St. Helena,
September 28,
1892.
My dear Blanche,
I have been waiting for a full hour of leisure to write you a letter, but I shall never get it, and so I'll write you anyhow. Come to think of it, there is nothing to say—nothing that needs be said, rather, for there is always so much that one would like to say to you, best and most patient of sayees.
I'm sending you and your father copies of my book. Not that I think you (either of you) will care for that sort of thing, but merely because your father is my co-sinner in making the book, and you in sitting by and diverting my mind from the proof-sheets of a part of it. Your part, therefore, in the work is the typographical errors. So you are in literature in spite of yourself.
I appreciate what you write of my girl. She is the best of girls to me, but God knoweth I'm not a proper person to direct her way of life. However, it will not be for long. A dear friend of mine—the widow of another dear friend—in London wants her, and means to come out here next spring and try to persuade me to let her have her—for a time at least. It is likely that I shall. My friend is wealthy, childless and devoted to both my children. I wish that in the meantime she (the girl) could have the advantage of association with you.
Please say to your father that I have his verses, which I promise myself pleasure in reading.
You appear to have given up your ambition to "write things." I'm sorry, for "lots" of reasons—not the least being the selfish one that I fear I shall be deprived of a reason for writing you long dull letters. Won't you play at writing things?
My (and Danziger's) book, "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter," is to be out next month. The Publisher—I like to write it with a reverent capital letter—is unprofessional enough to tell me that he regards it as the very best piece of English composition that he ever saw, and he means to make the world know it. Now let the great English classics hide their diminished heads and pale their ineffectual fires!
So you begin to suspect that books do not give you the truth of life and character. Well, that suspicion is the beginning of wisdom, and, so far as it goes, a preliminary qualification for writing—books. Men and women are certainly not what books represent them to be, nor what they represent—and sometimes believe—themselves to be. They are better, they are worse, and far more interesting.
With best regards to all your people, and in the hope that we may frequently hear from you, I am very sincerely your friend,Ambrose Bierce.