The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 3

[St. Helena, August 28, 1892.]

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

I positively shall not bore you with an interminated screed this time.

But I thought you might like to know that I have recovered my health, and hope to be able to remain here for a few months at least. And if I remain well long enough to make me reckless I shall visit your town some day, and maybe ask your mother to command you to let me drive you to Berkeley. It makes me almost sad to think of the camp at the lake being abandoned.

So you liked my remarks on the "labor question." That is nice of you, but aren't you afraid your praise will get me into the disastrous literary habit of writing for some _one_ pair of eyes?--your eyes? Or in resisting the temptation I may go too far in the opposite error.

But you do not see that it is "Art for Art's sake"--hateful phrase!

Certainly not, it is not Art at all. Do you forget the distinction I pointed out between journalism and literature? Do you not remember that I told you that the former was of so little value that it might be used for anything? My newspaper work is in _no_ sense literature.

It is nothing, and only becomes something when I give it the very use to which I would put nothing literary. (Of course I refer to my editorial and topical work.)

If you want to learn to write that kind of thing, so as to do good with it, you've an easy task. _Only_ it is not worth learning and the good that you can do with it is not worth doing. But literature--the desire to do good with _that_ will not help you to your means. It is not a sufficient incentive. The Muse will not meet you if you have any work for her to do. Of course I sometimes like to do good--who does not? And sometimes I am glad that access to a great number of minds every week gives me an opportunity. But, thank Heaven, I don't make a business of it, nor use in it a tool so delicate as to be ruined by the service.

Please do not hesitate to send me anything that you may be willing to write. If you try to make it perfect before you let me see it, it will never come. My remarks about the kind of mind which holds its thoughts and feelings by so precarious a tenure that they are detachable for use by others were not made with a forethought of your failure.

Mr. Harte of the New England Magazine seems to want me to know his work (I asked to) and sends me a lot of it cut from the magazine. I pa.s.s it on to you, and most of it is just and true.

But I'm making another long letter.

I wish I were not an infidel--so that I could say: "G.o.d bless you,"

and mean it literally. I wish there _were_ a G.o.d to bless you, and that He had nothing else to do.

Please let me hear from you. Sincerely,

A. B.

[St. Helena, September 28, 1892.]

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

I have been waiting for a full hour of leisure to write you a letter, but I shall never get it, and so I'll write you anyhow. Come to think of it, there is nothing to say--nothing that _needs_ be said, rather, for there is always so much that one would like to say to you, best and most patient of _sayees_.

I'm sending you and your father copies of my book. Not that I think you (either of you) will care for that sort of thing, but merely because your father is my co-sinner in making the book, and you in sitting by and diverting my mind from the proof-sheets of a part of it. Your part, therefore, in the work is the typographical errors. So you are in literature in spite of yourself.

I appreciate what you write of my girl. She is the best of girls to me, but G.o.d knoweth I'm not a proper person to direct her way of life.

However, it will not be for long. A dear friend of mine--the widow of another dear friend--in London wants her, and means to come out here next spring and try to persuade me to let her have her--for a time at least. It is likely that I shall. My friend is wealthy, childless and devoted to both my children. I wish that in the meantime she (the girl) could have the advantage of a.s.sociation with _you_.

Please say to your father that I have his verses, which I promise myself pleasure in reading.

_You_ appear to have given up your ambition to "write things." I'm sorry, for "lots" of reasons--not the least being the selfish one that I fear I shall be deprived of a reason for writing you long dull letters. Won't you _play_ at writing things?

My (and Danziger's) book, "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter," is to be out next month. The Publisher--I like to write it with a reverent capital letter--is unprofessional enough to tell me that he regards it as the very best piece of English composition that he ever saw, and he means to make the world know it. Now let the great English cla.s.sics hide their diminished heads and pale their ineffectual fires!

So you begin to suspect that books do not give you the truth of life and character. Well, that suspicion is the beginning of wisdom, and, so far as it goes, a preliminary qualification for writing--books. Men and women are certainly not what books represent them to be, nor what _they_ represent--and sometimes believe--themselves to be. They are better, they are worse, and far more interesting.

With best regards to all your people, and in the hope that we may frequently hear from you, I am very sincerely your friend,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

Both the children send their _love_ to you. And they mean just that.

[St. Helena, October 6, 1892.]

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

I send you by this mail the current _New England Magazine_--merely because I have it by me and have read all of it that I shall have leisure to read. Maybe it will entertain you for an idle hour.

I have so far recovered my health that I hope to do a little pot-boiling to-morrow. (Is that properly written with a hyphen?--for the life o' me I can't say, just at this moment. There is a story of an old actor who having played one part half his life had to cut out the name of the person he represented wherever it occurred in his lines: he could never remember which syllable to accent.) My illness was only asthma, which, unluckily, does not kill me and so should not alarm my friends.

Dr. Danziger writes that he has ordered your father's sketch sent me.

And I've ordered a large number of extra impressions of it--if it is still on the stone. So you see I like it.

Let me hear from you and about you.

Sincerely your friend, AMBROSE BIERCE.

I enclose Bib.

[St. Helena, October 7, 1892.]

DEAR MR. PARTINGTON,

I've been too ill all the week to write you of your ma.n.u.scripts, or even read them understandingly.

I think "Honest Andrew's Prayer" far and away the best. _It_ is witty--the others hardly more than earnest, and not, in my judgment, altogether fair. But then you know you and I would hardly be likely to agree on a point of that kind,--I refuse my sympathies in some directions where I extend my sympathy--if that is intelligible. You, I think, have broader sympathies than mine--are not only sorry for the Homestead strikers (for example) but approve them. I do not. But we are one in detesting their oppressor, the smug-wump, Carnegie.

If you had not sent "Honest Andrew's Prayer" elsewhere I should try to place it here. It is so good that I hope to see it in print. If it is rejected please let me have it again if the incident is not then ancient history.

I'm glad you like some things in my book. But you should not condemn me for debasing my poetry with abuse; you should commend me for elevating my abuse with a little poetry, here and there. I am not a poet, but an abuser--that makes all the difference. It is "how you look at it."

But I'm still too ill to write. With best regards to all your family, I am sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

I've been reading your pamphlet on Art Education. You write best when you write most seriously--and your best is very good.

[St. Helena, October 15, 1892.]

DEAR BLANCHE,

I send you this picture in exchange for the one that you have--I'm "redeeming" all those with these. But I asked you to return that a long time ago. Please say if you like this; to me it looks like a dude. But I hate the other--the style of it.

It is very good of your father to take so much trouble as to go over and work on that stone. I want the pictures--lithographs--only for economy: so that when persons for whom I do not particularly care want pictures of me I need not bankrupt myself in orders to the photographer. And I do not like photographs anyhow. How long, O Lord, how long am I to wait for that sketch of _you_?

My dear girl, I do not see that folk like your father and me have any just cause of complaint against an unappreciative world; n.o.body compels us to make things that the world does not want. We merely choose to because the pay, _plus_ the satisfaction, exceeds the pay alone that we get from work that the world does want. Then where is our grievance? We get what we prefer when we do good work; for the lesser wage we do easier work. It has never seemed to me that the "unappreciated genius" had a good case to go into court with, and I think he should be promptly non-suited. Inspiration from Heaven is all very fine--the mandate of an att.i.tude or an instinct is good; but when A works for B, yet insists on taking his orders from C, what can he expect? So don't distress your good little heart with compa.s.sion--not for me, at least; whenever I tire of pot-boiling, wood-chopping is open to me, and a thousand other honest and profitable employments.