooking” and “abominable living” are the words of a man used to a pleasant home life. They reveal a condition that speaks loudly of his affection for his wife and boys, and are about as demonstrative as Bierce ever permitted himself to become.

  Bierce remained in Leamington during the summer of 1875, — leaving for London in the latter part of August, 1875. He lived in London for several months, and then in the latter part of 1875 sailed for America, as he had received word from Mrs. Bierce that she was again enceinte and he hastened from London, abandoning his plans, work, friendships, and associations, so that he might return and be with her during her confinement. He must have realized that this meant a break in his life: a return to the West which would perhaps be permanent. The trip had, after all, been little more than an extended honeymoon. They had not yet come to grips with life. Bierce had not even been able to pay expenses with his earnings in London. He knew that when he arrived back in San Francisco he would have to go to work again as a hack libelist for some journal of the day. And yet he returned to America. His conduct can scarcely be considered the act of a disgruntled husband. He sailed on the Adriatic, arriving in New York Sept. 25, 1875, and the unpleasant nature of the voyage was somewhat alleviated by the presence on shipboard of Madame Theresa Tietjens, the famous opera singer, whose care and well being had been entrusted to Bierce’s hands on sailing by a mutual friend. She is the opera singer mentioned in “Bits of Autobiography.” Bierce tells about the mysterious foreigner whose civility anticipated Madame’s every need and desire. On visiting Madame Tietjens in New York, Bierce discovered that the fellow was her servant!

  And so the London residence was at a close and it was the new world again, to be rediscovered, and tried once more. That Bierce liked England immensely cannot be doubted; and that, after his arrival there, he intended to make it his home can still less be doubted. If it had not been for his wife becoming enceinte, there can be no doubt that Bierce would have remained indefinitely in England. It was the scene of peace, quiet and order that he instinctively sought; it was the period of rest and pause in his life; a period of work, meditation and study. These years had done much for him, coming late as they had in life. The man had been fundamentally the same at all times: super-sensitive and given by this very fact a sharp, swift, insight into human affairs. He was a man to whom every contact with vulgarity, dishonesty and sloth brought a reaction so spontaneous and violent that it unbalanced him for the moment. He saw the evasion and he struck. Perception and reaction were spontaneous with him. This gave his wit its force and aptness. Meditation would have brought doubt, and doubt in turn might have resulted in meditation and study, which might have brought about abstract thought and philosophy. But not for a sensitive man. He had not learned, as had Anatole France, “to despise man tenderly.” He hated ugliness; detested dishonesty; shunned hypocrisy as the evil one itself. I shall have occasion again and again to emphasize this sensitiveness which bordered on the pathologic in the course of time. In time, too, came a gruff exterior; a layer of cynicism that tended to become coarse. But beneath that exterior the man was almost feminine in his vibrant perception of values. It appeared, this same trait, in his son Day. Mrs. Isgrigg has told me how Day would stand in the middle of the room, at St. Helena in later years, his eyes flashing, quivering with rage, his sensitive nostrils dilated, his whole person flaming with indignation like a Shelley, and say: “I wouldn’t think of doing such a thing!” when told about some act of dishonesty or petty cheating. This same sense of values was Bierce’s. It was scarcely aesthetic, not philosophic, it was more a poetic intuition, a sharp ability to perceive realities beyond realities, a certain fine quality of perception.

  Mr. Mencken has spoken of Bierce’s “appalling cynicism” and with this phrase I have no great quarrel. But it stated only one side of the equation. Externally Bierce was a cynic, for experi
ences had made him so, and, as W. L. George once pointed out in connection with Anatole France, a highly developed human being tends to hold two views upon one topic: the one of his instincts and the other of his reason. Instinctively Bierce was one of the most idealistic men that his generation produced in America, a man of exquisitely balanced perception, intuition, and even a sort of harmony. He maintained mental balance by giving violent expression to his work-a-day views. The core of the man was idealistic: shining, brilliant, forceful. The cynic is the concave idealist. The only utter cynic is the man who mouths platitudes which he knows to be untrue. Compared with the men of affairs of his day, Bierce was a great moral force: he was truth resplendent, for the man would not lie, and truth alone mattered to him. It came to mean more than beauty, always a rather secondary consideration with Bierce; it came to be the paramount value of his life. He could not have willed it otherwise. Sensitive, fine, idealistic, splendid, he was destined to fight hydra-headed monsters of untruth all his life. The rage finally exhausted him. He was devastated by his own apocryphal disgust with mankind. Idealism burned itself out in him.

  He scorned moderation, philosophic meditation; he would have nothing to do with George Sterling’s oft-repeated “implications of infinity” — the assurance that many things were transitory and did not matter; they mattered greatly to Bierce. I want to say again: he was shocked in a manner that is very difficult for us to understand, and to an unbelievable degree, by base things. He has been criticized for his sharp, harsh treatment of friends who sinned against his code; he has been violently assailed by a few personal friends for his harsh treatment of his wife’s alleged infidelity. But what I want to force home is that he could not prevent his passionate convictions, his ungovernable, uncompromising determinations. If idealism ever is pathologic sin, it was with Bierce. His violent shots at friends for their shortcomings were boomerangs that took notches out of his own soul: they burned, and hissed, and cut his inner calm to shreds. Ingratitude of friends tortured him as it did King Lear. He suffered from these things. It was not a merely intellectual perception of degraded states of life: he was incapable of such objectivity. He was so shocked by baseness that he froze inwardly, suppressing every natural inclination, suppressing a very great and tender affection. The death of his son, Day, rocked his life like nothing had done before. The slightest suffering or pain tortured him. Inwardly he was so tender, so kind, so idealistic, that when the stimulus came it toppled him off balance in the other direction. It doesn’t do any good to attempt to explain this quality: it is difficult enough to describe. He was simply that kind of man. War or no war, sorrows or no sorrows, he was Bierce and an inscrutable destiny had made him what he was.

  It has often been stated that Bierce learned his trade as a witty journalist in England. This is inaccurate. In his writing for The News-Letter he struck the note which echoed through all his later work. He was fundamentally the same before as after his residence in London. What he did acquire from his years abroad was a manner, an attitude, something of a personal style. It was often remarked in later years by people who knew Bierce but slightly, that he was of English origin. Gavin McNab, the famous San Francisco attorney, once wrote me that he was quite positive Bierce was an Englishman. He had about his person something that suggested the foreigner; his manners alone set him apart from the ultra-Americanism of Twain and Artemus Ward. Even his writing possessed certain qualities that impressed critics as European. John G. Neihardt, writing in the St. Louis Post-Despatch (December 31, 1927), suggests that Bierce was a “congenital outsider.” Herman Scheffauer wrote of Bierce: “During his short sojourn in England, he adopted many English, not to say Tory, externals. He once told me that his ideal of an aged man’s appearance should be a florid face and silver white hair: a color harmony which he realized in his own life.” The London residence was only to make him the more romantic, for on his return to America he felt infinitely superior to all “local” writers. Then, too, the men he had associated with were the survivors of a rather anemic period. Their influence was perhaps more harmful to Bierce than it was helpful. But the years abroad did give him personal poise, polished his manners, and gave him an opportunity to read and study that would have been impossible in San Francisco.

  But important as were the years in London from a personal standpoint, they are even more significant when Bierce’s views are considered. Before attempting an analysis of his own views on the matter, a personal explanation is necessary. What Bierce actually said and wrote is relatively unimportant to-day. It would be folly to attempt a scriptural defense of his views, although he did possess what François Porche has so finely termed “the essential virtue of judgment: lucidity.” One can point out, with sophomoric ease, that many of his views are trite, lack learning, were conceived in excitement and are hastily phrased. But all this is really beside the point when one considers his personal significance. What is important is that such a man lived and wrote in early San Francisco: a man so forceful and so impressive that he stamped his personality in an indelible manner on every one he came in contact with. He stirred his generation in the West as no one had done before, or has done since, for that matter. His influence was essentially a personal influence. What gave his satire, for example, such tremendous force at the time it was written, was the knowledge uppermost in the mind of every reader that Ambrose Bierce had written it.

  Considering his ideas, then, from an objective standpoint, it is apparent that may of them are of English origin. He once wrote a long panegyric about the English system of government in the course of which he said: “For nearly all that is good in our American civilization we are indebted to England; the errors and mischiefs are of our own creation. In learning and letters, in art and the science of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of England. The English are undoubtedly our intellectual superiors.”

  His admiration was genuine and his attitude towards democracy, although influenced by his own personal bias, was essentially the attitude of an Englishman. In pointing out evils in American society, he would invariably point to the superiority of the English custom.

  Often, after his return to San Francisco, he would drop his mask as satirist in “Prattle” and write a few revealing lines of reminiscence about the London years. They came in the course of time to be an oasis in his life. He perhaps magnified his happiness and well-being during these few years, because of the aridness of the times that followed. Nothing he ever said on the subject is so significant as this passage from “Prattle” (Argonaut, Nov. 9, 1878): “A certain friend of mine, who writes things, is commonly accused by those of whom he writes them of thinking himself a Titan among the pigmies. It can hardly be from vanity, for he frankly confesses that the happiest and most prosperous period of his life was passed where he felt himself a pigmy among the Titans. My friend used to write things in London.” To one familiar with Bierce’s writing from its inception to its close, such lines, rare as they are for their simplicity and personal quality, speak volumes. “My friend used to write things in London.”...

  CHAPTER VII. “THE TERRIBLE SEVENTIES”

  BIERCE returned in the fall of 1875 and spent most of the winter with his wife and children in San Francisco, where they were living at the home of Mr and Mrs. Day on Vallejo Street. For a brief holiday in December, he took his wife to Calistoga Hot Springs, then a famous resort. The Napa Valley through which they journeyed was in striking contrast to recent scenes in England, but they were not disheartened at the prospect of living on the coast. Mrs. Bierce, in particular, was delighted at the thought of being near her friends. After the birth of their daughter, Helen, they moved from San Francisco across the bay to San Rafael, in Marin County, where they had lived when they were first married. Bierce found, soon after his arrival in San Francisco, that by living in Marin County he could secure relief from the attacks of asthma which had always troubled him. This cursed disease made him a fugitive from society and his grief was unassuagable, when, one
evening as he bent over his son Leigh, he heard that dreaded wheezing, that painful breathing, of the asthmatic. Thenceforth there were two exiles in the family.

  One reason that the Bierces had decided to live in San Rafael was the fact that their friends, the Getliffs, who had visited them in England, made San Rafael their home. The two families lived next door and were neighbors for many years. Bierce found life very pleasant in San Rafael. It was a pretty town, only slightly removed from the bay, full of a quiet and restful beauty. He could tramp the brown hillsides with their evenly spaced clusters of green, umbrella-like trees.

  He took long walks up Mt. Talmapais where the sun burned down upon the slanting hillsides with warming indolence. Then, too, there were trips across the bay to San Francisco, when the waters were dull with sorrow, full of uneasy restlessness, tugging at the shoreline. He would return home in the evening with his banker friend, Getliff, or perhaps with Judge Boalt as a week-end guest, and they would talk over the affairs of the day. A friend remembers a picture of the three of them standing near the railing, dignified, clear-eyed, but in that state of inebriation that converts every word into a sonorous intonation and makes of every movement a superb gesture. There was still a spaciousness about life, then, that permitted of gestures, verbal violence and magnificent sentiments.