Oakley Hall - Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

“His tendency to make improvements is merely a natural instinct inherited from his public-spirited ancestor, the man who dug the post-holes on Mount Calvary.”

He also showed me a newspaper clipping he had saved, a denunciation of Crocker by a lawyer with whom the Railroad magnate had quarreled:

“I will show the world how an intelligent patron of the arts and literature can be manufactured by the process of wealth out of a peddler of needles and pins. I will visit Europe until I can ornament my ungrammatical English with a fringe of mispronounced French. I will wear a diamond as big as the headlight of one of my locomotives; and my adipose tissue shall increase with my pecuniary gains until my stomach is as large as my arrogance, and I shall strut along the corridors of the Palace Hotel a living, breathing, waddling monument of the triumph of vulgarity, viciousness and dishonesty.”

“You can’t hope to equal that for invective,” Bierce said. “Just leave the vituperations to others,” he said, and that is what I had tried to do:

Charles Crocker of the Big Four was the superintendent of construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. He accomplished wonders with the thousands of coolies, “Crocker’s Pets,” who made up the bulk of his construction crews, and were released to unemployment when the Railroad was completed.

Unemployed himself, he traveled abroad to purchase furnishings and art objects for his Nob Hill mansion, to serve which he financed a cable car line up California Street. The Crocker palace cost in the vicinity of a million and a half dollars to build. The architectural style is called “Early Renaissance.” Its 172-ft. facade is a masterpiece of carpenters’ scrollwork, and its 76-ft. tower commands a magnificent view of the City.

Although he could have extended his domain to almost any corner of the country that he desired, he was unable to purchase the northeast corner of the block of Nob Hill bounded by Jones, California, Taylor and Sacramento Streets. He had acquired all the other lots that made up the block for his mansion, but a stubborn German undertaker, Nicholas Yung, would not sell his corner.

Crocker consequently had constructed on three sides of the Yung property a fence 40 feet high, closing off Yung’s sunlight and views except for a narrow frontage on Sacramento Street. Eventually Yung moved his house to another part of the City but would not release the property, so Crocker left the fence standing.

The spite-fence has become one of the landmarks of Nob Hill and has come to signify the arrogance of the rich in general and the Railroad millionaires in particular.

Denis Kearney’s Workingman’s Party was viewed by Nob Hill as anarchistic. Kearney’s Irishmen often gathered at the spite-fence as the focus for their rage against the Railroad moguls who had amassed fabulous wealth and who had discharged an army of Chinese after the completion of the Railroad, contributing to the post-Railroad depression and to general unemployment. It is claimed that Crocker had his tower fitted with slots for pouring boiling lead down on the heads of besieging Communists, but, although the Sandlotters’ rallies began at the spite-fence, the rioters usually drifted downhill to sack Chinatown. The hot-lead slots have so far not been put to use.

“That is adequate,” Bierce said. “Now go through and take out half the adverbs.”

“There are only three.”

“Remove two.”

Miss Penryn announced Mr. Beaumont McNair. Beau strode into the office, with his gold-leaf beard, his arrogant chin, his close-set eyes, his well fitted jacket and his affected manner of walking, as though testing the floor with the stretched-out toe of his gleaming boot before trusting his weight to it.

He halted, gazing at the chalk-white skull on Bierce’s desk. Bierce rose. I did also.

“Good morning, Mr. McNair.”

“Good morning, Mr. Bierce. Redmond,” Beau said, with a dip of his head in my direction.

I produced a chair and he seated himself with some style, this young man whose pleasure it was to draw cunts on the bare bellies of whores and who was, in fact, obsessed with low women.

“There was an incident last night,” Beau said, chin up, eyes fixed on Bierce. “An intruder.”

Bierce glanced once at me but only nodded to Beau.

“Someone broke in,” Beau said. “Marvins pursued him but lost him. There was a window open.”

“The ghost,” Bierce said.

Beau looked startled.

“Mr. Buckle told us there was a permanent ghost.”

“Well, yes,” Beau said.

“This was when I was in conference with your mother?” Bierce asked. “If so, Mr. Redmond observed the ghost leaving the house. He thought it was you.”

Beau looked confused and irritated.

“Have the police been notified?”

Beau removed a linen handkerchief from his pocket and patted his forehead. “My mother thought you should be advised first.”

Bierce leaned back in his chair with his fingers knitted together over his vest. “Someone hates you, Mr. McNair.”

“I understand that. And I understand that you and my mother came to some meeting of the minds last night. She is prepared to meet your condition, Mr. Bierce. I am to inquire if you will come to us this evening and present your solution to these matters. She believes that you will require that others be on hand also.”

“I shall present you with a list. Tom, if you would write down these names for Mr. McNair.”

I did not much like taking orders in Beau’s presence, but I brought out notebook and pencil. Bierce dictated. I wrote. It was not the Elite Directory of San Francisco , but it was not entirely different.

With his list in hand. Beau McNair remained standing, scowling. “I must speak with Redmond,” he said.

“I’ll just take these to the typewriter,” Bierce said, flourishing a sheaf of papers. He left us there.

“I will ask your intentions towards Miss Brittain,” Beau said.

I still ached from last night’s frustrations. “My intentions are not intentions,” I said.

“That is very glib,” Beau said. “I say, I demand to know your intentions!”

“I am telling you I have no intentions. Miss Brittain is engaged to marry a man named Marshall Sloat.”

“Her mother is worried that you have formed an attachment to Miss Brittain. She does not wish any complications.”

His coat fit him so prettily it weighed on me. I said I didn’t consider that any of his business.

“I speak for Mrs. Brittain, and I will speak frankly. Miss Brittain belongs to a station in life to which you cannot aspire.”

I blew out my breath to keep calm. “I wish you would come down to the True Blue Democracy Club and explain your meaning,” I said.

His face was pinched and schoolmasterish. He looked at me as though I was being purposefully stupid. How I disliked him, Amelia’s half brother.

“We call folks who live on Nob Hill ‘instant Aristocrats,’ ” I said. “Is that what you mean? For instance, your putative father went to the Washoe and found a bonanza, while mine found nothing but borrascas. Is that the difference?” Mine, in fact, had been euchred by his.

I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t, “Aristocrats go to whores and draw all over their bellies. Is that the difference?”

His face turned a dangerous red. “ How dare you? ”

“You don’t want to try tricks like that here,” I said. “San Francisco whores are tough .”

He stared at me with his mouth open. “ Damn you!”

“No, damn you! ” I said. “For the spoiled presumptuous twit you are.” I was aware of pushing this into something from which I could not withdraw, which pleased me.