I wrote you yesterday at San Antonio, but dated the letter here and
today, expecting to bring the letter and mail it here. That's because
I did not know if I would have time to write it here. Unfortunately,
I forgot and posted it, with other letters, where it was written. Thus
does man's guile come to naught!
Well, I'm here, anyhow, and have time to explain.
Laredo was a Mexican city before it was an American. It is Mexican
now, five to one. Nuevo Laredo, opposite, is held by the Huertistas
and Americans don't go over there. In fact a guard on the bridge will
not let them. So those that sneak across have to wade (which can be
done almost anywhere) and go at night.
I shall not be here long enough to hear from you, and don't know where
I shall be next. Guess it doesn't matter much.
Adios,
AMBROSE.
_Extracts from Letters_
You are right too--dead right about the poetry of Socialism; and you
might have added the poetry of wailing about the woes of the poor
generally. Only the second- and the third-raters write it--except
"incidentally." You don't find the big fellows sniveling over that
particular shadow-side of Nature. Yet not only are the poor always
with us, they always _were_ with us, and their state was worse in the
times of Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton and the others than in the
days of Morris and Markham.
But what's the use? I have long despaired of convincing poets and
artists of anything, even that white is not black. I'm convinced that
all you chaps ought to have a world to yourselves, where two and two
make whatever you prefer that it _should_ make, and cause and effect
are remoulded "more nearly to the heart's desire." And then I suppose
I'd want to go and live there too.
Did you ever know so poor satire to make so great a row as that of
Watson? Compared with certain other verses against particular
women--Byron's "Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred"; even my own skit
entitled "Mad" (pardon my modesty) it is infantile. What an
interesting book might be made of such "attacks" on women! But Watson
is the only one of us, so far as I remember, who has had the
caddishness to _name_ the victim.
Have you seen Percival Pollard's "Their Day in Court"? It is amusing,
clever--and more. He has a whole chapter on me, "a lot" about Gertrude
Atherton, and much else that is interesting. And he skins alive
certain popular gods and goddesses of the day, and is "monstrous
naughty."
As to * * *'s own character I do not see what that has to do with his
criticism of London. If only the impeccable delivered judgment no
judgment would ever be delivered. All men could do as they please,
without reproof or dissent. I wish you would take your heart out of
your head, old man. The best heart makes a bad head if housed there.
The friends that warned you against the precarious nature of my
friendship were right. To hold my regard one must fulfil hard
conditions--hard if one is not what one should be; easy if one is. I
have, indeed, a habit of calmly considering the character of a man
with whom I have fallen into any intimacy and, whether I have any
grievance against him or not, informing him by letter that I no longer
desire his acquaintance. This, I do after deciding that he is not
truthful, candid, without conceit, and so forth--in brief, honorable.
If any one is conscious that he is not in all respects worthy of my
friendship he would better not cultivate it, for assuredly no one can
long conceal his true character from an observant student of it. Yes,
my friendship is a precarious possession. It grows more so the longer
I live, and the less I feel the need of a multitude of friends. So,
if in your heart you are conscious of being any of the things which
you accuse _me_ of being, or anything else equally objectionable (to
_me_) I can only advise you to drop me before I drop you.
Certainly you have an undoubted right to your opinion of my ability,
my attainments and my standing. If you choose to publish a censorious
judgment of these matters, do so by all means: I don't think I ever
cared a cent for what was printed about me, except as it supplied me
with welcome material for my pen. One may presumably have a "sense of
duty to the public," and the like. But convincing one person (one at a
time) of one's friend's deficiencies is hardly worth while, and is to
be judged differently. It comes under another rule. * * *
Maybe, as you say, my work lacks "soul," but my life does not, as a
man's life is the man. Personally, I hold that sentiment has a place
in this world, and that loyalty to a friend is not inferior as a
characteristic to correctness of literary judgment. If there is a
heaven I think it is more valued there. If Mr. * * * (your publisher
as well as mine) had considered you a Homer, a Goethe or a Shakspeare
a team of horses could not have drawn from _me_ the expression of a
lower estimate. And let me tell you that if you are going through life
as a mere thinking machine, ignoring the generous promptings of the
heart, sacrificing it to the brain, you will have a hard row to hoe,
and the outcome, when you survey it from the vantage ground of age,
will not please you. You seem to me to be beginning rather badly, as
regards both your fortune and your peace of mind.
* * * * *
I saw * * * every day while in New York, and he does not know that I
feel the slightest resentment toward you, nor do I know it myself. So
far as he knows, or is likely to know (unless you will have it
otherwise) you and I are the best of friends, or rather, I am the best
of friends to you. And I guess that is so. I could no more hate you
for your disposition and character than I could for your hump if you
had one. You are as Nature has made you, and your defects, whether
they are great or small, are your misfortunes. I would remove them if
I could, but I know that I cannot, for one of them is inability to
discern the others, even when they are pointed out.
I must commend your candor in one thing. You confirm * * * words in
saying that you commented on "my seeming lack of sympathy with certain
modern masters," which you attribute to my not having read them. That
is a conclusion to which a low order of mind in sympathy with the
"modern masters" naturally jumps, but it is hardly worthy of a man of
your brains. It is like your former lofty assumption that I had not
read some ten or twelve philosophers, naming them, nearly all of whom
I had read, and laughed at, before you were born. In fact, one of your
most conspicuous characteristics is the assumption that what a man who
does not care to "talk shop" does not speak of, and vaunt his
knowledge of, he does not know. I once thought this a boyish fault,
but you are no longer a boy. Your "modern masters" are Ibsen and Shaw,
with both of whose works and ways I am thoroughly familiar, and both
of whom I think very small men--pets of the drawing-room and gods of
the hour. No, I am not an "up to date" critic, thank God. I am not a
literary critic at all, and never, or very seldom, have gone into that
field except in pursuance of a personal object--to help a good writer
(who is commonly a friend)--maybe you can recall such instances--or
laugh at a fool. Surely you do not consider my work in the
Cosmopolitan (mere badinage and chaff, the only kind of stuff that the
magazine wants from me, or will print) essays in literary criticism.
It has never occurred to me to look upon myself as a literary critic;
if you _must_ prick my bubble please to observe that it contains more
of your breath than of mine. Yet you have sometimes seemed to value, I
thought, some of my notions about even poetry. * * *
Perhaps I am unfortunate in the matter of keeping friends; I know, and
have abundant reason to know, that you are at least equally luckless
in the matter of making them. I could put my finger on the very
qualities in you that make you so, and the best service that I could
do you would be to point them out and take the consequences. That is
to say, it would serve you many years hence; at present you are like
Carlyle's "Mankind"; you "refuse to be served." You only consent to be
enraged.
I bear you no ill will, shall watch your career in letters with
friendly solicitude--have, in fact, just sent to the * * * a most
appreciative paragraph about your book, which may or may not commend
itself to the editor; most of what I write does not. I hope to do a
little, now and then, to further your success in letters. I wish you
were different (and that is the harshest criticism that I ever uttered
of you except to yourself) and wish it for your sake more than for
mine. I am older than you and probably more "acquainted with
grief"--the grief of disappointment and disillusion. If in the future
you are convinced that you have become different, and I am still
living, my welcoming hand awaits you. And when I forgive I forgive all
over, even the new offence.
Miller undoubtedly is sincere in his praise of you, for with all his
faults and follies he is always generous and usually over generous to
other poets. There's nothing little and mean in him. Sing ho for
Joaquin!
If I "made you famous" please remember that you were guilty of
contributory negligence by meriting the fame. "Eternal vigilance" is
the price of its permanence. Don't loaf on your job.
I have told her of a certain "enchanted forest" hereabout to which I
feel myself sometimes strongly drawn as a fitting place to lay down
"my weary body and my head." (Perhaps you remember your Swinburne:
"Ah yet, would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me!
Ah yet, would God that roots and stems were bred
Out of my weary body and my head.")
The element of enchantment in that forest is supplied by my wandering
and dreaming in it forty-one years ago when I was a-soldiering and
there were new things under a new sun. It is miles away, but from a
near-by summit I can overlook the entire region--ridge beyond ridge,
parted by purple valleys full of sleep. Unlike me, it has not visibly
altered in all these years, except that I miss, here and there, a thin
blue ghost of smoke from an enemy's camp. Can you guess my feelings
when I view this Dream-land--my Realm of Adventure, inhabited by
memories that beckon me from every valley? I shall go; I shall retrace
my old routes and lines of march; stand in my old camps; inspect my
battlefields to see that all is right and undisturbed. I shall go to
the Enchanted Forest.
PRINTED BY
JOHN HENRY NASH AT SAN FRANCISCO
IN DECEMBER MDCCCCXXII
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No. 208