1911
Under the name of G. A. Danziger I wrote in the year 1889 a story
founded on a German tale, which I called _The Monk and the Hangman’s
Daughter_. The story was tragic but I gave it a happy ending. Submitting
it to the late Ambrose Bierce, asking him to revise the story, he
suggested the retention of the tragic part and so revised it. The story
was published and the house failed.
When in 1900 a publisher desired to bring out the story provided I gave
it a happy ending, I submitted the matter to Bierce and on August 21,
1900, he wrote me a long letter on the subject of which the following is
an extract:
‘I have read twice and carefully, your proposed addition to _The Monk_,
and you must permit me to speak plainly, if not altogether agreeably, of
it. It will not do for these reasons and others:
‘The book is almost perfect as you wrote it; the part of the work that
pleases me least is _my_ part (underscores Bierce’s). I am surprised
that you should yield to the schoolgirl desire for that shallowest of
all literary devices, a “happy ending,” by which all the pathos of the
book is effaced to “make a woman holiday.” It is unworthy of you. So
much did I feel this unworthiness that I hesitated a long time before
even deciding to have so much of “odious ingenuity” and “mystery” as
your making Benedicta the daughter of the Saltmaster and inventing her
secret love for Ambrosius instead of Rochus.
‘“Dramatic action,” which is no less necessary in a story than in a
play, requires that so far as is possible what takes place shall be
_seen_ to take place, not related as having previously taken place....
Compare Shakespeare’s _Cymbeline_ with his better plays. See how he
spoiled it the same way. You need not feel ashamed to err as Shakespeare
erred. Indeed, you did better than he, for his explanations were of
things already known to the reader, or spectator, of the play. _Your_
explanations are needful to an understanding of the things explained; it
is _they_ that are needless. All “explanation” is unspeakably tedious,
and is to be cut as short as possible. Far better to have nothing to
explain--to _show_ everything that occurs, in the very act of occurring.
We cannot always do that, but we should come as near to doing it as we
can. Anyhow, the “harking back” should not be done at the end of the
book, when the dénouement is already known and the reader’s interest in
the action exhausted....
‘Ambrosius and Benedicta are unique in letters. Their nobility, their
simplicity, their sufferings--everything that is theirs stamps them
as “beings apart.” They live in the memory sanctified and glorified by
these qualities and sorrows. They are, in the last and most gracious
sense, children of nature. Leave them lying there in the lovely valley
of the gallows, where Ambrosius shuddered as his foot fell on the spot
where he was destined to sleep....
‘Let _The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter_ alone. It is great work and
_you_ should live to see the world confess it. Let me know if my faith
in your faith in me is an error. You once believed in my judgment; I
think it is not yet impaired by age.
‘Sincerely yours,
‘(Signed) Ambrose bierce.’
I can only add that my faith in Bierce’s judgment of letters is as firm
to-day as it was then, when I gave him power of attorney to place
my book with a publisher. This publisher embodied _The Monk and the
Hangman’s Daughter_ in Bierce’s collected works, then sold the right to
Messrs. Albert and Charles Boni who without knowledge of the true facts
brought out an edition under Bierce’s name.
ADOLPHE de CASTRO.