It's a long time since the date of your latest letter, but I've been
doing two men's work for many weeks and have actually not found the
leisure to write to my friends. As it is the first time that I've
worked really hard for several years I ought not to complain, and
don't. But I hope it will end with this session of Congress.
I think I did not thank you for the additional copies of your new
book--the new edition. I wish it contained the new poem, "A Wine of
Wizardry." I've given up trying to get it into anything. I related my
failure to Mackay, of "Success," and he asked to be permitted to see
it. "No," I replied, "you too would probably turn it down, and I will
take no chances of losing the respect that I have for you." And I'd
not show it to him. He declared his intention of getting it,
though--which was just what I wanted him to do. But I dare say he
didn't.
Yes, you sent me "The Sea Wolf." My opinion of it? Certainly--or a
part of it. It is a most disagreeable book, as a whole. London has a
pretty bad style and no sense of proportion. The story is a perfect
welter of disagreeable incidents. Two or three (of the kind) would
have sufficed to _show_ the character of the man Larsen; and his own
self-revealings by word of mouth would have "done the rest." Many of
these incidents, too, are impossible--such as that of a man mounting a
ladder with a dozen other men--more or less--hanging to his leg, and
the hero's work of rerigging a wreck and getting it off a beach where
it had stuck for weeks, and so forth. The "love" element, with its
absurd suppressions and impossible proprieties, is awful. I confess to
an overwhelming contempt for both the sexless lovers.
Now as to the merits. It is a rattling good story in one way;
something is "going on" all the time--not always what one would wish,
but _something_. One does not go to sleep over the book. But the great
thing--and it is among the greatest of things--is that tremendous
creation, Wolf Larsen. If that is not a permanent addition to
literature, it is at least a permanent figure in the memory of the
reader. You "can't lose" Wolf Larsen. He will be with you to the end.
So it does not really matter how London has hammered him into you. You
may quarrel with the methods, but the result is almost incomparable.
The hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to
do in one life-time. I have hardly words to impart my good judgment of
_that_ work.
* * * * *
That is a pretty picture of Phyllis as Cleopatra--whom I think you
used to call "the angel child"--as the Furies were called Eumenides.
* * * * *
I'm enclosing a review of your book in the St. Louis "Mirror," a paper
always kindly disposed toward our little group of gifted obscurians. I
thought you might not have seen it; and it is worth seeing. Percival
Pollard sends it me; and to him we owe our recognition by the
"Mirror."
I hope you prosper apace. I mean mentally and spiritually; all other
prosperity is trash.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C.,
April 17, 1905.]