The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 10

Yes, your poem recalled my "Invocation" as I read it; but it is better, and not too much like--hardly like at all except in the "political" part. Both, in that, are characterized, I think, by decent restraint. How * * * would, at those places, have ranted and chewed soap!--a superior quality of soap, I confess.

A. B.

[1825 Nineteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C., June 30, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I am glad my few words of commendation were not unpleasing to you. I meant them all and more. You ought to have praise, seeing that it is all you got. The "Post," like most other newspapers, "don't pay for poetry." What a d.a.m.ning confession! It means that the public is as insensible to poetry as a pig to--well, to poetry. To any sane mind such a poem as yours is worth more than all the other contents of a newspaper for a year.

I've not found time to consider your "bit of blank" yet--at least not as carefully as it probably merits.

My relations with the present editor of the Examiner are not unfriendly, I hope, but they are too slight to justify me in suggesting anything to him, or even drawing his attention to anything.

I hoped you would be sufficiently "enterprising" to get your poem into the paper if you cared to have it there. I wrote Dr. Doyle about you.

He is a dear fellow and you should know each other. As to Scheffauer, he is another. If you want him to see your poem why not send it to him? But the last I heard he was very ill. I'm rather anxious to hear more about him.

It was natural to enclose the stamps, but I won't have it so--so there! as the women say.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[1825 Nineteenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C., July 15, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

Here is the bit of blank. When are we to see the book? Needless question--when you can spare the money to pay for publication, I suppose, if by that time you are ambitious to achieve public inattention. That's my notion of encouragement--I like to cheer up the young author as he sets his face toward "the peaks of song."

Say, that photograph of the pretty sister--the one with a downward slope of the eyes--is all faded out. That is a real misfortune: it reduces the sum of human happiness hereabout. Can't you have one done in fast colors and let me have it? The other is all right, but that is not the one that I like the better for my wall. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., December 16, 1901.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I enclose the poems with a few suggestions. They require little criticism of the sort that would be "helpful." As to their merit I think them good, but not great. I suppose you do not expect to write great things every time. Yet in the body of your letter (of Oct. 22) you do write greatly--and say that the work is "egoistic" and "unprintable." If it[4] were addressed to another person than myself I should say that it is "printable" exceedingly. Call it what you will, but let me tell you it will probably be long before you write anything better than some--many--of these stanzas.

[4] "Dedication" poem to Ambrose Bierce.

You ask if you have correctly answered your own questions. Yes; in four lines of your running comment:

"I suppose that I'd do the greater good in the long run by making my work as good poetry as possible."

Of course I deplore your tendency to dalliance with the demagogic muse. I hope you will not set your feet in the dirty paths--leading nowhither--of social and political "reform".... I hope you will not follow * * * in making a sale of your poet's birthright for a mess of "popularity." If you do I shall have to part company with you, as I have done with him and at least _one_ of his betters, for I draw the line at demagogues and anarchists, however gifted and however beloved.

Let the "poor" alone--they are oppressed by n.o.body but G.o.d. n.o.body hates them, n.o.body despises. "The rich" love them a deal better than they love one another. But I'll not go into these matters; your own good sense must be your salvation if you are saved. I recognise the temptations of environment: you are of San Francisco, the paradise of ignorance, anarchy and general yellowness. Still, a poet is not altogether the creature of his place and time--at least not of his to-day and his parish.

By the way, you say that * * * is your only a.s.sociate that knows anything of literature. She is a dear girl, but look out for her; she will make you an anarchist if she can, and persuade you to kill a President or two every fine morning. I warrant you she can p.r.o.nounce the name of McKinley's a.s.sa.s.sin to the ultimate zed, and has a little graven image of him next her heart.

Yes, you can republish the Memorial Day poem without the _Post's_ consent--could do so in "book form" even if the _Post_ had copyrighted it, which it did not do. I think the courts have held that in purchasing work for publication in his newspaper or magazine the editor acquires no right in it, _except for that purpose_. Even if he copyright it that is only to protect him from other newspapers or magazines; the right to publish in a book remains with the author.

Better ask a lawyer though--preferably without letting him know whether you are an editor or an author.

I ought to have answered (as well as able) these questions before, but I have been ill and worried, and have written few letters, and even done little work, and that only of the pot-boiling sort.

My daughter has recovered and returned to Los Angeles.

Please thank Miss * * * for the beautiful photographs--I mean for being so beautiful as to "take" them, for doubtless I owe their possession to you.

I wrote Doyle about you and he cordially praised your work as incomparably superior to his own and asked that you visit him. He's a lovable fellow and you'd not regret going to Santa Cruz and boozing with him.

Thank you for the picture of Grizzly and the cub of him.

Sincerely yours, with best regards to the pretty ever-so-much-better half of you,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

P.S. * * * * * * * * * * *

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., March 15, 1902.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

Where are you going to stop?--I mean at what stage of development? I presume you have not a "whole lot" of poems really writ, and have not been feeding them to me, the least good first, and not in the order of their production. So it must be that you are advancing at a stupendous rate. This last[5] beats any and all that went before--or I am bewitched and befuddled. I dare not trust myself to say what I think of it. In manner it is great, but the greatness of the theme!--that is beyond anything.

[5] "The Testimony of the Suns."

It is a new field, the broadest yet discovered. To paraphrase Coleridge,

You are the first that ever burst Into that silent [unknown] sea--

a silent sea _because_ no one else has burst into it in full song.

True, there have been short incursions across the "border," but only by way of episode. The tremendous phenomena of Astronomy have never had adequate poetic treatment, their meaning adequate expression. You must make it your own domain. You shall be the poet of the skies, the prophet of the suns. Don't fiddle-faddle with such infinitesimal and tiresome trivialities as (for example) the immemorial squabbles of "rich" and "poor" on this "mote in the sun-beam." (Both "cla.s.ses,"

when you come to that, are about equally disgusting and unworthy--there's not a pin's moral difference between them.) Let them cheat and pick pockets and cut throats to the satisfaction of their base instincts, but do thou regard them not. Moreover, by that great law of change which you so clearly discern, there can be no permanent composition of their nasty strife. "Settle" it how they will--another beat of the pendulum and all is as before; and ere another, Man will again be savage, sitting on his naked haunches and gnawing raw bones.

Yes, circ.u.mstances make the "rich" what they are. And circ.u.mstances make the poor what _they_ are. I have known both, long and well. The rich--_while_ rich--are a trifle better. There's nothing like poverty to nurture badness. But in this country there are no such "cla.s.ses" as "rich" and "poor": as a rule, the wealthy man of to-day was a poor devil yesterday; the poor devils of to-day have an equal chance to be rich to-morrow--or would have if they had equal brains and providence.

The system that gives them the chance is not an oppressive one. Under a really oppressive system a salesman in a village grocery could not have risen to a salary of one million dollars a year because he was worth it to his employers, as Schwab has done. True, some men get rich by dishonesty, but the poor commonly cheat as hard as they can and remain poor--thereby escaping observation and censure. The moral difference between cheating to the limit of a small opportunity and cheating to the limit of a great one is to me indiscernable. The workman who "skimps his work" is just as much a rascal as the "director" who corners a crop.

As to "Socialism." I am something of a Socialist myself; that is, I think that the principle, which has always coexisted with compet.i.tion, each safeguarding the other, may be advantageously extended. But those who rail against "the compet.i.tive system," and think they suffer from it, really suffer from their own unthrift and incapacity. For the competent and provident it is an ideally perfect system. As the other fellows are not of those who effect permanent reforms, or reforms of any kind, pure Socialism is the dream of a dream.

But why do I write all this. One's opinions on such matters are unaffected by reason and instance; they are born of feeling and temperament. There is a Socialist diathesis, as there is an Anarchist diathesis. Could you teach a bulldog to retrieve, or a sheep to fetch and carry? Could you make a "born artist" comprehend a syllogism? As easily persuade a poet that black is not whatever color he loves.

Somebody has defined poetry as "glorious nonsense." It is not an altogether false definition, albeit I consider poetry the flower and fruit of speech and would rather write gloriously than sensibly. But if poets saw things as they are they would write no more poetry.

Nevertheless, I venture to ask you: _Can't_ you see in the prosperity of the strong and the adversity of the weak a part of that great beneficent law, "the survival of the fittest"? Don't you see that such evils as inhere in "the compet.i.tive system" are evils only to individuals, but blessings to the race by gradually weeding out the incompetent and their progeny?