CHAPTER XVIII. HOLIDAY
BY 1910 Bierce had turned the last corner in the road and realized that his active career was over. He had definitely ceased to write for any of Mr. Hearst’s publications, and, so free did he feel from any obligation to Mr. Hearst personally that he began to jot down notes for a proposed biography. Nothing remained but to complete the editing and selecting of material for the imposing “Collected Works” edition, a matter of “adding, subtracting and dividing” old paragraphs into books. He had arrived at the period of rest and pause and yet he did not feel much like abandoning the old life. There were moments when he felt marvelously young and fresh, but it was a deceptive elation. At times his letters would have his early strength and vigor in every line and his wit would be sharper than ever. But there was always a recurrent strain of sadness, the result of an inevitable and disheartening realization that he was but a shell of the man he had been, a shadowy outline of the old “Prattler.” In his despair he began to think of California, old scenes and old faces. He was curious about the place; perhaps he might recapture that illusive feeling of splendor if he returned to the scenes with which it had been associated. And so, in the spring of 1910, he sailed for California.
Ten years had passed since he left California. Now that he was returning, he was excited about the trip. It promised to be something of an adventure. He wrote of it with eagerness and his letters counted the days until he sailed. Perhaps San Francisco would not be the same: the fire had razed many old landmarks and the years had taken their toll. But it would be a pleasant trip, nevertheless. There was surely no reason why he should remain in Washington. Moreover, he wanted to see George Sterling again, who was saving some choice bottles: “The booze that is like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” He sold his canoe, said good-by to a few pet squirrels, and set sail.
He left in April of 1910, sailing to Colon and through the Isthmus. The Canal Zone interested him immensely as he had visited Aspinwall in 1865. The voyage stirred the enthusiasm of that earlier visit to Galveston, and he began to focus his attention on South America and its alluring “romance” and “uncertainty.” It was the only land left for the adventurous. He would return to Central America some day and journey farther south to the Andes. In this way he might be able to rid himself of all this old baggage of ideas, dreams, blasted hopes, and sorrows. For at sixty-eight this appalling “cynic” was still full of a boyish belief that he might discover an ultima thule.
As soon as he arrived in San Francisco, he left immediately for his brother’s cabin perched high on a bluff overlooking the river near Guerneville, California. It was enjoyable beyond his expectations: a fine interval of quiet, unbroken by the annoyance of duty. The scenery about Guerneville was of a breathtaking loveliness. He wrote to Neale from Guerneville: “I had a pleasant but rather long voyage. Was three days in Panama and saw something of the canal work. On arrival at San Francisco, I gathered up my nephew and his wife and came directly up here to my brother’s shack in the mountainside. And, faith! it is paradise. Right above a beautiful river (we have a canoe) with a half-dozen pretty villages in sight below, and the woods already filled with their summer population from the city. One meets groups of pretty girls in camping attire everywhere — some of whom say that I held them on my knee when they were little (I mean to again), although I fancy it may have been their grandmothers.” He paddled up to town every day for his mail; the mountainside was ablaze with flowers; and he was to see George Sterling soon as they were leaving for Yosemite.
At Yosemite he was even more amazed with the beauty about him. “As to the ‘sights’ to be seen, they are simply unspeakable. I haven’t it in my heart to say a word about it.”
Such a pastoral mood is certainly out of keeping with the “Bitter” Bierce of legend, the ruthless satirist of the Pacific Coast. It is more the expression of an old man who had almost forgotten about life. In July he was back in Berkeley, and, at the Key Route Inn in Oakland, was royally entertained by so many hosts that he could scarcely remember their names. Many old grievances were forgotten and even the journals edited by former rivals were quite polite and docile. The era of bloody journalism in California was at an end.
But there were several uneasy situations that he had to face. When he left for Washington in 1899, he had ceased writing to several old friends, whether out of pique or offended feelings or laziness, no one knows. But he had graciously decided to forget about this neglect and wrote several notes arranging interviews. Soon after his arrival in California, he had written pleasantly to Amy Cecil and suggested an appointment, as though the silence of ten years would explain itself. They met and talked quite casually of a “variety of things,” but he offered no explanation of his conduct. Finally, as the day came to a close, he admitted that he had failed to write because of “something” which he later found to be untrue. But if he had expected indifference, he was mistaken. Mrs. Cecil, like several of his other friends, decided that such a sensitive and temperamental creature should be left to his own devices.
It was the end of an old and dear friendship. Some trivial utterance, some letter of gossip, had reached him in Washington, and he had frozen into an unearthly reserve that it had required ten years to thaw. He had not written for an explanation. His experience with friends had been so precarious, that an intimation of disloyalty was enough. He was monumentally unable to deal with human nature, — a sublime incompetent. Some weeks after their first interview, Bierce saw Mrs. Cecil in the Palace Hotel. He bowed rather formally and went his way. They never met again. He might understand but he could not, psychologically, act upon the promptings of impulse. People should not allow their hearts to rule their heads, he was always writing his young admirers, to which one is tempted to add: neither should they be ridiculous.
And his parting with Mrs. Cecil was not an isolated incident. He had quarreled with Leila Cotton before leaving California. It had been a petty misunderstanding, compound of unwarranted inference and conjecture. When Bierce returned in 1910, he invited Miss Cotton to lunch and they went for a stroll in an Oakland cemetery, looking for Lily Walsh’s grave. They talked of the fine hours at “Bohemia,” of amusing incidents, of old friends. He told her that he was “written out” and that some day he “would go away.” It was a phrase that he was beginning to repeat, — a preparation for a farewell. But when they parted that day it was to be for all time. There had been no explanation, not a word of apology, not a token of faith. Had he been ashamed of his impulsive repudiation of an old friendship?
In August there was a round of pleasure: the Bohemian Club play on the Russian River. “The finest spectacle that I ever saw,” so he wrote to a friend. But, despite the Grove Play, and despite the luncheons, and parties in San Francisco and Oakland, he was seized with impatience. “I don’t find San Francisco quite the same,” he wrote. He had written to Scheffauer, prior to their severance of relations, that “San Francisco is not the same city that it was. Where are the courageous men of the Vigilante Committee of the old days? Where are those who broke the head of the mob with pick-handles in the time of Dennis Kearney? I mean, where are those like them? It is clear that the business men and the professional men of to-day are no better than the labor unions and not half so brave.” In truth, the San Francisco that he visited in 1910 had little in common with the San Francisco that he knew of old, despite the pamphlets, brochures, and novels to the contrary. He was not in touch with the new city; his former associates were now old men, who had retired. It was a region peopled with ghosts and specters.
Towards the end of the summer, Miss Christiansen arrived on a vacation, and Bierce saw her for a few moments before she left for Napa, “carrying my bird — without which she could not live.” They corrected more proofs, checked over some business, and then she left. A few weeks later she returned to Washington to sell some of his favorite Mergenthaler stock and wire him the proceeds. In September he was writing Howes, “my health is pretty good, but I’m a bi
t homesick. Guess I’ve had too good a time.” And in October, he “left California like a thief in the night” in an effort to avoid his friends. He arrived back in Washington on November 4th, after stopping over at the Grand Canyon for a few days.
The apartment was stuffy; he had an attack of asthma; there was an accumulation of proofs to correct and letters to answer; and his pet squirrel had died. Naturally he was irritable and grouchy. The young newspapermen did not visit him for some weeks. He was still furious when he noticed that the manager of the Washington Directory had printed his name “Major” Bierce in the directory. He sat down and penned him a crisp note, in which he said: “I wish to repeat my protest against being described in your directory as belonging to the United States Army, when in fact I am a civilian, and to beg that in the future my name be omitted from the Directory.” He quarreled with the Army and Navy Club, resigned, and then permitted himself to be coaxed back into the fold. Of such things were his days composed.
This editing of the “Collected Works” was becoming wearisome. He was devoting his entire time to the tedious work of sorting out all clippings, pasting, cutting, editing. The edition was appearing, volume by volume, and was creating no little wonderment in many minds. There was absolutely no demand for a “collected” edition of his works; the entire project was pure vanity. Bierce knew that much of the material reprinted was worthless; his letters, particularly those to S. O. Howes, reveal this fact unmistakably. But the desire to have that massive set of books on the library shelves of America, was too much for the “curmudgeon philosopher,” and he yielded a point to his vanity. Professor Fred Lewis Pattee was rather confused by the edition, and wrote asking Mr. Neale if Bierce was “really a great man.” Editors were equally nonplussed. Franklin K. Lane wrote a hasty letter to a New York newspaper denouncing the author as a “hideous monster, so like the mixture of dragon, lizard, bat and snake as to be unnameable.” The old query: “Who is Ambrose Bierce?” was setting tongues wagging again. American critics were quite incompetent in reviewing the edition and generally wearied of the task after the first few volumes appeared.
In England the reviewers received the volumes of the “Collected Works” with less enthusiasm and more sense. A writer on The Anthenœum wrote an interesting review of one volume in which he said:
“It might be interesting to consider what are the prepossessions, the constituents of the alienating view of life, which makes such a solecism (i.e. Bierce’s views on the novel) possible in an intelligence so acute. Lacking space for that excursus, let us say that though our author’s other critical pronouncements are tangential enough, none is so flagrantly wide of the mark, and many must have been a distinct mental acquisition to the audience which Mr. Bierce instructs.... The great fault or misfortune of Mr. Bierce is that, when he is not kept right by the pressure of an artistic purpose serious enough to inhibit the characteristic sallies of his intelligence, his writing is apt to be punctuated with lapses and excesses, tags of humor or extravagance or verbiage, which bring it into line, for the moment at least, with very common matter.”
What seems to have troubled so many reviewers was the impression that insinuated itself into their consciousness, that Bierce was really an important and vital personality. His force reached them through layers of “lapses and excesses” and the “extravagances of verbiage,” and unsteadied their pens. But little was known of his life, so they could only wonder in silence.
Just how much of Bierce’s work went into the “Collected Works” is a question that is difficult to answer. A great deal of his “Prattle” may be found throughout the twelve volumes, but a vast amount of his journalism did not commend itself sufficient to warrant inclusion. In fact, Bierce omitted the most extravagantly amusing passages of “Prattle,” as they seemed too rowdy for the handsome morocco bindings that Mr. Neale had provided. But it would be impossible to edit the unpublished satire, as it is entirely fragmentary and nearly every incident would require a footnote. It seems unthinkable, however, that Bierce should have omitted some of his sharpest lines in order that he might include those horrible “Little Johnny” yarns of which he wrote Mr. Neale that it pained him to have to kill any of them.
He led a rather lazy existence at Washington during these last years. The monotony of proofreading was broken by an occasional visit with Dr. Franklin in Schenectady and a few days at West Point with the Martins. He would also visit Mrs. Ruth Guthrie Harding at Paterson, New Jersey. She, too, was another “pupil.” With some of these friends, Bierce apparently adopted the slightly theatrical attitude of the man overcome with a sense of lost illusions. It is always a pleasant and successful act, as it secretly flatters the spectator, who, inferentially, must be happier than the sufferer, generally a slightly romantic, Byron-esque gentleman “tortured” with sorrows. Such was the Mr. “Boythorn” Bierce that Mrs. Harding knew. “At times,” she has written with great ecstasy, “I used to feel as if I were strolling with Francis of Assisi.” It is difficult not to blame Bierce for such a line as that: he should have realized the consequences of tenderness on the pen of a romantic lady. It was but another indication that he was more sorely than ever in need of a catharsis that would purge him of “shadow making” and romantic gesturing. He was often on the quest of adventure, dramatic situations, and, it must be confessed, an audience.
The origin of his tangential, quixotic gallantry would be difficult to trace. The world was not to him the tragi-comic spectacle that it was to Anatole France. It was more a matter of sharp distinctions; impassable gulfs; worlds of thought that were complete in themselves. This habit of thought warred against any possible synthesis since it prevented the identification of the thinker with his world. The roots of idealism in subjective experience was a theory that would have been repulsive to Bierce. His idealism was ever a star in the sky. Like his conception of “art” as a world of romantic strangeness and bizarre sensation, his idealism had no relation with the material world. He collected weird incidents from the press as the material for romantic stories, that is, strange stories, when all he needed to do was to look at life. He was thus at a tangent. Even his wit and satire broke into unassimilable fragments, unrelated crystals that gleamed impishly in the sunlight. Yet there was a great force about the lines, since inwardly he felt the impulse to create but his hand was stayed by an archaic tradition. When he stepped out of the realm of his unreal ideas, he was literally a Titan. But, under the baleful influence of his beloved “shadows,” he was capable at times of being a Romantic Figure. No man ever takes the trouble to write epigrams about love who is not at the same time slightly romantic. “Disillusion” is not understanding any more than a headache is wisdom. What he needed was to be plunged layers deep in the so-called material world and to be in sympathy with fundamental rhythms. “Idealism,” in his sense, was remote and unnecessary. He saw the dilemma at times but it was too late to amend.
There was an interval when he was away at Sag Harbor, “motorboating, autoing, and so forth,” with George Sterling, who was visiting in the east. But it was a short vacation, and he was soon back in Washington. “I’m still playing at asthma. It isn’t much of a game; I prefer draw-poker. But asthma is cheaper.” The great edition of his work was progressing rapidly and he wrote to Neale that “before ‘cashing in’ I should like to know that some far future edition of my books will be brought out in a little better shape.” His ambition was to be fully realized and his vanity appeased, for the complete set was put on the market about this time.
That it might be properly ushered into the world, Mr. Neale and Bierce conspired over a prospectus, which, properly considered, is one of the most amusing documents imaginable. In it they collected all the odds and ends of compliments and opinions that Bierce could cull from his files. Some of these comments were forced, some absurd, some ridiculous, but they were all included. The prospectus when printed was naturally a most bewildering document. What could the uninitiated think of such a magnificent brochure? “He is a l
iterary Rhadamanthus,”
“He is as interesting as a kangaroo,” said the faithful J. S. Cowley-Brown, who wrote blurbs about Bierce in the Musical Leader and Black and White (London), and occasionally tapped him for a slight loan! Brander Mathews was present with a gentle and diplomatic compliment. Michael Williams shouted, “Hail, Bierce!” Arthur Machen, William Marion Reedy, Richard Barry, and Gertrude Atherton made their contributions. Mr. Arthur Brisbane, with customary grandeur, said that: “Ambrose Bierce is one of the best writers in America, perhaps the best.” Joel Chandler Harris was so enthusiastic that if he were “Santa Claus he would give every one a set of Ambrose Bierce’s works.” Elbert Hubbard, recognizing the fact that Bierce could write a nice sermonette when in the mood, announced that “Ambrose Bierce is the boss of us all,” and then added the famous prophecy which Mr. Vincent Starrett quoted in his little brochure but omitted the name of the prophet, fearing (perhaps?) that its association might injure Bierce’s reputation: “Some day he will go up on Mount Horeb and forget to come down. No man will see his death struggle, for he’ll cover his face with his cloak of motley, and if he sends us a wireless it will be this: ‘‘Tis a Grave subject.’” Perhaps it was Hubbard’s suggestion that prompted the final melodrama. The prospectus will remain a literary and psychological curiosity. Arthur Machen, Haldane MacFall, Edwin Markham, Franklin Lane, Joel Chandler Harris, Elbert Hubbard, Eugene Field, and the Wellington, New Zealand, Searchlight!
Bierce had few close friends in the East. On the coast, “Charley” Kauffman, Judge Boalt, Watkins, and quite a number of others, were always faithful and loyal. But in Washington he had no associates with whom he felt truly companionable, if one may make a notable exception of Percival Pollard. They began to correspond in the early nineties when Pollard was one of the first Eastern reviewers to become enthusiastic about Bierce’s work, and naturally they soon met after Bierce went to live in Washington. Pollard’s home, when he was not globetrotting, was in Baltimore. He spent much time with Bierce, at Washington and Baltimore, and also during the summer home in Connecticut. The intervals when Pollard was abroad were always noted in Bierce’s letters with a shade of regret. They were constantly in correspondence and had many ideas which they shared in common, although Pollard was of a different temperament.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 371