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.
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.
Sincerely your friend, Ambrose Bierce.
18 Iowa Circle,Washington, D. C.,January 1,1901.
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 rôle 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, 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.
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.
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 pâte.
My love to Grizzly if you ever see him. Yours ever, A. B.
Washington, D. C.,January 23,1901.
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