Part 12 (1/2)
The Chateau Yquem came all right, and is good. Thank you for it--albeit I'm sorry you feel that you must do things like that. It is very conventional and, I fear, ”proper.” However, I remember that you used to do so when you could not by any stretch of imagination have felt that you were under an ”obligation.” So I guess it is all right--just your way of reminding me of the old days. Anyhow, the wine is so much better than my own that I've never a scruple when drinking it.
Has ”Maid Marian” a photograph of me?--I don't remember. If not I'll send her one; I've just had some printed from a negative five or six years old. I've renounced the photograph habit, as one renounces other habits when age has made them ridiculous--or impossible.
Send me the typewritten book when you have it complete.
Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Was.h.i.+ngton, August 19, 1902.]
MY DEAR STERLING,
I suppose you are in Seattle, but this letter will keep till your return.
I am delighted to know that I am to have ”the book” so soon, and will give it my best attention and (if you still desire) some prefatory lines. Think out a good t.i.tle and I shall myself be hospitable to any suggestion of my daemon in the matter. He has given me nothing for the star poem yet.
You'll ”learn in suffering what you teach in song,” all right; but let us hope the song will be the richer for it. It _will_ be. For that reason I never altogether ”pity the sorrows” of a writer--knowing they are good for him. He needs them in his business. I suspect you must have shed a tear or two since I knew you.
I'm sending you a photograph, but you did not tell me if Maid Marian the Superb already has one--that's what I asked you, and if you don't answer I shall ask her.
Yes, I am fairly well, and, though not ”happy,” content. But I'm dreadfully sorry about Peterson.
Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.
I am about to break up my present establishment and don't know where my next will be. Better address me ”Care N. Y. American and Journal Bureau, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.”
You see I'm still chained to the oar of yellow journalism, but it is a rather light servitude.
[Address me at 1321 Yale Street, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., December 20, 1902.]
DEAR STERLING,
I fancy you must fear by this time that I did not get the poems, but I did. I'll get at them, doubtless, after awhile, though a good deal of ma.n.u.script--including a couple of novels!--is ahead of them; and one published book of bad poems awaits a particular condemnation.
I'm a little embarra.s.sed about the preface which I'm to write. I fear you must forego the preface or I the dedication. That kind of ”cooperation” doesn't seem in very good taste: it smacks of ”mutual admiration” in the bad sense, and the reviewers would probably call it ”log-rolling.” Of course it doesn't matter too much what the reviewers say, but it matters a lot what the intelligent readers think; and your book will have no others. I really shouldn't like to write the preface of a book dedicated to me, though I did not think of that at first.
The difficulty could be easily removed by _not_ dedicating the book to me were it not that that would sacrifice the n.o.ble poem with my name atop of it. That poem is itself sufficiently dedicatory if printed by itself in the forepages of the book and labeled ”Dedication--To Ambrose Bierce.” I'm sure that vanity has nothing to do, or little to do, with my good opinion of the verses. And, after all, they _show_ that I have said _to you_ all that I could say to the reader in your praise and encouragement. What do you think?
As to dedicating individual poems to other fellows, I have not the slightest hesitancy in advising you against it. The practice smacks of the amateur and is never, I think, pleasing to anybody but the person so honored. The custom has fallen into ”innocuous desuetude” and there appears to be no call for its revival. Pay off your obligations (if such there be) otherwise. You may put it this way if you like: The whole book being dedicated to me, no part of it _can_ be dedicated to another. Or this way: Secure in my exalted position I don't purpose sharing the throne with rival (and inferior) claimants. They be gam doodled!
Seriously--but I guess it is serious enough as it stands. It occurs to me that in saying: ”no part of it _can_ be dedicated to another” I might be understood as meaning: ”no part of it _must_ be,” etc. No; I mean only that the dedication to another would contradict the dedication to me. The two things are (as a matter of fact) incompatible.
Well, if you think a short preface by me preferable to the verses with my name, all right; I will cheerfully write it, and that will leave you free to honor your other friends if you care to. But those are great lines, and implying, as they do, all that a set preface could say, it seems to me that they ought to stand.
Maid Marian shall have the photograph.
Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.