Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  He followed this up with a long article in The Examiner, January 14, 1900, “The Survival of the Fittest,” in which he gave the correct name to Senator Beveridge’s elegant idea. In fact, Mr. Bierce came to think that there was much to be said for the theory of brute force, or materialistic determinism. He used the same idea with a vengeance during the Boer War in which he espoused the cause of the British. As an outgrowth of his articles on British strategy during this campaign, he first began to correspond with Lord Kitchener. They exchanged letters for some years afterwards. All of Bierce’s journalism written in the East under the head of “The Passing Show” was extremely reactionary and full of a great seriousness about public affairs. But, then, he held the post as philosopher in the Hearst college and it was beginning to mar his thought.

  During these years Mrs. Bierce was living in Los Angeles. Bierce never corresponded with his wife directly, and all communications had to be sent through the medium of the daughter. Every month Helen would receive a remittance from her father, which she would send to Mrs. Bierce. Leigh was in New York at this time. He had studied art under J. H. E. Partington in San Francisco, and had contributed to The Wave. Later he began to work for The Examiner and Mr. Hearst had sent him to the Yosemite Valley to write some feature stories about the wonders of that valley since desecrated by tourists. He later went to Los Angeles and reported for The Record, maintaining a studio up on a region known as Bunker Hill. When his father went east, Leigh accompanied him and soon began to write for the New York Telegraph. I have a considerable collection of newspaper clippings containing his work up to December 8, 1900, — and they reveal the hand of an intelligent writer. For some time Leigh edited a rather interesting journal in New York called The Bee. He drew with facility and his decorations and illustrations were excellent. His early journalism reflected the temper of his father, but the great light does not shine about the lines. Yet he was like his father in many ways. He possessed the same mesmeric power with animals. And he imitated the personal manner of his father. One evening while in Los Angeles he happened to be dining at Ahrend’s Café. A waiter was discouretous and Leigh, with that sense of affront in the slightest discourtesy which his father always experienced, gave the fellow a thorough drubbing and made him apologize.

  Bierce was much pleased with the success of his son in New York, and looked forward to the time when Leigh would try his hand at a book of stories. Of course he made light of the boy’s achievements to others, but he was secretly delighted with his good work in the arts. It would have been interesting to watch the development of Leigh’s talent, but it was destined to be of short life. Upon coming to New York, he had become involved with the wife of an artist. His father learned of the affair; in fact, it was a continuation of a liaison begun in Oakland, and it was the cause of heated words for several years. Bierce had no particular objection to such escapades, but in this case the woman happened to be married and her husband was, if not a friend, at least an acquaintance of the family. This made Leigh’s conduct a form of dishonesty which his father would not tolerate. But once the affair had run its course, a more serious dispute arose between father and son. Upon arriving in New York, Leigh roomed at a boarding-house owned by an aged woman who had a rather pretty daughter whose name was Flora. Bierce had only been East a short time when Leigh and Flora were married. He never approved of the alliance and never ceased to resent Leigh’s disobedience. As usual he showed his great incompetence when dealing with human beings; he was never able to comprehend imperfections. There was no flexibility about his judgments; he was not really unreasonable or dogmatic, but he was temperamentally unable to feel relations as well as to think about them. He saw the issues so sharply and his reactions were so sensitive, that he could not tolerate a sensibility not equally as developed. Consequently he shouted at Leigh, argued, dogmatized, and plead, but all to no avail. Shortly after his son’s marriage, Bierce remarked to a friend: “Why should both of my boys have gotten mixed up with trashy women?”

  Once Bierce knew that his son was determined to marry, he cut him off and did not speak or write to him until Leigh was stricken ill. It seems that the newspaper for which Leigh was reporting decided to conduct a Christmas Benefit. Leigh accompanied the expedition to write a news story and to supervise the distribution of provisions to the poor. He halted the expedition as it was passing a saloon, and proceeded to get hilariously drunk. When the caravan again moved on its way, he began to give away all the provisions before the destination was reached. Shortly after this affair, Leigh became seriously ill with pneumonia. His father rushed from Washington to be near him. He kept asking his father to send for his sister, and finally Bierce wired for her to come on to New York. She started from Los Angeles, but while she was en route Leigh died. The date of his death was March 31, 1901. The pain which Bierce had experienced on Day’s death was sharp, and swift, and almost unbearable. Much had happened since 1889. This time his grief was no less acute, but he was somewhat benumbed with a growing sense of utter futility. There was no pillar against which he could lean; there was no faith to sustain his spirit. Winter, and death, and a horrible attack of asthma... the senseless folly and cruelty of human affairs... and death giggling in the drop curtains and whispering in the alcoves. Death had paralyzed his thoughts, embittered his life, made him brave and courageous, and finally it would do away with him. It was, as one commentator announced, “his honey and his poison.” A few days after Leigh’s death, Bierce wrote a friend: “I am hit hard; more than you can guess — am a bit broken and gone gray of it all.” A year later he wrote the same friend: “It is just a year ago to-day that Leigh died — I wish I could stop counting the days.”

  If it was a great tragedy in Bierce’s life, Leigh’s death was doubly tragic for Mrs. Bierce, who had to stay in Los Angeles and could not attend the funeral. Poor woman, she seemed destined to a role of lonely and unattended sorrow. But death, while it affected Bierce very keenly, never softened him. He would not relent towards the family into which his son had married. He still refused to see them or to be near them; and used his daughter as a medium to communicate money to his daughter-in-law. In fact, Helen met Leigh’s wife for the first time at the funeral! On this occasion the father acted quite in character. He admonished his daughter not to be ostentatious about her grief, and, above all, to be proud and dignified. A woman of very slight acquaintance made herself quite offensive by a gushing expression of condolence. Bierce cut this creature short with a word, and told his daughter that nothing was so vulgar as a public display of sorrow.

  Back in Washington Bierce was stricken ill himself and it was months before he recovered from the combined effects of grief and asthma. If it had been a gray scene prior to Leigh’s death, it was black now. Something of the depression that settled about Bierce during these months is reflected in a letter to Amy Cecil, dated January 2, 1901, in the course of which he said: “I’m leading a life of mere waiting — waiting for nothing in particular, except the end of it all. I do no work that I care to do — just the work that keeps me living — for I’ve no incentive, no ambition but to go on with as little friction as possible. (Why did not God make us with ball-bearings, like bicycles?) I fancy most observers would say that I’m having a pretty good time, and that’s what I usually say myself; but may Heaven punish the malefactor who invented that deathly dull thing, a good time.” And he closed the letter with this phrase: “May God give you strength to bear the sorrows which He seems to desire to inflict.” No wonder that he drifted into a state of complete indifference and despair during these months. His writings of about this time are the heavy, dogmatic opinions of an old and rather weary man. He built up fortresses of dogma behind which he could crouch and evade the chance bullet of cruel truth that might otherwise break through the careful shield of his cynicism.

  Another unpublished letter of about the same time (June 7, 1901) to Theresa McCarthy contains similar thoughts. “I thank you for your kind words of sympathy, for I know h
ow sincere they are. When one is in trouble, one likes to know that not all the world is indifferent. I hope you are again well and happy — as happy as it is consonant with the plans of God’s universe for any of his helpless creatures to be — or believe themselves to be.” It is the note of a sick and despondent man, a man to whom the thought of death was a continuing sorrow. He might write with insouciance such lines as these.

  “Done with the work of breathing; done

  With all the world; the mad race run Through to the end; the golden goal Attained and found to be a hole,”

  but when death touched him personally it was a different matter. Grief was crippling and it benumbed the spirit. Day and Leigh both dead! It seemed like a monstrous untruth, and yet it was true and he must endure it. When he recovered he was “cynical” as ever, but

  “Thou wouldst not think

  How ill all’s here about my heart!”

  He was leading an idle life: a little writing for the Hearst newspapers; and a few magazine articles. The old column of “Prattle” had long been abandoned, and it was apparently intended that with “The Passing Show” he would adopt a broader outlook. In any event, his journalism ceased to be good reading after 1896. He spent his days in Washington, full of petty duties and trivial tasks, and would invite some of the boys from “the office” to his apartment to play anagrams in the evening! He usually began the day by walking down to the Army and Navy Club for his mail; then he would journey over to his office in the Washington Bureau of the New York American; then back to the Club for lunch and a chat with his old army cronies; when evening came he was ready for Roche’s where his “boozing den” as he named it was located. In the evening he would sometimes have a few guests at the apartment; sometimes Percival Pollard, or Dr. Franklin from Schenectady; or Justice Harlan. Later a tray with a pot of coffee would be brought into his study and he would work for awhile, with “Mr. Dooley,” a pet canary bird, flitting about the room and trying to alight on his penholder. There, across the desk, would be the famous skull, to which Bierce could address queries and guess the answers. It was worse than a twilight existence: it lacked even the poignancy of twilight. It was a vacuum: a cave of indifference: an empty shadowland of meditation. He wrote a few ghost stories about this time and thought them rather good, but he had too many ghosts in his own life just then to spend much time imagining yarns about them. On the desk by the skull was the cigar box which contained the ashes of another friend. He could steel himself by such bravado gestures against the question which the grinning outline of the skull suggested, as though it would tell him some grave secrets but a horrible mirth made speech impossible. Death worried him all the same. For such a romantic temperament, his life was a boresome existence and gradually the seed of discontent bore fruit in a great disdainful gesture.

  Meantime he seems to have been amused with people who wanted adventure and excitement, as though the thought of such experiences was rather attractive to him. Theresa McCarthy wanted to go to China as a nurse, and he was finally induced to see Mr. Meiklejohn and secure the appointment for her. “Why under the sun should you wish to go to Manila?” he would write. A few days later he wrote: “I took your application to Mr. Meiklejohn (whom I found at dinner and therefore good humored), and asked him to approve it before sending it to the Surgeon-General. He said the best way to do would be to order the thing done. He put the application in his pocket; so the Surgeon-General will probably not be bothered about it. We then — took a drink. So I think you may hope to go to Manila and die of a fever or marry one of your patients.” He was instrumental in getting Margaret McKenzie appointed as a government nurse; and in getting Mabel Wood sent to the Philippines as a teacher. They were young and wanted adventure; well, why not? He had a few adventures of his own about this time. Coming home one night to his apartment, he was attacked by a big burly negro. But, true to form, he gave battle and beat the negro with a walking stick that fortunately had a steel core. He was laid up in his apartment for some time afterwards with a broken rib as a result of the encounter. He wheezed with asthma; fell over cliffs at Calistoga Hot Springs while bicycling; fought with ruffians in Washington; and always lived. As he once wrote to Howes: “I’m happy to announce the defeat of the hives. I’m now ready for cholera infantum and the ills incident to teething.” There was a strange exclusiveness about death. Should one seek it out, deliberately?

  The young lady he had met by chance at Angwin’s, Carrie Christiansen, was now in Washington as his secretary. Since he had met her, Bierce had been a father to this poor girl, sending her to school and helping her in many ways. She had come to Washington, when he finally succeeded in getting her a place in the public schools, and, because it was quite the sensible thing to do, she also lived at the Olympia Apartments. Miss Christiansen’s kindly and loving care of Bierce is an amazing story, a refreshing experience in human affairs, particularly as she Was quite sensitive to criticism and was made the target of a good deal of abuse during the years she lived in Washington. Bierce had warned her that such would be the case, but she was quite oblivious to the consequences. She adored Bierce with the sacred admiration of a blind affection. Guileless, naive, and utterly unsophisticated, her presence was yet an unmixed blessing for Bierce. She assisted him with his work, kept his affairs in order (he was impossible as a business man), and nursed him when he was stricken with periodic attacks of asthma. But to assume, as Mr. Neale has done, that Bierce was deeply in love with Miss Christiansen is ridiculous. The inference that Mr. Neale draws from the manner in which they lived, is repulsed by their correspondence, by Bierce’s references to Miss Christiansen in other letters, and by the testimony of those who lived with them. The fact is that Miss Christiansen, if she admired Bierce, was perhaps Mrs. Bierce’s dearest friend. She was always regarded, even in St. Helena, as a dependent of the family, as an unfortunate child. To assume that Bierce went into Mexico with a broken heart because Miss Christiansen had jilted him, and to whisper of a secret marriage, as Mr. Neale does, is to be unnecessarily ridiculous if not malicious.

  Bierce soon began to acquire quite a reputation in Washington as an unusual and striking character. Young newspapermen would “look Bierce up” and have a few drinks. He became the subject of an endless chain of stories; and his bon mots were frequently quoted. One day he was listening to a very ardent suffragette. Suddenly he said to her: “Madame” (it was always “Madame”), “if you desire equal rights it follows that you must assume equal obligations, does it not?” She eagerly assented. “And, therefore, if an army of the Japanese were to land off the coast of Monterey you would be willing to organize an army of women to fight them, would you not?” Oh, yes, indeed she would. “Well, then, did it ever occur to you, Madame, what would happen if an army of women were ever captured by an army of men?” Asked by a group of women’s rights advocates to say something about their sex, he replied: “Woman, lovely woman, if we could only fall into her arms without falling into her hands.” A very proper lady was objecting, one day in the apartment, on the ground of impropriety to everything. Bierce finally became annoyed and said: “Madame, you are so proper that! Would hesitate to call you a woman, for woman is only man with a womb.” He once remarked that to be happy a good woman should possess the three B’s, and when asked what they were he replied: “She must be Bright, Beautiful and Barren.”

  George Horton recalls the Sunday morning breakfasts that Bierce used to give in his apartment in Washington for “literary and brain workers, invitations to which were much prized. He specialized in coffee which he made in a peculiar pot that was shaped something like a long melon, and that oscillated like a pendulum, dripping slowly from either end.” He impressed Mr. Horton as the “most genial and kindliest of men, although he seemed oppressed by a secret sadness.” Charles Willis Thompson visited him at about the same time, and his recollections are of interest:

  “It is surprising that a quarter of a century later Bierce stands out in my recollection far above near
ly all the hundreds of men I was meeting daily, for those were crowded years. I have difficulty in placing many a United States Senator and Cabinet officer, but Bierce is as vividly before me as the day I first saw him; even the day Is before me, a sunny afternoon in Dennis Mullany’s crazy little bar-room, a place frequented by all the wits, the home of real conversation. There Bierce was a conversational autocrat; and his first look at a newcomer was unflatteringly appraising. It seemed to say, ‘Show me your credentials.’ He looked straight at you from under his frosty brows with a bright eye and a cynical smile, which said as plain as words, ‘Now what kind of ass are you going to make yourself?’ But, the moment you did show him that you belonged, that air was gone and you were admitted to his camaraderie in an instant, and on absolutely even terms, and for all time. Nobody could be more genial or more intellectually democratic. In The Herald-Tribune I described him as my most enduring recollection. He had no time and no use for men who had nothing to say, but was hail-fellow with any one who could talk. The recollection of his personal appearance is that of a wonderfully handsome man with talkative eyes and an eagle nose. I can see him at this moment, though I can’t conjure up the face of the British Ambassador.”

  The Washington Post, March, 1902, reported a meeting of the literati at some salon. Bierce was there, and C. W. Stoddard, Maurice Egan, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and many others. The reporter noticed the handsome Mr. Bierce standing in one corner mixing cocktails, and pouring harsh cynicisms into the pink ears of the Hon. Thomas Nelson Page. The Washington Times, August, 1902, sent a reporter around to interview Bierce. “Mr. Bierce was found seated in his den, an apartment hung and carpeted in red and containing a Turkish couch piled high with pillows, a table full of interesting books, and a quaint little sideboard filled with a mixture of curious glasses, decanters, and a chafing dish. He is a modest man and declares that the best thing about his work is the part he doesn’t write, namely, the checks, and that even they might be better. He says that at present he is doing nothing, and adds, ‘except writing.’ He vows that he shall never publish another book and that he has no faith in his own or anybody’s inspiration. He spends most of his spare time collecting arrow-heads.” It is, I believe, a fair picture. He was “doing nothing,” and about the only diversion that might be added to collecting arrow-heads was canoeing.