end of letter
Washington, D. C.,June 11,1906.
Dear George,
Your poem, "A Dream of Fear" was so good before that it needed no improvement, though I'm glad to observe that you have "the passion for perfection." Sure—you shall have your word "colossal" applied to a thing of two dimensions, an you will.
I have no objection to the publication of that sonnet onme. It may give my enemies a transient feeling that is disagreeable, and if I can do that without taking any trouble in the matter myself it is worth doing. I think they must have renewed their activity, to have provoked you so—got up a new and fascinating lie, probably. Thank you for putting your good right leg into action themward.
What a "settlement" you have collected about you at Carmel! All manner of cranks and curios, to whom I feel myself drawn by affinity. Still I suppose I shall not go. I should have to see the new San Francisco—when it has foolishly been built—and I'd rather not. One does not care to look upon either the mutilated face of one's mashed friend or an upstart imposter bearing his name. No,mySan Francisco is gone and I'll have no other.
* * *
You are wrong about Gorky—he has none of the "artist" in him. He is not only a peasant, but an anarchist and an advocate of assassination—by others; like most of his tribe, he doesn't care to take the risk himself. His "career" in this country has been that of a yellow dog. Hearst's newspapers and * * * are the only friends that remain to him of all those that acclaimed him when he landed. And all the sturdy lying of the former cannot rehabilitate him. It isn't merely the woman matter. You'd understand if you were on this side of the country. I was myself a dupe in the matter. He had expressed high admiration of my books (in an interview in Russia) and when his Government released him from prison I cabled him congratulations. O, my!
Yes, I've observed the obviously lying estimates of the San Franciscan dead; also that there was no earthquake—just a fire; also the determination to "beat" the insurance companies. Insurance is a hog game, and if they (the companies)can be beaten out of their dishonest gains by superior dishonesty I have no objection; but in my judgment they are neither legally nor morally liable for the half that is claimed of them. Those of them that took no earthquake risks don't owe a cent.
Please don't send * * *'s verses to me if you can decently decline. I should be sorry to find them bad, and my loathing of the Whitmaniacal "form" is as deep as yours. Perhaps I should find them good otherwise, but the probability is so small that I don't want to take the chance.
* * *
I've just finished reading the first proofs of "The Cynic's Word Book," which Doubleday, Page & Co. are to bring out in October. My dealings with them have been most pleasant and one of them whom I met the other day at Atlantic City seems a fine fellow.
I think I told you that S. O. Howes, of Galveston, Texas, is compiling a book of essays and sich from some of my stuff that I sent him. I've left the selection entirely to him and presented him with the profits if there be any. He'll probably not even find a publisher. He has the work about half done. By the way, he is an enthusiastic admirer of you. For that I like him, and for much else.
I mean to stay here all summer if I die for it, as I probably shall. Luck and love to you.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,June 20, 1906.
Dear Mr. Cahill,
I am more sorry than I can say to be unable to send you the copy of the Builder's Review that you kindly sentme. But before receiving your note I had, in my own interest,searched high and low for it, in vain. Somebody stole it from my table. I especially valued it after the catastrophe, but should have been doubly pleased to have it for you.
It was indeed a rough deal you San Franciscans got. I had always expected to go back to the good old town some day, but I have no desire to see the new town, if there is to be one. I fear the fire consumed even the ghosts that used to meet me at every street corner—ghosts of dear dead friends, oh, so many of them!
Please accept my sympathy for your losses. I too am a "sufferer," a whole edition of my latest book, plates and all, having gone up in smoke and many of my friends being now in the "dependent class." It hit us all pretty hard, I guess, wherever we happened to be.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
Washington, D. C,August 11,1906.
Dear George,
* * *
If your neighbor Carmelites are really "normal" and respectable I'm sorry for you. They will surely (remaining cold sober themselves) drive you to drink. Their sort affectsmethat way. God bless the crank and the curio!—what would life in this desert be without its mullahs and its dervishes? A matter of merchants and camel drivers—no one to laugh with and at.
Did you see Gorky's estimate of us in "Appleton's"? Having been a few weeks in the land, whose language he knows not a word of, he knows (by intuition of genius and a wee-bit help from Gaylord Wilshire and his gang) all about us, and tells it in generalities of vituperation as applicable to one country as to another. He's a dandy bomb-thrower,but he handles the stink-pot only indifferently well. He should write (for "The Cosmopolitan") on "The Treason of God."
Sorry you didn't like my remarks in that fool "symposium." If I said enough to make it clear that I don't care a damn for any of the matters touched upon, nor for the fellows whodocare, I satisfied my wish. It was not intended to be an "argument" at all—at least not on my part; I don't argue with babes and sucklings. Hunter is a decentish fellow, for a dreamer, but the Hillquit person is a humorless anarchist. When I complimented him on the beauty of his neck and expressed the hope of putting a nice, new rope about it he nearly strangled on the brandy that I was putting down it at the hotel bar. And it wasn't with merriment. His anarchist sentiments were all cut out.
I'm not familiar with the poetry of William Vaughan Moody. Can you "put me on"?
I'm sending you an odd thing by Eugene Wood, of Niagara Falls, where I met him two or three years ago. I'm sure you will appreciate it. The poor chap died the other day and might appropriately—as he doubtless will—lie in a neglected grave. You may return the book when you have read it enough. I'm confident you never heard of it.
Enclosed is your sonnet, with a few suggestions of no importance. I had not space on it to say that the superfluity of superlatives noted, is accentuated by the words "west" and "quest" immediately following, making a lot of "ests." The verses are pleasing, but if any villain prefer them to "In Extremis" may he bite himself with a Snake!
If you'll send me that shuddery thing on Fear—with the "clangor of ascending chains" line—and one or two others that you'd care to have in a magazine, I'll try them onMaxwell. I suspect he will fall dead in the reading, or possibly dislocate the jaw of him with a yawn, but even so you will not have written in vain.
Have you tried anything on "Munsey"? Bob Davis is the editor, and we talked you over at dinner (where would you could have been). I think he values my judgment a little. * * *
I wish I could be blown upon by your Carmel sea-breeze; the weather here is wicked! I don't even canoe.
My "Cynic" book is due in October. Shall send it to you.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
Washington, D. C.,September 28,1906.
Dear George,
Both your letters at hand.
* * *
Be a "magazine poet" all you can—that is the shortest road to recognition, and all our greater poets have travelled it. You need not compromise with your conscience, however, by writing "magazine poetry." You couldn't.
What's your objection to * * *? I don't observe that it is greatly worse than others of its class. But a fellow who has for nigh upon twenty years written for yellow newspapers can't be expected to say much that's edifying on that subject. So I dare say I'm wrong in my advice about thekindof swine for your pearls. There are probably more than the two kinds of pigs—live ones and dead ones.
Yes, I'm a colonel—in Pennsylvania Avenue. In the neighborhood of my tenement I'm a Mister. At my club I'm a major—which is my real title by an act of Congress. I suppressed it in California, but couldn't here, where I run with the military gang.
You need not blackguard your poem, "A Visitor," thoughI could wish you had not chosen blank verse. That form seems to me suitable (in serious verse) only to lofty, not lowly, themes. Anyhow, I always expect something pretty high when I begin an unknown poem in blank. Moreover, it is not your best "medium." Your splendid poem, "Music," does not wholly commend itself to me for that reason. May I say that it is a little sing-songy—the lines monotonously alike in their caesural pauses and some of their other features?
By the way, I'd like to see what you could do in more unsimple meters than the ones that you handle so well. The wish came to me the other day in reading Lanier's "The Marshes of Glynn" and some of his other work. Lanier did not often equal his master, Swinburne, in getting the most out of the method, but he did well in the poem mentioned. Maybe you could manage the dangerous thing. It would be worth doing and is, therefore, worth trying.
Thank you for the Moody book, which I will return. He pleaseth me greatly and I could already fill pages with analyses of him for the reasons therefore. But for you to say that he hasyou"skinned"—that is magnanimity. An excellent thing in poets, I grant you, and a rare one. There is something about him and his book in the current "Atlantic," by May Sinclair, who, I dare say, has never heard ofyou. Unlike you, she thinks his dramatic work the best of what he does. I've not seen that. To be the best it must be mighty good.
Yes, poor White's poetry is all you say—and worse, but, faith! he "had it in him." What struck me was his candid apotheosis of piracy on the high seas. I'd hate the fellow who hadn't some sneaking sympathy with that—as Goethe confessed to some sympathy with every vice. Nobody'll everhear of White, but (pray observe, ambitious bard!) he isn't caring. How wise are the dead!
* * *
My friend Howes, of Galveston, has, I think, nearly finished compiling his book of essaylets from my stuff. Neale has definitely decided to bring out "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter." He has the plates of my two luckless Putnam books, and is figuring on my "complete works," to be published by subscription. I doubt if he will undertake it right away.
Au reste, I'm in good health and am growing old not altogether disgracefully.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington,October 30,1906.
Dear George,
I'm pained by your comments on my book. I always feel that way when praised—"just plunged in a gulf of dark despair" to think that I took no more trouble to make the commendation truer. I shall try harder with the Howes book.
* * *
I can't supply the missing link between pages 101 and 102 of the "Word Book," having destroyed the copy and proofs. Supply it yourself.
You err: the book is getting me a little glory, but that will be all—it will have no sale, for it has no slang, no "dialect" and no grinning through a horse-collar. By the, way, please send me any "notices" of it that you may chance to see out there.
* * *
I've done a ghost story for the January "Cosmopolitan," which I think pretty well of. That's all I've done for morethan two months.
I return your poem and the Moody book. Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington,December 5,1906.
Dear George,
Your letter of Nov. 28 has just come to my breakfast table. It is the better part of the repast.
* * *
No, my dictionary will not sell. I so assured the publishers.
I lunched with Neale the other day—he comes down here once a month. His magazine (I think he is to call it "The Southerner," or something like that) will not get out this month, as he expected it to. And for an ominous reason: He had relied largely on Southern writers, and finds that they can't write! He assures me that itwillappear this winter and asked me not to withdraw your poem and my remarks on it unless you asked it. So I did not.
* * *
In your character of bookseller carrying a stock of my books you have a new interest. May Heaven promote you to publisher!
Thank you for the Moody books—which I'll return soon. "The Masque of Judgment" has some great work in its final pages—quite as great as anything in Faust. The passages that you marked are good too, but some of them barely miss being entirely satisfying. It would trouble you to find many such passages in the other book, which is, moreover, not distinguished for clarity. I found myself frequently prompted to ask the author: "What the devil are you driving at?"
I'm going to finish this letter at home where there is lesstalk of the relative military strength of Japan and San Francisco and the latter power's newest and most grievous affliction, Teddy Roosevelt.
Ambrose Bierce.
P.S. Guess the letter is finished.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,January 27,1907.
Dear George,
I suppose I owe you letters and letters—but you don't particularly like to write letters yourself, so you'll understand.
* * *
Hanging before me is a water-color of a bit of Carmel Beach, by Chris Jorgensen, for which I blew in fifty dollars the other day. He had a fine exhibition of his Californian work here. I wanted to buy it all, but compromised with my desire by buying what I could. The picture has a sentimental value to me, apart from its artistic.
* * *
I am to see Neale in a few days and shall try to learn definitely when his magazine is to come out—if he knows. If he does not I'll withdraw your poem. Next month he is to republish "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter," with a new preface which somebody will not relish. I'll send you a copy. The Howes book is on its travels among the publishers, and so, doubtless, will long continue.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,February 5,1907.
Dear George,
Our letters "crossed"—a thing that "happens" oftener than not in my correspondence, when neither person has written for a long time. I have drawn some interesting inferences from this fact, but have no time now to statethem. Indeed, I have no time to do anything but send you the stuff on the battle of Shiloh concerning which you inquire.
I should write it a little differently now, but it may entertain you as it is.
* * *
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
* * *
end of letter
Washington,February 21,1907
My dear George,
If you desert Carmel I shall destroy my Jorgensen picture, build a bungalow in the Catskills and cut out California forever. (Those are the footprints of my damned canary, who will neither write himself nor let me write. Just now he is perched on my shoulder, awaiting the command to sing—then he will deafen me with a song without sense. O he's a poet all right.)
I entirely approve your allegiance to Mammon. If I'd had brains enough to make a decision like that I could now, at 65, have the leisure to make a good book or two before I go to the waste-dump. * * * Get yourself a fat bank account—there's no such friend as a bank account, and the greatest book is a check-book; "You may lay to that!" as one of Stevenson's pirates puts it.
* * *
No, sir, your boss will not bring you East next June; or if he does you will not come to Washington. How do I know? I don't know how I know, but concerning all (and they are many) who were to come from California to see me I have never once failed in my forecast of their coming or not coming. Even in the case of * * *, although I wrote to you, and to her, as if I expected her, Isaidto one of my friends:"She will not come." I don't think it's a gift of divination—it just happens, somehow. Yours is not a very good example, for you have not said you were coming, "sure."
So your colony of high-brows is re-establishing itself at the old stand—Piedmont. * * * But Piedmont—it must be in the heart of Oakland. I could no longer shoot rabbits in the gulch back of it and sleep under a tree to shoot more in the morning. Nor could I traverse that long ridge with various girls. I dare say there's a boulevard running the length of it,
"A palace and a prison on each hand."
If I could stop you from reading that volume of old "Argonauts" I'd do so, but I suppose an injunction would not "lie." Yes, I was a slovenly writer in those days, though enough better than my neighbors to have attracted my own attention. My knowledge of English was imperfect "a whole lot." Indeed, my intellectual status (whatever it may be, and God knows it's enough to make me blush) was of slow growth—as was my moral. I mean, I had not literary sincerity.
Yes, I wrote of Swinburne the distasteful words that you quote. But they were not altogether untrue. He used to set my teeth on edge—couldnotstand still a minute, and kept you looking for the string that worked his legs and arms. And he had a weak face that gave you the memory of chinlessness. But I have long renounced the views that I once held about his poetry—held, or thought I held. I don't remember, though, if it was as lately as '78 that I held them.
You write of Miss Dawson. Did she survive the 'quake? And do you know about her? Not a word of her has reachedme. Notwithstanding your imported nightingale (upon which I think you should be made to pay a stiff duty) your Ina Coolbrith poem is so good that I want to keep it if you have another copy. I find no amendable faults in it. * * *
The fellow that told you that I was an editor of "The Cosmopolitan" has an impediment in his veracity. I simply write for it, * * *, and the less of my stuff the editor uses the better I'm pleased.
* * *
O, you ask about the "Ursus-Aborn-Gorgias-Agrestis-Polyglot" stuff. It was written by James F. ("Jimmie") Bowman—long dead. (See a pretty bad sonnet on page 94, "Shapes of Clay.") My only part in the matter was to suggest the papers and discuss them with him over many mugs of beer.
* * *
By the way, Neale says he gets almost enough inquiries for my books (from San Francisco) to justify him in republishing them.
* * *
That's all—and, as George Augustus Sala wrote of a chew of tobacco as the price of a certain lady's favors, "God knows it's enough!"Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,April 23,1907.
Dear George,
I have your letter of the 13th. The enclosed slip from the Pacific Monthly (thank you for it) is amusing. Yes, * * * is an insufferable pedant, but I don't at all mind his pedantry. Any critic is welcome to whack me all he likes if he will append to his remarks (as * * * had the thoughtfulness to do) my definition of "Critic" from the "Word Book."
Please don't bother to write me when the spirit does notmove you thereto. You and I don't need to write to each other for any other reason than that we want to. As to coming East, abstain, O, abstain from promises, lest you resemble all my other friends out there, who promise always and never come. It would be delightful to see you here, but I know how those things arrange themselves without reference to our desires. We do as we must, not as we will.
I think that uncle of yours must be a mighty fine fellow. Be good to him and don't kick at his service, even when you feel the chain. It beats poetry for nothing a year.
Did you get the "Shiloh" article? I sent it to you. I sent it also to Paul Elder & Co. (New York branch) for their book of "Western Classics," and hope it will meet their need. They wanted something, and it seemed to me as good, with a little revision, as any of my stuff that I control. Do you think it would be wise to offer them for republication "In the Midst of Life"? It is now "out of print" and on my hands.
* * *
I'm glad of your commendation of my "Cosmopolitan" stuff. They don't give me much of a "show"—the editor doesn't love me personally as he should, and lets me do only enough to avert from himself the attention of Mr. Hearst and that gentleman's interference with the mutual admiration game as played in the "Cosmopolitan" office. As I'm rather fond of light work I'm not shrieking.
* * *
You don't speak of getting the book that I sent, "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter"—new edition. 'Tisn't as good as the old. * * *
I'm boating again. How I should like to put out my prowon Monterey Bay.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,June 8,1907.
Dear Lora,
Your letter, with the yerba buena and the spray of redwood, came like a breeze from the hills. And the photographs are most pleasing. I note that Sloot's moustache is decently white at last, as becomes a fellow of his years. I dare say his hair is white too, but I can't see under his hat. And I think he never removes it. That backyard of yours is a wonder, but I sadly miss the appropriate ash-heaps, tin cans, old packing-boxes, and so forth. And that palm in front of the house—gracious, how she's grown! Well, it has been more than a day growing, and I've not watched it attentively.
I hope you'll have a good time in Yosemite, but Sloots is an idiot not to go with you—nineteen days is as long as anybody would want to stay there.
I saw a little of Phyllis Partington in New York. She told me much of you and seems to be fond of you. That is very intelligent of her, don't you think?
No, I shall not wait until I'm rich before visiting you. I've no intention of being rich, but do mean to visit you—some day. Probably when Grizzly has visitedme. Love to you all.Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
Army and Navy Club,Washington, D. C.,June 25,1907.
Dear George,
* * *
So * * * showed you his article on me. He showed it to me also, and some of it amused me mightily, though I didn't tell him so. That picture of me as a grouchy and disappointed old man occupying the entire cave of Adullam isparticularly humorous, and so poetic that I would not for the world "cut it out." * * * seems incapable (like a good many others) of estimating success in other terms than those of popularity. He gives a rather better clew to his own character than to mine. The old man is fairly well pleased with the way that he has played the game, and with his share of the stakes, thank'ee.
I note with satisfactionyoursatisfaction with my article on you and your poem. I'll correct the quotation about the "timid sapphires"—don't know how I happened to leave out the best part of it. But I left out the line about "harlot's blood" because I didn't (and don't) think a magazine would "stand for it" if I called the editor's attention to it. You don't know what magazines are if you haven't tested them. However, I'll try it on Chamberlain if you like. And I'll put in "twilight of the year" too.
* * *
It's pleasing to know that you've "cut out" your clerical work if you can live without it. Now for some great poetry! Carmel has a fascination for me too—because of your letters. If I did not fear illness—a return of my old complaint—I'd set out for it at once. I've nothing to do that would prevent—about two day's work a month. But I'd never set foot in San Francisco. Of all the Sodoms and Gomorrahs in our modern world it is the worst. There are not ten righteous (and courageous) men there. It needs another quake, another whiff of fire, and—more than all else—a steady tradewind of grapeshot. When * * * gets done blackguarding New York (as it deserves) and has shaken the dung of San Francisco from his feet I'm going to "sick him onto" that moral penal colony of the world. * * *
I've two "books" seeking existence in New York—theHowes book and some satires. Guess they are cocks that will not fight.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
I was sixty-five yesterday.
end of letter
Washington, D. C.,July 11,1907.
Dear George,
I've just finished reading proofs of my stuff about you and your poem. Chamberlain, as I apprised you, has it slated for September. But for that month also he has slated a longish spook story of mine, besides my regular stuff. Not seeing how he can run it all in one issue, I have asked him to run your poem (with my remarks) and hold the spook yarn till some other time. Ihopehe'll do so, but if he doesn't, don't think it my fault. An editor never does as one wants him to. I inserted in my article another quotation or two, and restored some lines that I had cut out of the quotations to save space.
It's grilling hot here—I envy you your Carmel.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.
Dear George,
I guess several of your good letters are unanswered, as are many others of other correspondents. I've been gadding a good deal lately—to New York principally. When I want a royal good time I go to New York; and I get it.
* * *
As to Miller being "about the same age" as I, why, no. The rascal is long past seventy, although nine or ten years ago he wrote from Alaska that he was "in the middle fifties." I've known him for nearly thirty years and he can't fool me with his youthful airs and tales. May he livelong and repent.
Thank you for taking the trouble to send Conan Doyle's opinion of me. No, it doesn't turn my head; I can show you dozens of "appreciations" from greater and more famous men. I return it to you corrected—as he really wrote it. Here it is:
"Praise from Sir Hugo is praise indeed." In "Through the Magic Door," an exceedingly able article on short stories that have interested him, Conan Doyle pays the following well-deserved tribute to Ambrose Bierce, whose wonderful short stories have so often been praised in these columns: "Talking of weird American stories, have you ever read any of the works of Ambrose Bierce? I have one of his books before me, 'In the Midst of Life.' This man (has) had a flavor quite his own, and (is)[9]was a great artist. It is not cheerful reading, but it leaves its mark upon you, and that is the proof of good work."
Thank you also for the Jacobs story, which I will read. As ahumoristhe is no great thing.
I've not read your Bohemian play to a finish yet, * * *. By the way, I've always wondered why they did not "put on" Comus. Properly done it would be great woodland stuff. Read it with a view to that and see if I'm not right. And then persuade them to "stage it" next year.
I'm being awfully pressed to return to California. No San Francisco for me, but Carmel sounds good. For about how much could I get ground and build a bungalow—for one? That's a pretty indefinite question; but then the will to go is a little hazy at present. It consists, as yet, only of the element of desire. * * *
The "Cosmopolitan," with your poem, has not come tohand but is nearly due—I'm a little impatient—eager to see the particular kind of outrage Chamberlain's artist has wrought upon it. He (C.) asked for your address the other day; so he will doubtless send you a check.
* * *
Now please go to work at "Lilith"; it's bound to be great stuff, for you'll have to imagine it all. I'm sorry that anybody ever invented Lilith; it makes her too much of an historical character.
* * *
"The other half of the Devil's Dictionary" is in the fluid state—not even liquid. And so, doubtless, it will remain.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
[9](has) and (is) crossed out by A. B.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,September 7,1907.
My dear George,
I'm awfully glad that you don't mind Chamberlain's yellow nonsense in coupling Ella's name with yours. But when you read her natural opinion of your work you'll acquit her of complicity in the indignity. I'm sending a few things from Hearst's newspapers—written by the slangers, dialecters and platitudinarians of the staff, and by some of the swine among the readers.
Note the deliberate and repeated lying of Brisbane in quoting me as saying the "Wine" is "the greatest poem ever written in America." Note his dishonesty in confessing that he has commendatory letters, yet not publishing a single one of them. But the end is not yet—my inning is to come, in the magazine. Chamberlain (who professes an enthusiastic admiration of the poem) promises me a free hand in replying to these ignorant asses. If he does not give it to me I quit. I've writ a paragraph or two for the Novembernumber (too late now for the October) by way of warning them what they'll get when December comes. So you see you must patiently endure the befouling till then.
* * *
Did you notice in the last line of the "Wine" that I restored the word "smile" from your earlier draft of the verses? In one of your later (I don't remember if in the last) you had it "sigh." That was wrong; "smile" seems to me infinitely better as a definition of the poet's attitude toward his dreams. So, considering that I had a choice, I chose it. Hope you approve.
I am serious in wishing a place in Carmel as a port of refuge from the storms of age. I don't know that I shall ever live there, but should like to feel that I can if I want to. Next summer I hope to go out there and spy out the land, and if I then "have the price" (without sacrificing any of my favorite stocks) I shall buy. I don't care for the grub question—should like to try the simple life, for I have already two gouty finger points as a result of the other kind of life. (Of course if they all get that way I shan't mind, for I love uniformity.) Probably if I attempted to live in Carmel I should have asthma again, from which I have long been free.
* * *
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
Army and Navy Club,Washington, D. C.,October 9,1907.
My dear Morrow,
Whether you "prosper" or not I'm glad you write instead of teaching. I have done a bit of teaching myself, but as the tuition was gratuitous I could pick my pupils; so it was a labor of love. I'm pretty well satisfied with the results.
No, I'm not "toiling" much now. I've written all I careto, and having a pretty easy berth (writing for The Cosmopolitan only, and having no connection with Mr. Hearst's newspapers) am content.
I have observed your story in Success, but as I never never (sic) read serials shall await its publication in covers before making a meal of it.
You seem to be living at the old place in Vallejo Street, so I judge that it was spared by the fire. I had some pretty good times in that house, not only with you and Mrs. Morrow (to whom my love, please) but with the dear Hogan girls. Poor Flodie! she is nearly a sole survivor now. I wonder if she ever thinks of us.
I hear from California frequently through a little group of interesting folk who foregather at Carmel—whither I shall perhaps stray some day and there leave my bones. Meantime, I am fairly happy here.
I wish you would add yourself to the Carmel crowd. You would be a congenial member of the gang and would find them worth while. You must know George Sterling: he is the high panjandrum and a gorgeously good fellow. Go get thee a bungalow at Carmel, which is indubitably the charmingest place in the State. As to San Francisco, with its labor-union government, its thieves and other impossibilities, I could not be drawn into it by a team of behemoths. But California—ah, I dare not permit myself to remember it. Yet this Eastern country is not without charm. And my health is good here, as it never was there. Nothing ails me but age, which brings its own cure.
God keep thee!—go and live at Carmel.
Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,October 29,1907.
James D. Blake, Esq.,Dear Sir:
It is a matter of no great importance to me, but the republication of the foolish books that you mention would not be agreeable to me. They have no kind of merit or interest. One of them, "The Fiend's Delight," was published against my protest; the utmost concession that the compiler and publisher (the late John Camden Hatten, London) would make was to let me edit his collection of my stuff and write a preface. You would pretty surely lose money on any of them.
If you care to republish anything of mine you would, I think, do better with "Black Beetles in Amber," or "Shapes of Clay." The former sold well, and the latter would, I think, have done equally well if the earthquake-and-fire had not destroyed it, including the plates. Nearly all of both books were sold in San Francisco, and the sold, as well as the unsold, copies—I mean the unsold copies of the latter—perished in the fire. There is much inquiry for them (mainly from those who lost them) and I am told that they bring fancy prices. You probably know about that better than I.
I should be glad to entertain proposals from you for their republication—in San Francisco—and should not be exacting as to royalties, and so forth.
But the other books are "youthful indiscretions" and are "better dead." Sincerely yours,Ambrose Bierce.
end of letter
The Army andNavy Club,Washington, D. C.,December 28,1907.
Dear George,
* * *
Please send me a copy of the new edition of "The Testimony." I borrowed one of the first edition to give away, and want to replace it. Did you add the "Wine" to it? I'dnot leave off the indefinite article from the title of that; it seems to dignify the tipple by hinting that it was no ordinary tope. It may have been witch-fermented.
I don't "dislike" the line: "So terribly that brilliance shall enhance"; it seems merely less admirable than the others. Why didn't I tell you so? I could not tell youallI thought of the poem—for another example, how I loved the lines:
"Where Dawn upon a pansy's breast hath laidA single tear, andwhence the wind hath flownAnd left a silence."
* * *
I'm returning you, under another cover (as the ceremonial slangers say) some letters that have come to me and that I have answered. I have a lot more, most of them abusive, I guess, that I'll dig out later. But the most pleasing ones I can't send, for I sent them to Brisbane on his promise to publish them, which the liar did not, nor has he had the decency to return them. I'm hardly sorry, for it gave me good reason to call him a peasant and a beast of the field. I'm always grateful for the chance to prod somebody.
* * *
I detest the "limited edition" and "autograph copies" plan of publication, but for the sake of Howes, who has done a tremendous lot of good work on my book, have assented to Blake's proposal in all things and hope to be able to laugh at this brilliant example of the "irony of fate." I've refused to profit in any way by the book. I want Howes to "break even" for his labor.
By the way, Pollard and I had a good time in Galveston, and on the way I took in some of my old battlefields. At Galveston they nearly killed me with hospitality—sonearly that Pollard fled. I returned via Key West and Florida.
You'll probably see Howes next Summer—I've persuaded him to go West and renounce the bookworm habit for some other folly. Be good to him; he is a capital fellow in his odd, amusing way.
I didn't know there was an American edition of "The Fiends' Delight." Who published it and when?
Congratulations on acceptance of "Tasso and Leonora." But I wouldn't do much in blank verse if I were you. It betrays you (somehow) into mere straightaway expression, and seems to repress in you the glorious abundance of imagery and metaphor that enriches your rhyme-work. This is not a criticism, particularly, of "Tasso," which is good enough for anybody, but—well, it's justso.
I'm not doing much. My stuff in the Cosmo. comes last, and when advertisements crowd some of it is left off. Most of it gets in later (for of course I don't replace it with more work) but it is sadly antiquated. My checks, though, are always up to date. Sincerely[10]yours,Ambrose Bierce.
[10]I can almost say "sinecurely."