The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 28

Howes writes me that the "Lone Hand"--Sydney--has been commending you.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., October 9, 1909.]

DEAR GEORGE,

I return the poems with a few random comments and suggestions.

I'm a little alarmed lest you take too seriously my preference of your rhyme to your blank--especially when I recall your "Music" and "The Spirit of Beauty." Perhaps I should have said only that you are not so _likely_ to write well in blank. (I think always of "Ta.s.so to Leonora," which I cannot learn to like.) Doubtless I have too great fondness for _great_ lines--_your_ great lines--and they occur less frequently in your blank verse than in your rhyme--most frequently in your quatrains, those of sonnets included. Don't swear off blank--except as you do drink--but study it more. It's "an h.e.l.lish thing."

It looks as if I _might_ go to California sooner than I had intended.

My health has been wretched all summer. I need a sea voyage--one _via_ Panama would be just the thing. So if the cool weather of autumn do not restore me I shall not await spring here. But I'm already somewhat better. If I had been at sea I should have escaped the Cook-Peary controversy. We talk nothing but arctic matters here--I enclose my contribution to its horrors.

I'm getting many a good lambasting for my book of essays. Also a sop of honey now and then. It's all the same to me; I don't worry about what my contemporaries think of me. I made 'em think of _you_--that's glory enough for one. And the squirrels in the public parks think me the finest fellow in the world. They know what I have in every pocket.

Critics don't know that--nor nearly so much.

Advice to a young author: Cultivate the good opinion of squirrels.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., November 1, 1909.]

DEAR GEORGE,

European criticism of your _bete noir_, old Leopold, is ent.i.tled to attention; American (of him or any other king) is not. It looks as if the wretch may be guilty of indifference.

In condemning as "revolutionary" the two-rhyme sestet, I think I could not have been altogether solemn, for (1) I'm something of a revolutionist myself regarding the sonnet, having frequently expressed the view that its accepted forms--even the number of lines--were purely arbitrary; (2) I find I've written several two-rhyme sestets myself, and (3), like yours, my ear has difficulty in catching the rhyme effect in a-b-c, a-b-c. The rhyme is delayed till the end of the fourth line--as it is in the quatrain (not of the sonnet) with unrhyming first and third lines--a form of which I think all my mult.i.tude of verse supplies no example. I confess, though, that I did not know that Petrarch had made so frequent use of the 2-rhyme sestet.

I learn a little all the time; some of my old notions of poetry seem to me now erroneous, even absurd. So I _may_ have been at one time a stickler for the "regular" three-rhymer. Even now it pleases my ear well enow if the three are not so arranged as to elude it. I'm sorry if I misled you. You'd better 'fess up to your young friend, as I do to you--if I really was serious.

Of course I should be glad to see d.i.c.k, but don't expect to. They never come, and it has long been my habit to ignore every "declaration of intention."

I'm greatly pleased to know that you too like those lines of Markham that you quote from the "Wharf of Dreams." I've repeatedly told him that that sonnet was his greatest work, and those were its greatest lines. By the way, my young poet, Loveman, sends me a letter from Markham, asking for a poem or two for a book, "The Younger Choir,"

that he (M.) is editing. Loveman will be delighted by your good opinion of "Pierrot"--which still another magazine has returned to me.

Guess I'll have to give it up.

I'm sending you a booklet on loose locutions. It is vilely gotten up--had to be so to sell for twenty-five cents, the price that I favored. I just noted down these things as I found them in my reading, or remembered them, until I had four hundred. Then I took about fifty from other books, and boiled down the needful d.a.m.nation. Maybe I have done too much boiling down--making the stuff "thick and slab." If there is another edition I shall do a little bettering.

I should like some of those mussels, and, please G.o.d, shall help you cull them next summer. But the abalone--as a Christian comestible he is a stranger to me and the tooth o' me.

I think you have had some correspondence with my friend Howes of Galveston. Well, here he is "in his habit as he lives." Of the two figures in the picture Howes is the one on top.[11] Good night.

[11] Howes was riding on a burro.

A. B.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., January 29, 1910.]

DEAR GEORGE,

Here are your fine verses--I have been too busy to write to you before. In truth, I've worked harder now for more than a year than I ever shall again--and the work will bring me nor gain nor glory. Well, I shall take a rest pretty soon, partly in California. I thank you for the picture card. I have succ.u.mbed to the post-card fas.h.i.+on myself.

As to some points in your letter.

I've no recollection of advising young authors to "leave all heart and sentiment out of their work." If I did the context would probably show that it was because their time might better be given to perfect themselves in form, against the day when their hearts would be less wild and their sentiments truer. You know it has always been my belief that one cannot be trusted to feel until one has learned to think--and few youngsters have learned to do that. Was it not Dr. Holmes who advised a young writer to cut out every pa.s.sage that he thought particularly good? He'd be sure to think the beautiful and sentimental pa.s.sages the best, would he not? * * *

If you mean to write really "vituperative" sonnets (why sonnets?) let me tell you _one_ secret of success--name your victim and his offense.

To do otherwise is to fire blank cartridges--to waste your words in air--to club a vacuum. At least your satire must be so personally applicable that there can be no mistake as to the victim's ident.i.ty.

Otherwise he is no victim--just a spectator like all others. And that brings us to Watson. His caddishness consisted, not in satirizing a woman, which is legitimate, but, first, in doing so without sufficient reason, and, second, in saying orally (on the safe side of the Atlantic) what he apparently did not dare say in the verses. * * *

I'm enclosing something that will tickle you I hope--"The Ballade of the Goodly Fere." The author's[12] father, who is something in the Mint in Philadelphia, sent me several of his son's poems that were not good; but at last came this--in ma.n.u.script, like the others. Before I could do anything with it--meanwhile wearing out the paper and the patience of my friends by reading it at them--the old man asked it back rather peremptorily. I reluctantly sent it, with a letter of high praise. The author had "placed" it in London, where it has made a heap of talk.

[12] Ezra Pound.

It has plenty of faults besides its monotonous rhyme scheme; but tell me what you think of it.

G.o.d willing, we shall eat Carmel mussels and abalones in May or June.

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., March 7, 1910.]

DEAR GEORGE,

My plan is to leave here before April first, pa.s.s a few days in New York and then sail for Colon. If I find the ca.n.a.l work on the Isthmus interesting I may skip a steamer from Panama to see it. I've no notion how long it will take to reach San Francisco, and know nothing of the steamers and their schedules on the Pacific side.

I shall of course want to see Grizzly first--that is to say, he will naturally expect me to. But if you can pull him down to Carmel about the time of my arrival (I shall write you the date of my sailing from New York) I would gladly come there. Carlt, whom I can see at once on arriving, can tell me where he (Grizzly) is. * * *

I don't think you rightly value "The Goodly Fere." Of course no ballad written to-day can be entirely good, for it must be an imitation; it is now an unnatural form, whereas it was once a natural one. We are no longer a primitive people, and a primitive people's forms and methods are not ours. Nevertheless, this seems to me an admirable ballad, as it is given a modern to write ballads. And I think you overlook the best line:

"The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue."

The poem is complete as I sent it, and I think it stops right where and as it should--

"I ha' seen him eat o' the honey comb Sin' they nailed him to the tree."

The current "Literary Digest" has some queer things about (and by) Pound, and "Current Literature" reprints the "Fere" with all the wrinkles ironed out of it--making a "capon priest" of it.

Fo' de Lawd's sake! don't apologise for not subscribing for my "Works." If you did subscribe I should suspect that you were "no friend o' mine"--it would remove you from that gang and put you in a cla.s.s by yourself. Surely you can not think I care who buys or does not buy my books. The man who expects anything more than lip-service from his friends is a very young man. There are, for example, a half-dozen Californians (all loud admirers of Ambrose Bierce) editing magazines and newspapers here in the East. Every man Jack of them has turned me down. They will do everything for me but enable me to live.

Friends be d.a.m.ned!--strangers are the chaps for me.