Large Fierce Mammal

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce in a portrait by J. H. E. Partington. Speaking for myself, I will not pose next to a skull I didn't harvest personally. Nobody knows Bierce's feelings on that.

On 7 October 2010 I published here my article concerned the curious life and end thereto of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Tonight I’ll speak to another literary legend with his own dark baggage – Ambrose Bierce.

Born 24 June 1842, Bierce was a prolific journalist and writer in such genres as the history of the American Civil War, in which he served and was wounded, as well as poetry, satire, and horror. He was a man of his times, and I personally enjoy the tone and style of his work, not least because of his delightful choice of titles including The Fiend’s Delight (his first book consisting of a collection of his articles, published in 1873) and The Devil’s Dictionary first published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic’s Workbook.

Bierce disappeared without a trace after what is alleged to have been his last known correspondence dated 26 December 1913, sent to Blanche Partington who was an intimate friend, held by many Bierce scholars to have been his lover. It’s said to have stated, in part, “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”

The story goes that he left in October of that year to tour some of the old Civil War battlefields he had known, and along the way crossed into Mexico where he decided to join Pancho Villa’s army as an observer. Much controversy surrounds what little is known, compounded by oral traditions that he was executed by firing squad in a church yard, allegations that his letter to Ms. Partington has never seen the light of day and was described by one chronicler as having been destroyed, and the fact that Bierce’s friend and biographer Walter Neale has publicly expressed his reasons for doubting that he would have ever gone to Mexico in the first place, for reasons both medical and political.

Whatever happened to Ambrose Bierce, a famous bit of prose from his pen was published in the San Francisco Examiner on 14 October 1888, and later included in his Can Such Things Be in 1893. It ironically – or perhaps not – tells the tale of a man’s complete and utter disappearance, and since has taken on the air of what I’ll grudgingly call urban legend. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you An Unfinished Race.

James Burne Worson was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington, Warwickshire, England.  He had a little shop in one of the by-ways leading off the road to Warwick.  In his humble sphere he was esteemed an honest man, although like many of his class in English towns he was somewhat addicted to drink.  When in liquor he would make foolish wagers.  On one of these too frequent occasions he was boasting of his prowess as a pedestrian and athlete, and the outcome was a match against nature.  For a stake of one sovereign he undertook to run all the way to Coventry and back, a distance of something more than forty miles.  This was on the 3d day of September in 1873.  He set out at once, the man with whom he had made the bet – whose name is not remembered – accompanied by Barham Wise, a linen draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer, I think, following in a light cart or wagon.For several miles Worson went on very well, at an easy gait, without apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them.  The three men in the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly “chaff” or encouragement, as the spirit moved them.  Suddenly – in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from them, and with their eyes full upon him – the man seemed to stumble, pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible cry and vanished!  He did not fall to the earth – he vanished before touching it.  No trace of him was ever discovered.

After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless irresolution, the three men returned to Leamington , told their astonishing story and were afterward taken into custody.  But they were of good standing, had always been considered truthful, were sober at the time of the occurrence, and nothing ever transpired to discredit their sworn account of their extraordinary adventure, concerning the truth of which, nevertheless, public opinion was divided, throughout the United Kingdom.  If they had something to conceal, their choice of means is certainly one of the most amazing ever made by sane human beings.