The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 14

[Aurora, West Virginia, September 12, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

I have yours of the 5th. Before now you have mine of _some_ date.

I'm glad you like London; I've heard he is a fine fellow and have read one of his books--"The Son of the Wolf," I think is the t.i.tle--and it seemed clever work mostly. The general impression that remains with me is that it is always winter and always night in Alaska.

* * * will probably be glad to sell his sc.r.a.p-book later, to get bread. He can't make a living out of the labor unions alone. I wish he were not a demgagoue and would not, as poor Doyle put it, go a-whoring after their Muse. When he returns to truth and poetry I'll receive him back into favor and he may kick me if he wants to.

No, I can't tell you how to get "Prattle"; if I could I'd not be without it myself. You ask me when I began it in the "Examiner." Soon after Hearst got the paper--I don't know the date--they can tell you at the office and will show you the bound volumes.

I have the bound volumes of the "Argonaut" and "Wasp" during the years when I was connected with them, but my work in the "Examiner" (and previously in the "News Letter" and the London "Fun" and "Figaro" and other papers) I kept only in a haphazard and imperfect way.

I don't recollect giving Scheff any "epigram" on woman or anything else. So I can't send it to you. I amuse myself occasionally with that sort of thing in the "Journal" ("American") and suppose Hearst's other papers copy them, but the "environment" is uncongenial and uninspiring.

Do I think extracts from "Prattle" would sell? I don't think anything of mine will sell. I could make a dozen books of the stuff that I have "saved up"--have a few ready for publication now--but all is vanity so far as profitable publication is concerned. Publishers want nothing from me but novels--and I'll die first.

Who is * * *--and why? It is good of London to defend me against him.

I fancy all you fellows have a-plenty of defending me to do, though truly it is hardly worth while. All my life I have been hated and slandered by all manner of persons except good and intelligent ones; and I don't greatly mind. I knew in the beginning what I had to expect, and I know now that, like spanking, it hurts (sometimes) but does not harm. And the same malevolence that has surrounded my life will surround my memory if I am remembered. Just run over in your mind the names of men who have told the truth about their unworthy fellows and about human nature "as it was given them to see it." They are the bogie-men of history. None of them has escaped vilification. Can poor little I hope for anything better? When you strike you are struck. The world is a skunk, but it has rights; among them that of retaliation. Yes, you deceive yourself if you think the little fellows of letters "like" you, or rather if you think they will like you when they know how big you are. They will lie awake nights to invent new lies about you and new means of spreading them without detection. But you have your revenge: in a few years they'll all be dead--just the same as if you had killed them. Better yet, you'll be dead yourself.

So--you have my entire philosophy in two words: "Nothing matters."

Reverting to Scheff. What he has to fear (if he cares) is not incompetent criticism, but public indifference. That does not bite, but poets are an ambitious folk and like the limelight and the center of the stage. Maybe Scheff is different, as I know you are. Try to make him so if he isn't. * * * Wise poets write for one another. If the public happens to take notice, well and good. Sometimes it does--and then the wise poet would a blacksmith be. But this screed is becoming an essay.

Please give my love to all good Sterlings--those by birth and those by marriage. * * *

My friends have returned to Was.h.i.+ngton, and I'm having great times climbing peaks (they are k.n.o.bs) and exploring gulches and canons--for which these people have no names--poor things. My dreamland is still unrevisited. They found a Confederate soldier over there the other day, with his rifle alongside. I'm going over to beg his pardon.

Ever yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

[Postmarked October 12, 1903.]]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I have Jack London's books--the one from you and the one from him. I thank you and shall find the time to read them. I've been back but a few days and find a brace of dozen of books "int.i.tualed" "Shapes of Clay." That the splendid work done by Scheff and Wood and your other a.s.sociates in your labor of love is most gratifying to me should "go without saying." Surely _I_ am most fortunate in having so good friends to care for my interests. Still, there will be an aching void in the heart of me until _your_ book is in evidence. Honest, I feel more satisfaction in the work of you and Scheff than in my own. It is through you two that I expect my best fame. And how generously you accord it!--unlike certain others of my "pupils," whom I have a.s.sisted far more than I did you.

My trip through the mountains has done my health good--and my heart too. It was a "sentimental journey" in a different sense from Sterne's. Do you know, George, the charm of a new emotion? Of course you do, but at my age I had thought it impossible. Well, I had it repeatedly. Bedad, I think of going again into my old "theatre of war," and setting up a cabin there and living the few days that remain to me in meditation and sentimentalizing. But I should like you to be near enough to come up some Sat.u.r.day night with some'at to drink.

Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[N. Y. Journal Office, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., October 21, 1903.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I'm indebted to you for two letters--awfully good ones. In the last you tell me that your health is better, and I can see for myself that your spirits are. This you attribute to exercise, correctly, no doubt.

You need a lot of the open air--we all do. I can give myself hypochondria in forty-eight hours by staying in-doors. The sedentary life and abstracted contemplation of one's own navel are good for Oriental G.o.ds only. We spirits of a purer fire need sunlight and the hills. My own recent wanderings afoot and horseback in the mountains did me more good than a sermon. And you have "the hills back of Oakland"! G.o.d, what would I not give to help you range them, the dear old things! Why, I know every square foot of them from Walnut Creek to Niles Canon. Of course they swarm with ghosts, as do all places out there, even the streets of San Francisco; but I and my ghosts always get on well together. With the female ones my relations are sometimes a bit better than they were with the dear creatures when they lived.

I guess I did not acknowledge the splendidly bound "Shapes" that you kindly sent, nor the Jack London books. Much thanks.

I'm pleased to know that Wood expects to sell the whole edition of my book, but am myself not confident of that.

So we are to have your book soon. Good, but I don't like your indifference to its outward and visible aspect. Some of my own books have offended, and continue to offend, in that way. At best a book is not too beautiful; at worst it is hideous. Be advised a bit by Scheff in this matter; his taste seems to me admirable and I'm well pleased by his work on the "Shapes"; even his covers, which I'm sorry to learn do not please Wood, appear to me excellent. I approved the design before he executed it--in fact chose it from several that he submitted. Its only fault seems to me too much gold leaf, but that is a fault "on the right side." In that and all the rest of the work (except my own) experts here are delighted. I gave him an absolutely free hand and am glad I did. I don't like the ragged leaves, but he does not either, on second thought. The public--the reading public--I fear does, just now.

I'll get at your new verses in a few days. It will be, as always it is, a pleasure to go over them.

About "Prattle." I should think you might get help in that matter from Oscar T. Schuck, 2916 Laguna St. He used to suffer from "Prattle" a good deal, but is very friendly, and the obtaining it would be in the line of his present business.

How did you happen to hit on Markham's greatest two lines--but I need not ask that--from "The Wharf of Dreams"?

Well, I wish I could think that those lines of mine in "Geotheos" were worthy to be mentioned with Keats' "magic cas.e.m.e.nts" and Coleridge's "woman wailing for her demon lover." But I don't think any lines of anybody are. I laugh at myself to remember that Geotheos, never before in print I believe, was written for E. L. G. Steele to read before a "young ladies' seminary" somewhere in the cow counties! Like a man of sense he didn't read it. I don't share your regret that I have not devoted myself to serious poetry. I don't think of myself as a poet, but as a satirist; so I'm ent.i.tled to credit for what little gold there may be in the mud I throw. But if I professed gold-throwing, the mud which I should surely mix with the missiles would count against me. Besides, I've a preference for being the first man in a village, rather than the second man in Rome. Poetry is a ladder on which there is now no room at the top--unless you and Scheff throw down some of the chaps occupying the upper rung. It looks as if you might, but I could not. When old Homer, Shakspeare and that crowd--building better than Ozymandias--say: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" I, considering myself specially addressed, despair. The challenge of the wits does not alarm me.

As to your problems in grammar.

If you say: "There is no hope _or_ fear" you say that _one_ of them does not exist. In saying: "There is no hope _nor_ fear" you say that _both_ do not exist--which is what you mean.

"Not to weary you, I shall say that I fetched the book from his cabin." Whether that is preferable to "I will say" depends on just what is meant; both are grammatical. The "shall" merely indicates an intention to say; the "will" implies a certain shade of concession in saying it.

It is no trouble to answer such questions, _nor_ to do anything else to please you. I only hope I make it clear.

I don't know if all my "Journal" work gets into the "Examiner," for I don't see all the issues of either paper. I'm not writing much anyhow.

They don't seem to want much from me, and their weekly check is about all that I want from them.

No, I don't know any better poem of Kipling than "The Last Chanty."

Did you see what stuff of his Prof. Harry Thurston Peck, the Hearst outfit's special literary censor, chose for a particular commendation the other day? Yet Peck is a scholar, a professor of Latin and a writer of merited distinction. Excepting the ability to write poetry, the ability to understand it is, I think, the rarest of intellectual gifts. Let us thank "whatever G.o.ds may be" that we have it, if we haven't so very much else.

I've a lovely birch stick a-seasoning for you--cut it up in the Alleghanies.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., October 29, 1903.]

DEAR GEORGE,

I return the verses--with apology for tardiness. I've been "full up"