The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, With a Memoir by George Sterling

If you were to visit the Mountain now I should be able to show you a redwood forest (newly discovered) and a picturesque gulch to match.

The wild flowers are beginning to put up their heads to look for you, and my collection of Indian antiquities is yearning to have you see it.

Please convey my thanks to Richard for the picture – the girlscape – and my best regards to your father and all the others.

Sincerely your friend, Ambrose Bierce.
Angwin,February 21,1893.

My dear Blanche,

I'm very sorry indeed that I cannot be in Oakland Thursday evening to see you "in your glory," arrayed, doubtless, like a lily of the field. However glorious you may be in public, though, I fancy I should like you better as you used to be out at camp.

Well, I mean to see you on Saturday afternoon if you are at home, and think I shall ask you to be my guide to Grizzlyville; for surely I shall never be able to find the wonderful new house alone. So if your mamma will let you go out there with me I promise to return you to her instead of running away with you. And, possibly, weather permitting, we can arrange for a Sunday in the redwoods or on the hills. Or don't your folks go out any more o' Sundays?

Please give my thanks to your mother for the kind invitation to put up at your house; but I fear that would be impossible. I shall have to be where people can call on me – and such a disreputable crowd as my friends are would ruin the Partingtonian reputation for respectability. In your new neighborhood you will all be very proper – which you could hardly be with a procession of pirates and vagrants pulling at your door-bell.

So – if God is good – I shall call on you Saturday afternoon. In the meantime and always be thou happy – thou and thine. Your unworthy uncle, Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin,March 18,1893.

My dear Blanche,

It is good to have your letters again. If you will not let me teach you my trade of writing stories it is right that you practice your own of writing letters. You are mistress of that. Byron's letters to Moore are dull in comparison with yours to me. Some allowance, doubtless, must be made for my greater need of your letters than of Byron's. For, truth to tell, I've been a trifle dispirited and noncontent. In that mood I peremptorily resigned from the Examiner, for one thing – and permitted myself to be coaxed back by Hearst, for another. My other follies I shall not tell you. * * *

We had six inches of snow up here and it has rained steadily ever since – more than a week. And the fog is of superior opacity – quite peerless that way. It is still raining and fogging. Do you wonder that your unworthy uncle has come perilously and alarmingly near to loneliness? Yet I have the companionship, at meals, of one of your excellent sex, from San Francisco. * * *

Truly, I should like to attend one of your at-homes, but I fear it must be a long time before I venture down there again. But when this brumous visitation is past I can look down, and that assists the imagination to picture you all in your happy (I hope) home. But if that woolly wolf, Joaquin Miller, doesn't keep outside the fold I shall come down and club him soundly. I quite agree with your mother that his flattery will spoil you. You said I would spoil Phyllis, and now, you bad girl, you wish to be spoiled yourself. Well, you can't eat four Millerine oranges. – My love to all your family. Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin,March 26,1893.

My dear Partington,

I am very glad indeed to get the good account of Leigh that you give me. I've feared that he might be rather a bore to you, but you make me easy on that score. Also I am pleased that you think he has a sufficient "gift" to do something in the only direction in which he seems to care to go.

He is anxious to take the place at the Examiner, and his uncle thinks that would be best – if they will give it him. I'm a little reluctant for many reasons, but there are considerations – some of them going to the matter of character and disposition – which point to that as the best arrangement. The boy needs discipline, control, and work. He needs to learn by experience that life is not all beer and skittles. Of course you can't quite know him as I do. As to his earning anything on the Examiner or elsewhere, that cuts no figure – he'll spend everything he can get his fingers on anyhow; but I feel that he ought to have the advantage of a struggle for existence where the grass is short and the soil stony.

Well, I shall let him live down there somehow, and see what can be done with him. There's a lot of good in him, and a lot of the other thing, naturally.

I hope Hume has, or will, put you in authority in the Post and give you a decent salary. He seems quite enthusiastic about the Post and – about you.

With sincere regards to Mrs. Partington and all the Partingtonettes, I am very truly yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin,April 10,1893.

My dear Partington,

If you are undertaking to teach my kid (which, unless it is entirely agreeable to you, you must not do) I hope you will regard him as a pupil whose tuition is to be paid for like any other pupil. And you should, I think, name the price. Will you kindly do so?

Another thing. Leigh tells me you paid him for something he did for the Wave. That is not right. While you let him work with you, and under you, his work belongs to you – is a part of yours. I mean the work that he does in your shop for the Wave.

I don't wish to feel that you are bothering with him for nothing – will you not tell me your notion of what I should pay you?

I fancy you'll be on the Examiner pretty soon – if you wish.

With best regards to your family I am sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin,April 10,1893.

My dear Blanche,

As I was writing to your father I was, of course, strongly impressed with a sense of you; for you are an intrusive kind of creature, coming into one's consciousness in the most lawless way – Phyllis-like. (Phyllis is my "type and example" of lawlessness, albeit I'm devoted to her – a Phyllistine, as it were.)

Leigh sends me a notice (before the event) of your concert. I hope it was successful. Was it?

It rains or snows here all the time, and the mountain struggles in vain to put on its bravery of leaf and flower. When this kind of thing stops I'm going to put in an application for you to come up and get your bad impressions of the place effaced. It is insupportable that my earthly paradise exist in your memory as a "bad eminence," like Satan's primacy.

I'm sending you the New England Magazine– perhaps I have sent it already – and a Harper's Weekly with a story by Mrs. * * *, who is a sort of pupil of mine. She used to do bad work – does now sometimes; but she will do great work by-and-by.

I wish you had not got that notion that you cannot learn to write. You see I'd like you to do some art work that I can understand and enjoy. I wonder why it is that no note or combination of notes can be struck out of a piano that will touch me – give me an emotion of any kind. It is not wholly due to my ignorance and bad ear, for other instruments – the violin, organ, zither, guitar, etc., sometimes affect me profoundly. Come, read me the riddle if you know. What have I done that I should be inaccessible to your music? I know it is good; I can hear that it is, but not feel that it is. Therefore to me it is not.

Now that, you will confess, is a woeful state – "most tolerable and not to be endured." Will you not cultivate some art within the scope of my capacity? Do you think you could learn to walk on a wire (if it lay on the ground)? Can you not ride three horses at once if they are suitably dead? Or swallow swords? Really, you should have some way to entertain your uncle.

True, you can talk, but you never get the chance; I always "have the floor." Clearly you must learn to write, and I mean to get Miller to teach you how to be a poet.

I hope you will write occasionally to me, – letter-writing is an art that you do excel in – as I in "appreciation" of your excellence in it.

Do you see my boy? I hope he is good, and diligent in his work.

* * *

You must write to me or I shall withdraw my avuncular relation to you.

With good will to all your people – particularly Phyllis – I am sincerely your friend, Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin, Calif.,April 16,1893.

My dear Partington,

I think you wrong. On your own principle, laid down in your letter, that "every man has a right to the full value of his labor" – pardon me, good Englishman, I meant "laboUr" – you have a right to your wage for the laboṷr of teaching Leigh. And what work would he get to do but for you?

I can't hold you and inject shekels into your pocket, but if the voice of remonstrance has authority to enter at your ear without a ticket I pray you to show it hospitality.

Leigh doubtless likes to see his work in print, but I hope you will not let him put anything out until it is as good as he can make it – nor then if it is not good enough. And that whether he signs it or not. I have talked to him about the relation of conscience to lab-work, but I don't know if my talk all came out at the other ear.

O – that bad joke o' mine. Where do you and Richard expect to go when death do you part? You were neither of you present that night on the dam, nor did I know either of you. Blanche, thank God, retains the old-time reverence for truth: it was to her that I said it. Richard evidently dreamed it, and you – you've been believing that confounded Wave! Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin,April 18,1893.

My dear Blanche,

I take a few moments from work to write you in order (mainly) to say that your letter of March 31st did not go astray, as you seem to fear – though why you should care if it did I can't conjecture. The loss to me – that is probably what would touch your compassionate heart.

So you will try to write. That is a good girl. I'm almost sure you can – not, of course, all at once, but by-and-by. And if not, what matter? You are not of the sort, I am sure, who would go on despite everything, determined to succeed by dint of determining to succeed.

* * *

We are blessed with the most amiable of all conceivable weathers up here, and the wild flowers are putting up their heads everywhere to look for you. Lying in their graves last autumn, they overheard (underheard) your promise to come in the spring, and it has stimulated and cheered them to a vigorous growth.

I'm sending you some more papers. Don't think yourself obliged to read all the stuff I send you —I don't read it.

Condole with me – I have just lost another publisher – by failure. Schulte, of Chicago, publisher of "The Monk" etc., has "gone under," I hear. Danziger and I have not had a cent from him. I put out three books in a year, and lo! each one brings down a publisher's gray hair in sorrow to the grave! for Langton, of "Black Beetles," came to grief – that is how Danziger got involved. "O that mine enemy would publish one of my books!"

I am glad to hear of your success at your concert. If I could have reached you you should have had the biggest basket of pretty vegetables that was ever handed over the footlights. I'm sure you merited it all – what do you not merit?

Your father gives me good accounts of my boy. He must be doing well, I think, by the way he neglects all my commissions.

Enclosed you will find my contribution to the Partington art gallery, with an autograph letter from the artist. You can hang them in any light you please and show them to Richard. He will doubtless be pleased to note how the latent genius of his boss has burst into bloom.

I have been wading in the creek this afternoon for pure love of it; the gravel looked so clean under the water. I was for the moment at least ten years younger than your father. To whom, and to all the rest of your people, my sincere regards, Your uncle, Ambrose Bierce.

Angwin, Cala.,April 26,1893.

My dear Blanche,

* * *

I accept your sympathy for my misfortunes in publishing. It serves me right (I don't mean the sympathy does) for publishing. I should have known that if a publisher cannot beat an author otherwise, or is too honest to do so, he will do it by failing. Once in London a publisher gave me a check dated two days ahead, and then (the only thing he could do to make the check worthless) – ate a pork pie and died. That was the late John Camden Hotten, to whose business and virtues my present London publishers, Chatto and Windus, have succeeded. They have not failed, and they refuse pork pie, but they deliberately altered the title of my book.

All this for your encouragement in "learning to write." Writing books is a noble profession; it has not a shade of selfishness in it – nothing worse than conceit.

O yes, you shall have your big basket of flowers if ever I catch you playing in public. I wish I could give you the carnations, lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and first-of-the-season sweet peas now on my table. They came from down near you – which fact they are trying triumphantly and as hard as they can to relate in fragrance.

I trust your mother is well of her cold – that you are all well and happy, and that Phyllis will not forget me. And may the good Lord bless you regularly every hour of every day for your merit, and every minute of every hour as a special and particular favor to Your uncle, Ambrose Bierce.

Berkeley,October 2,1893.

My dear Blanche,

I accept with pleasure your evidence that the Piano is not as black as I have painted, albeit the logical inference is that I'm pretty black myself. Indubitably I'm "in outer darkness," and can only say to you: "Lead, kindly light." Thank you for the funny article on the luxury question – from the funny source. But you really must not expect me to answer it, nor show you wherein it is "wrong." I cannot discern the expediency of you having any "views" at all in those matters – even correct ones. If I could have my way you should think of more profitable things than the (conceded) "wrongness" of a world which is the habitat of a wrongheaded and wronghearted race of irreclaimable savages. * * * When woman "broadens her sympathies" they become annular. Don't.

Cosgrave came over yesterday for a "stroll," but as he had a dinner engagement to keep before going home, he was in gorgeous gear. So I kindly hoisted him atop of Grizzly Peak and sent him back across the Bay in a condition impossible to describe, save by the aid of a wet dishclout for illustration.

Please ask your father when and where he wants me to sit for the portrait. If that picture is not sold, and ever comes into my possession, I shall propose to swap it for yours. I have always wanted to lay thievish hands on that, and would even like to come by it honestly. But what under the sun would I do with either that or mine? Fancy me packing large paintings about to country hotels and places of last resort!

Leigh is living with me now. Poor chap, the death of his aunt has made him an orphan. I feel a profound compassion for any one whom an untoward fate compels to live with me. However, such a one is sure to be a good deal alone, which is a mitigation.

With good wishes for all your people, I am sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Berkeley,December 27,1893.

My dear Blanche,

I'm sending you (by way of pretext for writing you) a magazine that I asked Richard to take to you last evening, but which he forgot. There's an illustrated article on gargoyles and the like, which will interest you. Some of the creatures are delicious – more so than I had the sense to perceive when I saw them alive on Notre Dame.

I want to thank you too for the beautiful muffler before I take to my willow chair, happy in the prospect of death. For at this hour, 10:35 p. m., I "have on" a very promising case of asthma. If I come out of it decently alive in a week or so I shall go over to your house and see the finished portrait if it is "still there," like the flag in our national anthem.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Oakland,July 31,1894.

My dear Blanche,

If you are not utterly devoured by mosquitoes perhaps you'll go to the postoffice and get this. In that hope I write, not without a strong sense of the existence of the clerks in the Dead Letter Office at Washington.

I hope you are (despite the mosquitoes) having "heaps" of rest and happiness. As to me, I have only just recovered sufficiently to be out, and "improved the occasion" by going to San Francisco yesterday and returning on the 11:15 boat. I saw Richard, and he seemed quite solemn at the thought of the dispersal of his family to the four winds.

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 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,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.