Witty ALS: “I have only one virtue, and its name is not self-denial”

An Advertisement for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition

Ambrose Bierce’s macabre stories reflect the adventure and mystery of his turbulent life. A Civil War veteran, Bierce settled in San Francisco where his satirical and scathing observations soon appeared in several newspapers including, beginning in 1887, the influential William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. During the next several decades, Bierce became one of the leading journalists of his time writing for various Hearst publications. As such, one of his most notable achievements was bringing public scrutiny to bear on the powerful railroad interests then dominating California and federal politics. However, Bierce was also popular for his “Cynic’s Dictionary” column in The Examiner, a reincarnation of his “Devil’s Dictionary” column previously published in California periodicals in which Bierce offered satirical definitions for commonplace words. In 1906, Doubleday published the first volume of Bierce’s dictionary, letters A-L and the second installment, including definitions from M to Z, was published in his Collected Works in 1911.

Our letter was written after Bierce returned to Washington following a visit to California in the spring of 1910, during which he famously drank an immense amount of alcohol with Jack London at the Bohemian Club’s summer camp. Back in Washington, he engaged in “a series of petty quarrels with old associates at the Army-Navy Club [where he penned our letter] and Bierce was beginning to feel like one of his own ghosts, trapped between two worlds a continent apart,” (Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company, Morris). He visited California one last time in June 1912.

“The Exposition” is a reference to the Panama–Pacific International Exposition world’s fair which would be held in San Francisco from February through December 1915 intended to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal and the city’s rebirth after the devastating 1906 earthquake. The exposition’s sole survivor, the Palace of Fine Arts, still stands in San Francisco’s Marina District.

Bierce’s literary legacy is somewhat overshadowed by the mysterious circumstances of his demise. En route from Washington, D.C. to California via the Panama Canal, Bierce, by October 1913, was in Mexico searching for the notorious Francisco “Pancho” Villa and his rebel band; it was a journey from which he never returned, and his fate remains the final mystery in a colorful career. Some experts suggest that he may have committed suicide in the Grand Canyon.

Not published in The Letters of Ambrose Bierce edited by Pope. Light age toning and in very good condition.