Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  Their separation was a great tragedy in Bierce’s life. He left the home in St. Helena immediately, but as yet there was no final separation. Mrs. Bierce did not know what would happen and their relations remained in this state of uncertainty until Day’s death. The experience was a shadow that enshrouded Bierce’s life until his disappearance into Mexico. But it is apparent, and immediately observable, that it was entirely a personal tragedy. It affected his own happiness, but it had no appreciable influence on his thinking. By the nature of things it could not have been other than a personal sorrow, for Bierce was past middle age and had written the great bulk of his satire by the time of the separation. It is impossible to use this domestic unhappiness as a lens by means of which to interpret his life. It was but an incident, perhaps the most serious, in a chain of tragedies that were predestined. His own nature made such sorrows inevitable. An extremely sensitive man cannot be other than indignant about life, but he may express his indignation variously. It may escape in the flight of lyric verse or religious inspiration or mordant satire. With Bierce the movement was centripetal rather than centrifugal. He was as idealistic as Shelley, but it was an indirect, perverse and disguised idealism. It involved him in contradictory situations and he could rationalize his position only with great difficulty. He recoiled from experience in a swift and startling manner. If doubt once crept into his mind, no evidence or logic could remove it. He knew that Mrs. Bierce was guilty of no wrong, but it was the fact that she had permitted him to discover such a situation that made a reconciliation impossible. His impressions were quick, sensitive, and unforgettable.

  Bierce had an uncanny ability to “sense” situations and he was capable of the most intense suffering. Dr. Danziger is correct in stressing Bierce’s horror of pain or suffering. In his walks through the woods near St. Helena, he would bring back pigeons, whose wings had been broken, and he would nurse and heal them in his study with the tenderness of a woman. For all helpless and unfortunate creatures, he had a marvelous compassion. He would take his daughter, Helen, for long walks through the mountains. She remembers that he would have her wait while he strode forward into the center of a glade or clearing. There he would stand perfectly still and erect, the sunlight touching his hair into a blaze of gold, while he called wild animals. It was a soft call, half a whisper and half a cry, and birds would come and light upon his uplifted arms, perch on his shoulders, and jump about on his hands. Others report the same experience. He always possessed this power and he was never without a “pet” in his study, be it a squirrel or a lizard. The central fact of his personality seems to have been some quality which invariably suggests such hackneyed expressions as “electric” or “vital.” It was this quality which charmed the people he knew, for energy is eternal delight. As with William Blake, “there was for him no evil, only a weakness, a negation of energy, the ignominy of wings that droop and are contented in the dust.”

  This acute sensitiveness was really pathological with Bierce. He was not amenable to reason once he had received a definite impression. He had a habit of freezing into an attitude of perfect immobility once he was disappointed. Within this shell, he was simply unapproachable. He would not quarrel about such matters, nor discuss them, but with him the doors once closed were closed forever. So it was with his wife. Their separation was as cruel and disheartening an experience as he was ever to know, but that it could have been prevented or that a reconciliation could have been effected is a conclusion that sounds chimerical to any one familiar with Bierce’s character. From that date forward, there was no communication with his wife; no letters were exchanged; no words spoken, with the exception of two interviews later noted. If there was a message to communicate, it was conveyed by one of the children, generally by Helen.

  But even darker days were ahead.... After leaving home, Day had wandered about northern California, going from one town to another, until he came to Chico. There he was employed on a country newspaper, of which he was editor, manager, and virtually proprietor. One reason that had drawn him to Chico was the fact that the previous summer he had met Eva Adkins at an “A. O. U. W.” picnic at Red Bluffs and learned that she lived in Chico. When he came to Chico, he boarded at the home of the girl’s mother, Mrs. Barney. She had remarried and her second husband was a drunkard. On one occasion Day threw him out of the house. As a result he had caused Day’s arrest on a charge of assault and battery, but Day was admitted to bail, one of the bondsmen being his friend, Neil Hubbs. At the time of the trial, Day was acquitted, so to speak, with honors.

  Shortly after this occurred, Day and the Adkins girl became engaged. They were to have been married on July 22nd, 1889, and Neil Hubbs was selected as best man. Of course, no word of this proposed marriage had reached the ears of either Mr or Mrs. Bierce. The night before the marriage, the Adkins girl and young Hubbs ran away to Stockton, where they were married. They returned to Chico a fortnight later. In the interim, the “practical jokers” of the village had been making unmerciful sport of young Bierce. He was made the butt of sharp gibes in the country newspapers. Such cruelty seems incredible, the more so as the audience seemed to think it amusing. Any one could have foreseen the consequences. It was unthinkable that young Bierce, who had been schooled to have the loftiest regard for personal dignity, would permit such an affront to go unpunished. Moreover, the perfidy of his best friend and the cruelty of his first sweetheart, had made him insane with rage and humiliation. When the young married couple arrived at Mrs. Barney’s home, Day awaited them. No sooner did young Bierce and Hubbs catch sight of each other than they began to shoot. They were both mortally wounded and died within a few hours after the duel. Day’s last words were: “Send for my father — send for my father!”

  The story of Day’s death is given in detail for the reason that it has been bruited about of late in a shameful manner. George Sterling unthinkingly remarked that Day had been “killed by a gambler in a sordid love affair.” Subsequent accounts have been equally careless of the facts and now it has become quite common to refer to the affair as a “drunken brawl.” The entire story appeared in all the San Francisco newspapers; the facts have never been inaccessible. It seems surprising, indeed, that writers enough interested in such a personal tragedy to make public reference to it, would not take the trouble to verify the facts. There is no intimation that either boy was drunk, and, at least from Day’s viewpoint, the affair was scarcely “sordid.” It must be remembered that Day was a mere youngster — seventeen years old. He was extremely proud and sensitive and he had been hard hit. The brutal laughter of a swinish community was ringing in his ears for weeks prior to the meeting. The Oroville Mercury made this comment, which illustrates the general feeling about the tragedy at the time: “At first it seems that Bierce was disposed to forego the matter, but for the sake of sensations the reporters continued to lacerate his wounded heart until the young man actually believed he was the laughing stock of the country.” Whether he was mistaken or not, Day could not smile about such a situation, for he was the son of his father and neither ever learned to compromise with life or to discount their ideals.

  Bierce was mortally hurt by the death of his boy, the son he always spoke of as “another Chatterton.” It was one of the greatest shocks of his life when Day’s death was announced. But, again let it be remembered, this occurred in 1889. Bierce was then at the height of his fame as a satirist. Like the matter of his separation from his wife, it was exclusively a personal tragedy. It did not make him “bitter.” It saddened him, made him weak with grief, but it did not mold his thoughts.

  Two stories are told as to what Bierce did on learning of his son’s death. Both stories shall be given, since it is as impossible to discredit either as it is to bring them into agreement. According to one account, Bierce went to Chico, with his friend “Charley” Kauffman, and made an investigation of the facts and then returned to San Francisco. George Sterling seemed surprised that “Bierce did nothing” about the affair. But what, indeed,
could he have done? Assuming vengeance to be the duty of a father under such circumstances, where and how was it to be obtained? When he arrived in Chico, he went to the funeral parlor where the body of his son lay naked on a marble slab. He approached the body, bent over, and, speaking as though to one at a great distance, said: “You are a noble soul, Day, you did just right.”

  By the other version of the facts, Bierce sent Kauffman alone to Chico. A friend recalls that Bierce was stricken with grief and sorrow. “Nothing matters” came to be a phrase born of grief and converted into a philosophy by necessity, but just then something had mattered tremendously. “No words can express his grief,” Mrs. Cecil says. It was not the stereotyped blubbering of “Little Nell,” but it possessed all the elements of real tragedy. Had not the young and beautiful again been struck down by a brutal and shocking violence? At Shiloh the same tragedy had seemed splendid and fascinating; but there was something so gray and so ashen about his feeling over the loss of Day that he could not see or reason his way to any point of consolation. So needless, so stupid, so brutal! As he wrote in one of his stories: “Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan?” When Mrs. Cecil sailed, a few weeks later, for Japan, Bierce came to the wharf to bid her farewell. He was pale and depressed and ill; she had never known him to look so ashen. He handed her Day’s ivory-handled revolver and asked her to take it away. He had been carrying it around for weeks, so he said, and could no more throw it away than he could forget about it.

  But, however dark and cold might be the realm of shadows that Bierce traversed on a recurrent track during these days of his sorrow, the world was still as indifferent and brutal as ever. The two bodies came out from Chico on the same train. At Sacramento the road branched: young Hubbs was carried to Stockton; Day was placed on the train for St. Helena. The Adkins girl stood on the platform of the station, one ear chipped by a flying bullet from the revolver of one of her lovers, and remarked to the newspaper reporters: “Now ain’t that queer? One goes one way and one goes another, but here I am!”

  Bierce came to St. Helena to attend the funeral. He was accompanied by Charles Kauffman and Judge Boalt. After the services a few friends returned to the Bierce home before departing. That evening one of them recalls that Bierce asked his wife to step into the parlor of their home, where they were alone for about an hour. The subject of the interview remains a mystery. But after Bierce left that evening, his wife remarked that she knew that a reconciliation was impossible. Many of their friends had hoped that Day’s death would bring them together, but it was impossible. Later, in Mrs. Bierce’s divorce suit, she fixed the date of the separation as “July, 1891.” This was obviously incorrect, as far as the year was concerned, although the month was probably accurately stated. She would have been more likely to forget the year than to forget the month or season. There is no question but that they were finally separated after 1889. Just how long previous to that they had been separated cannot be determined, save that it was after Day left home. Thus the date can be fixed as about 1888.

  These twin blows staggered Bierce. Beauty and horror, were their images always to be laid, one upon the other, in his mind? Sensitive and fine natured man that he was, these sorrows must have hit him harder than any one realized. Yet no one was to know the truth. To display grief was vulgar; therefore he froze into an imperturbable calm. It was over and “nothing mattered.” He seldom spoke of Day’s death afterwards and then only to a few friends. Of his wife he never spoke: not even to friends.

  * * *

  BIERCE returned to Auburn, and, after a two weeks interval, resumed his column of “Prattle” in The Examiner. But during his absence old Frank Pixley had not been inactive, as he saw in the tragedy an opportunity to strike Bierce a fatal blow. It seems incredible that even Pixley could have written this editorial, but he did:

  “If it be true, as alleged, that the jibes and jeers of the local press so worked upon the weak mind of a young man, maddened by passion and crazed by jealousy over an unworthy woman, that he should have resorted to murder and suicide to terminate his unpleasant and ridiculous predicament, may not the incident teach a moral lesson to those writers who indulge in such cruel and inhuman satire? May not the death of the younger Bierce teach the older man, his father, how sinister have been the bitter, heartless, and unprovoked assaults which he has spent his life in cultivating that he might the more cruelly wound his fellow-men? Might not an intellect so keen, a taste so critical, and a pen so caustic, have been wielded to some higher and nobler purpose? Might not a life, now growing nearly to its close, have been passed more profitably to humanity, more happily to himself, than in indulgence in the practiced use of a pen more cruel than the most destructive and death-dealing of swords? Does there not rest upon his father the shadow of a haunting fear lest he may have transmitted to a sensitive and tender soul an inheritance which resulted in crime and death, while he was cultivating the gift of wounding natures just as sensitive and tender, who had not the courage to end them in murder and self-destruction, but were driven to hide their sorrows in secret? Perhaps this man with the burning pen will recall the names of those whom he has held up to ridicule and shame; the men and women whom he has tortured and humiliated; perhaps he will analyze the moral code which has governed him, and review the relations he has held toward men of whom he might at least have remembered that gratitude was something other than merchandise and payable as a debt. Perhaps this man may recall the time, when a boy younger than his, with brighter hopes, folded his wings in a more peaceful death, leaving in his flight a mother’s love and a father’s fondest hopes; and, while they were in sorrow which could find no relief, how cruelly he wounded and tortured them because there had been said over the last remains of the son they loved words too eulogistic for his hard, incredulous stoicism. We are too sincere an admirer of this gifted writer not to regret that when his remains shall have been gathered for entombment in the grave of literature, nothing will be found worthy of preservation, and that if his writings shall find a publisher, they will contain no bright saying that was kindly meant, nor aught that was not cruel and cruelly intended. Upon his tomb may be carved the inscription: ‘He quarreled with God, and found nothing in his creations worthy of the commendation of Ambrose Bierce.’”

  It took Frank Pixley to write as mean an editorial as that, for Bierce seldom struck where there was no provocation. If he whipped rascals unmercifully, there are few who would care to contend that his victims did not richly deserve the beating that they received. Pixley croaking of “gratitude” was, indeed, a ridiculous sight. Moreover, the charge that he impliedly makes that Bierce had taken a similar advantage of another, is not borne out by the facts.

  Bierce took a long walk with a newspaper friend at Auburn. He carried a copy of The Argonaut and after they had completed quite a stroll through the woods, they came to the edge of a clearing. While they were sitting perched high on a rail fence, Bierce read the editorial and said that he had not decided just what he would do. They were just starting back towards Auburn, when the sun suddenly underwent an eclipse and for a few seconds they stood in a world of shadows and strangeness. As the light came back through the trees, it seemed as though “the mountains were stained as with wine, and as wine were the seas.”

  But when Bierce resumed his “Prattle” he lost no time in replying to Mr. Pixley.

  “You disclosed considerable forethought, Mr. Pixley, in improving the occasion to ask for lenity, but I see nothing in the situation to encourage your hope. You and your kind will have to cultivate fortitude in the future, as in the past; for assuredly I love you as little as ever. Perhaps it is because I am a trifle dazed that I can discern no connection between my mischance and your solemn ‘Why persecutest thou me?’ You must permit me to think the question incompetent and immaterial — the mere trick of a passing rascal swift to steal advantage from opportunity. Your ex post facto impersonification of The Great Light is an ineffect
ive performance: it is only in your own undisguised character of sycophant and slanderer for hire that you shine above.”

  And when some friend wrote in an indignant letter to the press, complaining of Pixley’s editorial, Bierce answered him:

  “C. H. L. Your letter in my defense was referred to me. I thank you for your kind intention, but there was no need. The swift revenge of my enemies that God had stood in my path was natural to their degree of intelligence and required but a congenial mood to be amusing. It hardly deserved your stern arraigning.”

  Bierce’s reply came as near to a confession as anything he ever wrote in “Prattle.” He bowed ever so slightly when he made that concession to sentiment: “I am a trifle dazed.” But he did not fully realize how hard he was hit. As he wrote of a character in one of his stories: “He had no experience with grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he was hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go.”