  “The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. ‘His dinner is ready. Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?’ “‘Lives without dining,’ said I, and closed the eyes. “‘Eh! He’s asleep, ain’t he?’ “‘With kings and counsellors,’ murmured I.” —Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener. “The death of Herman Melville,” wrote Arthur Stedman, “came as a surprise to the public at large, chiefly because it revealed the fact that such a man had lived so long.” The New York Times missed the news of Melville’s death (on September 28, 1891) and published a few days later an editorial beginning: “There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigour of life, that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was of but three or four lines.” In 1885, Robert Buchanan published in the London Academy a pasquinade containing the following lines: “... Melville, sea-compelling man, Before whose wand Leviathan Rose hoary white upon the Deep, With awful sounds that stirred its sleep; Melville, whose magic drew Typee, Radiant as Venus, from the sea, Sits all forgotten or ignored, While haberdashers are adored! He, ignorant of the draper’s trade, Indifferent to the art of dress, Pictured the glorious South Sea maid Almost in mother nakedness— Without a hat, or boot, or stocking, A want of dress to most so shocking, With just one chemisette to dress her She lives—and still shall live, God bless her, Long as the sea rolls deep and blue, While Heaven repeats the thunder of it, Long as the White Whale ploughs it through, The shape my sea-magician drew Shall still endure, or I’m no prophet!” In a footnote, Buchanan added: “I sought everywhere for this Triton, who is still living somewhere in New York. No one seemed to know anything of the one great writer fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with Whitman on that continent.” If this man, who had in mid-career been hailed at home and abroad as one of the glories of our literature, died “forgotten and ignored,” it was, after all, in accordance with his own desires. Adventurous life and action was the stuff out of which his reputation had been made. But in the middle of his life, he turned his back upon the world, and in his recoil from life absorbed himself in metaphysics. He avoided all unnecessary associations and absorbed in his own thoughts he lived in sedulous isolation. He resisted all efforts to draw him out of retirement—though such efforts were very few indeed. Arthur Stedman tells us: “It is generally admitted that had Melville been willing to join freely in the literary movements of New York, his name would have remained before the public and a larger sale of his works would have been insured. But more and more, as he grew older, he avoided every action on his part and on the part of his family that might look in this direction, even declining to assist in founding the Authors Club in 1882.” With an aggressive indifference he looked back in Clarel to “Adventures, such as duly shown Printed in books, seem passing strange To clerks which read them by the fire, Yet be the wonted common-place Of some who in the Orient range, Free-lances, spendthrifts of their hire, And who in end, when they retrace Their lives, see little to admire Or wonder at, so dull they be.” When Titus Munson Coan was a student at Williams College, prompted by a youthful curiosity to hunt out celebrities, he called upon Melville at Arrowhead. In an undated letter to his mother he thus recounted the experience: “I have made my first literary pilgrimage—a call upon Herman Melville, the renowned author of Typee, &c. He lives in a spacious farm-house about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk through the dust. But it was well repaid. I introduced myself as a Hawaiian-American and soon found myself in full tide of talk—or rather of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of Typee and those Paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his philosophy and his theories of life. The shade of Aristotle arose like a cold mist between myself and Fayaway. We have quite enough of Greek philosophy at Williams College, and I confess I was disappointed in this trend of the talk. But what a talk it was! Melville is transformed from a Marquesan to a gypsy student, the gypsy element still remaining strong in him. And this contradiction gives him the air of one who has suffered from opposition, both literary and social. With his liberal views he is apparently considered by the good people of Pittsfield as little better than a cannibal or a ‘beach-comber.’ His attitude seemed to me something like that of an Ishmael; but perhaps I judged hastily. I managed to draw him out very freely on everything but the Marquesas Islands, and when I left him he was in full tide of discourse on all things sacred and profane. But he seems to put away the objective side of life and to shut himself up in this cold North as a cloistered thinker.” An article appearing in the New York Times, under the initials O. G. H., a week after Melville’s death, said of him: “He had shot his arrow and made his mark, and was satisfied. With considerable knowledge of the world, he had preferred to see it from a distance.... I asked the loan of some of his books which in early life had given me pleasure and was surprised when he said that he didn’t own a single copy of them.... I had before noticed that though eloquent in dis In her sketch of her husband’s life, Mrs. Melville says: “In February, 1855, he had his first attack of severe rheumatism—and in the following June an attack of sciatica. Our neighbour in Pittsfield, Dr. O. W. Holmes, attended and prescribed for him. A severe attack of what he called crick in the back laid him up at his mother’s in Gansevoort in March, 1858—and he never regained his former vigour and strength.” In 1863, so runs the account of J. E. A. Smith, while Melville was in process of moving from Arrowhead, “he had occasion for some household articles he left behind, and, with a friend, started in a rude wagon to procure them. He was driving at a moderate pace over a perfectly smooth and level road, when a sudden start of the horse threw both occupants from the wagon; probably on account of an imperfectly secured seat. Mr. Melville fell with his back in a hollow of the frozen road, and was very severely injured. Being conveyed to his home by Col. George S. Willis, near whose farm on Williams Street the accident happened, he suffered painfully for many weeks. This prolonged agony and the confinement and interruption of work which it entailed, affected him strangely. He had been before on mountain excursions a driver daring almost to the point of recklessness.... After this accident he not only abandoned the rides of which he had been so fond, but for a time shrank from entering a carriage. It was long before the shock which his system had received was overcome; and it is doubtful whether it ever was completely.” Ill health certainly contributed more to Melville’s retirement from letters than any of his critics—Mr. Mather excepted—have ever even remotely suggested. During the last half of his life, Melville twice journeyed far from home. In her journal Mrs. Melville says: “In October, 1856, his health being impaired by too close application, he again sailed for London. He went up the Mediterranean to Constantinople and the Holy Land. For much of his observation and reflection in that interesting quarter see his poem of Clarel. Sailed for home on the steamer City of Manchester Of this trip to the Holy Land there survive, beside Clarel and Hawthorne’s accounts of the meeting en route, a long and closely written journal that Melville kept during the trip, and twenty-one shorter poems printed in Timoleon under the caption “Fruit of Travel Long Ago.” Typical of these shorter poems is THE APPARITION(The Parthenon uplifted on its rock first challenging the view on the approach to Athens) Abrupt the supernatural Cross, Vivid in startled air, Smote the Emperor Constantine And turned his soul’s allegiance there With other power appealing down, Trophy of Adam’s best! If cynic minds you scarce convert You try them, shake them, or molest. Diogenes, that honest heart, Lived ere your date began: Thee had he seen, he might have swerved In mood nor barked so much at man. The journal was surely never written with a view to publication. It is a staccato jotting down of impressions, chiefly interesting (as is Dr. Johnson’s French journal) as another evidence of Melville’s scope of curiosity and keenness of observation. A typical entry is that for Saturday, December 13,—Melville’s first day in Constantinople: “Up early; went out; saw cemeteries where they dumped garbage. Sawing wood over a tomb. Forest of cemeteries. Intricacies of the streets. Started alone for Constantinople and after a terrible long walk found myself back where I started. Just like getting lost in a wood. No plan to streets. Pocket compass. Perfect labyrinth. Narrow. Close, shut in. If one could but get up aloft, it would be easy to see one’s way out. If you could get up into a tree. Soar out of the maze. But no. No names to the streets no more than to natural alleys among the groves. No numbers, no anything. Breakfasted at 10 A. M. Took guide ($1.25 per day) and started for tour. Took Cargua for Seraglio. Holy ground. Crossed some extensive grounds and gardens. Fine buildings of the Saracenic style. Saw the Mosque of St. Sophia. Went in. Rascally priests demanding ‘baksheesh.’ Fleeced me out of ½ dollar; following me round, selling the fallen mosaics. Ascended a kind of hose way leading up, round and round. Came into a gallery fifty feet above the floor. Superb interior. Precious marbles. Prophyry & Verd antique. Immense magnitude of the building. Names of the prophets in great letters. Roman Catholic air to the whole. To the hippodrome, near which stands the six towered mosque of Sultan Achmed; soaring up with its snowy white spires into the pure blue sky. Like light-houses. Nothing finer. In the hippodrome saw the obelisk with Roman inscription on the base. Also a broken monument of bronze, representing three twisted serpents erect upon their tails. Heads broken off. Also a square monument of masoned blocks. Leaning over and frittered away,—like an old chimney stack. A Greek inscription shows it to be of the time of Theodoric. Sculpture about the base of the obelisk, representing Constantine & wife and sons, &c. Then saw the ‘Burnt Column.’ Black and grimy enough & hooped about with iron. Stands soaring up from among a bundle of old wooden stakes. A more striking fire mount than that of London. Then to the cistern of 1001 columns. You see a rounded knoll covered with close herbage. Then a kind of broken cellar-way you go down, and find yourself on a wooden, rickety platform, looking down into a grove of marble Clarel was, in 1876, printed at Melville’s expense. More accurately, its printing was made possible by his uncle, Hon. Peter Gansevoort, who, as Melville says in the dedication, “in a personal interview provided for the publication of this poem, known to him by report, as existing in manuscript.” Not the least impressive thing about Clarel is its length: it extends to 571 pages. Mr. Mather states: “Of those who have actually perused the four books (of verse) and Clarel, I am presumably the only survivor.” Mr. Mather is mistaken: there are two. But since, because of the excessive length of Clarel and the excessive scarcity of John Marr and Timoleon (both privately printed in an edition of only twenty-five copies) it would be over-optimistic to presume that there will soon be a third, some account must be given of Melville’s poetry. Stevenson once said: “There are but two writers who have touched the South Seas with any genius, both Americans: Melville and Charles Warren Stoddard; and at the christening of the first and greatest, some influential fairy must have been neglected; ‘He shall be able to see’; ‘He shall be able to tell’; ‘He shall be able to charm,’ said the friendly godmothers; ‘But he shall not be able to hear!’ exclaimed the last.” When Stevenson wrote his passage, the artist in him seems for the moment to have slept; taking no account of Melville’s frequent mastery of the magic of words, he berates Melville’s genius for misspelling Polynesian names as a defect of genius. That Melville had an ear sensitive to the cadences of prose is shown by the facility with which he on occasion caught the rhythm both of the Psalms and of Sir Thomas Browne. Yet the same man who at his best is equalled only by Poe in the subtle melody of his prose, at times fell into ranting passages of obvious and intolerable parody of blank verse. The following from Mardi is an example: “From dawn till eve, the bright, bright There is a coal-black Angel With a thick Afric lip And he dwells (like the hunted and harried) In a swamp where the green frogs dip But his face is against a City Which is over a bay by the sea, And he breathes with a breath that is blastment And dooms by a far degree. Though there are memorable lines and stanzas in Battle-Pieces, only one of the poems in the volume has ever been at all noticed: Sheridan at Cedar Creek, beginning: Shoe the steed with silver That bore him to the fray, When he heard the guns at dawning Miles away; When he heard them calling, calling— Mount! nor stay. The following letter to his brother Tom bears upon Melville’s Battle-Pieces. “Pittsfield, May 25th, 1862. “My Dear Boy: (or, if that appears disrespectful) “Yesterday I received from Gansevoort your long and very entertaining letter to Mamma from Pernambuco. Yes, it was very entertaining. Particularly the account of that interesting young gentleman whom you so uncivilly stigmatise for a jackass, simply because he improves his opportunities in the way of sleeping, eating & other commendable customs. That’s the sort of fellow, seems to me, to get along with. For my part I love sleepy fellows, and the more ignorant the better. Damn your wide-awake and knowing chaps. As for sleepiness, it is one of the noblest qualities of humanity. There is something sociable about it, too. Think of those sensible & sociable millions of good fellows all taking a good long friendly snooze together, under the sod—no quarrels, no imaginary grievances, no envies, heartburnings, & thinking how much better that other chap is off—none of this: but all equally free-&-easy, they sleep away & reel off their nine knots an hour, in perfect amity. If you see your sleepy ignorant jackass-friend again, give him my compliments, and say that however others may think of him, I honour and esteem him.—As for your treatment of the young man, there I entirely commend you. You remember what the Bible says:— “Oh ye who teach the children of the nations, Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain, I pray ye strap them upon all occasions, It mends their morals—never mind the pain.” “In another place the Bible says, you know, something about sparing the strap & spoiling the child.—Since I have quoted poetry above, it puts me in mind of my own doggerel. You will be pleased to learn that I have disposed of a lot of it at a great bargain. In fact, a trunk-maker took the whole lot off my hands at ten cents the pound. So, when you buy a new trunk again, just peep at the lining & perhaps you may be And now, my boy, if you knew how much laziness I overcame in writing you this letter, you would think me, what I am “Always your affectionate brother, Melville’s family seem all to have been more sceptical of his verse than they were of his prose. In 1859 Mrs. Melville wrote to her mother “Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell any one, for you know how such things get around.” Mrs. Melville was too optimistic: her husband’s indiscreet practice is still pretty much a secret to the world at large. And Clarel, his longest and most important poem, is practically impossible to come by. In 1884, Melville said of Clarel in a letter to Mr. James Billson: “a metrical affair, a pilgrimage or what not, of several thousand lines, eminently adapted for unpopularity.” My shroud is saintly linen, In lavender ’tis laid; I have chosen a bed by the marigold And supplied me a silver spade. And there are, too, incidental legends and saints’ tales: Those legends which, be it confessed Did nearer bring to them the sky— Did nearer woo it in their hope Of all that seers and saints avow— Than Galileo’s telescope Can bid it unto prosing science now. Clarel is by all odds the most important record we have of what was the temper of Melville’s deeper thoughts during his long metaphysical period. Typical quotations have already been made. The most recurrent note of the poem is a parched desire for companionship; a craving for A brother that he well might own In tie of friendship. Could I but meet Some stranger of a lore replete, Who, marking how my looks betray The dumb thoughts clogging here my feet Would question me, expound and prove, And make my heart to burn with love. Doubt’s heavy hand Is set against us; and his brand Still warreth for his natural lord King Common-place. Art thou the first soul tried by doubt? Shall prove the last? Go, live it out. But for thy fonder dream of love In man towards man—the soul’s caress— The negatives of flesh should prove Analogies of non-cordialness In spirit. Why then Remaineth to me what? the pen? Dead feather of ethereal life! Nor efficacious much, save when It makes some fallacy more rife. My kin—I blame them not at heart— Would have me act some routine part. Subserving family, and dreams Alien to me—illusive schemes. This world clean fails me: still I yearn. Me then it surely does concern Some other world to find. But where? In creed? I do not find it there. This side the dark and hollow bound Lies there no unexplored rich ground? Some other world: well, there’s the New— Ah, joyless and ironic too! Ay, Democracy Lops, lops; but where’s her planted bed? The future, what is that to her Who vaunts she’s no inheritor? ’Tis in her mouth, not in her heart. The past she spurns, though ’tis the past From which she gets her saving part— That Good which lets her evil last. Behold her whom the panders crown, Harlot on horseback, riding down The very Ephesians who acclaim This great Diana of ill fame! Arch strumpet of an impious age, Upstart from ranker villainage: Asia shall stop her at the least That old inertness of the East. But in the New World things make haste: Not only men, the state lives fast— Fast breed the pregnant eggs and shells, The slumberous combustibles Sure to explode. ’Twill come, ’twill come! One demagogue can trouble much: How of a hundred thousand such? Indeed, those germs one now may view: Myriads playing pygmy parts— Debased into equality: Dead level of rank commonplace: An Anglo-Saxon China, see, May on your vast plains shame the race In the Dark Ages of Democracy. Your arts advance in faith’s decay: You are but drilling the new Hun Whose growl even now can some dismay; Vindictive is his heart of hearts. He schools him in your mines and marts A skilled destroyer. Old ballads sing Fair Christian children crucified By impious Jews: you’ve heard the thing: Yes, fable; but there’s truth hard by: How many Hughs of Lincoln, say, Does Mammon, in his mills, to-day, Crook, if he does not crucify? The impieties of “Progress” speak; What say these, in effect to God? “How profits it? And who art Thou That we should serve Thee? Of Thy ways No knowledge we desire; new ways We have found out, and better. Go— Depart from us!”—And if He do? Is aught betwixt us and the hells? Against all this stands Rome’s array: Rome is the Protestant to-day. The Red Republic slinging flame In Europe—she’s your Scarlet Dame. Rome stands: but who may tell the end? Relapse barbaric may impend, Dismission into ages blind— Moral dispersion of mankind. If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year, Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear? Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate, The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell; Science the feud can only aggravate— No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell, The running battle of the star and clod Shall run forever—if there is no God. Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill resigned— Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind; That like the crocus budding through the snow— That like a swimmer rising from the deep That like a burning secret which doth go Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep; Emerge thou mayst from the last wheeling sea And prove that death but routs life into victory. Though Clarel is unconscionably long, and though there are arid wastes strewn throughout its length, a patient reading is rewarded by passages of beauty, and more frequently by passages of astonishing vigour and daring. And it speaks more for the orthodoxy of America than for her intellect, that Clarel—which reposes in the outer limbo of oblivion—is about all she has to show, as Mr. Mather has observed, for the poetical stirrings of the deeper theological waters which marked the age of Matthew Arnold, Clough, Tennyson, and Browning. We should blush for our neglect of a not unworthy representative. Besides Battle-Pieces and Clarel, Melville printed for private circulation two slender volumes: John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) and Timoleon (1891): selections from a larger body of poetry, the remainder of which is still preserved in manuscript. In these, the inspiration flags throughout. Two of the better poems have already been quoted. John Marr was dedicated to W. Clark Russell, Timoleon to Elihu Vedder. In 1886, according to Arthur Stedman, Melville “felt impelled to write Mr. Russell in regard to one of his newly published novels.” This was the beginning of a correspondence between Russell and Melville. Melville’s letters are not available. Russell’s reply to Melville’s first letter follows: “July 21, 1886. “My Dear Mr. Herman Melville: “Your letter has given me a very great and singular pleasure. Your delightful books carry the imagination into a maritime period so remote that, often as you have been in my mind, I could never satisfy myself that you were still amongst the living. I am glad, indeed, to learn from Mr. Toft that you are still hale and hearty, and I do most heartily wish you many years yet of health and vigour. “Your books I have in the American edition. I have Typee, Omoo, Redburn, and that noble piece, Moby-Dick. These are all I have been able to obtain. There have been many editions of your works in this country, particularly the lovely South Sea sketches; but the editions are not equal to those of the American publishers. Your reputation here is very great. It “Dana is, indeed, great. There is nothing in literature more remarkable than the impression produced by Dana’s portraiture of the homely inner life of a little brig’s forecastle. “I beg that you will accept my thanks for the kindly spirit in which you have read my books. I wish it were in my power to cross the Atlantic, for you assuredly would be the first whom it would be my happiness to visit.... The condition of my right hand obliges me to dictate this to my son; but painful as it is to me to hold a pen I cannot suffer this letter to reach the hands of a man of so admirable genius as Herman Melville without begging him to believe me to be, with my own hand, his most respectful and hearty admirer, “W. Clark Russell.” Elihu Vedder and Melville never met or corresponded. The acknowledgment of the dedication came only after Melville’s death. “I may not have been very successful in a worldly way,” he said, “but the knowledge that my art has gained me so many friends—even if unknown to me—makes ample amends.” Schopenhauer was enabled to preserve his disillusions because he also preserved his income. If a man is blessed with a comfortable fortune, then it is easy for him to lead a tranquil and unpretentious existence, sheltered from all intruders. But for an unsuccessful writer with a wife, four children, and no income, to throw down the pen and retire from the world (except for a season in California and another in the Holy Land); the secret of such a feat should be popularised. The secret transpires in the following letter to Melville from his father-in-law, Justice Shaw. “Boston, 15 May, 1860. “My dear Herman, “I am very glad to learn from your letter that you intend to accept Thomas’ invitation to go on his next voyage. I think “The prospect of your early departure renders it proper and necessary to bring to a definite conclusion the subject we have had a considerable time under consideration, a settlement of the matter of the Pittsfield estate, with a view to which you handed me your deeds, when I was in Pittsfield last autumn. “You will recollect that when you proposed to purchase a house in N. York I advanced to you $2000. and afterwards, when you purchased the Brewster place, I again advanced you $3000. For these sums, as well as for another loan of $500. afterwards, I took your notes. This I did, not because I had then any fixed determination to treat the advances as debts, to be certainly repaid, but I was in doubt at the time in reference to other claims upon me, and how my affairs would be ultimately arranged, what I should be able to do by way of provision for my daughter, and I put these advances upon the footing of loans until some future adjustment. “I always supposed that you considered the two first of the above-named advances as having substantially gone into the purchase of the Brewster farm, and that I had some equitable claim upon it as security. I presume it was upon that ground that you once sent me a mortgage of the estate prepared by your brother Allan. I never put that mortgage on record nor made any use of it; and if the conveyances are made, which I now propose, that mortgage will become superseded and utterly nugatory. “What I now propose is to give up to you the above mentioned notes in full consideration of your conveyance to me of your present homestead, being all the Brewster purchase except what you sold to Mr. Willis. This being done and the estate vested in me, I propose to execute a deed conveying the same in fee to Elizabeth. This will vest the fee as an estate of inheritance in her, subject of course to your rights as her husband during your life. If you wish to know more particularly what will be the legal effect and operation of these con “Elizabeth now writes me that you wish the note for $600., given by the town and coming from the sale of the Brewster place, that part of it not sold to Mr. Willis, so placed that it may be applied as you have heretofore, in your own mind, appropriated it, for building a new barn. “I propose to treat this as I did the estate itself: first purchase it of you for a full consideration and then apply it to Elizabeth’s use. In looking for a consideration for this purchase there is the interest of the above notes not computed in the consideration for the deed and now amounting to several thousand dollars. “But there is another consideration, respecting which I have never had any direct communication, I believe, but I can see no reason why it should not be now clearly understood. When you went to Europe in the fall of 1856 I advanced the money necessary for your outfit and the expenses of your tour. This was done through your brother Allan and amounted to about fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars. In my own mind, though I took no note or obligation for it, I treated it like the other advances, to be regarded as advance by way of loan or a gift according to some future arrangement. I propose now to consider that sum as a set off against the note of $600. and, as to all beyond that, to consider it cancelled and discharged. This will make the note mine. At the same time I propose to appropriate it to its original use, to build a barn, in which case it will go to increase the value of the estate already Elizabeth’s, or should anything occur to prevent such use of the money I shall appropriate it in some other way to her use. The effect of this arrangement will be to cancel and discharge all debt and pecuniary obligation of every description from you to my “Affectionately and ever faithfully After his return from the Holy Land, Melville tried to eke out the small income from his books and his farm by lecturing. J. E. A. Smith says: “Between 1857 and 1861, a rage for lyceum lectures prevailed all over the northern and western states. In Pittsfield the Burbank hall, now Mead’s carriage repository, was filled at least once every week to its full capacity of over a thousand seats, with eager and intelligent listeners to the most brilliant orators in the country. Some of the most noted authors, as well as orators, were induced to mount the platform partly by the liberal pay which they received directly—and also for the increased sale which it gave their books. Among these was Herman Melville, who lectured in Burbank hall, and in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, St. Louis, San Francisco as well as intermediate cities and towns. He did not take very kindly to the lecture platform, but had large and well pleased audiences.” If his audiences were composed of people of the jaunty and shallow provincialism of J. E. A. Smith—and J. E. A. Smith is a very fair product of his country and his time—Melville’s distaste for their prim, bland receptivity does not pass understanding. The place and date of Melville’s lectures, together with the “liberal pay directly received” follows.
For these lyceum gatherings, Melville prepared two lectures: one on the South Seas, one on Statuary in Rome. On December 2, 1857, in competition with another Melville, a bareback rider, who at the circus at Bingo “nightly performed before the Élite and respectability of the city,” Melville lectured on Statuary in Rome. On December 3, 1857, the Boston Journal thus reported Melville’s lecture: “A large audience assembled last evening to listen to the author of Omoo and Typee. He began by asserting that in the realm of art there was no exclusiveness. Dilettanti might accumulate their technical terms, but that did not interfere with the substantial enjoyment of those who did not understand them. As the beauties of nature could be appreciated without a knowledge of botany, so art could be enjoyed without the artist’s skill. With this principle in view, he, claiming to be neither critic nor artist, would make some plain remarks on the statuary of Rome. “As you approach the city from Naples, you are first struck by the statues of the Church St. John Lateran. Here you have the sculptured biographies of ancient celebrities. The speaker then vividly described the statues of Demosthenes, Titus Vespasian, Socrates, looking like an Irish comedian. Julius CÆsar, so sensible and business-like of aspect that it might be taken for the bust of a railroad president; Seneca, with the visage of a pawn broker; Nero, the fast young man; Plato, with the locks and air of an exquisite, as if meditating on the destinies of the world under the hand of a hair-dresser. Thus these statues confessed, and, as it were, prattled to us of much that does not appear in history and the written works of those they represent. They seem familiar and natural to us—and yet there is about them all a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. It is to be hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility. “The lecturer next turned to the celebrated Apollo Belvedere. This stands alone by itself, and the impression made upon all beholders is such as to subdue the feelings with wonder and “Among the most wonderful works of statuary is that of Lucifer and his associates cast down from heaven. This is in Padua, and contains three-score figures cut out of solid rock. The variety and power of the group cannot be surpassed. The Venus de Medici, as compared with the Apollo, was lovely and not divine. Mr. Melville said he once surprised a native maiden in the precise attitude of the Venus. He then passed to a rapid review of the Laocoon and other celebrated sculptures, to show the human feeling and genius of the ancient artists. None but a gentle heart could have conceived the idea of the Dying Gladiator. The sculptured monuments of the early Christians, in the vaults of the Vatican, show the joyous triumph of the new religion—quite unlike the sombre momentoes of modern times. “The lecturer then eloquently sketched the exterior of the Vatican. But nearly the whole of Rome was a Vatican—everywhere were fallen columns and sculptured fragments. Most of these, it is true, were works of Greek artists. And yet the grand spirit of Roman life inspired them. Passing from these ancient sculptures, tribute was paid to the colossal works of Benvenuto Cellini and Michael Angelo. He regretted that the time would not allow him to speak of the scenery and surroundings of the Roman sculptures—the old Coliseum, the gardens, the Forum, and the villas in the environs. He sketched some of the most memorable of the latter, and the best works they contain. “He concluded by summing up the obvious teachings of these deathless marbles. The lecture was quite interesting to those of artistic tastes, but we fancy the larger part of the audience would have preferred something more modern and personal.” The report of Melville’s other lecture is quoted from the Boston Journal, January 31, 1859. “At the Tremont Temple last evening, Herman Melville, Esq., the celebrated author and adventurer, delivered the ninth lecture of the course under the auspices of the Mechanic Apprentices’ Association. Subject—‘The South Seas.’ The audience was not large, but about equal to the usual attendance at this and the Mercantile course. “On being introduced to the audience, Mr. Melville said that the field of his subject was large, and he should not be expected to go over it all: nor should he be expected to read again what had long been in print, touching his own incidental adventures in Polynesia. But he proposed to view the subject in a general manner, in a random way, with here and there an incident by way of illustration. “He first referred to the title of the lecture, and the origin and date of the name ‘South Seas’ which was older than the name ‘Pacific,’ to which preference is usually given now. The voyages of early navigators into the South Seas, and especially the Balboa, commander of the petty port of Darien, from whence he had taken formal possession of all the South Seas, and all lands and kingdoms therein, in behalf of his masters, the King of Castile and Leon, were noticed by the lecturer. “Magellan was the man who, after the first hazardous and tortuous passage through the straits which now bear his name, gave the peaceful ocean to which he came out the name of ‘Pacific.’ It was California, said the lecturer, which first made the Pacific shores the home of the Anglo-Saxons. Even now, there were many places in this wide waste of waters which were not found upon the charts. But what was known, and well known, afforded an abundant theme for a lecture. The fish found in that water would furnish an abundant subject, of which he named the sword fish, a different fish from that of the same name found in our northern latitudes—and the devil fish, over which a mystery hangs, like that over the sea-serpent in northern waters. The birds, also, in those latitudes, might occupy a full hour. The lecturer said he wondered that the renowned Agassiz did not pack his carpet bag and betake himself to Nantucket, and from thence to the South Seas, than which he could find no richer field. “Full of interest also were the fisheries of the South Seas and the life of the whaling crews on the broad waters, or visiting lands. Seldom, if ever, touched by any but themselves, was covered over with a charm of novelty. Again the islands were an interesting study. Why, asked the lecturer, do northern Englishmen, who own large yachts, with which they sail up the Mediterranean, why don’t they go yachting in the South Seas? The white race have a very bad reputation among the Polynesians. With few exceptions they were considered the most bloodthirsty, atrocious and diabolical race in the world. But there were no dangers to voyagers if they treated the natives with common kindness. “In the Pacific there were yet unknown and unvisited isles. There were many places where a man might make himself a sylvan retreat and for years, at least, live as much removed from Christendom as if in another world. “The lecturer described an interview he had with a poetical young man who called upon him to get his opinion upon what would be the prospects of a number, say four score, of disciples of Fourier to settle in the valley of Typee. He had not encouraged the scheme, having too much regard for his old friends, the Polynesians. The Mormons had also such a scheme in view—to discover a large island in the Pacific, upon which they could increase and multiply. The Polynesians themselves have ideas of the same nature. Every one has heard of the voyage of Ponce de Leon to find the fountain of perpetual youth. Equally poetical, and more unfamiliar, was the adventure of Cama Pecar, who set sail alone from Hawaii to find the fount of eternal joy, which was supposed to spring up in some distant island where the people lived in perpetual joy and youth. Like all who go to Paradise, he was never heard from again. A tranquil scene from the South Seas was remembered by the lecturer. In a ship from a port of the Pacific coast he had sailed five months, and came upon an island where the natives lived in a state of total laziness. Here they found a white man who was a permanent inhabitant, and comfortably settled with three wives, who, however, failed to keep his wardrobe in good order. “Wonderful tales were told of the adventures in the South Seas, and the lecturer said that he believed that the books Typee and Omoo gave scarcely a full idea of them, except that part which tells of the long captivity in the valley of Typee. He had seen many of these story tellers of adventures in the South Seas with good vouchers of their tales in the shape of tattooing. A full and interesting description of the process of tattooing with its various styles was given. Tattooing was sometimes, like dress, an index of character, and worn as an ornament which would never wear off and could not be pawned, lost or stolen. The lecturer had successfully combated all attempts to naturalise him by marks as from a gridiron, on his face, for which he thanked God. “A brief notice was made of the islands of the Pacific, where the Anglo-Saxons had settled, and civilised the people, and the lecturer had been disgusted, and threw down a paper published in the Sandwich Islands, which suggested the propriety of not having the native language taught in the common schools. “In conclusion, the lecturer spoke of the desire of the natives of Georges Island to be annexed to the United States. He was sorry to see it, and, as a friend of humanity, and especially as a friend of the South Sea Islanders, he should pray, and call upon all Christians to pray with him, that the Polynesians might be delivered from all foreign and contaminating influences. “The lecture gave the most ample satisfaction, and was frequently applauded.” Melville cut short his third year of lecturing to make the trip to California with his brother. Upon his return, he again made an unsuccessful attempt to be appointed to a consularship. Such a mission took him to Washington in 1861. This trip was chiefly notable because of the meeting of Melville and Lincoln. Melville recounted the experience in a letter to his wife: “The night previous to this I was at the second levee at the White House. There was a great crowd and a brilliant scene—ladies in full dress by the hundreds—a steady Melville struggled on for two more years at Pittsfield, and in October, 1863, moved with his family to 104 East 26th Street, New York, where he spent the remaining years of his life. His house in New York he bought from his brother Allan, giving $7,750 (covered by mortgages and in time paid for by legacies of his wife) and the Arrowhead place, valued at $3,000. The last years in Pittsfield and the early years in New York were, in financial hardship, perhaps the darkest in Melville’s life. He was in ill health, and except for the pittance from his books he was without income. His lectures were a desperate if not lucrative measure. But for the generosity of his wife’s father, he would have been in destitution. On December 5, 1866, he was appointed Inspector of Customs in New York—a post he held until January 1, 1886. He was sixty-seven years old when he resigned. His wife had come into an inheritance that allowed him an ultimate serenity in his closing years. R. H. Stoddard, in his Recollections, thus speaks of Melville: “My good friend Benedict sent me, one gloomy November forenoon, this curt announcement of a new appointment in Herman Melville: ‘He seems a good fellow, Dick, and says he knows you, though perhaps he doesn’t, but anyhow be kind to him if this infernal weather will let you be so to anybody.’ I bowed to the gentleman who handed the note to me, in whom I recognised a famous writer whom I had met some twenty-five years before; no American writer was more widely known in the late forties and early fifties in his own country and in England than Melville, who in his earlier books, Typee, Omoo, “Whether any of Melville’s readers understood the real drift of his mind, or whether he understood it himself, has often puzzled me. Next to Emerson he was the American mystic. He was more than that, however, he was one of our great unrecognised poets, as he manifested in his version of ‘Sheridan’s Ride,’ which begins as all students of our serious war poetry ought to know: ‘Shoe the steed with silver that bore him to the fray.’ Melville’s official duty during the last years of my Custom-House life confined him to the foot of Gansevoort Street, North River, and on a report that he might be changed to some district on the East River, he asked me to prevent the change, and Benedict said to me, ‘He shan’t be moved,’ and he was not; and years later, on a second report of the same nature reaching him, I saw Benedict again, who declared with a profane expletive, ‘He shall stay there.’ And if he had not died about a dozen years ago he would probably be there to-day, at the foot of Gansevoort Street.” It is interesting that a man of the intellect of R. H. Stoddard should have found Melville’s mind such a shadowed hieroglyph. With Stoddard so perplexed, it is less difficult to understand Melville’s preference for solitude. In his copy of Schopenhauer, Melville underlined the phrase—“this hellish society of men;” and he vigorously underscored the aphorism: “When two or three are gathered together, the devil is among them.” Melville occupied himself with his books, with collecting etchings, with solitary walks; and for companionship he was satisfied with the society of his grandchildren. His grand-daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Melville Metcalf, thus records her recollections of such association: “I was not yet ten years old when my grandfather died. To put aside all later impressions gathered from those who knew him longer and coloured by their personal reactions, all impressions made by subsequent reading of his books, results in a series of childish recollections, vivid homely scenes wherein “Setting forth on a bright spring afternoon for a trip to Central Park, the Mecca of most of our pilgrimages, he made a brave and striking figure as he walked erect, head thrown back, cane in hand, inconspicuously dressed in a dark blue suit and a soft black felt hat. For myself, I skipped gaily beside him, anticipating the long jogging ride in the horse cars, the goats and shanty-topped granite of the upper reaches of our journey, the broad walks of the park, where the joy of all existence was best expressed by running down the hills, head back, skirts flying in the wind. He would follow more slowly and call ‘Look out, or the “cop” may catch you!’ I always thought he used funny words: ‘cop’ was surely a jollier word than ‘policeman.’ “We never came in from a trip of this kind, nor indeed from any walk, but we stopped in the front hall under a coloured engraving of the Bay of Naples, its still blue dotted with tiny white sails. He would point to them with his cane and say, ‘See the little boats sailing hither and thither.’ ‘Hither and thither’—more funny words, thought I, at the same time a little awed by something far away in the tone of voice. “I remember mornings when even sugar on the oatmeal was not enough to tempt me to finish the last mouthful. It would be spring in the back yard too, and a tin cup full of little stones picked out of the garden meant a penny from my grandmother. He would say in a warning whisper, ‘Jack Smoke will come down the chimney and take what you leave!’ That was another matter. The oatmeal was laughingly finished and the yard gained. Across the back parlour and main hall upstairs ran a narrow iron-trimmed porch, furnished with Windsor and folding canvas chairs. There he would sit with a pipe and his most constant companion—his cane, and watch my busy activity below. Against the wall of the porch hung a match holder, more for ornament than utility, it seems. It was a gay red and blue china butterfly. Invariably he looked to see if it had flown away since we were there last. “Once in a long while his interest in his grandchildren led him to cross the river and take the suburban train to East Orange, where we lived. He must have been an impressive figure, sitting silently on the piazza of our little house, while my sister and I pranced by with a neighbour’s boy and his express wagon, filled with a satisfied sense of the strength and accomplishment of our years. When he had had enough of such exhibitions, he would suddenly rise and take the next train back to Hoboken. “Chiefly do I think of him connected with different parts of the 26th Street house. “His own room was a place of mystery and awe to me; there I never ventured unless invited by him. It looked bleakly north. The great mahogany desk, heavily bearing up four shelves of dull gilt and leather books; the high dim book-case, topped by strange plaster heads that peered along the ceiling level, or bent down, searching blindly with sightless balls; the small black iron bed, covered with dark cretonne; the narrow iron grate; the wide table in the alcove, piled with papers I would not dream of touching—these made a room even more to be fled than the back parlour, by whose door I always ran to escape the following eyes of his portrait, which hung there in a half light. Yet lo, the paper-piled table also held a little bag of figs, and one of the pieces of sweet stickiness was for me. ‘Tittery-Eye’ he called me, and awe melted into glee, as I skipped away to my grandmother’s room, which adjoined. “That was a very different place—sunny, comfortable and familiar, with a sewing machine and a white bed like other peoples’ In the corner stood a big arm chair, where he always sat when he left the recesses of his own dark privacy. I used to climb on his knee, while he told me wild tales of cannibals and tropic isles. Little did I then know that he was reliving his own past. We came nearest intimacy at these times, and part of the fun was to put my hands in his thick beard and squeeze it hard. It was no soft silken beard, but tight curled like the horse hair breaking out of old upholstered chairs, firm and wiry to the grasp, and squarely chopped. “Sad it is that he felt his grandchildren would turn against him as they grew older. He used to forebode as much. As it is, I have nothing but a remembrance of glorious fun, mixed with a childish awe, as of some one who knew far and strange things.” As the last meed of glory, Melville received this flattering letter: “12 Lucknow Terrace, “Dear Sir: “Although a stranger, I take the liberty of addressing you on the ground of my ardent admiration for your works. For a number of years I have read and reread Moby-Dick with increasing pleasure in every perusal: and with this study, the conviction has grown up that the unique merits of that book have never received due recognition. I have been a student for ten years and have dabbled in literature more or less myself. And now I find myself in a position which enables me to give myself to literature as a life-work. I am anxious to set the merits of your books before the public and to that end, I beg the honour of corresponding with you. It would be of great assistance to me, if I could gather some particulars of your life and literary methods from you, other than given in such books as Duyckinck’s dictionary. In the matter of style, apart from the matter altogether I consider your books, especially the earlier ones, the most thoroughly New World product in all American literature. “Hoping that I am not asking too much, I remain, “Yours most respectfully, “Munro Professor of English at Dalhousie University.” Melville replied: “104 E. 26th St. “Dear Sir: “I beg you to overlook my delay in acknowledging yours of the 12th ult. It was unavoidable. “Your note gave me pleasure, as how should it not, written in such a spirit. “But you do not know, perhaps, that I have entered my 8th decade. After 20 years nearly, as an outdoor custom house officer, I have lately come into possession of unobstructed leisure, but only just as, in the course of nature, my vigour sensibly declines. What little of it is left I husband for certain matters as yet incomplete, and which indeed may never be completed. “I appreciate, quite as much as you would have me, your friendly good will and shrink from any appearance to the contrary. “Trusting that you will take all this, & what it implies, in the same spirit that prompts it, I am, “Very truly yours, “To Melville was using his “unobstructed leisure” in a return to the writing of prose. Ten prose sketches and a novel were the result. But the result is not distinguished. The novel, Billy Budd, is built around the character of Jack Chase, the “Handsome Sailor.” In the character of Billy Budd, Melville attempts to portray the native purity and nobility of the uncorrupted man. Melville spends elaborate pains in analysing “the mystery of iniquity,” and in celebrating by contrast the god-like beauty of body and spirit of his hero. Billy Budd, by his heroic guilelessness is, like an angel of vengeance, precipitated into manslaughter; and for his very righteousness he is hanged. Billy Budd, finished within a few months before the end of Melville’s life, would seem to teach that though the wages of sin is death, that sinners and saints alike toil for a common hire. In Billy Budd the orphic sententiousness is gone, it is true. But gone also is the brisk lucidity, the sparkle, the verve. Only the disillusion abided with him to the last. Melville died at 104 East 26th Street, New York, on Mon “Oh, what quenchless feud is this, that Time hath with the sons of Men!” | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
