Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic :: CHAPTER XIII INTO THE RACING TIDE

CHAPTER XIII INTO THE RACING TIDE

“As the vine flourishes, and the grape empurples close up to the very walls and muzzles of cannoned Ehrenbreitstein; so do the sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its peril.”—Herman Melville: Pierre.

“Until I was twenty-five,” Melville once wrote to Hawthorne, “I had no development at all.” When the cable and anchor of the United States were all clear, and when he bounded ashore on his native soil, Melville was in his twenty-fifth year. “From my twenty-fifth year,” he wrote Hawthorne, “I date my life.”

His three years of wandering, crowded as they were with alienating experiences, had, of course, worked deep changes in him: changes more radical than in the dizzy whirl of strangely peopled adventures it was possible for him to gauge. In memory, the fitful fever of the past, deceitfully seems to strive not. But we delude ourselves when we fancy that it sleeps well. During his far driftings, Melville had clung reverently to thoughts of home, his imagination treacherously caressing those very scenes whose intimate contact had filled him with revulsion. “Do men ever hate the thing they love?” he asks in White-Jacket, perplexed at the paradox of this perpetual recoil. He was eternally looking both before and after, but never with the smug and genial after-dinner optimism of Rabbi Ben Ezra. The insufficient present was always poisoned, to him, by bitter margins of pining and regret. In headlong escape from his household gods he had been landed among South Sea islands that in retrospect he viewed as “authentic Edens.” Yet even in Paradise did he feel himself an exile, teaching old Marheyo to say “Home” and “Mother,” converting into sacred words the countersigns of a former Hell. He tells in White-Jacket, how, with the smell of tar in his nostrils, out of sight of land, with a stout ship under his feet, and snuffing the ocean air, in the silence and solitude of the deep, during the long night watches used to come thronging about his heart “holy home associations.” And he closes White-Jacket with the reflection that “Life’s a voyage that’s homeward-bound!” But he sailed with sealed orders.

Of Melville’s impressions upon his return he has left no record. During his three years of whaling and captivity among cannibals, and mutiny, and South Sea driftings, and adventures in the Navy, life at home had gone along in its regular necessary way; and the scenes of his youth, despite their transformation in his memory, lived on in solid fact unchanged. The identical trees in the Boston Common blotted out the same patterns against the New England stars; none of the streets had swerved from off their prim and angular respectability. His mother he found living in Lansingburg, just out from Albany, N. Y. There was the same starched calico smell to his sister’s dresses, the same clang-tint to his mother’s voice. Such was the calibre of his imagination, that he must have found life at Lansingburg unbelievably like he knew it must be, yet very different from what he was prepared to find.

His brothers must have first appeared intimate strangers to him. His elder brother, Gansevoort, had given up his hat and fur shop, was well established in law and had won a creditable name for himself in politics. His younger brother, Allan, was beginning a successful legal career, with his name emblazoned on a door at 10 Wall Street. Maria was, after all, a Gansevoort; she was not too proud to keep her brothers reminded that she had borne sons. Melville’s youngest brother, Tom, had sprung from boyhood into the self-conscious maturity of youth.

From vagabondage in Polynesia to the stern yoke of self-supporting citizenship was a dizzy transition. But Melville did not clear it at a bound. The very violence of the impact between the two antipodal types of experience for a time must have stunned Melville to their incompatibility. Tanned with sea-faring, exuberant in health, rosy with the after-glow of his proud companionship with Jack Chase, and the respect and affection he had won from his associates on board the United States, he was effulgent with amazing tales—the enviable hero of endless incredible adventures. His home-coming may well have been not only a staggering, but a joyous adventure. For he entered Lansingburg trailing clouds of glory. He was panoplied in romance; and though bodily he was in a suburb of Albany, his companion image was the distant adventurer he saw mirrored in the admiring and jealous imagination of his friends. With what melancholy—if any—he viewed this reflected image, and to what degree he was, Narcissus-wise, conscious of its irony, we do not know. But if Typee and Omoo be any index of his mood, he returned home happier and wholesomer than at any other period of his life. Before many years, unsolved problems of his youth were to reassert themselves, heightened in difficulty and in pertinacity. Yet for a time, at least, so it would appear, he reaped very substantial benefits from his escape beyond civilisation.

According to J. E. A. Smith, Melville was soon beset by his enthralled and wide-eyed friends to put his experiences into a book. Even if such a challenge had never been made, it is difficult to see how Melville could have escaped plunging into literature. For the hankering for letters had earlier stirred in Melville’s blood,—a hankering that he had before succumbed to, swathing a vacuity of experience in the grave-wrappings of rhetoric and prolixity. Now he was rich in matter; because of the very straitened circumstances of his family, he was faced again by the necessity of earning some money if he stayed at home; and in so far as we know, he was untempted to venture forth either as vagabond or efficiency expert.

Soon after his arrival home he must have settled down to composition. For the manuscript of Typee was bought in London by John Murray, by an agreement dated December, 1845.

At the time of the completion of Typee, Melville’s brother, Gansevoort, was starting for London as Secretary to the American Legation under Minister McLane. Gansevoort threw Typee in among his luggage, to try its luck among British publishers. Whether Typee had previously been refused in the United States has not yet transpired. In any event, John Murray bought the English rights to print a thousand copies of Typee—a purchase that cost him £100. Murray did not close the sale, however, until he was assured that Typee was a sober account of actual experiences. Typee appeared in two parts in Murray’s “Colonial and Home Library.” Part I appeared on February 26, 1846; Part II on April 1 of the same year.

Encouraged by the temerity of John Murray, Wiley and Putnam of New York bought the American rights for Typee. And by an agreement made in England, Typee appeared simultaneously in New York and London: in America under the title, Typee, a Peep at Polynesian Life During Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas. In 1849, Harper Brothers took over Typee, and issued it shorn of some of the passages the Missionaries had found most objectionable. Up to January 1, 1849, Wiley and Putnam had sold 6,392 copies of Typee: a sale upon which Melville gained $655.91. Up to April 29, 1851, 7,437 copies of Typee had been sold in England, netting Melville, if accounts surviving in Allan’s hand be correct, $708.40.

Under the date of April 3, 1846—two days after the appearance in England of Part II of Typee, Gansevoort wrote Melville the following letter—the last letter, it appears, he ever wrote:

“My Dear Herman:

“Herewith you have copy of the arrangement with Wiley & Putnam for the publication in the U. S. of your work on the Marquesas. The letter of W. & P. under date of Jan. 13th is the result of a previous understanding between Mr. Putnam and myself. As the correspondence speaks for itself, it is quite unnecessary to add any comment. By the steamer of to-morrow I send to your address several newspaper comments and critiques of your book. The one in the Sun was written by a gentleman who is very friendly to myself, and who may possibly for that reason have made it unusually eulogistic.

“Yours of Feb. 28 was rec’d a few days ago by the daily packet from Joshua Bates. I am happy to learn by it that the previous intelligence transmitted by me was ‘gratifying enough.’ I am glad that you continue busy, and on my next or the after that will venture to make some suggestions about your next book. In a former letter you informed me that Allan had sent you $100 home, the fruit of my collection. (I refer to the money sent at your request). It appears that this was not so, for Allan informs me that the $100 was part of the £90 s 10—making £100 which I sent out by the Jan. 2 Steamer. Allan seems to find it entirely too much trouble to send me the monthly accounts of receipts and disbursements. I have received no accounts from him later than up to Nov. 30th and consequently am in a state of almost entire ignorance as to what is transpiring at No. 10, Wall Street. This is very unthinking in him, for my thoughts are so much at home that much of my time is spent in disquieting apprehensions as to matters & things there. I continue to live within my income, but to do so am forced to live a life of daily self-denial. I do not find my health improved by the sedentary life I have to lead here. The climate is too damp & moist for me. I sometimes fear I am gradually breaking up. If it be so—let it be—God’s will be done. I have already seen about as much of London society as I care to see. It is becoming a toil to me to make the exertion necessary to dress to go out, and I am now leading a life really as quiet as your own in Lansingburg.—I think I am growing phlegmatic and cold. Man stirs me not, nor women either. My circulation is languid. My brain is dull. I neither seek to win pleasure or avoid pain. A degree of insensibility has been long stealing over me, & now seems completely established, which, to my understanding, is more akin to death than life. Selfishly speaking, I never valued life very much—it were impossible to value it less than I do now. The only personal desire I now have is to be out of debt. That desire waxes stronger within me as others fade. In consideration of the little egotism which my previous letters to you have contained, I hope that mother, brothers & sister will pardon this babbling about myself.

“Tom’s matter has not been forgotten. You say there is a subject, etc., etc., ‘on which I intended to write but will defer it.’ What do you allude to? I am careful to procure all the critical notices of Typee which appear & transmit them to you. The steamer which left Boston on the 1st inst. will bring me tidings from the U. S. as to the success of Typee there. I am, with love and kisses to all,

“Affectionately, Your brother,
“Gansevoort Melville.”

With this letter, Gansevoort enclosed fourteen lines from Act III, Scene I of Measure for Measure, beginning “Ah, but to die.” On May 12, he was dead. His countrymen celebrated his decease. The Wisconsin, a newspaper published in Milwaukee, for example, published, on July 1, a florid tribute to his memory, declaring him “dear to the people of the West.” “And though he died young in years,” the Wisconsin goes on to say, “for genius, thrilling eloquence and enlarged patriotism, he was known to the people from Maine to Louisiana.”

But already had Melville achieved a wider, if less beatified, reputation. The notice that Typee attracted extended considerably beyond either Maine or Louisiana. And its success was none the less brilliant because it was in part a succes de scandal. Christendom has progressed since 1846, and Typee has, for present-day readers, lost its charm of indelicacy. Yet, despite the violation of the proprieties of which Melville was accused, Longfellow records in his journal for July 29, 1846: “In the evening we finished the first volume of Typee, a curious and interesting book with glowing descriptions of life in the Marquesas.” There is no indication that even Longfellow found it discreet to omit any passages as he read Typee to his family before the fire. It is to be remembered, however, that in 1851 the Scarlet Letter was attacked as being nothing but a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basest taste: “Is the French era actually begun in our literature?” a shocked reviewer asked.

The appearance of Omoo on January 30, 1847, augmented Melville’s notoriety, and contributed to his fame. Both Typee and Omoo stirred up a whole regiment of critics, at home, in England and in France. France was patronising, of course, after the manner of the period; but France flattered Melville by the prolixity of her patronage. The interest of France in Melville was not a merely literary absorption, however. Melville had arrived at the Marquesas in the wake of Admiral Du Petit-Thouars; and at Tahiti Melville had been a prisoner on board the Reine Blanche. In England, Melville was flattered not only by vitriolic evangelistical damnation, and the uncritical flatter of Gansevoort’s friends, but even Blackwood’s, the most anti-American of British journals, said of Omoo: “Musing the other day over our matutinal hyson, the volume itself was laid before us, and we found ourselves in the society of Marquesan Melville, the Phoenix of modern voyages—springing, it would seem, from the mingled ashes of Captain Cook and Robinson Crusoe.” Writing of Typee, the insular John Bull said: “Since the joyous moment when we first read Robinson Crusoe and believed it, we have not met so bewitching a book as this narrative of Herman Melville’s.” The London Times descended to amiability and said: “That Mr. Melville will favour us with his further adventures in the South Seas, we have no doubt whatever. We shall expect them with impatience, and receive them with pleasure. He is a companion after our own hearts. His voice is pleasant, and we are sure that if we could see his face it would be a pleasant one.” While such pronouncements were no earnest of fame, they may have contributed somewhat to augment Melville’s royalties. And in Mardi—written before Melville’s secular critics began to assail him—Melville took a violent fling at his reviewers. “True critics,” he said, “are more rare than true poets. A great critic is a sultan among satraps; but pretenders are thick as ants striving to scale a palm after its aerial sweetness. Oh! that an eagle should be stabbed by a goose-quill!” Withal, when Melville wrote Mardi he had spent some reflection on the nature of Fame, and mocked at those who console themselves for the neglect of their contemporaries by bethinking themselves of the glorious harvest of bravos their ghosts will reap. And time, he saw, was an undertaker, not a resurrectionist: “He who on all hands passes for a cipher to-day, if at all remembered, will be sure to pass to-morrow for the same. For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living than of being underrated when dead.”

Noticed by reviewers, and encouraged by payments from his publishers, Melville began to look more hopefully at the world. In Clarel he later wrote: “The dagger-icicle draws blood; but give it sun.” He seemed at last to have stepped decoratively and profitably into his assigned niche in the cosmic order. It was delightful to rehearse outlived pleasures and hardships; and it was a lucrative delight: by writing, too, some men had achieved fame. And so, undeterred by the wail of the Preacher of Jerusalem, Melville settled to the multiplication of books. He would perpetuate his reveries—and he doubted not that sparkling wines would crown his cup. Then it was that the beckoning image of an ultimate earthly felicity swam over the beaded brim.

Melville had dedicated Typee to Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts. The Shaws and the Melvilles were friends of years’ standing. When a student at Amherst, Lemuel Shaw had been engaged to Melville’s aunt, Nancy. “To his death,” says Frederic Hathway Chase in his Lemuel Shaw, “Shaw carefully preserved two tender notes written in the delicate hand of his first betrothed, timidly referring to their immature plans for the future and her admiration and love for him. The untimely death of the young lady, unhappily cut short their youthful dreams, and not until he was thirty-seven years of age were Shaw’s affections again engaged. The intimacy between Shaw and the Melville family, however, continued after the young lady’s death.” Yet were the demands of Shaw’s affections not satisfied by his intimacy with the Melvilles or by the two love-letters among his precious belongings. He married twice; the first time in 1818 to Elizabeth Knapp; the second time in 1827 to Hope Savage. By each wife he had two children. By Elizabeth, John Oakes, who died in 1902; and Elizabeth, who married Melville. By Hope, was born to him Lemuel, who lived till 1884, and Samuel Savage, born in 1833 in the Shaw home at 49 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, where he lived till his death in 1915. Melville heartily detested his brothers-in-law.

On March 19, 1846, Melville wrote from Lansingburg to Chief Justice Shaw:

“My Dear Sir:

“Herewith you have one of the first bound copies of Typee I have been able to procure—the dedication is very simple, for the world would hardly have sympathised to the full extent of those feelings with which I regard my father’s friend and the constant friend of all his family.

“I hope that the perusal of this little narrative of mine will afford you some entertainment, even if it should not possess much other merit. Your knowing the author so well, will impart some interest to it.—I intended to have sent at the same time with this copies of Typee for each of my aunts, but have been disappointed in not receiving as many as I expected.—I mention, however, in the accompanying letter to my Aunt Priscilla that they shall soon be forthcoming.

“Remember me most warmly to Mrs. Shaw & Miss Elizabeth, and to all your family, & tell them I shall not soon forget that agreeable visit to Boston.

“With sincere respect, Judge Shaw, I remain gratefully & truly yours,

“Herman Melville.

“Chief Justice Shaw,
”Boston.”

The Aunt Priscilla mentioned in this letter was a sister of Melville’s father—fifth child of Major Thomas Melville. She was born in 1784, and upon her death in 1862, she showed that her appreciation of Melville’s earlier solicitude had been substantial, by bequeathing him nine hundred dollars. The Miss Elizabeth of the letter, the only daughter of Chief Justice Shaw, and Melville were married on August 4, 1847.

On the evidence of surviving records, Melville’s father had resigned himself to the institution of marriage as to one of the established conveniences of Christendom. Allan was a practical man, and he soberly saw that he gained more than he lost by generously sharing his bed and the fireside zone with a competent accessory to his domestic comforts. If he was ever a romantic lover, it was in the folly of his youth. Though romantic love be a tingling holiday extravagance, he mistrusted—and Allan never doubted his wisdom—its everyday useability for a cautious and peace-loving man. And since Dante had married Gemma Donati, since Petrarch had had children by an unknown concubine, Maria had reason to congratulate herself that Allan evinced for her no adoration of the kind lavished upon the sainted Beatrice or upon the unattainable Laura.

In his approach to marriage, Melville showed none of the prosaic circumspection of his father. From his idealisation of the proud cold purity of Maria, Melville built up a haloed image of the wonder and mystery of sanctified womanhood: without blemish, unclouded, snow-white, terrible, yet serene. And before this image Melville poured out the fulness of his most reverential thoughts and beliefs. The very profundity of his frustrated love for Maria, and the accusing incompatibility between the image and the fact, made his early life a futile and desperate attempt to escape from himself. The peace, and at the same time the stupendous discovery that he craved: that he found neither at home nor over the rim of the world. When with Maria, he had craved to put oceans between them; when so estranged, he was parched to return.

In his wanderings, he had seen sights, and lived through experiences to disabuse him of his fantastic idealisation of woman. In fact, however, such experiences may but tend to heighten idealisation. In the Middle Age, the Blessed Mother was celebrated in a duality of perplexing incompatibility: she was at once the Virgin Mother of the Son of God, and the patron of thieves, harlots and cutthroats. She was at once an object of worship and a subject of farce. She was woman. Protestantism, restoring woman to her original Hebraic dignity of a discarded rib, evinced in marriage an essentially biological interest, and regulated romantic love into uxoriousness. Allan was a good Protestant. But neither Mrs. Chapone nor Fayaway were able to precipitate Melville into that form of heresy. Fayaway was Fayaway: and her father was a cannibal. Civilisation had given her no veils; Christianity had given her no compunctons. She was neither a mystery nor a sin. Untouched did she leave the sacred image in his heart.

To Elizabeth Shaw, Melville transferred his idealisation of his mother. In Pierre he says: “this softened spell which wheeled the mother and son in one orbit of joy seemed a glimpse of the glorious possibility, of the divinest of those emotions which are incident to the sweetest season of love.” In Pierre, Melville declared that the ideal possibilities of the love between mother and son, seemed “almost to realise here below the sweet dreams of those religious enthusiasts, who paint to us a Paradise to come, when etherealised from all dross and stains, the holiest passion of man shall unite all kindreds and climes in one circle of pure and unimpaired delight.” And in this “courteous lover-like adoration” of son for mother, Melville saw the “highest and airiest thing in the whole compass of the experience of our mortal life.” And “this heavenly evanescence,” Melville declares, “this nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness,” is, “in every refined and honourable attachment, contemporary with courtship.” In Pierre, Melville spends a chapter of dithyramb in celebration of this sentiment which, inspired by one’s mother, one transfers to all other women honourably loved. “Love may end in age, and pain and need, and all other modes of human mournfulness; but love begins in joy. Love’s first sigh is never breathed, till after love hath laughed. Love has not hands, but cymbals; Love’s mouth is chambered like a bugle, and the instinctive breathings of his life breathe jubilee notes of joy.” And during his courtship of Elizabeth Shaw, it seems that in Melville were “the audacious immortalities of divinest love.”

None of Melville’s letters of courtship survive. There are more direct evidences of the fruits of his love, than of its early bloom. There are, however, two letters of his wife’s, written during the month of the marriage. The first was written during the wedding trip.

“Center Harbor, Aug. 6th, 1847.
“My Dear Mother:

“You know I promised to write you whenever we came to a stopping place, and remained long enough. We are now at Center Harbor, a most lonely and romantic spot at the extremity of Winnipiscogee Lake, having arrived last evening from Concord—and we intend to remain until to-morrow. One object in stopping so long and indeed principal one was to visit ‘Red Hill’—a mountain (commanding a most beautiful view of the lake) about four miles distant. But to-day it is so cloudy and dull, I am afraid we shall not be able to accomplish it—so you see I have a little spare time, and improve it by writing to relieve any anxiety you may feel. Though this is but the third day since our departure, it seems as if a long time had passed, we have seen so many places of novelty and interest. The stage ride yesterday from Franklin here, though rather fatiguing, was one of great attraction from the beautiful scenery. To-morrow we again intend to take the stage to Conway, and from there to the White Mountains. I will write again from there, and tell you more of what I have seen, but now I send this missive more to let you know of our safety and well-being than anything else.

“I hope by this time you have quite recovered from your indisposition, and that I shall soon hear from you to be assured of it—I hardly dare to trust myself to speak of what I felt in leaving home, but under the influence of such commingling thoughts, it entirely escaped me to tell you of any place to which you might address a letter to me so that I should be sure to get it. Now I am very anxious and impatient to hear from you, and I hope you will lose no time in writing if it be only a very few lines. Herman desires to add a postscript to my letter, and he will tell you when and where to write so that I may get it.

“Remember me with affection to father and ask him to let me have a letter from him soon, to all members of the family and to Mrs. Melville and the girls—my mother and sisters—how strangely it sounds. Accept a great deal of love for yourself, my dear mother, and believe me as ever, your affectionate daughter, Elizabeth—even though I add to it—Melville—for the first time.

“Friday morning.

“My Dear Sir:

“At my desire Lizzie has left a small space for a word or two.—We arrived here last evening after a pleasant ride from Franklin, the present terminus of the Northern Rail Road. The scenery was in many places very fine, & we caught some glimpses of the mountain region to which we are going. Center Harbor where we now are is a very attractive place for a tourist, having the lake for boating and trouting, and plenty of rides in the vicinity, besides Red-Hill, the view from which is said to be equal to anything of the kind in New England. A rainy day, however, has thus far prevented us from taking our excursion, to enjoy the country.—To-morrow, I think we shall leave for Conway and thence to Mt. Washington & so to Canada. I trust in the course of some two weeks to bring Lizzie to Lansingburgh, quite refreshed and invigourated from her rambles.—Remember me to Mrs. Shaw & the family, and tell my mother that I will write to her in a day or two.

“Sincerely yours,
“Herman Melville.

“Letters directed within four or five days from now, will probably reach us at Montreal.”

The second letter explains itself:

“Lansingburgh, Aug. 28th, 1847.

“My Dear Mother:

“We arrived here safe and well yesterday morning, and I intended to have written a few lines to you then, but I was so tired, and had so much to do to unpack and put away my things, I deferred it until to-day.

“We left Montreal on Tuesday evening and the next day in the afternoon hailed Whitehall, at the foot of Lake Champlain, after a very pleasant sail on that beautiful piece of water. The next question was whether we should proceed to Lansingburgh by stage or take the canal boat. We thought stage riding would be rather tame after the beautiful scenery of Vermont, and as I had never been in a canal boat in my life, Herman thought we had better try it for the novelty. This would expedite our journeying, too, and having once set our faces homeward, we were not disposed to delay. Being fully forewarned of the inconvenience we might expect in passing a night on board a canal boat—a crowded canal boat, too, and fully determined to meet them bravely, we stepped on board—not without some misgivings, however, as we saw the crowds of men, women and children come pouring in, with trunks and handbags to match. Where so many people were to store themselves at night was a mystery to be yet unravelled, and what they all did do with themselves is something I have not yet found out. Well, night drew on—and after sitting on deck on trunks or anything we could find (and having to bob our heads down every few minutes when the helmsman sang out ‘Bridge!’ or ‘Low Bridge!’) it became so damp and chilly that I was finally driven below.

“Here was a scene entirely passing description. The Ladies’ ‘Saloon!’ they politely termed it so, so we were informed by a red and gilt sign over it. A space about as large as my room at home, was separated from the gentlemen’s ‘Saloon’ by a curtain only. About 20 or 25 women were huddled into this. Each one having two children apiece of all ages, sexes, and sizes, said children, as is usual on such occasions, lifting up their respective voices, very loud indeed, in one united chorus of lamentations.

“A narrow row of shelves was hooked up high on each side and on these some & more fortunate mothers had closely packed their sleeping babies while they sat by to prevent their rolling out. I looked round in vain for a place to stretch my limbs, but it was not to be thought of—but after a while by a fortunate chance I got a leaning privilege, and fixing my carpet-bag for a pillow, I made up my mind to pass the night in this manner. One by one the wailing children dropped off to sleep and I had actually lost myself in a sort of doze, when a new feature in the case became apparent. Stepping carefully over the outstretched forms on the floor came two men, each bearing a pile of boards or little shelves like those already suspended. These they hooked up against the sides in the smallest conceivable spaces, using every available inch of room—and were intended to sleep (!) upon. I immediately pounced upon one of them which I thought might be accessible, and was just consulting with myself as to the best means of getting onto it, when I was politely requested by one of the sufferers to take the shelf above from which she wished to remove her children to the one I thought to occupy—of course I complied, and after failing in several awkward attempts, I managed to climb and crawl into this narrow aperture like a bug forcing its way through the boards of a fence. Sweltering and smothering I watched the weary night hours pass away, for to sleep in such an atmosphere was impossible. I rose at 3 o’clock, thinking it was five, spent a couple of hours curled up on the floor, and was right glad when Herman came for me, with the joyful intelligence that we were actually approaching Whitehall—the place of our destination. He also passed a weary night, though his sufferings were of the opposite order—for while I was suffocating with the heat and bad atmosphere, he was on deck, chilled and half-frozen with the fog and penetrating dampness, for the gentlemen’s apartment was even more crowded than the ladies’—so much so that they did not attempt to hang any shelves for them to lie upon. All they could do was to sit bolt upright firmly wedged in and if one of them presumed to lean at all or even to nod out of the perpendicular it was thought a great infringement of rights, and he was immediately called to order. So Herman preferred to remain on deck all night to being in this crowd. We left the boat and took the cars about an hour’s ride from Lansingburgh, and surprised the family at 6 o’clock in the morning before they were up. We were very warmly welcomed and cared for and soon forgot our tribulations of the canal boat. I was much disappointed to miss the boys—they had only left the day before—it was too bad—I am looking forward with such impatience to see you and father, and sincerely hope nothing will happen to prevent your coming.

“I suppose we shall not be long here. Allan is looking out for a house in N. Y. and will be married next month.

“You know a proposition was made before I came here that I should furnish my own room, which for good reasons were then set aside—but if it is not too late now, I should like very much to do it if we go to N. Y.—but we can talk about that when I see you. I must bring my scribbling to a close, after I have begged you or somebody to write me. I have not received a single line since I left home. How did the dinner party go off? I want to hear about everything and everybody at home. Please give my warmest love to all and believe me your affectionate daughter,

“Elizabeth S. M.

“Herman desires his kindest remembrances to all.”

Soon after the marriage, Melville and his wife moved from Lansingburg to New York, where they lived with Melville’s brother, Allan, and his household of sisters. The letters of Mrs. Melville’s are the only surviving records of the intimate details of this domestic arrangement. They are interesting, too, as revelation of the character of Mrs. Melville. The three following are typical:

“New York, Dec. 23rd, 1847.

“Thank you, dear Mother, for your nice long letter. I was beginning to be afraid you had forgotten your part of the contract for that week, but Saturday brought me evidence to the contrary and made us even. And I should have written you earlier, but the days are so short, and I have so much to do, that they fly by without giving me half the time I want. Perhaps you will wonder what on earth I have to occupy me. Well in fact I hardly know exactly myself, but true it is little things constantly present themselves and dinner time comes before I am aware. We breakfast at 8 o’clock, then Herman goes to walk and I fly up to put his room to rights, so that he can sit down to his desk immediately on his return. Then I bid him good-bye, with many charges to be an industrious boy and not upset the inkstand and then flourish the duster, make the bed, etc., in my own room. Then I go downstairs and read the papers a little while, and after that I am ready to sit down to my work whatever it may be—darning stockings—making or mending for myself or Herman—at all events, I haven’t seen a day yet, without some sewing or other to do. If I have letters to write, as is the case to-day, I usually do that first—but whatever I am about I do not much more than get thoroughly engaged in it, than ding-dong goes the bell for luncheon. This is half-past 12 o’clock—by this time we must expect callers, and so must be dressed immediately after lunch. Then Herman insists upon taking a walk of an hour’s length at least. So unless I can have rain or snow for an excuse, I usually sally out and make a pedestrian tour a mile or two down Broadway. By the time I come home it is two o’clock and after, and then I must make myself look as bewitchingly as possible to meet Herman at dinner. This being accomplished, I have only about an hour of available time left. At four we dine, and after dinner is over, Herman and I come up to our room and enjoy a cosy chat for an hour or so—or he reads me some of the chapters he has been writing in the day. Then he goes down town for a walk, looks at the papers in the reading room, etc., and returns about half-past seven or eight. Then my work or my book is laid aside, and as he does not use his eyes but very little by candle light, I either read to him, or take a hand at whist for his amusement, or he listens to our reading or conversation, as best pleases him. For we all collect in the parlour in the evening, and generally one of us reads aloud for the benefit of the whole. Then we retire very early—at 10 o’clock we all disperse. Indeed we think that quite a late hour to be up. This is the general course of daily events so you see how my time is occupied; but sometime—dear me! we have to go and make calls! and then good-bye to everything else for that day! for upon my word, it takes the whole day, from 1 o’clock till four! and then perhaps we don’t accomplish more than two or three, if unluckily they chance to be in—for everybody lives so far from everybody else, and all Herman’s and Allan’s friends are so polite, to say nothing of Mrs. M.’s old acquaintances, that I am fairly sick and tired of returning calls. And no sooner do we do up a few, than they all come again, and so it has to be gone over again.

“You know ceremonious calls were always my abomination, and where they are all utter strangers and we have to send in our cards to show who we are, it is so much the worse. Excepting calls, I have scarcely visited at all. Herman is not fond of parties, and I don’t care anything about them here. To-morrow night, for a great treat, we are going to the opera—Herman & Fanny and I—and this is the first place of public amusement I have attended since I have been here but somehow or other I don’t care much about them now.

“I am glad to hear that father and all are so well—except Sam—how is his cough now? don’t forget to tell us when you write.

“If Susan Haywood and Fanny Clarke are at our house please give my love to them and ask Susan to answer my letter. How is Mrs. Marcus Morton and Mrs. Hawes? I hope you will be able to write me this week though I know your time is very much occupied—but then you know any letter—even the shortest and most hurried is acceptable and better than none—though I must confess my prejudice sins in favour of long ones—but I am glad to hear anything from home. You addressed my last letter just right and it came very straight—but Allan’s name is spelt with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e’—as Allan—not Allen—different names, you see—I am hoping that sometime or other father will find time to write to me—though I know he is so much occupied with other matters.

“Thank you for your kindness about the picture box—as I do not need any article at present, I will keep the dollar till I do—it will be the same thing, you know, and I have already got such a New Year’s present in the big box upstairs—by the way, in about a week more, it will be time to open it. Oh, what do you think about my calling on Mrs. Joe Henshaw and Josephine—they are living here and came here after I did, so perhaps I ought to call first if it is best for me to visit them—being connected with the Haywoods perhaps it would be better to renew the acquaintance. What do you think about it? Please tell me when you write, and get their address from Aunt Haywood, if you think I had better call. I am afraid you are tired of this long letter; but I have done now. Good-bye, and love to all.

“Affectionately yours,
“Elizabeth S. Melville.

“P. S. I have a letter from Mrs. Warpwell a few days since—I didn’t know she had lost one of her twins before. Why didn’t you tell me? My love to Mrs. Sullivan. I hope she is quite well again. Tell Lem we expect him next month in his mention to make us a visit.”

“New York, Feb. 4th, 1848.
“103 Fourth Avenue.

“My Dear Mother:

“Every day for the last week I have been trying to write to you, but have been prevented. I received your letter by Lemuel with much pleasure and the next time you write I want you to tell me more about Carrie—how she and the small baby are getting along—and whether she took ether when she was sick and if so, with what effect. What they have decided to name the baby and all about it. Your presents were very acceptable—Herman was much gratified with your remembrance to him—and intends to make his acknowledgment for himself. You forgot Kate in the multitude of Melvilles—so I just gave her my share of the bill you enclosed without saying anything about it—knowing you would not intentionally leave her out—or rather I gave the bill to Helen for herself, Fanny and Kate, as she could get what they most wanted better than I—so it’s all right now, and I will take the will for the deed and thank you all the same.

“The key of the basket that you wanted me to send—you know—I have no bills there whatever—you have them all. I only have an account of the expenditure and a memorandum of the bills that were paid—not the item of the bills. If you have an opportunity where it will come safe I should like to have you send me that basket very much.

“You speak of a Mr. Crocker whom you wish me to receive. If he will call I shall be very happy to see him. You know we are recently renumbered and our address now is ‘No. 103 Fourth Avenue’, ‘between 11th & 12th Streets’—it is safer to add for a time.

“Lem seems to be enjoying himself highly with the amusements out of doors, and the society within. Last night he went to a masked ball, under the auspices of Mrs. Elwell, through Aunt Marat’s kindness, and a very fine appearance he presented, I can assure you, in an old French court dress—with a long curled horse-hair wig, chapeau bras—knee breeches, long stockings, buckles, snuff box and all—it was a very becoming dress to him, and exactly suited to his carriage and manners—I wish you could have seen him. We went to a party ourselves last evening, but we had a deal of fun helping him to dress—he went masked of course, but being introduced by Mrs. Elwell was very kindly received—taking Mrs. Dickinson (the hostess) down to supper, and doing the polite thing to the nine Misses Dickinson. He enjoyed it much, as you may suppose, and did not get home till four o’clock in the morning, and even then the ball had not broken up. At this present moment—11 o’clock—I believe he is dozing on the parlour sofa—to gain strength to go to the opera this evening.

“We have been very dissipated this week for us, for usually we are very quiet. Wednesday evening we passed at Mrs. Thurston’s and were out quite late—last night at a party—a very pleasant one too, where by the way—I passed off for Miss Melville and as such was quite a belle!! And to-night in honour of our guest, we go to the Opera. We have resolved to stop after this though and not go out at all for while Herman is writing the effect of keeping late hours is very injurious to him—if he does not get a full night’s rest or indulges in a late supper, he does not feel right for writing the next day. And the days are too precious to be thrown away. And to tell the truth I don’t think he cares very much about parties either, and when he goes it is more on my account than his own. And it’s no sacrifice to me, for I am quite as contented, and more—to stay at home so long as he will stay with me. He has had communications from London publishers with very liberal offers for the book in hand—and one from Berlin to translate from the first sheets into German—but as yet he has closed with none of them, and will not in a hurry.

“I believe I forgot in my last to acknowledge the receipt of a paper from father—I was very glad of it—please present my thanks—I have intended to write to father for a good while—but I like to have answers to my letters—so if father has not time to write in reply, you must write for him. Give my love to him and to all the family—and when you see Susan Morton ask her to write to me.

“Tell Aunt Lucretia I was delighted to get her note, and I will write to her.

“Now I have written you a famous long letter and I hope you will write me as long a one very soon, for I have not heard from home for more than a week now—not since Lem came.

“Give my love to Mrs. Sullivan, and believe me as ever truly yours,

“E. S. Melville.”

“New York, May 5th, 1848.

“My Dear Mother:

“I am very much occupied to-day but I snatch a few moments to reply to your letter which though rather tardy in forthcoming was very acceptable. But you did not tell me what I most wanted to know—about Sam. And your indefinite allusion to it, when we were all waiting to hear, was rather tantalising. Does ‘this season’ means now in his present vacation, or sometime in the course of the year? I suppose his vacation has already commenced if he is out at Milton, then why not let him come immediately and make his visit, because if he waits till warm weather it will not be nearly so pleasant or so beneficial for him. Maria Percival writes me that she is coming on soon and he might come with her. Please write me something definite about it, as soon as you can, and do let him come. We want him to very much, and the sooner the better.

“You ask about our coming to Boston but I guess the house will be ready to clean again by that time—for it will not be before July, perhaps August. Herman of course will stick to his work till ‘the book’ is published and his services are required till the last moment—correcting proof, etc. The book is done now, in fact (you need not mention it) and the copy for the press is in progress, but when it is published on both sides of the water a great deal of delay is unavoidable and though Herman will have some spare time after sending the proof sheets to London which will be next month sometime probably he will not want to leave New York till the book is actually on the book-sellers’ shelves. And then I don’t care about leaving home till my cold is over because I could not enjoy my visit so much. So though I am very impatient for the time to come I must e’en wait as best I may and enjoy the anticipation.

“We are looking out for Tom to return every day, his ship has been reported in the papers several times lately as homeward bound and Herman wrote to the owner at Westport and received answer that he looked for the ship the first of May. That has already past and we are daily expecting a letter to announce her actual arrival. Then Herman will have to go over to Westport for Tom and see that he is regularly discharged and paid, and bring him home. As yet he, Tom, is in entire ignorance of the changes that have taken place in his family and of their removal to New York. So he will be much surprised I think. As you may suppose, Mother is watching and counting the days with great anxiety for he is the baby of the family and his mother’s pet.

“Augusta is going to Albany in a few days to visit the Van Renssalaers. They have been at her all winter to go up the river but she would not, and now Mr. Van Renssalaer is in town and will not go back without her. And in a few weeks Helen is going to Lansingburgh to visit Mrs. Jones.

“I should write you a longer letter but I am very busy to-day copying and cannot spare the time so you must excuse it and all mistakes. I tore my sheet in two by mistake thinking it was my copying (for we only write on one side of the page) and if there is no punctuation marks you must make them yourself for when I copy I do not punctuate at all but leave it for a final revision for Herman. I have got so used to write without (.) I cannot always think of it.

“Please write me very soon this week—if only a few lines and tell me about Sam’s coming.

“My love to all, to father when you write and to Sue Morton if she is at our house, Mrs. Hawes etc. and believe me as ever your affectionate

“E. S. Melville.

“Miss Savage & Miss Lincoln called to see me a day or two ago.

“Please spell Allan’s name with an A, not E. Allan, not Allen.”

During this period, the household at 103 Fourth Avenue was busy getting Redburn and Mardi ready for the press. Melville’s sister Augusta seems to have been exhaustless in copying manuscript. Melville’s mother-in-law reports “Miss Augusta is all energy, united with much kindness.” Augusta also evinced a strong religious bent, and during song services—which she loved to attend—she used to grip her hymnal athletically, and beat time with an aggressive rhythm. Her Hymn Book survives, pasted up with dozens of clippings of hymns and prayers, a “selection” entitled The Sinner’s Friend, and the vivacious couplet:

ELIZABETH SHAW MELVILLE

But song-services, and copying manuscript, were not enough to fill Augusta’s busy days. In January, 1848, she was commissioned to find a name satisfactory for Melville’s first child. Mrs. Herman Melville was in Boston to be with her mother and family at the time of the childbirth. On January 27, 1849, Augusta wrote from New York to “My dear Lizzie, My sweet Sister,” reporting that she had been “searching the Genealogical Tree” with designs upon an ancestor with a choice name: and she spends two very diverting and animated pages recounting her adventures among the branches. Her search was rewarded to her satisfaction: “Malcolm Melville! how easily it runs from my pen; how sweetly it sounds to my ear; how musically it falls upon my heart. Malcolm Melville! Methinks I see him in his plaided kilts, with his soft blue eyes, & his long flaxen curls. How I long to press him to my heart. There! I can write no more. The last proof sheets are through. Mardi’s a book.” Augusta concludes with a quotation from Mardi: “‘Oh my own Kagtanza, child of my prayers. Oro’s blessing on thee!’”

In her search of the Genealogical Tree, Augusta had contemptuously brushed by all female branches: she had determined that Melville’s first child should be a son—and a son with blue eyes and blond hair—and in her choice of a name for the unborn infant, she contemptuously ignored the possibility of the child turning out to be a girl. On February 16, 1849, was born in Boston, to Melville and his wife, their first child. There was potency in Augusta’s prayers. It was a boy.

On April 14, 1849, Mardi appeared, published, as was Omoo, by Harper and Brothers in America, by Richard Bentley in London. Redburn appeared on August 18 of the same year. By February 22, 1850 (the date of Melville’s fifth royalty account from Harper and Brothers), 2,154 copies of Mardi, and 4,011 copies of Redburn had been sold. On February 1, 1848, Melville had overdrawn his account with Harper’s to the extent of $256.03. On December 5, 1848, Harper’s advanced Melville $500; on April 28, 1848, $300; on July 2, 1849, $300; on September 14, 1849, $500. Though Mardi and Redburn had had a fairly generous sale, the deduction of his royalties on February 22, 1850, left him in debt to Harper’s $733.69. The outlook was not bright for the responsibilities of fatherhood.

On April 23, Melville sent to his father-in-law a note “conveying the intelligence of Lizzie’s improving strength, and Malcolm’s precocious growth. Both are well.” Melville went on to say that Samuel, the brother-in-law for whom he felt not the most enthusiastic affection, was expected by all “to honour us with his presence during the approaching vacation: and I have no doubt he will not find it difficult to spend his time pleasantly with so many companions.” Does Melville here imply that for himself, as a sensible man, he would prefer more solitude? In conclusion, Melville says: “I see that Mardi has been cut into by the London Atheneum, and also burnt by the common hangman by the Boston Post. However, the London Examiner & Literary Gazette & other papers this side of the water have done differently. These attacks are matters of course, and are essential to the building up of any permanent reputation—if such should ever prove to be mine—‘There’s nothing in it!’ cried the dunce when he threw down the 47th problem of the 1st Book of Euclid—‘There’s nothing in it!’—Thus with the posed critic. But Time, which is the solver of all riddles, will solve Mardi.”

The riddle of Mardi goes near to the heart of the riddle of Melville’s life. “Not long ago,” Melville says in the preface to Mardi, “having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience. This thought was the germ of others, which have resulted in Mardi.”

Mardi, as Moby-Dick, starts off firmly footed in reality. The hero, discontented on board a whaler, hits upon the wild scheme of surreptitiously cutting loose one of the whale boats, and trusting to the chances of the open Pacific. It is sometimes the case that an old mariner will conceive a very strong attachment for some young sailor, his shipmate—a Fidus-Achates-ship, a league of offence and defence, a copartnership of chests and toilets, a bond of love and good-feeling. Such a relationship existed between the hero of Mardi and his Viking shipmate Jarl. Jarl was an old Norseman to behold: his hands as brawny as the paws of a bear; his voice as hoarse as a storm roaring round the peak of Mull; his long yellow hair waving about his head like a sunset. In the crow’s-nest of the ship the project of escape was confided to Jarl. Jarl advised with elderly prudence, but seeing his chummy’s resolution immovable, he changed his wrestling to a sympathetic hug, and bluntly swore he would follow through thick and thin. The escape was successfully made, and for days the two men drifted at sea: and it was an eventful if solitary drifting. After sixteen days in their open boat, “as the expanded sun touched the horizon’s rim, a ship’s uppermost spars were observed, traced like a spider’s web against its crimson disk. It looked like a far-off craft on fire.” Bent upon shunning a meeting—though Jarl “kept looking wistfully over his shoulder; doubtlessly praying Heaven that we might not escape”—they lowered sail. As the ship bore down towards them, they saw her to be no whaler—as they had feared—but a small, two-masted craft in unaccountable disarray. They lay on their oars, and watched her in the starlight. They hailed her loudly. No return. Again. But all was silent. So, armed with a harpoon, they eventually boarded the strange craft. The ship was in a complete litter; the deserted tiller they found lashed. Though it was a nervous sort of business, they explored her interior. Many were the puzzling sights they saw; but except for a supernatural sneeze from the riggings, there was no evidence of life aboard. At dawn, however, they discovered, in the maintop, a pair of South Sea Islanders: Samoa, and Annatoo. “To be short, Annatoo was a Tartar, a regular Calmuc; and Samoa—Heaven help him—her husband.” Upon this pair, Melville has lavished chapter after chapter of the most finished and competent comedy. Annatoo is as perfect, in her way, as is Zuleika Dobson. And Samoa—well, Samoa, on occasion, thinks it discreet to amputate his wounded arm.

“Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part, accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in despair, the savage would disdain to recline.

“More yet. In Polynesia, every man is his own barber and surgeon, cutting off his beard or arm, as occasion demands. No unusual thing, for the warriors of Varvoo to saw off their own limbs, desperately wounded in battle. But owing to the clumsiness of the instrument employed—a flinty, serrated shell—the operation has been known to last several days. Nor will they suffer any friend to help them; maintaining, that a matter so nearly concerning a warrior is far better attended to by himself. Hence it may be said, that they amputate themselves at their leisure, and hang up their tools when tired. But, though thus beholden to no one for aught connected with the practice of surgery, they never cut off their own heads, that ever I heard; a species of amputation to which, metaphorically speaking, many would-be independent sort of people in civilised lands are addicted.

“Samoa’s operation was very summary. A fire was kindled in the little caboose, or cook-house, and so made as to produce much smoke. He then placed his arm upon one of the windlass bitts (a short upright timber, breast-high), and seizing the blunt cook’s axe would have struck the blow; but for some reason distrusting the precision of his aim, Annatoo was assigned to the task. Three strokes, and the limb, from just above the elbow, was no longer Samoa’s; and he saw his own bones; which many a centenarian can not say. The very clumsiness of the operation was safety to the subject. The weight and bluntness of the instrument both deadened the pain and lessened the hemorrhage. The wound was then scorched, and held over the smoke of the fire, till all signs of blood vanished. From that day forward it healed, and troubled Samoa but little.

“But shall the sequel be told? How that, superstitiously averse to burying in the sea the dead limb of a body yet living; since in that case Samoa held, that he must very soon drown and follow it; and how, that equally dreading to keep the thing near him, he at last hung it aloft from the topmast-stay; where yet it was suspended, bandaged over and over in cerements. The hand that must have locked many others in friendly clasp, or smote a foe, was no food, thought Samoa, for fowls of the air nor fishes of the sea.

“Now, which was Samoa? The dead arm swinging high as Haman? Or the living trunk below? Was the arm severed from the body, or the body from the arm? The residual part of Samoa was alive, and therefore we say it was he. But which of the writhing sections of a ten times severed worm, is the worm proper?”

There are more cosy pleasures aboard the old ship, however, than amputation: “Every one knows what a fascination there is in wandering up and down in a deserted old tenement in some warm, dreamy country; where the vacant halls seem echoing of silence, and the doors creak open like the footsteps of strangers; and into every window the old garden trees thrust their dark boughs, like the arms of night-burglars; and ever and anon the nails start from the wainscot; while behind it the mice rattle like dice. Up and down in such old spectre houses one loves to wander; and so much the more, if the place be haunted by some marvellous story.

“And during the drowsy stillness of the tropical sea-day, very much such a fancy had I, for prying about our little brigantine, whose tragic hull was haunted by the memory of the massacre, of which it still bore innumerable traces.”

After delightful and exciting, and irresponsible days spent sailing without chart, they find the vessel unseaworthy, leaking in every pore; so again they take to their whale boat soon to fall in with strangers. With this meeting, Mardi swings into allegory,—and then it is that Melville first tries his hand at the orphic style.

This second part of Mardi in its manner defies simple characterisation, though its purpose is simple enough. It is a quest after Yillah, a maiden from Oroolia, the Island of Delight. A voyage is made through the civilised world for her: and though they find occasion for much discourse on international politics, and an array of other topics, Yillah is not found. And in an astonishing variety of fantastic and symbolic scenes—many conceived in the manner of the last three books of Rabelais—they go on in futile search for her. They search among the Islands of “those Scamps the Plujii,” where all evil which the inhabitants could impute neither to the gods nor to themselves were blamed upon the Plujii. There they meet an “old woman almost doubled together, both hands upon her abdomen; in that manner running about distracted.” When asked of the occasion of her distraction she screamed “The Plujii! The Plujii!” affectionately caressing the field of their operations.

“And why do they torment you?” she was soothingly asked.

“How should I know? and what good would it do me if I did?”

And on she ran.

“Hearing that an hour or two previous she had been partaking of some twenty unripe bananas, I rather fancied that that circumstance might have had something to do with her suffering. But whatever it was, all the herb-leeches on the island would not have been able to alter her own opinions on the subject.”

They visit jolly old Borabolla, and discuss the hereafter of fish. “As for the possible hereafter of the whale,” says Melville, “a creature eighty feet long without stockings, and thirty feet round the waist after dinner is not inconsiderably to be consigned to annihilation.” They are entertained by the gentry of Pimminee, and their host, being told they were strolling divinities, demigods from the sun “manifested not the slightest surprise, observing incidentally, however, that the eclipses there must be a sad bore to endure.” They are entertained by the pallid and beautiful youth Donjalolo, with wives thirty in number, corresponding in name to the nights of the moon: wives “blithe as larks, more playful than kittens,” though “but supplied with the thirtieth part of all that Aspasia could desire.” Over flowing calabashes they discourse of super-men, and vitalism, and toad-stools, and fame, and thieves, and teeth, and democracy, and an interminable variety of other irrelevant and diverting matters. Incredible is the rich variety of Mardi.

There is infinite laughter in the book—but the laughter is at bottom the laughter of despair. “It is more pleasing to laugh, than to weep,” Montaigne has said. But Montaigne preferred laughter not for that reason, but because “it is more distainfull, and doth more condemne us than the other. And me thinkes we can never bee sufficiently despised according to our merit.” Melville’s laughter, however, grew out of a desolation less emancipated than Montaigne’s. “Let us laugh: let us roar: let us yell.” Melville makes the philosopher in Mardi say: “Weeds are torn off at a fair; no heart bursts but in secret; it is good to laugh though the laugh be hollow. Women sob, and are rid of their grief; men laugh and retain it. Ha! ha! how demoniacs shout; how all skeletons grin; we all die with a rattle. Humour, thy laugh is divine; hence mirth-making idiots have been revered; and so may I.” And one of the ultimate discoveries of the book is: “Beatitude there is none. And your only Mardian happiness is but exemption from great woes—no more. Great Love is sad; and heaven is Love. Sadness makes the silence throughout the realms of space; sadness is universal and eternal.”

For Mardi, in its intention to show the vanity of human wishes, is a kind of Rasselas; but because of its “dangerous predominance of imagination,” it is a Rasselas Dr. Johnson would have despised. And the happiness sought in Mardi is of a brand of felicity unlike anything the Prince of Abyssinia ever had any itching to enjoy. Mardi is a quest after some total and undivined possession of that holy and mysterious joy that touched Melville during the period of his courtship: a joy he had felt in the crucifixion of his love for his mother; a joy that had dazzled him in his love for Elizabeth Shaw. When he wrote Mardi he was married, and his wife was with child. And Mardi is a pilgrimage for a lost glamour.

In these wanderings in search of Yillah, the symbol of this faded ecstasy, the hero of Mardi is pursued by three shadowy messengers from the temptress Hautia; she who was descended from the queen who had first incited Mardi to wage war against beings with wings. Despairing of ever achieving Yillah, Melville in the end turned towards the island of Hautia, called Flozella-a-Nina, or “The Last-Verse-of-the-Song.” “Yillah was all beauty, and innocence; my crown of felicity; my heaven below:—and Hautia, my whole heart abhorred. Yillah I sought; Hautia sought me. Yet now I was wildly dreaming to find them together. In some mysterious way seemed Hautia and Yillah connected.”

They land on the shore of Hautia’s bower of bliss, when “all the sea, like a harvest plain, was stacked with glittering sheaves of spray. And far down, fathoms on fathoms, flitted rainbow hues:—as seines-full of mermaids; half-screening the bower of the drowned.” Hautia lavished him with flowers, and with wine, that like a blood-freshet ran through his veins, she the vortex that draws all in. “But as my hand touched Hautia’s, down dropped a dead bird from the clouds.” And at the end of the madness into which Hautia had betrayed him, he and she stood together—“snake and victim: life ebbing from out me, to her.”

In Pierre, Melville sadly reflects upon “the inevitable evanescence of all earthly loveliness: which makes the sweetest things of life only food for ever-devouring and omnivorous melancholy.” And the nuptial embrace, he says, breaks love’s airy zone. The etherealisations of the filial breast, he wrote, while contemporary with courtship, preceding the final banns and the rites, “like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporate upon pouring love out to drink in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.” “I am Pluto stealing Proserpine,” says Pierre; “and every accepted lover is. I am of heavy earth, and she of airy light. By heaven, but marriage is an impious thing!”

Yillah was to Melville lost for ever; and in Hautia was a final disillusionment. And on the shore, awaiting to destroy, “stood the three pale sons of him I had slain to gain the lost maiden, sworn to hunt me round eternity.”

“‘Hail! realm of shades!’”—so Mardi concludes—“and turning my prow into the racing tide, which seized me like a hand omnipotent, I darted through. Churned in foam, that outer ocean lashed the clouds; and straight in my white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three fixed spectres leaning o’er its prow: three arrows poising. And thus, pursuers and pursued fled on, over an endless sea.”

Within a week of the completion of Mardi, Melville’s wife wrote to her mother:

“I suppose by this time that you have received Sam’s letter and are relieved of anxiety concerning his safe arrival. I was very glad to see him at last & hope he will enjoy his vacation. You need not fear his getting too much excited—he will not take too much exercise, for he can always get in an omnibus when he feels tired of walking. Yesterday he went down town with Tom—to the Battery—and to a gallery of paintings—and in the afternoon took a short walk with the girls. We should have gone to Brooklyn, but it was very cloudy and looked like rain—but we are going to-day as soon as I get done my copying (by the way we are nearly through—shall finish this week). Sam is very well and finds much amusement, especially in the ‘ad-i-s-h-e-e-e-s!’ (radishes) screamed continually under our window in every variety of cracked voices.

“I was very much pleased with my presents especially the ‘boots’ which fit me admirably—but I meant that to be a business transaction—else I should not have sent. ‘Tapes’ are always useful, especially if one has a husband who is continually breaking strings off of drawers as mine is—the cuffs were very pretty also—Herman was very much pleased with his pocket-book & says ‘he has long needed such an article, for his bank bills accumulate to such an extent he can find no place to put them.’

“Mother feels very uneasy because Tom wants to go to sea again—he has been trying for a place in some store ever since he came home but not succeeding, is discouraged and says he must go to sea immediately. Herman has written Mr. Parker (Daniel P.) to see if he can send him out in one of his ships. I hope he will, if Tom must go, for Mr. Parker would be likely to take an interest in him and promote him.

“And now for something which I hardly know whether to write you or not I feel so undecided about it. My cold is very bad indeed, perhaps worse than it has ever been so early, and I attribute it entirely to the warm dry atmosphere so different from the salt air I have been accustomed to. And Herman thinks I had better go back to Boston with Sam to see if the change of air will not benefit me. And he will come on for me in two or three weeks, if he can—and then in August when he takes his vacation he will take me there again. But I don’t know as I can make up my mind to go and leave him here—and besides I’m afraid to trust him to finish up the book without me! That is, taking all things into consideration I’m afraid I should not feel at ease enough to enjoy my visit without him with me. But there is time enough to consider about it before Sam goes—and if my cold continues so bad I think I shall go. But I must go to my writing else I shall not get done in time to go to Brooklyn.”

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