Posted on 12/30/2013 5:51:56 PM PST by jocon307
One golden autumn morning 100 years ago, a few blocks from where I’m writing these words in northwest Washington, D.C., Ambrose Bierce said goodbye to his secretary, turned the key in the door to his apartment on Logan Circle, and went off to God knows where.
I’m not speaking figuratively: God and nobody else knows where Ambrose Bierce ended up—or when, how, or why. He had taken September and early October to settle his personal affairs, as people used to say. His literary affairs had been settled with the publication of his collected works, more than a million words packed into 12 volumes and assembled over a period of five years, which signaled his official exit from the writing life. His two sons were dead, his estranged wife was dead, and his daughter Helen, though not quite estranged, had built a life for herself a safe distance from him, in the Midwest.
Bierce sent Helen a letter before he left Washington. He told her he wanted to walk the battlefields where he had fought 50 years before as a first lieutenant in the 9th Indiana Infantry. He wanted to look a last time at Kennesaw Mountain, Chickamauga, Franklin, Nashville, Missionary Ridge, and Murfreesboro. Then, he said, he would turn further south, into Mexico, to see firsthand the Mexican civil war and its most romantic figure, the revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had struck his interest. From there, he’d move on to South America.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Franklin. After reading Sam Watkins’ description of that affair, the very name is chilling.
I would say almost certainly he was murdered by Mexicans, probably Villa’s people. Many of them were pure evil.
I was a fan of Ambrose Bierce back in the day.
Tanks for the post. Very interesting, read the article at WS.
“I was a fan of Ambrose Bierce back in the day.”
I almost said that exact same thing. Maybe he is overlooked, but he’s certainly had at least a couple of flashes in the pan of fame.
Thanks!
Adore the Devil’s Dictionary.
My high school English teacher (American Lit) did not assign Bierce. She READ Bierce to us — a little bit at the end of each class. We were transfixed by the writing.
I have his Collected Works which I bought in 1974, the reissued edition by Gordian Press. Very hard to find nowadays as I have discovered. Only Bierce’s “Devils’ Dictionary” is widely available.
To this day the volume “Can Such Things Be?” is difficult to read late at night when one is alone. “The Damned Thing” is especially hair-raising.
The collected works of Ambrose Bierce Vol 1 (Free on Kindle)
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II
Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs (Library of America)
“He Walked Around the Horses”
A quick sample from DD:
Christian, n. -- One who believes the New Testament is a Divinely-inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
AH, you are in for a treat!
Chicamauga is very disturbing reading. Only a veteran could have had either the imagination or the right to write it. And he was there. I quote from Ambrose Bierce's Civil War - in "A Little of Chicamauga" he writes:
There was sharp fighting all along and all day, for the forest was so dense that the hostile lines came almost into contact before fighting was possible. One instance was particularly horrible. After some hours of close engagement my brigade, with foul pieces and exhausted cartridge boxes, was relieved and withdrawn to the road to protect several batteries of artillery - probaly two dozen pieces - which commanded an open field in the rear of our line. Before our weary and virtually disarmed man had actually reached the guns the line in front gave way, fell back behind the guns and went on, the Lord knows whither. A moment later the field was gray with Confederates in pursuit. Then the guns opened fire with grape and canister and for perhaps five minutes - it seemed an hour - nothing could be heard but the infernal din of their discharge and nothing seen through the smoke but a great ascension of dust from the smitten soil. When all was over, and the dust cloud had lifted, the spectacle was too dreadful to describe. The Confederates were still there - all of them, it seemed - some almost under the muzzles of the guns. But not a man of all these brave fellows was on his feet, and so thickly were all covered with dust that they looked as if they had been reclothed in yellow.
"We bury our dead," said a gunner grimly, though doubtless all were afterward dug out, for some were partly alive.
Whatever else, the guy could write.
My great-great. . .grand dad was at a number of those battles. Tough as nails, a farmer from Nebraska.
Very dreadful.
I was reading War & Peace (but I kind of gave up on it, but I might go back to it, but I don’t see what’s so great about it, sorry!), some of the battle scenes are pretty intense. There always seems to be so much confusion.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. - Ambrose Bierce
One of my favorite writers. His Civil War stories are excellent. Most people know his “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” through the French film shown on Twilight Zone.
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