Part 6

I have a joyous letter from Leigh dated "on the road," nearing Yosemite. He has been passing through the storied land of Bret Harte, and is permeated with a sense of its beauty and romance. When shall you return? May I hope, then, to see you?

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

P.S. Here are things that I cut out for memoranda. On second thought _I_ know all that; so send them to you for the betterment of your mind and heart.

B.

[San Jose, October 17, 1894.]

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

Your kindly note was among a number which I put into my pocket at the postoffice and forgot until last evening when I returned from Oakland. (I dared remain up there only a few hours, and the visit did me no good.)

Of course I should have known that your good heart would prompt the wish to hear from your patient, but I fear I was a trifle misanthropic all last week, and indisposed to communicate with my species.

I came here on Monday of last week, and the change has done me good. I have no asthma and am slowly getting back my strength.

Leigh and Ina Peterson passed Sunday with me, and Leigh recounted his adventures in the mountains. I had been greatly worried about him; it seems there was abundant reason. The next time he comes I wish he would bring you. It is lovely down here. Perhaps you and Katie can come some time, and I'll drive you all over the valley--if you care to drive.

If I continue well I shall remain here or hereabout; if not I don't know where I shall go. Probably into the Santa Cruz mountains or to Gilroy. If I could have my way I'd live at Piedmont.

Do you know I lost Pin the Reptile? I brought him along in my bicycle bag (I came the latter half of the way bike-back) and the ungrateful scoundrel wormed himself out and took to the weeds just before we got to San Jose. So I've nothing to lavish my second-childhoodish affection upon--nothing but just myself.

My permanent address is Oakland, as usual, but _you_ may address me here at San Jose if you will be so good as to address me anywhere. Please do, and tell me of your triumphs and trials at the Conservatory of Music. I do fervently hope it may prove a means of prosperity to you, for, behold, you are The Only Girl in the World Who Merits Prosperity!

Please give my friendly regards to your people; and so--Heaven be good to you.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[San Jose, October 28, 1894.]

O, BEST OF POETS,

How have you the heart to point out what you deem an imperfection in those lines. Upon my soul, I swear they are faultless, and "moonlight" is henceforth and forever a rhyme to "delight." Also, likewise, moreover and furthermore, a ---- is henceforth ----; and ---- are forever ----; and to ---- shall be ----; and so forth. You have established new canons of literary criticism--more liberal ones--and death to the wretch who does not accept them! Ah, I always knew you were a revolutionist.

Yes, I am in better health, worse luck! For I miss the beef-teaing expeditions more than you can by trying.

By the way, if you again encounter your fellow practitioner, Mrs. Hirshberg, please tell her what has become of her patient, and that I remember her gratefully.

It is not uninteresting to me to hear of your progress in your art, albeit I am debarred from entrance into the temple where it is worshiped. After all, art finds its best usefulness in its reaction upon the character; and in that work I can trace your proficiency in the art that you love. As you become a better artist you grow a nicer girl, and if your music does not cause my tympana to move themselves aright, yet the niceness is not without its effect upon the soul o' me. So I'm not so _very_ inert a clod, after all.

No, Leigh has not infected me with the exploring fad. I exhausted my capacity in that way years before I had the advantage of his acquaintance and the contagion of his example. But I don't like to think of that miserable mountain sitting there and grinning in the consciousness of having beaten the Bierce family.

So--apropos of my brother--_I_ am "odd" after a certain fashion! My child, that is blasphemy. You grow hardier every day of your life, and you'll end as a full colonel yet, and challenge Man to mortal combat in true Stetsonian style. Know thy place, thou atom!

Speaking of colonels reminds me that one of the most eminent of the group had the assurance to write me, asking for an "audience" to consult about a benefit that she--_she!_--is getting up for my friend Miss * * *, a glorious writer and eccentric old maid whom you do not know. * * * evidently wants more notoriety and proposes to shine by Miss * * * light. I was compelled to lower the temperature of the situation with a letter curtly courteous. Not even to assist Miss * * * shall my name be mixed up with those of that gang. But of course all that does not amuse you.

I wish I could have a chat with you. I speak to nobody but my chambermaid and the waiter at my restaurant. By the time I see you I shall have lost the art of speech altogether and shall communicate with you by the sign language.

God be good to you and move you to write to me sometimes.

Sincerely your friend, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[First part of this letter missing.]

* * * * *

You may, I think, expect my assistance in choosing between (or among) your suitors next month, early. I propose to try living in Oakland again for a short time beginning about then. But I shall have much to do the first few days--possibly in settling my earthly affairs for it is my determination to be hanged for killing all those suitors. That seems to me the simplest way of disembarrassing you. As to me--it is the "line of least resistance"--unless they fight.

* * * * *

So you have been ill. You must not be ill, my child--it disturbs my Marcus Aurelian tranquillity, and is most selfishly inconsiderate of you.

Mourn with me: the golden leaves of my poplars are now underwheel. I sigh for the perennial eucalyptus leaf of Piedmont.

I hope you are all well. Sincerely your friend,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[San Jose, November 20, 1894.]

Since writing you yesterday, dear Blanche, I have observed that the benefit to * * * is not abandoned--it is to occur in the evening of the 26th, at Golden Gate Hall, San Francisco. I recall your kind offer to act for me in any way that I might wish to assist Miss * * *. Now, I will not have my name connected with anything that the * * * woman and her sister-in-evidence may do for their own glorification, but I enclose a Wells, Fargo & Co. money order for all the money I can presently afford--wherewith you may do as you will; buy tickets, or hand it to the treasurer in your own name. I know Miss * * * must be awfully needy to accept a benefit--you have no idea how sensitive and suspicious and difficult she is. She is almost impossible. But there are countless exactions on my lean purse, and I must do the rest with my pen. So--I thank you.

Sincerely your friend, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[18 Iowa Circle, Washington, D. C., January 1, 1901.]

DEAR STERLING,

This is just a hasty note to acknowledge receipt of your letter and the poems. I hope to reach those pretty soon and give them the attention which I am sure they will prove to merit--which I cannot do now. By the way, I wonder why most of you youngsters so persistently tackle the sonnet. For the same reason, I suppose, that a fellow always wants to make his first appearance on the stage in the role of "Hamlet." It is just the holy cheek of you.

Yes, Leigh prospers fairly well, and I--well, I don't know if it is prosperity; it is a pretty good time.

I suppose I shall have to write to that old scoundrel Grizzly,[1] to give him my new address, though I supposed he had it; and the old one would do, anyhow. Now that his cub has returned he probably doesn't care for the other plantigrades of his kind.

[1] Albert Bierce.

Thank you for telling me so much about some of our companions and companionesses of the long ago. I fear that not all my heart was in my baggage when I came over here. There's a bit of it, for example, out there by that little lake in the hills.

So I may have a photograph of one of your pretty sisters. Why, of course I want it--I want the entire five of them; their pictures, I mean. If you had been a nice fellow you would have let me know them long ago. And how about that other pretty girl, your infinitely better half? You might sneak into the envelope a little portrait of _her_, lest I forget, lest I forget. But I've not yet forgotten.

The new century's best blessings to the both o' you.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

P.S.--In your studies of poetry have you dipped into Stedman's new "American Anthology"? It is the most notable collection of American verse that has been made--on the whole, a book worth having. In saying so I rather pride myself on my magnanimity; for of course I don't think he has done as well by me as he might have done. That, I suppose, is what every one thinks who happens to be alive to think it. So I try to be in the fashion.

A. B.

[18 Iowa Circle, Washington, D. C., January 19, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I've been a long while getting to your verses, but there were many reasons--including a broken rib. They are pretty good verses, with here and there _very_ good lines. I'd a strong temptation to steal one or two for my "Passing Show," but I knew what an avalanche of verses it would bring down upon me from other poets--as every mention of a new book loads my mail with new books for a month.

If I ventured to advise you I should recommend to you the simple, ordinary meters and forms native to our language.

I await the photograph of the pretty sister--don't fancy I've forgotten.

It is 1 a. m. and I'm about to drink your health in a glass of Riesling and eat it in a pate.

My love to Grizzly if you ever see him. Yours ever,

A. B.

[Washington, D. C., January 23, 1901.]

MY DEAR DOYLE,

Your letter of the 16th has just come and as I am waiting at my office (where I seldom go) I shall amuse myself by replying "to onct." See here, I don't purpose that your attack on poor Morrow's book shall become a "continuous performance," nor even an "annual ceremony." It is not "rot." It is not "filthy." It does not "suggest bed-pans,"--at least it did not to me, and I'll wager something that Morrow never thought of them. Observe and consider: If his hero and heroine had been man and wife, the bed-pan would have been there, just the same; yet you would not have thought of it. Every reader would have been touched by the husband's devotion. A physician has to do with many unpleasant things; whom do his ministrations disgust? A trained nurse lives in an atmosphere of bed-pans--to whom is her presence or work suggestive of them? I'm thinking of the heroic Father Damien and his lepers; do you dwell upon the rotting limbs and foul distortions of his unhappy charges? Is not his voluntary martyrdom one of the sanest, cleanest, most elevating memories in all history? Then it is _not_ the bed-pan necessity that disgusts you; it is something else. It is the fact that the hero of the story, being neither physician, articled nurse, nor certificated husband, nevertheless performed _their_ work. He ministered to the helpless in a natural way without authority from church or college, quite irregular and improper and all that. My noble critic, there speaks in your blood the Untamed Philistine. You were not caught young enough. You came into letters and art with all your beastly conventionalities in full mastery of you. Take a purge. Forget that there are Philistines. Forget that they have put their abominable pantalettes upon the legs of Nature. Forget that their code of morality and manners (it stinks worse than a bed-pan) does _not_ exist in the serene altitude of great art, toward which you have set your toes and into which I want you to climb. I know about this thing. I, too, tried to rise with all that dead weight dragging at my feet. Well, I could not--now I could if I cared to. In my mind I do. It is not freedom of act--not freedom of living, for which I contend, but freedom of thought, of mind, of spirit; the freedom to see in the horrible laws, prejudices, custom, conventionalities of the multitude, something good for them, but of no value to you _in your art._ In your life and conduct defer to as much of it as you will (you'll find it convenient to defer to a whole lot), but in your mind and art let not the Philistine enter, nor even speak a word through the keyhole. My own chief objection to Morrow's story is (as I apprised him) its unnaturalness. He did not dare to follow the logical course of his narrative. He was too cowardly (or had too keen an eye upon his market of prudes) to make hero and heroine join in the holy bonds of _bed_lock, as they naturally, inevitably and rightly would have done long before she was able to be about. I daresay that, too, would have seemed to you "filthy," without the parson and his fee. When you analyze your objection to the story (as I have tried to do for you) you will find that it all crystallizes into that--the absence of the parson. I don't envy you your view of the matter, and I really don't think you greatly enjoy it yourself. I forgot to say: Suppose they had been two men, two partners in hunting, mining, or exploring, as frequently occurs. Would the bed-pan suggestion have come to you? Did it come to you when you read of the slow, but not uniform, starvation of Greeley's party in the arctic? Of course not. Then it is a matter, not of bed-pans, but of sex-exposure (unauthorized by the church), of prudery--of that artificial thing, the "sense of shame," of which the great Greeks knew nothing; of which the great Japanese know nothing; of which Art knows nothing. Dear Doctor, do you really put trousers on your piano-legs? Does your indecent intimacy with your mirror make you blush?

There, there's the person whom I've been waiting for (I'm to take her to dinner, and I'm not married to even so much of her as her little toe) has come; and until you offend again, you are immune from the switch. May all your brother Philistines have to "Kiss the place to make it well."

Pan is dead! Long live Bed-Pan!

Yours ever, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, February 17, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I send back the poems, with a few suggestions. You grow great so rapidly that I shall not much longer dare to touch your work. I mean that.

Your criticisms of Stedman's Anthology are just. But equally just ones can be made of any anthology. None of them can suit any one. I fancy Stedman did not try to "live up" to his standard, but to make _representative_, though not always the _best_, selections. It would hardly do to leave out Whitman, for example. _We_ may not like him; thank God, we don't; but many others--the big fellows too--do; and in England he is thought great. And then Stedman has the bad luck to know a lot of poets personally--many bad poets. Put yourself in his place. Would you leave out me if you honestly thought my work bad?

In any compilation we will all miss some of our favorites--and find some of the public's favorites. You miss from Whittier "Joseph Sturge"--I the sonnet "Forgiveness," and so forth. Alas, there is no universal standard!

Thank you for the photographs. Miss * * * is a pretty girl, truly, and has the posing instinct as well. She has the place of honor on my mantel. * * * But what scurvy knave has put the stage-crime into her mind? If you know that life as I do you will prefer that she die, poor girl.

It is no trouble, but a pleasure, to go over your verses--I am as proud of your talent as if I'd made it.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[over]

About the rhymes in a sonnet:

"Regular", or "English" Modern Italian form form English (Petrarch): (Shakspear's): 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 2 2 4 2 2 3 1 1 4 Two or three 3 5 rhymes; any 4 6 arrangement 5 5 3 6 4 7 5 7

There are good reasons for preferring the regular Italian form created by Petrarch--who knew a thing or two; and sometimes good reasons for another arrangement--of the sestet rhymes. If one should sacrifice a great thought to be like Petrarch one would not resemble him.

A. B.

[Washington, D. C., May 2, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I am sending to the "Journal" your splendid poem on Memorial Day. Of course I can't say what will be its fate. I am not even personally acquainted with the editor of the department to which it goes. But if he has not the brains to like it he is to send it back and I'll try to place it elsewhere. It is great--great!--the loftiest note that you have struck and _held_.

Maybe I owe you a lot of letters. I don't know--my correspondence all in arrears and I've not the heart to take it up.

Thank you for your kind words of sympathy.[2] I'm hit harder than any one can guess from the known facts--am a bit broken and gone gray of it all.

[2] Concerning the death of his son Leigh.

But I remember you asked the title of a book of synonyms. It is "Roget's Thesaurus," a good and useful book.

The other poems I will look up soon and consider. I've made no alterations in the "Memorial Day" except to insert the omitted stanza. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, May 9, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I send the poems with suggestions. There's naught to say about 'em that I've not said of your other work. Your "growth in grace" (and other poetic qualities) is something wonderful. You are leaving my other "pupils" so far behind that they are no longer "in it." Seriously, you "promise" better than any of the new men in our literature--and perform better than all but Markham in his lucid intervals, alas, too rare.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, May 22, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I enclose a proof of the poem[3]--all marked up. The poem was offered to the Journal, but to the wrong editor. I would not offer it to him in whose department it could be used, for he once turned down some admirable verses of my friend Scheffauer which I sent him. I'm glad the Journal is _not_ to have it, for it now goes into the Washington Post--and the Post into the best houses here and elsewhere--a good, clean, unyellow paper. I'll send you some copies with the poem.

[3] "Memorial Day."

I think my marks are intelligible--I mean my _re_marks. Perhaps you'll not approve all, or anything, that I did to the poem; I'll only ask you to endure. When you publish in covers you can restore to the original draft if you like. I had not time (after my return from New York) to get your approval and did the best and the least I could.

* * * * *

My love to your pretty wife and sister. Let me know how hard you hate me for monkeying with your sacred lines.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

Yes, your poem recalled my "Invocation" as I read it; but it is better, and not too much like--hardly like at all except in the "political" part. Both, in that, are characterized, I think, by decent restraint. How * * * would, at those places, have ranted and chewed soap!--a superior quality of soap, I confess.

A. B.

[1825 Nineteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C., June 30, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I am glad my few words of commendation were not unpleasing to you. I meant them all and more. You ought to have praise, seeing that it is all you got. The "Post," like most other newspapers, "don't pay for poetry." What a damning confession! It means that the public is as insensible to poetry as a pig to--well, to poetry. To any sane mind such a poem as yours is worth more than all the other contents of a newspaper for a year.

I've not found time to consider your "bit of blank" yet--at least not as carefully as it probably merits.

My relations with the present editor of the Examiner are not unfriendly, I hope, but they are too slight to justify me in suggesting anything to him, or even drawing his attention to anything. I hoped you would be sufficiently "enterprising" to get your poem into the paper if you cared to have it there. I wrote Dr. Doyle about you. He is a dear fellow and you should know each other. As to Scheffauer, he is another. If you want him to see your poem why not send it to him? But the last I heard he was very ill. I'm rather anxious to hear more about him.

It was natural to enclose the stamps, but I won't have it so--so there! as the women say.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[1825 Nineteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C., July 15, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

Here is the bit of blank. When are we to see the book? Needless question--when you can spare the money to pay for publication, I suppose, if by that time you are ambitious to achieve public inattention. That's my notion of encouragement--I like to cheer up the young author as he sets his face toward "the peaks of song."

Say, that photograph of the pretty sister--the one with a downward slope of the eyes--is all faded out. That is a real misfortune: it reduces the sum of human happiness hereabout. Can't you have one done in fast colors and let me have it? The other is all right, but that is not the one that I like the better for my wall. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., December 16, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I enclose the poems with a few suggestions. They require little criticism of the sort that would be "helpful." As to their merit I think them good, but not great. I suppose you do not expect to write great things every time. Yet in the body of your letter (of Oct. 22) you do write greatly--and say that the work is "egoistic" and "unprintable." If it[4] were addressed to another person than myself I should say that it is "printable" exceedingly. Call it what you will, but let me tell you it will probably be long before you write anything better than some--many--of these stanzas.

[4] "Dedication" poem to Ambrose Bierce.

You ask if you have correctly answered your own questions. Yes; in four lines of your running comment:

"I suppose that I'd do the greater good in the long run by making my work as good poetry as possible."

* * * * *

Of course I deplore your tendency to dalliance with the demagogic muse. I hope you will not set your feet in the dirty paths--leading nowhither--of social and political "reform".... I hope you will not follow * * * in making a sale of your poet's birthright for a mess of "popularity." If you do I shall have to part company with you, as I have done with him and at least _one_ of his betters, for I draw the line at demagogues and anarchists, however gifted and however beloved.

Let the "poor" alone--they are oppressed by nobody but God. Nobody hates them, nobody despises. "The rich" love them a deal better than they love one another. But I'll not go into these matters; your own good sense must be your salvation if you are saved. I recognise the temptations of environment: you are of San Francisco, the paradise of ignorance, anarchy and general yellowness. Still, a poet is not altogether the creature of his place and time--at least not of his to-day and his parish.