The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 13

There are few things that I would rather do than join that party; and I'd be the last to strike my tent and sling my swag. Alas, it cannot be--not this year. My outings are limited to short runs along this coast. I was about to set out on one this morning; and wrote a hasty note to Scheff in consequence of my preparations. In five hours I was suffering from asthma, and am now confined to my room. But for eight months of the year here I am immune--as I never was out there.

You will have to prepare yourself to endure a good deal of praise when that book is out. One does not mind when one gets accustomed to it. It neither pleases nor bores; you will have just no feeling about it at all. But if you really care for _my_ praise I hope you have quoted a bit of it at the head of those dedicatory verses, as I suggested. That will give them a _raison d'etre_.

With best regards to Mrs. Sterling and Katie I am sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

P.S.--If not too much trouble you may remind d.i.c.k Partington and wife that I continue to exist and to remember them pleasantly.

[N. Y. "American" Bureau, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., [July, 1903].]

DEAR SCHEFF:

I got the proofs yesterday, and am returning them by this mail. The "report of progress" is every way satisfactory, and I don't doubt that a neat job is being done.

The correction that you made is approved. I should have wanted and expected you to make many corrections and suggestions, but that I have had a purpose in making this book--namely, that it should represent my work at its average. In pursuance of this notion I was not hospitable even to suggestions, and have retained much work that I did not myself particularly approve; some of it trivial. You know I have always been addicted to trifling, and no book from which trivialities were excluded would fairly represent me.

I could not commend this notion in another. In your work and Sterling's I have striven hard to help you to come as near to perfection as we could, because perfection is what you and he want, and as young writers ought to want, the character of your work being higher than mine. I reached my literary level long ago, and seeing that it is not a high one there would seem to be a certain affectation, even a certain dishonesty, in making it seem higher than it is by republication of my best only. Of course I have not carried out this plan so consistently as to make the book dull: I had to "draw the line" at that.

I say all this because I don't want you and Sterling to think that I disdain a.s.sistance: I simply decided beforehand not to avail myself of its obvious advantages. You would have done as much for the book in one way as you have done in another.

I'll have to ask you to suggest that Mr. Wood have a man go over all the matter in the book, and see that none of the pieces are duplicated, as I fear they are. Reading the t.i.tles will not be enough: I might have given the same piece two t.i.tles. It will be necessary to compare first lines, I think. That will be drudgery which I'll not ask you to undertake: some of Wood's men, or some of the printer's men, will do it as well; it is in the line of their work.

The "Dies Irae" is the most earnest and sincere of religious poems; my travesty of it is mere solemn fooling, which fact is "given away" in the prose introduction, where I speak of my version being of possible service in the church! The travesty is not altogether unfair--it was inevitably suggested by the author's obvious inaccessibility to humor and logic--a peculiarity that is, however, observable in all religious literature, for it is a fundamental necessity to the religious mind.

Without logic and a sense of the ludicrous a man is religious as certainly as without webbed feet a bird has the land habit.

It is funny, but I am a "whole lot" more interested in seeing your cover of the book than my contents of it. I don't at all doubt--since you dared undertake it--that your great conception will find a fit interpreter in your hand; so my feeling is not anxiety. It is just interest--pure interest in what is above my powers, but in which _you_ can work. By the way, Keller, of the old "Wasp" was _not_ the best of its cartoonists. The best--the best of _all_ cartoonists if he had not died at eighteen--was another German, named Barkhaus. I have all his work and have long cherished a wish to republish it with the needed explanatory text--much of it being "local" and "transient." Some day, perhaps--most likely not. But Barkhaus was a giant.

How I envy you! There are few things that would please me so well as to "drop in" on you folks in Sterling's camp. Honestly, I think all that prevents is the (to me) killing journey by rail. And two months would be required, going and returning by sea. But the rail trip across the continent always gives me a horrible case of asthma, which lasts for weeks. I shall never take _that_ journey again if I can avoid it. What times you and they will have about the campfire and the table! I feel like an exile, though I fear I don't look and act the part.

I did not make the little excursion I was about to take when I wrote you recently. Almost as I posted the letter I was taken ill and have not been well since.

Poor Doyle! how thoughtful of him to provide for the destruction of my letters! But I fear Mrs. Doyle found some of them queer reading--if she read them.

Great Scott! if ever they begin to publish mine there will be a circus! For of course the women will be the chief sinners, and--well, they have material a-plenty; they can make many volumes, and your poor dead friend will have so bad a reputation that you'll swear you never knew him. I dare say, though, you have sometimes been indiscreet, too. _My_ besetting sin has been in writing to my girl friends as if they were sweethearts--the which they'll doubtless not be slow to affirm. The fact that they write to me in the same way will be no defense; for when I'm worm's meat I can't present the proof--and wouldn't if I could. Maybe it won't matter--if I don't turn in my grave and so bother the worms.

As Doyle's "literary executor" I fear your duties will be light: he probably did not leave much ma.n.u.script. I judge from his letters that he was despondent about his work and the narrow acceptance that it had. So I a.s.sume that he did not leave much more than the book of poems, which no publisher would (or will) take.

You are about to encounter the same stupid indifference of the public--so is Sterling. I'm sure of Sterling, but don't quite know how it will affect _you_. You're a pretty st.u.r.dy fellow, physically and mentally, but this _may_ hurt horribly. I pray that it do not, and could give you--perhaps have given you--a thousand reasons why it _should_ not. You are still young and your fame may come while you live; but you must not expect it now, and doubtless do not. To me, and I hope to you, the approval of one person who knows is sweeter than the acclaim of ten thousand who do not--whose acclaim, indeed, I would rather not have. If you do not _feel_ this in every fibre of your brain and heart, try to learn to feel it--practice feeling it, as one practices some athletic feat necessary to health and strength.

Thank you very much for the photograph. You are growing too infernally handsome to be permitted to go about unchained. If I had your "advantages" of youth and comeliness I'd go to the sheriff and ask him to lock me up. That would be the honorable thing for you to do, if you don't mind. G.o.d be with you--but inattentive.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Aurora, Preston Co., West Virginia, August 15, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

I fear that among the various cares incident to my departure from Was.h.i.+ngton I forgot, or neglected, to acknowledge the Joaquin Miller book that you kindly sent me. I was glad to have it. It has all his characteristic merits and demerits--among the latter, his interminable prolixity, the thinness of the thought, his endless repet.i.tion of favorite words and phrases, many of them from his other poems, his misp.r.o.nunciation, his occasional flashes of prose, and so forth.

Scheff tells me his book is out and mine nearly out. But what of yours? I do fear me it never will be out if you rely upon its "acceptance" by any American publisher. If it meets with no favor among the publisher tribe we must nevertheless get it out; and you will of course let me do what I can. That is only t.i.t for tat. But tell me about it.

I dare say Scheff, who is clever at getting letters out of me--the scamp!--has told you of my being up here atop of the Alleghenies, and why I _am_ here. I'm having a rather good time. * * * Can you fancy me playing croquet, cards, lawn--no, thank G.o.d, I've escaped lawn tennis and golf! In respect of other things, though, I'm a glittering specimen of the Summer Old Man.

Did _you_ have a good time in the redwoods?

Please present my compliments to Madame (and Mademoiselle) Sterling.

Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Aurora, West Virginia, September 8, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

I return the verses with a few suggestions.

I'm sorry your time for poetry is so brief. But take your pencil and figure out how much you would write in thirty years (I hope you'll live that long) at, say, six lines a day. You'll be surprised by the result--and encouraged. Remember that 50,000 words make a fairly long book.

You make me shudder when you say you are reading the "Prattle" of years. I haven't it and should hardly dare to read it if I had. There is so much in it to deplore--so much that is not wise--so much that was the expression of a mood or a whim--so much was not altogether sincere--so many half-truths, and so forth. Make allowances, I beg, and where you cannot, just forgive.

Scheff has mentioned his great desire that you join the Bohemian Club.

I know he wants me to advise you to do so. So I'm between two fires and would rather not advise at all. There are advantages (obvious enough) in belonging; and to one of your age and well grounded in sobriety and self-restraint generally, the disadvantages are not so great as to a youngster like Scheff. (Of course he is not so young as he seems to me; but he is younger by a few years and a whole lot of thought than you.)

The trouble with that kind of club--with any club--is the temptation to waste of time and money; and the danger of the drink habit. If one is proof against these a club is all right. I belong to one myself in Was.h.i.+ngton, and at one time came pretty near to "running" it.

No, I don't think Scheff's view of Kipling just. He asked me about putting that skit in the book. It _was_ his view and, that being so, I could see no reason for suppressing it in deference to those who do not hold it. I like free speech, though I'd not accord it to my enemies if I were Dictator. I should not think it for the good of the State to let * * * write verses, for example. The modern fad Tolerance does not charm me, but since it is all the go I'm willing that my friends should have their fling.

I dare say Scheff is unconscious of Kipling's paternity in the fine line in "Back, back to Nature":

"Loudly to the sh.o.r.e cries the surf upon the sea."

But turn to "The Last Chanty," in "The Seven Seas," fill your ears with it and you'll write just such a line yourself.

G.o.d be decent to you, old man.

AMBROSE BIERCE.