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"I mock thee not, though I by thee am mockéd.
Thou call'st me madman, but I call thee blockhead"
(William Blake) [l]
It has been written of Bierce that "he never developed a system of thought, and he was capable of changing his attitudes with great facility from idealism to cynicism, from philanthropy to misanthropy" [2] while on politics specifically, that "he left his thoughts incomplete because he did not have an audience for them. There was nothing to stimulate him logically to arrange his ideas". [3] Not only do these claims presuppose the efficacy of ordered thinking for the construction of a coherent outlook, but they appear to advocate the necessity of erecting a rostrum on which an explicit stance must be taken. Conversely, it need not be true that a satirist must necessarily follow a purely negative direction in attacking the creations of others, anymore than a politician should simply oppose, but as indicated above, for all he shared that man's ardent dislike of the railroad barons, ostensibly apolitical Devil was not in the Kearney mould. Sand, not sand, was his lot, not rot, and the nearest he came to a treestump was slithering around its roots.
In 1887 Bierce was asked by a young Randolph Hearst to join the staff of his new San Francisco Examiner, along with a wealth of creative genius including Stephen Crane and Jack London. [4] Hearst, something of a rebel against the world of his wealthy father and a university drop-out, was toying with journalism partly as a front for his political ambitions, partly, it seemed, for his own amusement. Bierce, unemployed and not too aware of, or concerned for, Hearst's embryonic motives for power, accepted the offer with its freedom from previous editorial responsibilities and opportunities to spill venom at will. The devil has all the best tunes and the Examiner became a best seller with attacks on public figures the happy domain for the desultory pen of "Bitter Bierce". The Southern Pacific railroad was by now a popular target and shame was heaped upon the corrupt Sacramento legislators for their tenacity along those lines.
O'Connor comes closer to pin-pointing the disorderly nature of Bierce's stance at that time and recounting a later embarrassment at some of his earlier writings noted that "the role of merciless critic, of the professional cynic, the hired moralist may have come naturally to him, but he was also conscious in retrospect that there had been something slightly meretricious in his performance". [5] However, as far as the continuing definitions were concerned, and it should be remembered that Bierce still chose to collate these towards the end of his life, [6] there was not the same degree of ephemerality that apparently existed in his "Prattle" columns. Neither was the distance of promiscuous San Francisco from Washington D.C. and Mammon's New York quite such a wide one. Accusations of provincialism would be misplaced.
Pre-dating the Kennedys, Erin had come across with the shamrock, a reminder of the importance of immigration and links with Europe more than a xenophobic dig, but also definitions which run counter to the ideals of America as some prosperous brave new world which had been able to sever connections with the vagaries of the old. Serpent's home, Hades, a part of which, the Elysian Fields "have since been removed to Paris", was pandemonium whose demons have mostly "escaped into politics and finance". The conflation of "governing" and "governed" in the republic (1 & 2) reveals again the universality of Bierce's contempt for what he saw as the illusion of democracy and is further explained by god of the underworld in his plutocracy. Politics (1 & 2) was a crime for the selfish but it is said that it takes one to know one and if Serpent was now a well-paid satirist shaking apples in hiss employer's own garden, hiss cousin the politician was a not too dissimilarly slithery customer.
By way of introduction, its inventor rewrites the Declaration of Independence with the kind of twists in language which are now familiar and further contorted in the name of imaginary liberty, freedom and equality. Government, (monarchical or otherwise), aristocracy, now, one suspects unhappily for Devil, and for different reasons, for Bierce, was"obsolete". The opposition fulfills its role as one of the checks and balances built into the American system for limited government, but even though "this worm of the dust" can have it stuffed in perpetuity and nailed to its seats, the "government of the people, by the people, for the people" of Ghargaroo will crumble when the epidermal condition of their ruling party clashes with the interests of raising national revenue. Had the king's study of "the science of government" been modelled more closely on the American system he might have avoided any legislation being passed by writing a two-thirds majority ruling into Article 1, section 7, paragraph 2 of his constitution.
Also, had Bierce reread his little story he might have noticed a certain discrepancy between standing and sitting as a means of recording votes, but his grasp of the democratic system, notwithstanding hiss seat in the House of Representatives helping to make up a quorum, was not quite the same as that outlined in the Federalist Papers. The vote was instrumental in exercising the choice of an elector in favour of the choice of an electioneer, who when elected, would discharge himself - or not - accordingly. The simplicity of the ballot was offset by the riddle of "who elects our leaders" and this has not only continued to baffle supporters of proportional representation, but is central to many of the conundrums in the lexicon.
"In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections ..." are the rabble. Among other things, female suffrage is "the right of a woman to vote as some man tells her", while on the other side of the coin, incivism is a curious crime which might amount to not caring to vote as both sides are going to levy tax anyway. The plebiscite is popular and the recount just as useful, but if one is honest the qualification may smack slightly of nepotism. The first course of action in the devil's political kitchen is then the primary, along with the opportunity to nominate a nominee. The word candidate has a fascinating etymology, "originally signifying white" (black), but campaign gifts of "taffy" cannot prevent him from being brought into disrepute. The incumbent has a special place amongst those who gull the multitude whilst the administration affords special protection for the president (2).
The basis of limited government in the American political system consists of three main bodies, the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. As Levine and Cornwell illustrated, "one branch checks the other so hopefully none of them predominates for vely long over the other" [7] and the success of this theory under the longest surviving constitution they put down largely to its ability in counteracting those personal interests of pressure groups and individual ambitions as foreseen by the federalist founding fathers. Where The Dictionary illuminates the latter negative aspects as being capable of success it might be argued that this only the more condones the former cautionary safeguards as essential to democracy. On the more unforeseen areas, Levine and Cornell wrote that "because the Constitution is in part ambiguous and omits much ... it has acquired layers of tradition and precedent, which themselves become integral parts of the total political system". [8] The attempted explanation by the "Terrestrian" to the "Lunarian" under executive, of the various bodies constituting the American political system, plays on the distance between theory and practice which had inevitably appeared in the first hundred years of its existence. It has doubtless already taken "five hundred lawyers in three volumes each" to unpack the contradictions involved in restraint and precedent, but since brevity is the soul of lexicography, it must suffice here to examine the key examples of wit and definition as they are used to expose the ambiguities.
The legislator, it will be recalled, juggled with various 'capitalist' definitions which point to self-seeking ambition, that "overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies ..." which is presumably where Bierce the journalist and Serpent, for whom "to reign is worth ambition, though in Hell", [9] can be of assistance. In contradiction to the definition for LEGISLATOR, the congress doesn't make laws, whilst the senate provides a slightly more elevated role for the senator and something to aim at for the governor. The "nonsensus" of public (1 & 2) opinion on "proposed legislation" might be put to a referendum, then passed by the "hypnotic suggestion" of persuasion - or sorcery.
All the political crew, they were honorable men, were indeed in danger of spending an eternity in the flaming Dictionary, including the representative (1 & 2) and the president (1) living in expensive but ramshackle accommodation. Did the author say all? One James Buchanan was to avoid going down in posterity (2). His presidency had begun in 1857 with an unfortunate involvement in the Dred Scott case and ended four years later with the Democrat President failing to avert secession in the year preceding Lincoln's inauguration. [10] For all his ineptitudes he appeared "at the Judgment Seat ..." where "... the Recording Angel ran his finger down the index to the Book of Doom and read off the name: 'James Buchanan, O.P.F.'" and the "Oncommonly phaultless filanthropist" (functionary), consequently evaded Serpent's hospitality.
Meanwhile the throwing of political parties to the infernal winds continued unabated, the fanning of which being after all a privilege enshrined in the First Amendment whereby even the asthmatic might be permitted a little gratuitous respiration. On one side of the party divide the fauna excluded chivalry, on the other the republican had special loyalty to the General who had been Bierce's supreme commander at Chattanooga [11] and the definition, for all its punning on his name, could not disguise any sympathy Bierce had entertained in his youth for the preservation of the Union as the only hope for its citizens, black or otherwise. However, nostalgia would have been as useless to hiss work as it would to a political party and, as a lesser General, "McComb", put it with such dextrality, one couldn't afford not the be right.
Reversible was the radicalism "of today", for one never knew when one might flop down next to a conservative adherent in league with the demagogue. A whiff of Carlylean grapeshot was being prepared, no doubt to fire at, amongst others, the latterday leveler. The upshot of the post-bellum era in terms of political realignment was to find a climax in the 1890's. The defiant mobility of the populist paradoxically rendered problematic any professed attempt at lexical circumscription, for as Hofstadter wrote:
... the conclusion that it was the West, the frontier spirit,
that produced American democracy, and that Populism was the
logical product of this spirit, is a deceptive inheritance
from the Turnerian school. The decisive role played by the
South in Populism suggests instantly the limitations of this
view. Terms that are superficially appealing when applied to
Kansas become meaningless when applied to Georgia. Southern
Populism, which could hardly have been close to the frontier
spirit, was at least as strong as the Western brand and
contained the more radical wing of the agrarian revolt of the
nineties. [12]
Ever the geographer, Serpent recalled the visit of Aeneas and Sibyl to his nether world and rubbed soil into the wounds of the agrarian. 1896 had seen the narrow defeat of arch Populist William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election (46.7% of the popular vote, 39.3% of the electoral vote). [13] A parallel but more elitist movement had arisen which challenged the broad base of the Populists, an outgrowth from the Mugwumps. Indeed, much of the Mugwump philosophy, notably a suspicion of the working classes and hatred of corporate finance seems to come through in The Dictionary. The trust was a common enemy though its definition as " ... composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies" would hardly tally with the Populist one. It is hardly surprising then that, for all berating by "the busted man" of the trusts and Hearst's support for his electioneering, the self-appointed colonel [14] in the Spanish war, W.J. Bryan, should have been boosted back to earth by Serpent's cutting of the safety-clutch. The zenith of this national movement had been reached, as in the South where it originated, and in the words of W.J. Cash, "having swung up to the point of this Populist outbreak, it was to fall back - dead? Not altogether dead, but reduced to essential quiescence for a long while to come". [15]
Another crash on Wall Street in 1894, had produced a wave of depression which again reached California, [16] but with the frontier now up against the Pacific there was no longer the possibility of escape. The less than respectable Californians were indeed caught between the proverbials. The Examiner continued to campaign against the villains of the peace, notably the "Railrogues", headed enthusiastically by Bierce's acid pen and fully supported by Hearst. They ruthlessly hunted down Collis Huntingdon, the arch villain, making journalistic capital of an attempted bribe from that philanthropist and of restitution from his late colleague, Senator Leyland $tanford' of the university of that name. It was scarifaction indeed and the epitaph under loss celebrated the victory in the courts which eventually forced the insolvent robber (l)-baron to agree a speedier repayment of Southern Pacific debts. [17]
It has been suggested that in another age Bierce might have become a socialist for, as well as dislike of the trusts and railroads, he at one time or another advocated the abolition of private ownership of land and the introduction of an inheritance tax and work programmes during recession. [18] A curiously Marxist discourse was provided by the labor of both centaur and caterpillar. Bierce's struggle with prejudice might at times lay him open to accusations of being patronizing, as perhaps with the Chinaman, (whom Kearney had wished to see dynamited), [19] but all would be well so long as there was a healthy appetite amongst the collectors of rent.
However, suspicion of organised movements and contempt, ostensible or real, for the masses, ensured that Bierce's reactionary brand of conservatism was not too radically compromised. The rebel attempted to heat up a revolution (1 & 2), but only managed an insurrection. If the agitator had success against the worms, Serpent was content to cart off the apples to his employer's press. Herculean might be the task of defending the implacable creature from further accusations of hypocrisy, not least over that root of all evil, money, of which the 'Hearstling' hireling was in no short supply. So, by way of relaxation it is to more remunerative branches that this hand of mine must reach.
Finance, the second of the areas into which PANDEMONIUM's demons had fled, could be advantageous, not least when coupled to the resources of California. Unlike the climate however, their distribution was not in abundance. A commodity not always in as plentiful supply for the asthmatic as for the destitute was air, failing which those afflicted by hunger could always try "dieting". The resident of a hovel can at least join Hamlet as "king of infinite space" [20] for when all was said and done privation is just fine, and the more abject the better. Quantity on the other hand is also welcome for the hungry and benevolence is on hand from publicity-seeking relatives, ready to give the "dumb" ingrate a promise and a bit of advice, providing "one" keeps one's distance. Man shall not live by diamond alone for it is worthless "to a beggar in place of bread" unless it should adorn a ring for a J. Pierpoint Morganatic marriage. A bed-quilt, can become productive though if such recompense meets with ingratitude the dependent beggar (1 & 2) can resort to beggary, that is, beg for some bread to take to hell and "um - toast".
The revenue system was iniquitous for it might spell ruin (1) for millionaires, and allegiance (1) might leave one houseless rather than a host, unless it is possible for the defaulter to make a regular deposit. The Stygian dammers were more generous to the creditor (1 & 2), if, that is, one could remember the address for forgetfulness was "bestowed" by Serpent's enemy upon the "worthy" debtor. It might be debatable whether or not one should pay too close attention to one whose idea of economy is so directly allied to liquidity, but all may not be what it seems.
Proudhon's contention that property (1 & 2), "c'est le vol" is contradicted neither by "the play" of "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" under income, nor by other entries in The Dictionary, where to embezzle is laudable and a possession (1) one of the algebraic equations common to definitions on this theme, (see commerce and plunder 1 & 2) and what is more, an encumbrance. The merchant meanwhile uses dishonesty in his pursuit of the dollar and the corporation which predates limited liability is elsewhere prefixed by in and Pluto's owe ("it meant 'own'") dis, to drive home the point.
Serpent raises head only briefly on contemporary national economic issues, notably the Panama Canal, for the use of which isthmus the United States agreed to pay $10 million to Panama with annual payments of $250,000 from 1913 onwards. He also contributed his four penn'orth to the "honest dollar" crusade of the monometallist and gold-bug. However, around another long-running controversy he was at least prepared to wrap his coils. Hofstadter's portrayal of the "typical Mugwump" again fits Bierce closely:
... a conservative in his economic and political views, He disdained the most unscrupulous of the new men of wealth, as he did the opportunistic, boodling, tariff-mongering Politicians who served them. But the most serious abuses of the unfolding economic order of the Gilded Age he either resolutely ignored or accepted complacently as an inevitable result of the struggle for existence or the improvidence and laziness of the masses. As a rule, he was dogmatically committed to the prevailing theoretical economics of laissez faire. His economic program did not go much beyond tariff reform and sound money - both principles more easily acceptable to a group whose wealth was based more upon mercantile activities and the professions than upon manufacturing and new enterprises - and his political program rested upon the foundations of honest and efficient government and civil-service reform. He was a 'liberal' in the classic sense. Tariff reform, he thought, would be the sovereign remedy for the huge business corporations that were arising. His pre-eminent journalist and philosopher was E.L.Godkin, the honorable old free-trading editor of the Nation and the New York Evening Post. His favourite statesman was Grover Cleveland, who described the tariff as 'the mother of trusts'. He imagined that most of the economic ills that were remediable at all could be remedied by free trade, just as he believed that the essence of government lay in honest dealing by honest and competent men. [21]
The tariff had been imposed during the Civil War, raising average duties from 18 to 40 per cent where they were to stay, more or less, until near the end of the century. The election of Democrat Cleveland in 1884 brought the question of reform into the open but jumping on the bandwagon, the Republicans, elected in 1888, passed the McKinley bill which, with its mélange of protection and duties, further exacerbated the situation nationwide, giving rise to the Populist revolt and election of Bryan. [22] Attention given to these issues by Bierce in definitions for importer, harbor, and port. The one-time place of work for both Melville and Hawthorne, the custom house, is a seat of villainy when free-trade is encumbered by protection. Bierce appears opposed to such interference but "Edan Smith's" poem on the tariff itself deserves close examination for the light it sheds upon the lexicographer's overall approach to a wider field. Annexation of Hell as "a sovereign Southern State" sees the "Enemy of Human Souls" subjected to a duty on coal and as a result his monopoly is threatened. Apart from "statesmen", notably "the Republicans" and "Democrats" whom "two belligerents embraced", competition now comes from "the public press", "the bar", the doctors" and "the preachers", in fact all those institutions which, providing at least some of them contained women, constituted all Bierce's favourite bêtes noires. Remote was a meritocracy, either because the professional was inconsiderate or because materialistic mankind was dismissible with impunity.
The final branch of government, justice, was given a familiar grilling. If possession (2) was "the whole of the law", albeit portable (1 & 2), then evidence for this universality must be presented, however inadmissible it may turn out. The trial existed to "record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors" and it was "necessary to supply a contrast in the person of one who is called the defendant". The portmanteau conflation of err and mine in ermine highlights two aspects of the system, incompetence and acquisitiveness, which Bierce himself saw fit to denigrate. Defeat for Chris Buckley, a Democrat boss who had assisted in the senior Hearst's election over a proposed city charter, was one of the feathers in the Examiner's cap and the judge is given due credit. [23]
However, the quill was mightier when it was being brandished. To be impartial was to be selfless, for following the Californian sun was but the shadow of a rusty sword. The barrister was "one of the ten thousand varieties of the genus lawyer ... " whose opponent was a pettifogger. Incompetence lay with the attorney and the magistrate. Being lawful, on the other scale, was in keeping (with) the common-law, yet it might take more than jurisprudence to keep one inside this snake-skinner's puzzle.
Presumably from the 'Puntateuch' of "The Unauthorized Version", it is learned that the six days of Creation were of such "unusualness" that they led to God being placed under arrest on the sabbath, that is, "caught criming without the money to satisfy the" not affording the police help with their enquiries, nor the reader of the prurient journal. Henceforth Satan, duped God into giving man enough rope, so Adam went unto Cupid in forma pauperis and "sued for Eve's favour", but the plaintiff came and went as God had made him, the injury being skin-deep, yet the litigant had to relinquish even that if he wasn't to lose another rib. The first parents were under oath to remain immaculate and impeccable respectively but then the female did make a concession and tasted of the forbidden apple the "idiot" Adam did follow, having no recourse but to deny being at fault and point to the real culprit. His uxoriousness at this infralapsarian stage was pitiful yet "the truth is, Adam had the" symbolic "colic" of compunction. Seeing that their was most painful to the man from the Police Gazette they did reach for a fig-leaf and saw that it was good. "No garden of sweets" was the prison (2) to which they were banished, no leisure neither, no nor reparation and not no repentance (1 & 2) whatsoever, no sir.
Should such erudition not this time meet with forgiveness and the fable not invoke the generous to pardon the penitent then mercy is not strained. It is clear from these examples that Bierce's interpretation of legalistic nomenclature might fit readily into those other areas of language in which signification is assessed according to which side of the divide - in this case the bar - one is standing. However, such divides are never simplified by Serpent as separating purely direct opposites. The armies in the Civil War faced each other across a continent and were both subject to the same definitions, (eg recruit), yet there were other lines dividing them all, as for example, soldiers from politicians, blacks (whites) from whites (blacks). The Democrats and Republicans were kept apart during purification, the rich and poor divided by acquaintance, yet across these was drawn a non-class, non party-political demarcation between the honest and the rascals. Sometimes the boundary lines were not too distinct whilst in matters of law they did indeed form puzzling "meshes" in which were entangled not only such problematical devices inherent in the judicial system, for example, representation and classification, but also the old chestnut prejudice, that "vagrant opinion" which the lexicographer tried so hard not to abet.
The pun on dice, accurately defines the area of representation whereby an accomplice (2) may have to "lie", but the concluding quip reveals a mistrust of a system which produced verdicts against which Bierce felt bound to appeal, (with another pun on "box") It was a safe bet that "the Kalloch jury will disagree" on trying that successor to Kearney as head of the Workingmen's Party, [24] whereas the pre - O.J.Simpson era was already prepared to acquit. Bierce would take visitors to see the scene of the latest murder, and at one time had himself to be restrained from using his Colt '45 on an ungrateful victim of his journalistic attacks and so joining his elder son among the ranks of murderer. [25] Nevertheless, the father was generally disturbed by urban violence, whether perpetrated by political militants or social criminals and being arrayed was generally too good for them.
Equally impressive was the machinery available to counter transgressions. A detective was as late as victims of homicide, the classification of which into four categories is only of limited interest. Punishment was out of date and preposterous the idea that the sixth commandment (from Exodus) was criminal, especially when a character reference was producible, or financial constraints made amnesty desirable. The jury might be "fixed" to return verdicts of innocence or guilt, but the distinction is merely a technicality when the client in the former has an alibi and in the latter merely failed to cover his tracks. The felon was one of the "aristocracy of crime" which included Carlyle's "captains of industry", as well as "Kings of finance" and "railway magnates" who on meeting misdemeanors would look down their . On the other side of the boundary* was a quasi-etymological definition for "Termini" to illustrate "how the unconscious hoodlum and the gentle ignoramus come to talk the learned languages", and a visit to the courts is as good a way as any to start. Bierce's marriage (2) had deteriorated and he became estranged from his wife around 1888, living the rest of his life in separation and communicating with regular payments only through intermediaries. [26] He did not sue for divorce (1 & 2) but agreed to ejection a mensa et thoro. Perhaps he feared his funds would be sequestrated, an estoppel put on the proceedings or even that the decree absolute would be redefined as habeas corpus (1 & 2)!
With one son dead to suicide and the other coming to stay with his father, there was no need for dad to resort to abduction (1 & 2) or retaliation of any kind. For "Joel Spate Woop's poetic demon there was to be no respite, only a following in the footprints of Longfellow's Angels to where "Lives of Oakland girls remind us / We can't make our lives as fine". [27]
Andrew Graham, Keele University
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