While on this muddled,
worm-eaten continent we still keep reading the works of Ernest Hemingway, that
wind egg filled with ego, few Europeans have ever heard of an American author
of far greater writing skills called Ambrose Bierce. That is a tremendous pity,
for Bierce (1842 – 1913?) is one of the most fascinating characters to come
from the other side of the Atlantic. From birth to death his life is a long
string of anecdotes. He was the 10th of 13 children, all of whom
were baptised with a first name starting ‘A’ (imagine the scene if a love letter
arrived addressed to A. Bierce!) He was a fine soldier, a splendid journalist,
a sometime entrepreneur, and – most praiseworthy of all - an implacable foe of
corruption.
Once his
newspaper send him to Washington to investigate a scandalous bill which the
railroad companies wished to pass in the deepest secret, so that they wouldn’t
have to pay back a cent of a 130 million government loan. Fearful that Bierce’s
denunciation would torpedo the deal, a railroad magnate offered him a bribe not
to publish, with the words: ‘Name your price!’ Bierce answered: ‘My price is
130 million dollars. If I happen to be out of town, you can hand the money to
my friend the US Treasurer’.
To end it all in
style, Bierce went on a trip to Mexico in 1913 and was never heard of again. It
is still a complete mystery what happened to him. Hence my question mark behind
the year of his death up above.
As a writer,
Bierce possessed the grip of Richard Ford and the wit of Twain. His short
stories are gems and his journalism can still be read today, but my favourite
book of his remains ‘The Devil’s
Dictionary’, a satirical lexicon guaranteed to make you double up twice
over every page. Of the Golden Sauce, he has for instance the following to say:
Mayonnaise, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state
religion.
On moral
questions we find such beauties as:
Destiny, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure.
And in the realm
of statecraft we are treated to telling fairy tales like:
Cabbage, n. A familiar
kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. The cabbage is so called from
Cabagius, a prince who on ascending the throne issued a decree appointing a High
Council of Empire consisting of the members of his predecessor's Ministry and
the cabbages in the royal garden. When any of his Majesty's measures of state
policy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that several members
of the High Council had been beheaded, and his murmuring subjects were
appeased.
Which, incidentally, may well be the blueprint
for the oft announced but never yet realized Democratic Improvements in the
EU: a European Commission consisting of
Unelected Bureaucrats and a garden plot full of Brussels Sprouts. It will be an improvement...
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