Ambrose Bierce, b. 1842, author of The Devil’s Dictionary. Bierce was irreverent and cynical, but funny. Semicolon quotes from The Devil’s Dictionary.

Back in March, when I was on my “blog vacation”, I read a biography of Mr. Bierce, one that was recommended here, called Bitter Bierce. I borrowed the book through interlibrary loan from some obscure college library, hoping to read something about the life and mysterious disappearance and presumed death of Mr. Bierce, lexicographer, journalist and humorist. Instead, I got a quaint biographical/critical study of Bierce’s life, psychology and literary works by Professor C. Hartley Grattan, copyright 1929. The book was fascinating, not because it gave a great deal of illumination to the life and writings of Ambrose Bierce, but because it did give insight into what I presume was the prevailing attitude among the American intelligentsia circa 1929.

A few examples:

Mr. Gratten writes in some detail about Ambrose Bierce’s anti-female attitudes and statements, but the author finds it completely unnecessary to try to excuse or even explain such an antipathy on the part of Mr. Bierce toward half of the human race.

Mr. Grattan on government and the arts:

Certain it is that sweetness and light have often radiated from the courts of tyrants and usurpers; for thought for creative artists, rulers can do little directly beyond giving them the benefits of order and security and leaving them alone, for civilization they can do much. They can endow and defend a civilizing class. That is why I think of sending copies of this essay to the Russian ‘bosses’, to Signor Mussolini, and to Mr. Winston Churchill.

A pre-World War II sentiment if I ever heard one! Bring on the dictator with his order, security, sweetness, and light!

Mr. Grattan calls Bierce “old-fashioned” because Bierce held to strict moral standards. He calls Bierce’s diatribes opposing socialists and socialism “sloppy and inconsequential thinking.” (Perhaps they were; I haven’t read them.) Grattan equates Bierce’s support for “selective breeding” with advanced thinking. Then, Grattan proceeds to write about “the essential modernity of the ideas that Bierce evolved.” Morality and opposition to socialism are antiquated and out-dated; eugenics are advanced and modern. And Bierce is both old-fashioned and modern at the same time.

Mr. Grattan calls Ambrose Bierce a contradictory, enigmatic sort of person. Bierce’s contrariness must have affected Mr. Grattan’s writing. Of Ambrose Bierce I did learn one thing I didn’t know before:

Bierce was one of twelve children each having a name beginning with A: Abigail, Addison, Aurelius, Amelia, Ann, Augustus, Andrew, Almeda, Albert, and Ambrose. (Two died in infancy.)

From The Letters of Ambrose Bierce: “My father was a poor farmer and could give me no general education, but he had a good library and to his books I owe all that I have.”

Blaise Pascal, b. 1623 In 1656, while he was still in his early thirties, Pascal began collecting material for a book, Apology for the Christian Religion. He wrote down his thoughts “upon the first scrap paper that came to hand . . . a few words and very often parts of words only.” These fragments of thought became, after his death at age 39, the Pensees, edited by a group of monks who shared his Catholic faith. Some pensees:

“Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.”

“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous.”

“Misery induces despair, pride induces presumption. The Incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy which he required.”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Prince of Preachers, b. 1834.

Every Sunday evening Mrs. Spurgeon was accustomed to gather the children around the table, and as they read the Scripture, she would explain it to them verse by verse. Then she prayed, and her son declares that some of the words of her prayers her children never forgot. Once she said, “Now, Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance they perish, and my soul must bear swift witness against them at the day of judgement if they lay not hold of Christ.” That was not at all in the modern vein, but it was the arrow that reached the boy’s soul. “The thought of a mother bearing swift witness against me pierced my conscience and stirred my heart.” There was enough in him to cause his mother anxiety. His father recalled that his wife once said to him, speaking of their eldest son, “What a mercy that boy was converted when he was young.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Biography by W.Y. Fullerton

I would that my children had a mother like Susannah Wesley or Elizabeth Spurgeon, but God has given them me, and my prayers, poor and inconsistent as they are, must be enough. Finally, of course, it is God’s mercy and grace that must suffice.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, b. 1811. Harriet Beecher was one of eleven brothers and sisters, and she and her husband, professor Calvin Stowe had seven children of their own. In 1852, Harriet published her most famous book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Later, during their retirement years, the Stowes lived across the lawn from another famous author, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). During the time that the Stowe family and the Clemens family were neighbors in Hartford, Connecticutt, Mark Twain wrote his most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Laurence Michael Yep, b.1948. Mr. Yep writes mostly historical fiction for children and young adults. The books are usually set on the West Coast or in Asia and feature Asian or Asian American characters. I’ve read Dragonwings and Dragon’s Gate and enjoyed them very much. Laurence Yep also has a connection with Mark Twain. Two of Yep’s titles are The Mark Twain Murders and The Tom Sawyer Fires.

Dorothy L. Sayers, (b. June 13, 1893) “I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.”
Dorothy Sayers quotations.
Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy Sayers
Top Ten Mystery Writers
Biographical Sketch of Dorothy L. Sayers with a list of her published writings.
Dorothy L. Sayers’ Feminism by Susan Haack

I like Dorothy Sayers. She was something of a character. She was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford with a degree in Medieval and Modern languages. She had an illegitimate son, Anthony, when she was thirty years old, and although she felt she could not raise him herself, she entrusted him to the care of a cousin and supported him financially and by writing him letters. She later married a war hero, Arthur Fleming, who was in poor health, and she took care of him until his death. She taught herself old Italian and translated Dante’s Divine Comedy She also translated Song of Roland from the French..

“The only Christian work is good work, well done”

“I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction “from the woman’s point of view.” To such demands, one can only say, “Go away and don’t be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle.”

Dorothy Sayers was first of all a Christian, secondly a writer and a scholar, and her identity as a woman came in a distant third–or later.