In Auburn, Bierce lived at the old Putnam House, a ramshackle hotel, the pride of that sleepy village. He rather liked to satirize Auburn, in verse and prose, and on one occasion he wrote of it these lines called “The Perverted Village”:
“Sweet Auburn! liveliest village of the plain.
Where Health and Slander welcome every train,
Whence smiling innocence, its tribute paid,
Retires in terror, wounded and dismayed —
Dear lovely bowers of gossip and disease,
Whose climate cures us that thy dames may tease,
How often have I knelt upon thy green
And prayed for death, to mitigate their spleen!”
It was at Nicassio and then at Auburn that Bierce began that long, interminable vagabondage of his, a constant moving about from one country hotel to another in search of a “breathing place.” First it was the Putnam House at Auburn; the Cranes Hotel at Sunol; Angwin’s on Howell Mountain; the El Monte at Los Gatos; Wright’s in the Santa Cruz Mountains; at the Jeffreys Place at Wrights. They were all small, unattractive hotels, sequestered in unbroken solitude. He lived, for the most part, without companions and without care in his periods of illness. That he missed the civilized, social life of London cannot be doubted. He wrote once that:
“I would rather dine in a receiving vault of a cemetery than in an American dining-room. I mean the dining-room of a hotel where ladies are admitted. The awful hush, the peculiar ghastly chill, the visible determination to be proper and avert the slow stroke of the rebuking eye that awaits the miscreant who laughs or speaks above his breath — these things overcome me. I can’t breathe in that atmosphere of solemn stupidity. I choke my food and strangle on my drink. The waiter carries me out.”
Many amusing incidents took place at Auburn that illustrate what a provincial place it was in the eighties, and, still is, I have no doubt. During one of Bierce’s most violent attacks of asthma, nearly every woman in the town came to the hotel and advocated some special remedy. One woman, however, did not come to the hotel. Her reticence intrigued Bierce. When he recovered sufficiently to be about, he called on this lovely but adamant lady and asked why she had not proposed some remedy for his asthma. Her cold and professional reply was: “Oh, that’s easy to explain: I’m a physician.”
There lived in Auburn, at that time, a handsome and attractive widow. She shocked the town considerably by her efforts to keep far in advance of the times, and Bierce was amused by her antics. One day she proposed to him that they have a picnic in the woods: a bottle of champagne, some verse, and woodland intimacy. He assented and set aside, at least the volume of verse, for the occasion. The lady started to drive down the main street of the town towards the Putnam House, when the horse she was driving ran away. The buggy with the picnic-lady came careening up the street, turned a corner and upset. The contents of the picnic basket, including several bottles of champagne, spilled out in the road in the gaze of the usual crowd of village loafers and gossips, much to the lady’s discomfort. But Bierce rushed to the rescue, picked her out of the wreckage, and they picnicked just the same. Perhaps he had this woman in mind when, in after years, he defined a “widow.” He was present at quite an interesting gathering in Oakland, and some one happened to mention the word “widow.” Immediately Bierce became pensive and sad. “A widow,” he mused, “God’s second noblest gift to man.” There was a pause and then the expected inquiry: “And the first, Mr. Bierce?” Another pause, and then leaning forward in an atmosphere of hushed expectancy, he whispered very softly: “A bad girl.”
During the latter part of 1885, and into 1886, E. C. MacFarlane, or “Ned” as he was called, began to have great difficulty with The Wasp. MacFarlane was a personal friend of Bierce, who had induced him to purchase the paper. But he really had a secret motive in doing so, unknown to Bierce, and this motive soon became apparent. He had a brother, George MacFarlane, who was a wealthy sugar planter in the Hawaiian Islands. The status of the Islands was then quite unsettled, and the sugar planters were anxious to secure favorable rights under the terms of a treaty being drafted between the United States and Their Majesties. To further this cause, the MacFarlanes thought that it would be good policy to own a newspaper in San Francisco, as the measure required considerable publicity.
It was during 1883 that quite a group of people who were interested in the Islands, including a number of newspapermen and their families, went to Hawaii to attend the coronation ceremonies. Among Bierce’s effects is an invitation, dated February 12, 1883, in which “Their Majesties the King and Queen request the presence of Major and Mrs. A. G. Bierce in Iolani Palace for the coronation ceremonies.” Mrs. Bierce actually went on this trip, but her husband remained at home and cabled to his friends, in response to their inquiries as to why he was not present: “Why should I bother to see a negress crowned queen of the fly-speck Isles?” This invitation was, of course, the work of the MacFarlanes, and, also, of E. L. G. Steele, who was another San Franciscan vitally interested in the development of the Islands.
After he had moved to Auburn, Bierce surrendered the active management of The Wasp to Ned MacFarlane. But MacFarlane, who was quite inexperienced as a journalist, soon began to have difficulty with the management of the paper. It was not so much the matter of money, for the MacFarlanes were wealthy people and could arrange to finance the paper, as it was in the field of politics that the trouble arose. MacFarlane would take flying week-end trips to Auburn for consultation and would return to San Francisco measurably calmed, only to write eight-or ten-page letters the next day to Bierce, exclaiming: “Oh, what shall I do!” He was quite quick tempered and actually feared that he might be overcome with frenzy and kill some of his enemies. His chief tormentor was none other than “Mike” DeYoung.
DeYoung began to attack MacFarlane and Bierce in The Chronicle. The main point of attack, and it was insidiously planned, was that MacFarlane had not actually purchased The Wasp from Howard, its former owner, but that he was just another dummy, such as Harry Dam had been. This infuriated both Bierce and MacFarlane, but they were powerless to check the effects of the insinuation. They could shout denials and their very vehemence was taken as an admission of guilt. DeYoung was immensely clever about such things, and he knew that nothing would infuriate Bierce so much as this constant intimation that the editor of The Wasp was just a puppet for large corporate interests.
Then, too, MacFarlane was caught in the toils of a political dilemma. His brother began to make strenuous demands that The Wasp give its unqualified support to the treaty with the Islands. To do so, at the time, required a change in the politics of the paper, as the national party which The Wasp had always endorsed was opposing the treaty. Furthermore, the change had to be made in the midst of a presidential campaign. DeYoung was gleeful, and, after the change had been made, he pointed at the apostasy with scorn. The real situation was that DeYoung had tried to bribe the sugar planters into purchasing the support of his paper, but he had run foul of Adolph Spreckels. He had announced that Spreckels, another large plantation owner, was corruptly influencing the press of California in favor of the treaty, and, particularly, that he had purchased The Wasp. Old Spreckels stood for this quite some time. But he finally turned berserk and chased DeYoung into his office and gave him a good caning. But DeYoung’s blow had struck, just the same, for there could be no denial that Ned MacFarlane, newspaperman, and George MacFarlane, plantation owner, were merely playing a game.
“Mike” DeYoung was, without doubt, the most interesting journalist on the coast. He was unscrupulous but had the courage to be frank in his demands. Every interest had to subsidize his press if it wanted his support; he was selling influence and was quite willing that people should know the rates. He could not be insulted and was adamant to abuse. He outlived all his enemies and became a millionaire. His impassivity before epithet was amazing. He was called, at one time or other, practically every variety of rascal that the dictionary of abuse could define.
But he would only smile and make more money. Occasionally, in later years, Bierce would hit too hard, and DeYoung would start out in the morning, after a few drinks, to “kill Ambrose Bierce.” But his nerve always waned or perhaps his cynicism reasserted itself. Bierce once called him a murderer to his face, and he still refused to fight. He knew when to smile.
The Wasp was essentially a political journal, and its pages reflect imperfectly the strident and vigorous manner in which political issues were debated in the eighties. Full-page cartoons shrieked blasphemies at the enemy, and editorials blasted the very foundation of the opponent’s platform. Naturally, Bierce’s views began to take color from such violence. The issues were somewhat obscure, the forces were imperfectly aligned, but political corruption was the rule. “Politics,” he once wrote, “is a pitch that defiles, a tope that endrunkens, a poison that penetrates the bones and gets into the hair.” In the midst of such scenes, Bierce despaired of his fine theory about “lashing rascals through the world,” and became cynical even of his scorn. He wrote of the press:
“Newspapers — conducted by rogues and dunces for dunces and rogues, they are faithful to nothing but the follies and vices of our system, strenuously opposing every intelligent attempt at their elimination. They fetter the feet of wisdom and stiffen the prejudices of the ignorant. They are sycophants to the mob, tyrants to the individual.”
No doubt Bierce’s views on journalism and journalists were affected by his association with MacFarlane. He thought that his friend was buying The Wasp out of a disinterested desire to give him a journal in which to purge the city of its vices, when, as a matter of fact, he was buying the paper to further his own interests. And Bierce had to acquiesce in MacFarlane’s wishes, and consent to the ignoble change of policy midstream, and all for a personal consideration. Nothing but the greatest necessity would have made him do so.
In December of 1885, MacFarlane finally admitted that the fight was too much for him, and he left for the Islands, writing Bierce a long letter from the Bohemian Club explaining his motives and, also, advising him that “Charley” Kauffman would make provision for the journal. He also promised to secure Bierce a government position in the Islands, which he never did. Shortly thereafter MacFarlane sold his interest in the paper to Jackson, and the doors were closed on another interesting chapter in the history of “Prattle.” Bierce was probably glad that the episode was over, although it left him in a precarious position. It had never been a satisfactory arrangement; he had been underpaid; had worked too hard; had become involved in distasteful alliances; and had been repeatedly disappointed in MacFarlane. But now there was no journal left in San Francisco that would accept his work. He was hated like a rattlesnake. By the spring of 1886, “Prattle” ceased to appear in The Wasp, and when “Prattle” was discontinued it invariably meant that Bierce was sick, or fired.
His work on The Wasp had not passed unnoticed. Parsons, one of the strongest editorial writers and journalists on the Pacific coast, once wrote a long editorial in the Sacramento Record-Union (December 28, 1881), praising Bierce for his fine fearlessness; the Stockton Evening Mail (Dec. 30, 1881) was equally enthusiastic. Journalists on the coast read Bierce with indefatigable zest. A writer on the Visalia Delta (Jan. 6, 1882) had apparently seen Mr. Bierce in San Francisco, for he wrote: “He is a young man (apparently little over thirty), dresses in fashionable clothes without any affectation or eccentricity, and in bearing is always a polite, considerate, refined and scholarly gentleman.” The article then proceeded to analyze Mr. Bierce’s journalistic methods and came to the conclusion that his central merit was “absolute honesty.” This was, of course, close to the facts. It was Bierce’s theory that if you took the personal out of journalism nothing was left. He once asked: “Is it blasphemy to hold the mirror up to the blasphemer?”
But studying his journalism from the perspective which time gives, one is impressed with its futility. Of course, if journalism had to be followed as a trade, and it did during these years, for Bierce had no other means of support, then his fearless candor is no doubt commendable. But what did it matter if “Mike” DeYoung was a rascal, or that politicians were liars, or that local poets were ridiculous? Viewing his work during the six years that he wrote for The Wasp, the conclusion is inevitable that it was a waste of effort and that the devastating effects of his rage, reacting upon his own temperament, did incalculable injury to his thinking. To be personal inevitably provoked a quarrel, and when men quarrel they are absurd. The difficulty was, again, Mr. Bierce’s idealism. He wrote that “the belief so dominant in the last generation that human events occur without human agency is a captivating absurdity.” But was that belief so absurd? The corollary of his proposition, namely, that by human agencies man’s nature can be changed, leads to positions which it is difficult to defend. He secretly believed that his satire might be immensely effective in correcting the evils it berated. But this belief, which did not take into consideration the possibility that there are agencies at work in society more important than the merely personal, was rather naïve. For as Remy de Gourmont has written, “The position taken by man outside the world to judge the world, is a factitious attitude.” He was hampered and kept ineffective by his lack of information. Mr.
Bierce felt the need of the times; he sensed the situation; and he was correct in his conclusions. He anticipated modern thought, but he lacked the assistance which modern investigation could have given. Because of this inadequacy in equipment, he was sometimes quite incompetent in the personal affairs of his life, and quite ineffective in his criticism of public events. He came to realize this in later years, but in 1886 he was still the victim of his own courage, caught in the mesh of his own idealism, but quite undeceived about the life of his day and writing with a vigor and directness which command modern admiration. “Men are mad,” said Pascal, “so unavoidably that not to be mad would constitute one a madman of another order of madness.”
CHAPTER X. “SIR ORACLE, INDEED!”
AFTER he ceased to write for The Wasp there was an interval in which Bierce was sorely pressed for a livelihood. He was past middle-age and had accomplished none of the work of which he knew himself capable. Then, too, he was ill with asthma and had to find a home in the mountains where he could live. About this time, some one told him that if he would go and live among the pines on Howell Mountain for a year or so, that he would be cured of his asthma. So he decided to move his family from San Francisco to St. Helena in order that they might be near. St. Helena is a charming little town, situated where the north end of Napa Valley is blocked by Mt. Saint Helena, and Howell Mountain runs a long, blue, pine-clad ridge to the east. The Napa Valley is the Rhine Valley of California; the warm sun-baked hillsides are covered with vineyards and the old Graystone Winery, on the outskirts of the town, is a silent spectre of a noble past. It was but a few hours to Oakland, when Bierce wanted to make a foray into civilization. But, for the most part, he lived at Angwin’s Camp on the top of Howell Mountain, about seven miles from St. Helena.
St. Helena, in the days when the Bierces first moved there, was a rather popular resort. Many prominent San Francisco families had country places nearby, such as the Polks and Fullers. Capt. Grant was an old friend of Bierce, in the early days in San Francisco, and he it was who suggested Angwin’s as a health cure. He even offered the Bierces his cottage on Main Street in St. Helena, which they accepted. There they were to live for several years, in the little white cottage with a special roost built above, for Leigh to sleep in as a haven from asthma. Bierce lived at Angwin’s on Howell Mountain, but he would return once or twice a week to his home, and would sometimes take Mrs. Bierce, with one or another of the children, back to his mountain retreat. Life in St. Helena was not altogether unpleasant: the valley was beautiful, many interesting people came there, and tucked away in the north end of the valley was old Schram’s winery, where Bierce used to get his wine.
A great friend of both Mr and Mrs. Bierce lived at this time i
n the Napa Valley. Her name was Lillie Coit. “Lil” Coit was the first “emancipated” woman of early San Francisco. While returning home from school in San Francisco one day, she noticed the Knickerbocker Fire Engine Company No. 5 stalled on a hillside. She discarded her books and rushed to the aid of the firemen. For this act she was made an honorary member of “No. 5,” and the number became a fetish in her life. She had it carved over the door of her room and, so rumor hath it in St. Helena, the sacred symbol appeared on her nightshirts. When the fire alarm rang, she would rush to headquarters and might be seen atop Fire Engine No. 5 careening madly down the streets of San Francisco. She was extremely wealthy and equally handsome, and had a beautiful estate near St. Helena called “Lonely.” Her home was the scene of many gay and interesting week-end parties. She was a great favorite of Mr. Bierce and they used to go hunting together. Lillie Coit is a character in several of Mrs. Atherton’s better known stories, and she surely deserved to be made immortal, for no more interesting character lived on the coast. She used to drive a tally-ho coach that went whizzing around the Napa Valley, to the amazement of the natives and the delight of her friends. There were barbecue feasts at “Lonely,” and, occasionally, “Lil” would drive up to Angwin’s, wearing scandalously short skirts and hunting boots, to take “Bierce” out for a tramp in the woods. Her mad escapades were the talk of her generation, but never once was there any personal scandal about her name. “‘Lil’ Coit,” Bierce once remarked, “is a real woman.”
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 355