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I’ve read somewhere that Ambrose Bierce remains of importance only as a journalist, and it’s true that his career and contemporary fame depended from his columns of stinging political commentary. Elsewhere it is written that in academia he is best remembered for his short stories of war. But of the nearly 100 stories he wrote, most of them were tales of the supernatural, and it is in primarily in this light that he is here considered.
He began life as the youngest of 12 children whose Christian names began with the letter A, a program of nomination for which no extant explanation exists. His parents were zealous in their religion but Bierce was, for at least most of his life, an atheist. He spent his childhood at their farm in Ohio, then went away at the age of 15 to work as a printer’s devil. He spent a year at a military academy. When he was 19, the Civil War broke out and he enlisted with the Union Army. He fought at Shiloh, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and Kennesaw Mountain. He was shot in the head and suffered terrible headaches all his life, besides increasing attacks of asthma.
After the war, he worked in Alabama for the Treasury Department in the Federal reclamation of Confederate goods. This was dangerous work, as was attested by the mysterious deaths of his predecessors. Men who had sold bales of cotton to the Confederacy for now-worthless Confederate dollars were not eager to be ruined by handing them over to the hated Yankees. But Bierce’s safety was secured in great measure through the friendship of two local confederate veterans who were his frequent partners in carousals and late-night walks through the lightless streets of Selma.
He left the Treasury and traveled west with companions until he came to San Francisco. Despite his early years in Ohio and Indiana, the battles he fought in West Virginia, and, later, his time in England writing for Fun and Figaro, it is San Francisco that is associated more than any other place with his name. It was there that he first tried his hand at columns of biting commentary and by them attracted the favorable notice of William Randolph Hearst who made him a leading writer for the San Francisco Examiner. At this time, Bierce had written few short stories. But now, at the age of 35, he wrote the first of those macabre masterpieces of economy that have earned him enduring notice. “Chickamauga,” “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Realm of the Unreal” sufficed by themselves to remember him and see his work endlessly anthologized.
His style in these stories may be at times too sardonic to achieve the height of supernatural impression, but at its best it conveys an air of the irrefutably matter-of-fact. M.R. James’ “The Ash-Tree” is perhaps not more classic and emblematic than Bierce’s “A Vine on a House.”
One summer evening, the Rev. J. Gruber, of Norton, and a Maysville attorney named Hyatt met on horseback in front of the Harding place. Having business matters to discuss, they hitched their animals and going to the house sat on the porch to talk. Some humorous reference to the somber reputation of the place was made and forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of their business affairs until it grew almost dark. The evening was oppressively warm, the air stagnant.
Presently both men started from their seats in surprise: a long vine that covered half the front of the house and dangled its branches from the edge of the porch above them was visibly and audibly agitated, shaking violently in every stem and leaf.
“We shall have a storm,” Hyatt exclaimed.
Gruber said nothing, but silently directed the other’s attention to the foliage of adjacent trees, which showed no movement; even the delicate tips of the boughs silhouetted against the clear sky were motionless. They hastily passed down the steps to what had been a lawn and looked upward at the vine, whose entire length was now visible. It continued in violent agitation, yet they could discern no disturbing cause.
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He had a wonderful sense of humor that showed itself in the titles he commonly applied to the sections of his stories. The first part of “The Eyes of the Panther” is called “One Does Not Always Marry When Insane,” and the first of “The Damned Thing” (before a description of a coroner’s inquest) is called “One Does Not Always Eat What Is On The Table.”
There were several interesting literary connections in his career. He formed the Western Authors Publishing Company with W.C. Morrow (author of “The Monster Maker” and other horror stories) and Adolphe Danziger (later known as Adolph de Castro, a ghost-writing client of Lovecraft and a biographer of Bierce). He looked after the publication of George Sterling’s poem “A Wine of Wizardry” and wrote the introduction for its first appearance in Cosmopolitan.
It was through Sterling that he came to meet Jack London. He had severly criticized London’s writing and warned Sterling that the rough-hewn writer of adventures would corrupt his poetic instincts. London knew of these criticisms and decided to confront Bierce one night at the northern Californian Bohemian Club. London approached Bierce and a portion of their conversation is related as follows:
‘Here you are, Bierce, if you don’t mind taking a drink from the wildcat of literature.’
‘Thank you, London,’ said Bierce, ‘But why drag in literature?’
‘Because,’ Jack shot back, ‘you’re a good judge of verbal tatting, having indulged in it all your life. Have another drink.’
‘Here’s good health, London, and I’m sorry I wasted even an impoverished pattern on one who thinks civilization is a slum.’
‘Here’s how, Bierce, and I think civilization’s a slum only when it’s cluttered up with critics. Then it smells bad. Have another drink.’
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Bierce mentioned something about killing London, and London suggested he might tie Bierce’s breastbone into knots, but by the end of the night they had consumed a bottle each of Martell cognac and parted on friendly if slightly incoherent terms.
Toward the end of his life, Bierce wrote less fiction but a voluminous correspondence, roughly comparable to Lovecraft’s epic epistolary output. In October, 1913, at the age of 71 and having evidently developed some antipathy of his own toward civilization, he wrote his niece:
“You must hunger and thirst for the mountains. . . . So do I. Civilization be dinged!—It is the mountains and the desert for me.
“Good-by—if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico—oh, that is euthanasia!”
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There is every reason to believe that Bierce did go to Mexico. But wherever he went, he disappeared not long afterward and never returned.
The dead are dead—let that atone:
And though with equal hand we strew
The blooms on saint and sinner too,
Yet God will know to choose his own.
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| —“To E.S. Salomon,” from Black Beetles in Amber |
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