Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

by Bierce, Ambrose

  Mrs. Hirshberg and Dr. C. W. Doyle had cared for a little deaf girl, Lily Walsh, who worked around in restaurants and hotels, but who seemed to show considerable promise as a poetess. They showed her work to Bierce, and he immediately became interested in the child and sent her to a school for the deaf in Berkeley. She seems to have been a preternaturally wise and solemn child. She would write all manner of verse, stilted romances of knights and ladies, and essays for Bierce’s approval. He kept a sheath of her manuscripts; and the kindness that he showed her was but typical of his great tenderness for all weak and pathetic creatures. To those who think, as does Mrs. Charlotte Gilman, that Bierce was an inhuman scourge, perhaps the realization of the kind and patient care that he devoted to Lily Walsh might force the correction of a hastily formed opinion. The brother of Lily Walsh was also a devoted admirer of Bierce, and he wrote from New York: “He, the ideal Ambrose Bierce, Saint Ambrose of Los Gatos, is the measure of my conduct.” One of Lily Walsh’s compositions was the following poem addressed to “A. B.”

  “O! as some pine towers free and far

  Above its forest fellows, matchless in height,

  Grace, strength and majesty; so in the might

  Of his grand intellect he towers. Dwarfed are

  All who beside him stand. They enviously mar

  The glory of his shining, quench his light

  With lie-tipped tongues, pens dipped in ink of spite

  (So, have we seen clouds strive to dim a star

  And all as vainly.) While pens scratch, tongues wag

  He stands serenely on Truth’s rugged rock

  To which he’s rooted firmly as the pine

  Is rooted to Earth’s bosom. Winds may drag

  That forest monarch from his throne. Not shock

  Of Quaking Earth can move this friend of mine.”

  It was just such blind, unquestioning adoration as this that Bierce inspired in all his young admirers. There were no bounds to their enthusiasm. While Lily Walsh was attending the school at Berkeley, she died and her last request was that she might be buried at Los Gatos where she could be near Bierce, but her relatives were Catholics and hence she was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery at Oakland. Bierce was quite ill at the time or else, as he afterwards remarked, he would have seen that her wish was regarded. His capacity for suffering is shown by his grief over the death of this girl: he mourned over her, as Mrs. Hirshberg says, “like a father.”

  “To parents only,” he wrote, “death brings an inconsolable sorrow. When the young die and the old live, nature’s machinery is working with friction that we name grief.”

  On the outskirts of Los Gatos was one of the largest and most valuable ranches in California. It was owned then by the Hume family. This enormous prune orchard stretched along the foothills for miles. Frank Hume, one of the owners, had started to build a magnificent country place which he called “Dotswood,” but he had constructed only one splendid room around which he expected to build his mansion. The ranch itself was named after his very charming wife, Una Hume, and was known as “Glen Una.” At the time that Bierce first went to live at Los Gatos, Mrs. Hume was a widow, and she entertained most elegantly for her friends. She and Bierce became great friends. In fact, Bierce’s affection for Una Hume was one of the reasons that kept him at Los Gatos so long. When their friendship was broken, he determined to go east. Mrs. Hume was a most attractive woman, talented, gracious, and charming and her home was always full of San Francisco people over the week end.

  One day Bierce walked out from Los Gatos to call on Mrs. Hume, who was just recuperating from an illness. He entered the gates of Dotswood, nestling as it does in a little grove backed against the hillside, and was about to ring the doorbell when he was accosted by a very determined and spirited Irish nurse. She informed him that Mrs. Hume could see no one and a battle royale ensued, but Theresa McCarthy was not to be overawed, even by Ambrose Bierce, and so Bierce had to turn around and go back to Los Gatos. He later became quite friendly with the nurse, and they exchanged many hot sallies of wit during the time she was attending Mrs. Hume.

  Miss McCarthy liked to set baits for Bierce’s rage during his frequent calls at Dotswood. She asked him one day why he always said: “God bless you!” when he did not believe in God. He answered this by saying: “If I actually believed in him, I wouldn’t dare mention his name.” The other gentlemen who called at Dotswood, particularly certain San Franciscans, were quite jealous of Bierce’s position. In an effort to discredit him, they told Mrs. Hume that he had once been expelled from the Bohemian Club for boasting of his conquests with women. Miss McCarthy, anticipating a great burst of indignation, related this story to him. He smiled and sat musing in the twilight for awhile — the warm sweet twilight that came to them through the stained glass windows designed by Bruce Porter — toying with the cocktail that had been served him from the miniature bar in the rear of the room. Then he said, very softly: “Boasting of my conquests with women at the Bohemian Club? Why, my dear, I couldn’t have gotten the floor if I had tried!”

  There were several women in Bierce’s life who occupied positions analogous to that of Mrs. Hume, that is, the beloved friend and confidante, some one to be slightly romantic about, if not actually anchored to by the skeins of an infatuation. These women knew him better than any other people in his life; it was to them, rather than to his immediate family or to his journalistic associates, that he talked most freely about his career, his dreams and his ambitions. Men saw a different Bierce: an elaborate cynic, a hardened skeptic, and a calloused satirist. But there were sonnets for the ladies, occasionally, and many a note full of soft pauses and waltz rhythms. With men he was often enough a good fellow, a congenial drinking companion, and capable of rabelaisian bursts of humor. The kindly, white-whiskered old veterans of the domino tables at the Family Club in San Francisco still tell amusing stories about the unprinted portions of his “Devil’s Dictionary,” ending always with his definition of “Heaven”: “Copulation without culmination.”

  Women were really offensive in the manner that they threw themselves at Bierce. His “Prattle” was literally a dragnet that drew innumerable sentimental notes and requests for clandestine appointments. He did not hesitate in later years to write rather sharp letters to these forward ladies; one such suggestion for an appointment brought this sentence from a scorching reply: “Madam: Commonly when one of your sex writes pleasantly to a stranger, it is because she wants something.” But while he was in California, it was not at all unusual for him to receive lyrics on pink stationery from Dimond, California, or stately and quivering sonnets from admiring poetesses at Lake Tahoe, opening with such sentiments as this: “You recall? We walked in the woods that matchless day—” But the ladies that he did admire consumed a great deal of his time: several of his friends lament to this day the hours that he loitered and dallied when he might have been at his work.

  At Wrights, Bierce stayed at the Jeffreys Hotel, where he occupied a little cabin set off by itself. One day as he was rounding the corner of the hotel at top speed, he collided with a young girl. He assumed a very superior manner and sniffed something to the effect that he “supposed” she had planned the collision in lieu of an introduction. It was the defensive attitude of a fugitive from feminine wiles. But, to his amazement, he was assured, with extraordinary force and emphasis, that nothing of the sort was in the young lady’s thoughts. He apologized and they both concluded that it was a fortunate meeting anyway and became the best of friends. The young lady’s name was Leila Cotton. She lived with her family in a delightful old frame house with a circular porch, that was called “Bohemia.” He was promptly adopted by the Cotton family, and used to take his meals at “Bohemia.”

  These last years in California were rather indolent and carefree days for Bierce. His duties were negligible and there were several long intervals during which he did no work for The Examiner, the result of spirited and periodic resignations. Nor was he writing any stories at
this time. There were long tramps in the woods, usually at night when his asthma kept him out of doors, and the usual week-end foray to San Francisco, or a trip down to Los Gatos to chat with Una Hume. At nights the dark forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains were blue with their cool radiance, and the valleys were full of deep soft pools of darkness. There were redwoods and pines, and an infinite variety of ferns and forest flowers, and in the distance the Santa Clara Valley was full of an unnameable magic when, at dusk, the shadows involved it and the lights of San José gleamed like phosphorescent fish in a sea of darkness. But, strangely enough, none of this beauty, none of the splendid stillness of the forests, ever got into his work save by a mischance. It was a strange man who could live at Wrights and at Angwins and be impervious to the natural splendor about him. But he was preoccupied with thoughts of the past, with grisly images of death, with a feeling of strangeness and unreality about the entire scene.

  The constant stream of pupils and disciples did not cease when he was at Wrights, but came up the grade from Los Gatos and followed him to his lair with indefatigible zeal. Herman Scheffauer was often at the camp; Edwin Markham came often, too, until that fatal afternoon when he read “The Man with the Hoe” and was furiously denounced as a traitor to his art and a victim of reform. So severely did Bierce denounce the poem in print that a debate was provoked, the last echoes of which did not cease to appear in The Examiner for months. But when Cora Case accused Markham of stealing the poem from her, Bierce was one of the first to rush to the defense of his old friend. The battle which raged over “The Man With the Hoe” was only a battle of ideas and Bierce would not have been so severe in his criticism had he not entertained a very high regard for Mr. Markham’s non-socialistic verse. When Scheffauer could not be at “Valhalla” at the feet of his “Tor,” as he referred to Bierce and his cabin, he would write interminable letters, thirty and forty pages long, written in an indecipherable script and full of the wildest and most chaotic and emotional bombast. When Scheffauer discovered Nietzsche the effect was almost fatal, for he promptly adopted the rhapsodical manner of Zarathustra and no one could understand his ravings. No wonder Bierce wearied of the fellow.

  At the other side of the range was Santa Cruz and Bierce could proceed there in search of amusement when he knew that the hostess of Dotswood was not at home. At Santa Cruz Mr. Bierce came to know Dr. C. W. Doyle. Doyle was a scholarly fellow, something of a bibliophile, and a considerable drinker. He wrote several volumes of Kipling-esque short stories, “The Taming of the Jungle” and “The Shadow of Quong Lung,” one of which he dedicated to Bierce. While not, except in a very limited sense, a pupil, he was yet influenced by Bierce and would never have published the two volumes without his kindly encouragement and interest. The Doctor presented Bierce with a handsome volume of Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religico Medici” which was, along with a diminutive edition of Pascal’s “Pensées,” the favorite item in Bierce’s library. At Santa Cruz, also, Bierce met some friends of Dr. Doyle’s, the MacKenzies, Agnes and Margaret. He thought that Agnes possessed a genuine talent as a painter, and, with Margaret to amuse them both, they would take long jaunts through the woods. Bierce would instruct the one in design at the same time that he corrected the other’s pronunciation. Wherever he lived, at San Rafael, St. Helena, Wrights, or Santa Cruz, he was almost invariably the “mentor” of some group of artists.

  One time while he was at Wrights, a woman came up from San Francisco to interview him on the subject of the proper method of rearing the young. He tried to avoid her, dodged her questions, and fled in panic to a friendly porch to read his newspaper in quiet. But she soon discovered his retreat and came rushing to propound more questions. Did Mr. Bierce know any of the ancients who might be read with instruction on the subject? It seemed that he did, for he answered: “Study Herod, Madam, study Herod.” During an early visit of the Markhams, Bierce succeeded in inducing Mrs. Markham to drink mulled claret on his representation that all the alcohol was “burnt out.” He was always willing to drop his book and go for a walk, or to visit with some pupil, as when George Sterling or Mabel Wood (now Mabel Wood Martin) another pupil, would come up to see him. He was rather bored with his work on The Examiner, and spent most of his time in the woods; he seemed to have lost something of his former interest in “Prattle” and only on occasions would it show the brilliancy of former years. He sensed a change and he felt the need of new scenes.

  Of all his pupils only Sterling and Scheffauer were destined to achieve any fame or distinction in the art. Some of the others might have gone far, indeed, but when he left the coast in 1899, they quickly neglected the duties and tasks to which he had set them and became teachers, nurses, or Christian Science practitioners. It has been intimated that Bierce helped young writers because he sensed his own limitations, and sought to acquire in another’s attainments what he had failed to achieve. It is difficult, of course, to analyze a motive in another. But from an examination of his correspondence, it is apparent that he was quite disinterested in the assistance that he gave many of these young people. He surely did not seek them out: in every instance they came to him begging the advice and assistance which he never withheld from a “worthy case,” be it Lily Walsh or Herman Scheffauer. Of course he was hurt and offended when, in later years, Scheffauer told tales about him and scoffed at the idea that Bierce had ever been of assistance to the Scheffauer who had visited Prof. Ernest Haeckel at Basle in 1904 and had his picture taken with the great scientist. By that time he had forgotten those myriad letters, the tons of scribbled adoration and praise that he had penned for his “Magister” at Wrights. It was so with many others. But that there was anything parasitic about Bierce’s relations with these pupils is too preposterous to warrant refutation.

  Mark Twain had gone East; Bret Harte had been an early fugitive; Stoddard was in Europe for years; and Bierce himself had attempted an escape which had failed. While the others were able to make an escape, Bierce stayed on in the West, rooted to the Bay District. It was thus that he became, as J. S. Cowley-Brown said, “a literary Rhadamanthus,” making and breaking literary reputations on the coast, its foremost writer and its chief figure. His name became a tradition in the West. Young reporters cherished their sheath of notes from “Bierce,” minor poets were grateful of a few kindly words in “Prattle” or a poem that was printed in its columns, or for a book sent them or a picture, or a pressed fern leaf, or an inscription in “Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.” The value of such a tradition can scarcely be overestimated. Bierce sent Sterling on his way to fame; Sterling went to Carmel and himself became a tradition in time; and a decade later Robinson Jeffers published “Tamar and Other Poems.” It is not so much a question as to whether or not Bierce’s influence was always creative, as it is the fact that some one remained on the coast to keep alive the semblance of an interest in the arts. Personally, I think his pupils could not have had a better “mentor.” He would tolerate no cheap and specious reasoning, and they must devote themselves unsparingly to their art. He did not rest with this, but proceeded to pound out of them the emotional optimism which infected the times. As Scheffauer later wrote: “The old Spartan over whom a hundred storms of destiny raged, and who had been obliged to arm himself for many hard battles, had become callous. He ducked me in an intellectual Styx which was for me a veritable chalybeate bath. It bewitched me against many threatening dangers of sentimentality and absurdity which frequently steal upon the young American writer.”

  It was while Bierce was at Wrights that he came to know Josephine Clifford McCrackin. She was the “Josephine Clifford” of the early issues of The Overland Monthly and The Californian. This old lady wrote Bierce the saddest of letters addressed to “Dear Grossmeister,” for her life had been one long trail of sorrow and misery along which she had moved with splendid indifference and unconcern. She tried to remonstrate with Bierce, when, in 1913, he wrote her that “fear of death is the invention of a humorist,” and attempted to point out to him th
e irrationality of the romantic quest for adventure. But he would not heed her advice; his curiosity demanded satisfaction. Romanticism is, of course, as Mr. Eliot has observed, “a short cut to the strangeness without the reality, and it leads its disciples only back upon themselves.” Much of the “Werther-like pessimism” that Scheffauer had noted in Bierce was the result of this feeling of emptiness provoked by a habit of questing restlessly about for a sensation that had once been experienced fortuitously. This impatience began to characterize Bierce very definitely from 1899 until his disappearance into Mexico.

  After the destruction of her home, Monte Paraiso Cottage, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Mrs. McCrackin was left in straitened circumstances, and it was to relieve this situation that Bierce tried to get several publishers to bring out a volume of her stories. Finally it was arranged, but under the management of George Wharton James, the J. Middleton Murray of Pasadena, who brought out a collection of her stories in 1913, for which Bierce wrote an introduction. His introduction is a little masterpiece of evasion, and it rather admits that the stories were unexceptional, although the lady who wrote them was a noble character. Bierce used to stride out of his little cabin, bang the door, and announce to his friends that he was “going over to see Jo,” as he called Mrs. McCrackin. God knows what these rare spirits discoursed about, high in the blue-black shadows of the Santa Cruz Mountains!

  A change was taking place in Bierce’s writing at this time, a change which must have reflected some corresponding change in the man himself. During these years, 1889-1899, he was at the apex of his career as a journalist in California. Popularly he was known as a Hearst journalist who wielded a mighty sword of abuse when in “good form.” But the old fiery days of the “Prattler” were over, for it is apparent from his journalism of this period that he had lost something of his old zest for baiting morons. Without interruption, save for the months in Washington, over a period of thirty years, he had lived and worked in the Bay District. Of its feuds, murders, lusts, crimes, wrongs, not to mention minor frivolities, amusements, social and artistic performances, he had woven a gay pattern which was reflected in the crisp elegance of his column “Prattle.” But he began to sense something wrong with his attitude. The satirist was too lowly a figure; he had seen vistas of grandeur during those months in Washington. He aspired to the chair of philosophy. A philosopher was to supplant a wit. The old life in San Francisco was over. The demagogic, prosy attitude of Hearst was beginning to have its effect even on Bierce. Those few months in Washington had whetted his appetite for a larger field, and he told Mr. A. M. Lawrence that a permanent change to Washington would be agreeable.