The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, With a Memoir by George Sterling. Bierce Ambrose
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half bad. Read Burke "On the Sublime and Beautiful."
Read – but that will do at present. And as you read don't forget that the rules of the literary art are deduced from the work of the masters who wrote in ignorance of them or in unconsciousness of them. That fixes their value; it is secondary to that of natural qualifications. None the less, it is considerable. Doubtless you have read many – perhaps most – of these things, but to read them with a view to profit as a writer may be different. If I could get to San Francisco I could dig out of those artificial memories, the catalogues of the libraries, a lot of titles additional – and get you the books, too. But I've a bad memory, and am out of the Book Belt.
I wish you would write some little thing and send it me for examination. I shall not judge it harshly, for this I know: the good writer (supposing him to be born to the trade) is not made by reading, but by observing and experiencing. You have lived so little, seen so little, that your range will necessarily be narrow, but within its lines I know no reason why you should not do good work. But it is all conjectural – you may fail. Would it hurt if I should tell you that I thought you had failed? Your absolute and complete failure would not affect in the slightest my admiration of your intellect. I have always half suspected that it is only second rate minds, and minds below the second rate, that hold their cleverness by so precarious a tenure that they can detach it for display in words.
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 pass 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: "God bless you," and mean it literally. I wish there were a God to bless you, and that He had nothing else to do.
Please let me hear from you. Sincerely, A. B.
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 God 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 association 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 classics 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.
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.
I enclose Bib. Ambrose Bierce.
Dear Mr. Partington,
I've been too ill all the week to write you of your manuscripts, or even read them understandingly.
I think