Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

by Bierce, Ambrose

  Were I, dear reader, to reproduce his exact words in giving expression to his indignation at and contempt for an institution the effect of which is to ignore the relations of husband and wife, and exalt the accomplishments of the heel over those of the head and heart, you would be shocked beyond measure.

  All his happiness was centred in this one woman; her good opinion was the dearest thing on earth to him. When therefore he found himself unable to partake with her of the pleasures of the dance, he tortured himself to acquire an art which in itself had no attraction for him, merely because he thought it would render him more pleasing in her sight. We have seen the manner in which she encouraged his first attempts; but the wrong was to be deeper yet. Content that h er pleasure should not be spoiled by his bad dancing, he allowed her to choose her own partners, while he applied himself vigorously to his self-appointed task of learning to waltz “like an angel.” Exactly how he achieved this end is not quite clear. He was not seen to practice much at the fashionable gatherings he attended with his wife; he was too sensitive to ridicule for that. Perhaps, like Socrates in his old age, he found some underground Aspasia who was willing to give him lessons in the art. But however this may be, certain it is that before long he had acquired a degree of proficiency which was quite surprising. Now, he triumphantly thought, his fond wife could have all the “Boston Dip” necessary for her “healthful exercise and recreation” without submitting her charms to the embrace of comparative strangers.

  Alas, for his hopes! After walking through the stately opening quadrille with the “partner of his joys,” he discovered that as though by magic her card had been filled by the young bloods who clustered about her; and then for the first time he was informed that after introducing his wife to the floor it was a breach of etiquette to monopolize her any further — he must either sit content to see her whirl, spitted on the same bodkin with men he had never seen before, or must turn his own skill to the best account and

  “Give — like her — caresses to a score.”

  It is more than likely that he adopted the latter course — most of his class do.

  Those wives who are so eager, for various reasons of their own, that their husbands should learn to dance, might draw a wholesome lesson from the story if Caribert, king of Paris, whose wife Ingoberge would fain prevent him from spending so much time in the hunting-field.

  To this end she prepared a series of splendid festivities, which she induced her lord to attend. Now, fairest and most graceful among the dancers were two sisters of surpassing beauty, named Mérofléde and Marcovére. Having, at his queen’s express solicitation, essayed the “light fantastic” with these ladies, the good Caribert, who had before no thought for any woman but his wife, suddenly became so enamored with the skill and grace of the sisters, that he not only forswore the chase forever, but with all possible despatch divorced Ingoberge and married first Mérofléde and then Marcovére.

  And thus it is that this demon creeps between the husband and the wife, and sooner or later separates their hearts forever. The sturdy oak may laugh at the entering of the wedge, but his mighty trunk will nevertheless be riven asunder by it in the end.

  But there is one other type of ballroom husband, whose portrait must not be omitted. This is the miserable, simpering, smirking creature who fully appreciates the privilege of being permitted to furnish, in the person of his wife, a well draped woman for other men’s amusement; who has an idea that the lascivious embraces bestowed upon his wife are an indirect compliment to himself; who is only too happy to be a cooler to other men’s lust in the ball-room, and is content to enjoy a kind of matrimonial aftermath in the nuptial chamber. Can any human being fall lower than this?

  Old Fenton has told us that flattery “supples the toughest fool,” but I regard the man who thus willingly resigns his wife to the palming of these ball room satyrs, merely because her beauty and gorgeous raiment bring notice upon him as the owner of so splendid an article — I regard this beast as a pander of the vilest kind; and a most foolish pander withal, for he simply purchases the title of cuckold at the price of his own dishonor and his wife’s open shame. He loves to hear it said that she “dances divinely,” though he knows that the horns on his forehead are plainer to none than to the fellow who tells him so. Bah! In the words of Mallet,

  “He who can listen pleased to such applause

  Buys at a dearer rate than I dare purchase.”

  The budding horns affixed to the husband’s pow in the fierce light of the ballroom have not the simple dignity of even the most towering antlers prepared by the ‘‘neat-handed Phyllis” of his heart in the domestic seclusion and subdued half-lights of a house of assignation. In the one case he poses as a suppliant for honors to mark his importunity; in the other his coronation is the unsought reward of modest merit. The Waltz may not make such despicable creatures as I have described above, but it at least affords them an opportunity to parade their own degradation.

  But the modern. Terpsichore has to answer for, if possible, still worse consequences than the seducing of our maids, the debauching of our young men, the prostitution of our wives, and the debasing of human nature, both male and female. She is worse than a procuress, there is blood upon her skirts, she is a murderess.

  From the day when Herodias danced John the Baptist’s head into a trencher the dance has been the cause of violence and bloodshed. The hate and jealousy which smoulder within the breast of the rejected lover, and which he is struggling to extinguish, burst into flame at the sight of her he loves folded in ecstacy upon the breast of his rival. His cup was already full — this is more than he can bean We may pass by Venetian masquerade and Spanish fandango — where the knife of the avenger sends the victim’s, blood spurting into the face of his partner — and may look nearer home, at our fashionable “hops” and “sociables,” where, though the Vendetta may not be carried out upon the floor (and instances of this are not lacking) it is nevertheless declared, and where, though no mute form be borne out from the ball-room to the grave, the dance is none the less a veritable Dance of Death — a dance of murdered love and slain friendship, of stabbed and bleeding hearts, of crushed hopes and blighted prospects, of ruined virtue and of betrayed trust.

  CHAPTER X.

  “To save a Mayd, St. George the Dragon slew;

  A pretty tale if all that’s told be true;

  Most say there are no Dragons, and Vis sayd

  There was no George — pray heaven there was a Mayd.”

  Anonymous.

  And now if I have succeeded in showing the modern dance as it is and the dancers as they are, together with the almost inevitable effects of the evil upon those who indulge in it, my main object is accomplished. I did not set out to deal with theories, but with facts. Indeed, did those whose godly calling places them on the watch-towers of the church, use a tongue of fire to lay bare this pernicious practice, and obey the divine mandate: “Thou shalt teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean,” and did those whose office it is to speak to the millions through the myriad tongued press, use a pen of flame to expose this growing iniquity, then would this thankless task be spared me. But when

  “Pulpits their sacred satire learn to spare,

  And vice admired to find a flatterer there,”

  then I say a layman must speak, or the stones would cry out against him.

  I have no personal or pulpit popularity to preserve, would not preserve it if I had at the price of divesting this public sensuality of its terrors, or at the risk of not causing the types of dancers herein painted to shrink from their own portraits.

  It only remains for me, then, to make a few concluding and general remarks.

  It is often urged that dancing cannot be desperately wicked, because it is “tolerated by all except those of narrow and bigotted religious views.” A greater mistake was never made, I assert that there are hosts of men who never permit the members of the
ir families to take part in round dances. Nor is this the result of religious bigotry. With most of them “religion,” in the popular sense of the word, does not enter into the question at all — they are not too pious, but too chaste to dance. In their eyes this familiar “laying on of hands” is essentially indecent, and they cannot see that the fact of its being done in public makes it any less indecent They will not allow even omnipotent Fashion to blind them in this matter, especially when they see that the vice is most common among those who lead the fashion.

  Far be it from me, however, to imply that even the most ardent votaries of the dance are blind to its impurity. No indeed. Is there one so-called respectable woman among them who would submit to be painted or photographed in the attitude she assumes while dancing the latest variety of waltz — even though her partner in the picture, instead of being a stranger just met for the first time, were her most intimate friend — aye, even though he were her husband? Not one of them would submit to be thus depicted; but if some maiden could be persuaded, what a pleasing family picture it would be for her husband and children to gaze upon in later years! Had I such an one to illustrate this book with, the success of its mission would be assured, with the simple drawback of the author being held amenable to an offended law for issuing obscene pictures.

  Such a representation would immediately effect the fulfillment of a prophecy made by the writer of a recent work entitled “Saratoga in Nineteen Hundred.” In those times there is to be no more dancing. The gentlemen, it is true, are to engage the ladies for a portion of the evening as in these benighted days; but instead of taking her on the floor, he will retire with her to one of a number of little private rooms with which every respectable mansion is to be provided, and there they will do their hugging in private. A great improvement, certainly, upon the present plan, in such matters as decency and comfort, but scarcely in completeness.

  It will only remain for the sons and daughters of that future generation to make dancing their religion. Let them convert their churches into dancing-halls, and set up an appropriate image of their deity — the Waltz — upon the altars; not the decently draped Terpsichore of the dark, pagan past, but the reeling Bacchante — flushed, panting, dishevelled, half-naked, half-drunk, half-mad — of the enlightened, Christian present; let the grave priest give way to the gay master-of-ceremonies, and the solemn benediction to the parting toast; let the orchestra occupy the pulpit, and the “wallflowers” sit in the vestry; let the pews be swept away, and the floors duly waxed and polished, but let not the tablets of the dead be removed — they are the “handwriting upon the wall,” the mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, most fitting for those to read who delight in the Dance of Death. Then, when the prayerbooks are programmes, and the hymnbooks the music of Strauss, the jingle of the piano may mock the dumb thunder of the organ, and the whirling congregation may immortalize a bard of to-day by singing the following verses of his composition to the “praise and glory of” — the Waltz:

  “In lofty cathedrals the organ may thunder

  Its echoes repeated from fresco-crowned vaults,

  And the multitude kneeling in rapture may wonder,

  But give me the music that sounds for the waltz!

  The Angels of Heaven, in glory advancing,

  Are singing hosannahs of praise to the King;

  Unless they have women, and music, and dancing.

  Forever unheeded by me they may sing.

  Oh! take not the sunshine that knows no to-morrow,

  The rivers of honey and fountains of bliss,

  Where the souls of the righteous may rest from their sorrow —

  They have not a joy that is equal to this.

  When the dead from their graves stand in awe and desponding,

  And the trumpet calls loud on that terrible day,

  To our names on the roll there will be no responding —

  To the music of Love we’ll have floated away.”

  But having brought this delectable “recreation” to the utmost pitch of refinement of which it is susceptible — a condition it bids fair promise to attain in a few more seasons, I feel that it is time, as Byron has it, to “put out the light.” I therefore conclude with a very brief exhortation to my readers.

  To dancers one and all I would say:

  Try and see yourselves as others see you; remember that there are many harmless pleasures that have about them no taint of filthy lust; above all cease to believe or to assert that the modem waltz is an “innocent amusement.”

  To the women, in particular, I say: Set your faces against this abomination, which is robbing you of man’s respect, and is the primal cause of infinite misery to yourselves.

  To the men I would say: Those who are the natural arbiters of what is permissible between man and woman, have shown their weakness and betrayed their trust; it is now for you to show your strength and redeem your honor.

  You who are unfavorable to the modern dance, I adjure not to let your opposition be merely negative, but to work positively for the putting down of the evil precisely as you might for the suppression of prostitution or any other corrupting influence. For as surely as thy soul liveth, this is “a way that seemeth good unto a man, but the end thereof is death.”

  THE MONK AND THE HANGMAN’S DAUGHTER

  The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter appeared in 1892, published by F.J. Schulte, of Chicago. Bierce collaborated on the novella with German author, Gustav Adolph Danziger, who had translated the original, The Monk of Berchtesgaden, by Richard Voss, into English. Bierce revised and rewrote the tale and, after publication in The San Francisco Examiner, had a falling out with Danziger over authorship. Bierce claimed to have written every word as published.

  The novella takes place at a rural monastery. Ambrosius, a recently arrived monk, meets and begins to spend time with Benedicta, the young daughter of the local hangman. His increasing interest in her, as well as her scandalous involvement with a young man, provides the backdrop for a tale of love, sin, and redemption.

  Front cover of 1955 Avon edition

  Back cover of 1955 Avon edition

  THE MONK AND THE HANGMAN’S DAUGHTER

  By Adolphe Danziger De Castro and Ambrose Bierce

  STATEMENT

  Under the name of G. A. Danziger I wrote in the year 1889 a story founded on a German tale, which I called The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter. The story was tragic but I gave it a happy ending. Submitting it to the late Ambrose Bierce, asking him to revise the story, he suggested the retention of the tragic part and so revised it. The story was published and the house failed.

  When in 1900 a publisher desired to bring out the story provided I gave it a happy ending, I submitted the matter to Bierce and on August 21, 1900, he wrote me a long letter on the subject of which the following is an extract:

  ‘I have read twice and carefully, your proposed addition to The Monk, and you must permit me to speak plainly, if not altogether agreeably, of it. It will not do for these reasons and others:

  ‘The book is almost perfect as you wrote it; the part of the work that pleases me least is my part (underscores Bierce’s). I am surprised that you should yield to the schoolgirl desire for that shallowest of all literary devices, a “happy ending,” by which all the pathos of the book is effaced to “make a woman holiday.” It is unworthy of you. So much vii did I feel this unworthiness that I hesitated a long time before even deciding to have so much of “odious ingenuity” and “mystery” as your making Benedicta the daughter of the Saltmaster and inventing her secret love for Ambrosius instead of Rochus.

  ‘“Dramatic action,” which is no less necessary in a story than in a play, requires that so far as is possible what takes place shall be seen to take place, not related as having previously taken place.... Compare Shakespeare’s Cymbeline with his better plays. See how he spoiled it the same way. You need not feel ashamed to err as Shakespeare erred. Indeed, you did better than he, for his explanations were of things already known to the re
ader, or spectator, of the play. Your explanations are needful to an understanding of the things explained; it is they that are needless. All “explanation” is unspeakably tedious, and is to be cut as short as possible. Far better to have nothing to explain — to show everything that occurs, in the very act of occurring. We cannot always do that, but we should come as near to doing it as we can. Anyhow, the “harking back” should not be done at the end of the book, when the dénouement is already known and the reader’s interest in the action exhausted....

  ‘Ambrosius and Benedicta are unique in letters. Their nobility, their simplicity, their sufferings — everything that is theirs stamps them as “beings apart.” They live in the memory sanctified and glorified by these qualities and sorrows. They are, in the last and most gracious sense, children of nature. Leave them lying there in the lovely valley of the gallows, where Ambrosius shuddered as his foot fell on the spot where he was destined to sleep....

  ‘Let The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter alone. It is great work and you should live to see the world confess it. Let me know if my faith in your faith in me is an error. You once believed in my judgment; I think it is not yet impaired by age.

  ‘Sincerely yours,

  ‘(Signed) Ambrose Bierce.’

  I can only add that my faith in Bierce’s judgment of letters is as firm to-day as it was then, when I gave him power of attorney to place my book with a publisher. This publisher embodied The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter in Bierce’s collected works, then sold the right to Messrs. Albert and Charles Boni who without knowledge of the true facts brought out an edition under Bierce’s name.