* * * * *
You should not be irritated by the "conspiracy of silence" about me on
the part of the "Call," the "Argonaut" and other papers. Really my
enemies are under no obligation to return good for evil; I fear I
should not respect them if they did. * * *, his head still sore from
my many beatings of that "distracted globe," would be a comic figure
stammering his sense of my merit and directing attention to the
excellence of the literary wares on my shelf.
As to the pig of a public, its indifference to a diet of pearls--_our_
pearls--was not unknown to me, and truly it does not trouble me
anywhere except in the pocket. _That_ pig, too, is not much beholden
to me, who have pounded the snout of it all my life. Why should it
assist in the rite? Its indifference to _your_ work constitutes a new
provocation and calls for added whacks, but not its indifference to
mine.
The Ashton Stevens interview was charming. His finding you and Scheff
together seems too idyllic to be true--I thought it a fake. He put in
quite enough--too much--about me. As to Joaquin's hack at me--why,
that was magnanimity itself in one who, like most of us, does not
offset blame against praise, subtract the latter from the former and
find matter for thanks in the remainder. You know "what fools we
mortals be"; criticism that is not all honey is all vinegar. Nobody
has more delighted than I in pointing out the greatness of Joaquin's
great work; but nobody than I has more austerely condemned * * *,
his vanity and the general humbugery that makes his prose so
insupportable. Joaquin is a good fellow, all the same, and you should
not demand of him impossible virtues and a reach of reasonableness
that is alien to him.
* * * * *
I have the books you kindly sent and have planted two or three in what
I think fertile soil which I hope will produce a small crop of
appreciation.
* * * * *
And the poem![7] I hardly know how to speak of it. No poem in English
of equal length has so bewildering a wealth of imagination. Not
Spenser himself has flung such a profusion of jewels into so small a
casket. Why, man, it takes away the breath! I've read and reread--read
it for the expression and read it for the thought (always when I speak
of the "thought" in your work I mean the meaning--which is another
thing) and I shall read it many times more. And pretty soon I'll get
at it with my red ink and see if I can suggest anything worth your
attention. I fear not.
[7] "A Wine of Wizardry."
* * * * *
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
["New York American" Office, Washington, D. C.,
February 29, 1904.]