Your letter of the 16th has just come and as I am waiting at my office
(where I seldom go) I shall amuse myself by replying "to onct." See
here, I don't purpose that your attack on poor Morrow's book shall
become a "continuous performance," nor even an "annual ceremony." It
is not "rot." It is not "filthy." It does not "suggest bed-pans,"--at
least it did not to me, and I'll wager something that Morrow never
thought of them. Observe and consider: If his hero and heroine had
been man and wife, the bed-pan would have been there, just the same;
yet you would not have thought of it. Every reader would have been
touched by the husband's devotion. A physician has to do with many
unpleasant things; whom do his ministrations disgust? A trained nurse
lives in an atmosphere of bed-pans--to whom is her presence or work
suggestive of them? I'm thinking of the heroic Father Damien and his
lepers; do you dwell upon the rotting limbs and foul distortions of
his unhappy charges? Is not his voluntary martyrdom one of the sanest,
cleanest, most elevating memories in all history? Then it is _not_ the
bed-pan necessity that disgusts you; it is something else. It is the
fact that the hero of the story, being neither physician, articled
nurse, nor certificated husband, nevertheless performed _their_ work.
He ministered to the helpless in a natural way without authority from
church or college, quite irregular and improper and all that. My noble
critic, there speaks in your blood the Untamed Philistine. You were
not caught young enough. You came into letters and art with all your
beastly conventionalities in full mastery of you. Take a purge. Forget
that there are Philistines. Forget that they have put their abominable
pantalettes upon the legs of Nature. Forget that their code of
morality and manners (it stinks worse than a bed-pan) does _not_ exist
in the serene altitude of great art, toward which you have set your
toes and into which I want you to climb. I know about this thing. I,
too, tried to rise with all that dead weight dragging at my feet.
Well, I could not--now I could if I cared to. In my mind I do. It is
not freedom of act--not freedom of living, for which I contend, but
freedom of thought, of mind, of spirit; the freedom to see in the
horrible laws, prejudices, custom, conventionalities of the multitude,
something good for them, but of no value to you _in your art._ In your
life and conduct defer to as much of it as you will (you'll find it
convenient to defer to a whole lot), but in your mind and art let not
the Philistine enter, nor even speak a word through the keyhole. My
own chief objection to Morrow's story is (as I apprised him) its
unnaturalness. He did not dare to follow the logical course of his
narrative. He was too cowardly (or had too keen an eye upon his market
of prudes) to make hero and heroine join in the holy bonds of
_bed_lock, as they naturally, inevitably and rightly would have done
long before she was able to be about. I daresay that, too, would have
seemed to you "filthy," without the parson and his fee. When you
analyze your objection to the story (as I have tried to do for you)
you will find that it all crystallizes into that--the absence of the
parson. I don't envy you your view of the matter, and I really don't
think you greatly enjoy it yourself. I forgot to say: Suppose they had
been two men, two partners in hunting, mining, or exploring, as
frequently occurs. Would the bed-pan suggestion have come to you? Did
it come to you when you read of the slow, but not uniform, starvation
of Greeley's party in the arctic? Of course not. Then it is a matter,
not of bed-pans, but of sex-exposure (unauthorized by the church), of
prudery--of that artificial thing, the "sense of shame," of which the
great Greeks knew nothing; of which the great Japanese know nothing;
of which Art knows nothing. Dear Doctor, do you really put trousers on
your piano-legs? Does your indecent intimacy with your mirror make you
blush?
There, there's the person whom I've been waiting for (I'm to take her
to dinner, and I'm not married to even so much of her as her little
toe) has come; and until you offend again, you are immune from the
switch. May all your brother Philistines have to "Kiss the place to
make it well."
Pan is dead! Long live Bed-Pan!
Yours ever,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington,
February 17, 1901.]