Here are your fine verses--I have been too busy to write to you
before. In truth, I've worked harder now for more than a year than I
ever shall again--and the work will bring me nor gain nor glory. Well,
I shall take a rest pretty soon, partly in California. I thank you for
the picture card. I have succumbed to the post-card fashion myself.
As to some points in your letter.
I've no recollection of advising young authors to "leave all heart and
sentiment out of their work." If I did the context would probably show
that it was because their time might better be given to perfect
themselves in form, against the day when their hearts would be less
wild and their sentiments truer. You know it has always been my belief
that one cannot be trusted to feel until one has learned to think--and
few youngsters have learned to do that. Was it not Dr. Holmes who
advised a young writer to cut out every passage that he thought
particularly good? He'd be sure to think the beautiful and sentimental
passages the best, would he not? * * *
If you mean to write really "vituperative" sonnets (why sonnets?) let
me tell you _one_ secret of success--name your victim and his offense.
To do otherwise is to fire blank cartridges--to waste your words in
air--to club a vacuum. At least your satire must be so personally
applicable that there can be no mistake as to the victim's identity.
Otherwise he is no victim--just a spectator like all others. And that
brings us to Watson. His caddishness consisted, not in satirizing a
woman, which is legitimate, but, first, in doing so without sufficient
reason, and, second, in saying orally (on the safe side of the
Atlantic) what he apparently did not dare say in the verses. * * *
I'm enclosing something that will tickle you I hope--"The Ballade of
the Goodly Fere." The author's[12] father, who is something in the Mint
in Philadelphia, sent me several of his son's poems that were not
good; but at last came this--in manuscript, like the others. Before I
could do anything with it--meanwhile wearing out the paper and the
patience of my friends by reading it at them--the old man asked it
back rather peremptorily. I reluctantly sent it, with a letter of high
praise. The author had "placed" it in London, where it has made a heap
of talk.
[12] Ezra Pound.
It has plenty of faults besides its monotonous rhyme scheme; but tell
me what you think of it.
God willing, we shall eat Carmel mussels and abalones in May or June.
Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C.,
March 7, 1910.]