Much doubt has been cast about the time and circumstances of his departure. This doubt can now be removed, as the details of his trip have been made available. Bierce was in constant communication with Miss Christiansen from the night he left Washington until his disappearance. Mr. Neale has intimated that Bierce went into Mexico because of a quarrel with Miss Christiansen, and he feels “certain that she never received any letters from him after their last personal interview.” There are no circumstances whatever to indicate that Bierce quarreled with Miss Christiansen. When he left for Mexico, she was in charge of his affairs. He had made assignments to her of his property, aside from the gold he took with him, and she was in possession of his papers and personal effects. Furthermore, she attended to all the details of his trip. Do these facts indicate that there had been a quarrel? Moreover, Bierce wrote Miss Christiansen the only specific and detailed account of his trip that exists. She knew his fear of the posthumous publication of letters written hastily and without thought of publication. Consequently, she destroyed all the correspondence, but she did realize the importance of the letters received from him during this time and thoughtfully jotted down in a notebook the dates and significant facts which they contained, even quoting an occasional phrase. That the record she made is authentic, admits of little doubt. The notes are specific and definite. Furthermore, there is no reason whatever to question her integrity, and the occasional phrases she quotes are unmistakably from Bierce’s pen.
From this record it is apparent that Bierce left Washington, Thursday evening, October 2, 1913, on the 10:10 train for Chattanooga. He was alone, although he had invited one friend to accompany him as far as the battlefields, just as he had taken Pollard with him on the pilgrimage of 1908. The fascination which old battle scenes possessed for Bierce was compelling and irresistible. When he was visiting in West Virginia, he had written to a friend a letter which contains a most significant passage:
“I have told her of a certain ‘enchanted forest’ hereabout to which I feel myself sometimes strongly drawn as a fitting place to lay down ‘my weary body and my head.’ (Perhaps you remember your Swinburne:
‘Ah yet, would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me!
Ah yet, would God that roots and steams were bred
Out of my weary body and my head.’)
“The element of enchantment in that forest is supplied by my wandering and dreaming in it forty-one years ago when I was a-soldiering and there were new things under a new sun. It is miles away, but from a nearby summit I can overlook the entire region — ridge beyond ridge, parted by purple valleys full of sleep. Unlike me, it has not visibly altered in all these years, except that I miss, here and there, a thin blue smoke from an enemy’s camp. Can you guess my feelings when I view this Dream-land — my Realm of Adventure, inhabited by memories that beckon me from every valley? I shall go; I shall retrace my old routes and lines of march; stand in my old camps; inspect my battlefields to see that all is right and undisturbed. I shall go to the Enchanted Forest.”
He apparently desired to make a complete and final inspection of these romantic scenes, which were so indescribably enchanting. He was perplexed by the quiet sleepiness of meadows and parks that were once the scenes of carnage and gore. It should be remembered that this was a second visit; a merely intellectual curiosity would have been satisfied by one trip. It is obvious that he was in a mood for revery. He was seeking for a lost magic, as though for fifty years he had been wandering in a world of negligible importance: weary, bored and disillusioned. Bierce had always been suspicious of the metaphysician’s identification of himself with light, and sun and stars. But now he rather vaguely desired that “roots and stems were bred” out of his “weary body” and his “weary head.” Every man to his own talisman.
On October 5th he arrived at Chickamauga, and the next day he was in Murfreesboro, registering in a hotel named, appropriately, “The Hermitage.” He tramped over many old battlefields that first day, missing no landmark of former years. He reported with pride that he had covered fifteen miles at Chickamauga and ten at Chattanooga. From Murfreesboro, he proceeded to Nashville. While he was visiting the field at Chickamauga, he made a sketch of the monument erected to his brother’s regiment and sent it to Albert in Berkeley. “Stone River” — it seemed an impossible dream and yet the experience was projected through time and its memory troubled him now that he stood in the center of silent fields and seemed to hear the call of bugles and to see the flash of brilliant flags.
A few days later, on the 12th, he left Nashville and journeyed up the river to Pittsburg Landing. If the river banks had been full to overflowing in 1862, on that memorable day when he had been ferried across to Shiloh, they were suspended high above the waters in 1913. It was, indeed, a time of low tide. A phrase from Miss Christiansen’s notebook reads: “A long and tedious voyage by steamboat. Stopped at every landing to put on freight. Landings are not towns, just roads coming down to the water. River beautiful but so low that the country could not be seen over the banks. The park so abundantly marked that following route of brigade and regiment is easy. Savannah, eight or ten miles below, looked familiar.” There was a hollow depression to the right of a clearing, in which men had been cremated in a burning forest — but it was only a green hollow carefully planted to lawn and might have served as a hazard on a golf course. At Shiloh he counted the graves of twenty men who had been in his regiment, but he noted that less than half of the three thousand graves were marked. It was a dreary trip of inspection and not at all satisfying. He was still disconsolate and troubled and eager for the time when this mask of appearances might be torn aside.
The pleasant sun which had blazed down at Murfreesboro suddenly disappeared and was followed on the twentieth by a snowstorm. He was miserably cold and his trip was a disappointment. He arrived at Corinth, after a long drive, so cold that he could scarcely write his name in the hotel register. Corinth was lost in a fog of coal gas from the engines. Clouds of steam, frosted windows, and a driving wind full of sleet — what evil chance had brought this cold upon him? He was cold, and sick; why, he wondered, had he ever started on this dreary trip. The interval of revery was shattered and the next night he “fled south” towards New Orleans. Nothing mattered; nothing ever remained the same. Even the fine sensation of sadness which he had experienced on his first trip to Chickamauga was gone. It was, indeed, time that he went into Mexico. Nothing was left him. Again that fatal cleavage from reality kept him pursuing a phantom of fine feeling and an impossible elation. He had been deceived into thinking that the lost glamour of war days could be conjured forth by auto-suggestion practiced in the midst of scenes rich in associations. Fumbling old letters in his trunk at Washington had given him the same feeling: sorrow and pain and despair. He had burned many of the letters as “old junk” and he now turned from Chickamauga which was suddenly but a “cold and dismal park.” He was annoyed with fugitive emotions. But, after all, “nothing mattered.”
In New Orleans the interval of darkness in the north was forgotten. It was good to be in New Orleans. A trace of the old raillery appeared in his letters, and he wrote “Norrie” that “the sun shines in evidence, the horses are twittering in the trees and the autos hopping gaily from limb to limb.” The place seemed to please him; it was warming as a cordial. He noticed that even the street traffic seemed full of leisure; that the hotel corridors and lobbies were crowded with handsome people who had pleasant voices; men played billiards just as they did “years ago — and the bars — O you should see a New Orleans bar!” And, a few lines later: “The drinks they make, the trays and trays sent upstairs; the general air of leisure and the love of life.” It suggested that trip to New Orleans in 1865. This was an admirable mode of living: leisure, drinks, and gestures towards happiness. Not that damned scrambling in New York, or the hollow tediousness of Washington, but a “love of life.” These people were saving life and enjoying it, in
the same manner that they lingered over a julep.
But, then, if he returned again to New Orleans, perhaps it, too, would have changed. He had no assurance that its charm was more durable than an hour. He was skeptical even of his own emotions, and, in a few days, his doubts were confirmed. “All my old haunts are lost to me, and excepting a few blocks immediately about the St. Charles Hotel, it is a strange city. I can’t find even the places where Pollard and I dined and drank a few years ago.” Shortly after his arrival he was stricken with asthma, and spent a day and night pacing his hotel room, bending over the back of a chair, gasping for breath, and wondering, as he had wondered for fifty years, why he endured such pain. He was losing weight and noticed the fact with apprehension. Perhaps he would yet die of “disease.” He must hurry. It was a lonely vigil with death in a land where “something was doing.” As though such a land existed! But the quest was understandable enough and his courage, as always, was most admirable.
He arrived at San Antonio, October 27th. Texas was in the grip of a blizzard. As soon as the weather improved, he spent some days strolling about and visiting the Alamo—”rather interesting with relics, old documents and bad poetry, the shrine of each Texan’s devotion.” At Fort Sam Houston that week he had a royal good time; why, he was actually treated as though he were a “foreign ambassador”! It was with difficulty that he prevented the Colonel from parading the regiment in his honor. Some of these army men he had known when they were stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco; many of them had exchanged drinks with him in the Army and Navy Club at Washington. Naturally they gave him a fine reception. It warmed him like the first flush of New Orleans had done. But it, too, was only a fragment of deceptive delight, a slight distraction. Death was his companion on this trip, and they hastened forward on their journey.
In November, “All Souls’ Day,” was clear and bright. The pale sunlight fell softly on a young winter world. Church bells were ringing everywhere and he took a long walk through the town, observing that several of the churches were “old for his country,” and reflecting on the contrast between such overt piety and a name like San Antonio. There were letters to write in the evening and then time for another long stroll before retiring. He would be traveling to-morrow — across the line. What was there? Probably another land of guffaws, boredom and chicanery. But if the fighting was trivial, there was still South America. It promised something; at least it offered more sustenance than the Washington of Woodrow Wilson. All these years he had known that he wanted surcease from a mob-mad democracy, a Leviathan of vulgarity that turned his sharpest shafts of satire with the strength of a great indifference. He had raged and stormed and cursed, but all to no purpose. Had he not seen demagogues on bicycles, the one with a hideous grin and the other with the voice of a bull in anguish, romping across the nation, jerking old scarecrows before the people, depicting promised lands, and leading the sheep to slaughter? No, San Antonio on “All Souls’ Day,” yea, even with Church Bells, was sweet and kind after such a nightmare.
But he must be going. November 7, 1913, saw him in Laredo. Across the river was Nuevo Laredo, held by the Huertistas. He was near now to the scene of the mock battles that were to follow: like an old soldier he was going to direct a sham battle for amusement. He was known even in Laredo. A newspaper man connected with The Herald, recognized him in the streets. This chap told an interesting story about a member of Porfirio Diaz’s cabinet who had bored his friends by reading “A Wine of Wizardry” on all occasions. Bierce stayed in Laredo for several days, visiting Fort McIntosh and the old Spanish Settlement, where he puzzled over ancient inscriptions just as he had made notes of Indian signs at Powder River in 1866. He stood on the river bank and gazed across into a “vast expanse of Mexican territory alluringly spread out and inaccessible.” He went on minor forays into the “enemy’s” territory, piercing that “inaccessible” and, therefore, “romantic” land to the south.
He proceeded on to El Paso and passed across the line into Juarez. Officials received him cordially and gave him his credentials to accompany the army. On December 16, 1913, he was in Chihuahua, Mexico, and a letter from Juarez relates that he had just ridden in from Chihuahua to post it. It was sharp weather but he was enjoying the life. There was much talk of “Jornada del Muerto,” the journey of death, and the roads were dotted with groups of refugees. There was a distinctly military atmosphere about the place and it pleased him. Troops were leaving Chihuahua every day and he was expecting to be in Torreon soon.
There had been a little fighting. These Mexicans fought like devils, but they were unsoldierly and addicted to “unseasonable firing.” There was the incident at Tierra Blanca, for example. Inquiry had been set afoot about the “gringo” who was accompanying the army. Was he a soldier? To remove any suspicion from their minds, he had taken a rifle, walked to the top of a ridge, taken careful aim and had gotten his man. They were elated: such firing was unheard of, it was an example of Non-Latin calculation and precision. The old Gringo was given a sombrero and questioned no more. But he was curious. He had shot one of the “enemy,” but his only sensation was one of dismay. “Poor devil! I wonder who he was!” War, too, had gone the way of all the mysterious, shifting, tantalizing shadows that were constantly disappearing only to reform into half-shapes and then dissolving again into the mists from which they had emerged and into which everything eventually disappeared. He was no nearer “the heart of darkness” than ever and he was troubled by a recurrent thought: was death to be a jest? He had touched it throughout his life. Once it had placed a long white scar through his hair, and it had mowed down thousands in his sight. Now, in old age, he was flirting with it again, but it did not seem much of an adventure. His early experience, then, had been something personal and subjective. All his life he had cherished the thought of the Civil War as the great “adventure” of his life, and now he knew it had been but another wraith of smoke stirred up by the gods of chance to perplex his sight. “To be a Gringo in Mexico — Ah, that is euthanasia!”
The notes ceased, for there were no more letters. It was near Christmas time, always for him a “hateful” season, full of sad memories. The year 1914 was to bring no word of him. His journey with death was over. He had disappeared — into his “good, good, darkness.”
CHAPTER XX. “INCOMMUNICABLE NEWS”
BIERCE once remarked that “Death is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate.” The wildly imaginary rumors that have circulated since his disappearance into Mexico, certainly suggest an interesting parallel. His disappearance did not put an end to the absurd speculations about his life, but, on the contrary, only gave them a fresh and splendid impetus. The old question: “Who is Ambrose Bierce?” was supplanted by the far more perplexing query: “Where is Ambrose Bierce.” Just as America was becoming curious about the first question, the second created even more attention and interest. The matter was made the subject of psychoanalysis, crystal gazing, and sensational news stories. The famous “disappearance” became the theme of short stories of the supernatural, prose fantasies, dialogues, detective stories, and editorial comment. Nothing so augmented the interest in Ambrose Bierce as his disappearance. Obscurity is obscurity, but disappearance is fame. It would be an act of supererogation to list all the stories about Bierce’s disappearance that have been tossed to a greedy world by those who have glibly promised to tell exactly what happened to Ambrose Bierce, but a few may be considered.
Immediately upon Bierce’s disappearance, that is, when his friends ceased to hear from him, his daughter wrote to the authorities in Washington and requested that they make an investigation, which they agreed to do. The Hon. Franklin K. Lane was one of the men who was induced to take an active part in directing the search that the government made in an effort to get word of Bierce. He was apparently ashamed of his famous Dunciad to the New York newspapers and was making belated amends. It was known that the last letters were postmarked from Chihuahua. One was dated Christmas Eve, Dec
ember 24, 1913, and was addressed to J. H. Dunnigan, in the course of which Bierce asked his friend to “pray for me — real loud.” The other was mailed two days later. Some further facts are known, as that Bierce had on his person approximately two thousand dollars in gold, that he carried credentials permitting him to pass through the Constitutionalists’ territory, and that he was accredited to the Villa forces. He left a trunk in Laredo, which, en passant, was never found and could never be traced. From various sources, it is quite apparent that Bierce did not go into Mexico with the thought of actually enlisting with either side. His role was distinctly that of an observer; his credentials so stated, and he had told many friends that he was merely “going through to the West Coast and then to South America.” So much, then, for the known facts.
The first important “Bierce Disappearance” story was that by James H. Wilkins. Wilkins, a well-known Pacific Coast journalist, was sent into Mexico by Fremont Older to try and find out what happened to Ambrose Bierce. The result of his investigation was a sensational news story that appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin, March 24, 1920. Summarized, Mr. Wilkins’ story is that Bierce was shot by a firing squad of Villista troops near Icamoli, on the trail to Monterey, in 1915. Wilkins claims that he went to interview Edmund Melero, associate editor of the Mexican Review in Mexico City. It was rumored that Melero had known Bierce in El Paso, and that they had been together for some time in Mexico. Up to this point Mr. Wilkins’ story is quite probable. But he strains the easiest credibility by the statements that follow. He went to interview a man supposed to have been with Melero, as Melero did not personally know much about Bierce. This mysterious man, unnamed in the story, then told Wilkins that he had been sent by Villa to capture an ammunition train on its way to Carranza’s forces. The ammunitions had been captured and two men had been taken prisoners. These two prisoners were shot down by the firing squad. As the man told Wilkins the story, a pictured fluttered to the floor. Wilkins is “without doubt” that it was a picture of Ambrose Bierce. But he never produced the picture or the man.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 373