Chapter XVII: The Long Quietus (1)

“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 discussing general literature he was dumb when the subject of his own writings was broached.”

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_ May 6, 1857. In May, 1860, he made a voyage to San Francisco, sailing from Boston on the 30th of May with his brother Thomas Melville who commanded the _Meteor_, a fast sailing clipper in the China trade--and returning in November, he being the only passenger. He reached San Francisco Oct. 12th--returned in the _Carter_ Oct. 20 to Panama--crossed the Isthmus & sailed for New York on the _North Star_. This voyage to San Francisco has been incorrectly given in many of the papers of the day.”

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 1/2 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 pillars, fading away into the darkness. A palatial sort of Tartarus. Two tiers of pillars, one standing on the other; lower tier half buried. Here and there a little light percolates through from breaks in the keys of the arches; where bits of green struggle down. Used to be a reservoir. Now full of boys twisting silk. Great hubbub. Flit about like imps. Whirr of the spinning Jenns. In going down, (as into a ship’s hold) and wandering about, have to beware the innumerable skeins of silk. Terrible place to be robbed or murdered in. At whatever place you look, you see lines of pillars, like trees in an orchard arranged in the quincunx style.--Came out. Overhead looks like a mere shabby common, or worn out sheep pasture.--To the bazaar. A wilderness of traffic. Furniture, arms, silks, confectionery, shoes, saddles,--everything. (Cario) Covered overhead with stone arches, with wide openings. Immense crowds. Georgians, Armenians, Greeks, Jews & Turks are the merchants. Magnificent embroidered silk & gilt sabres & caparisons for horses. You lose yourself & are bewildered and confounded with the labyrinth, the din, the barbaric confusion of the whole.--Went to Watch Tower within a kind of arsenal (Immense arsenal) the tower of vast girth & height in the Saracenic style--a column. From the top, my God, what a view! Surpassing everything. The Propontis, the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, the domes, the minarets, the bridges, the men-of-war, the cypresses.--Indescribable. Went to the Pigeon Mosque. In its court, the pigeons covered the pavement as thick as in the West they fly in hosts. A man feeding them. Some perched upon the roof of the colonnades & upon the fountain in the middle & on the cypresses. Took off my shoes and went in. Pigeons inside, flying round in the dome, in & out the lofty windows. Went to Mosque of Sultan Suleiman. The third one in point of size and splendour. The Mosque is a sort of marble mosque of which the minarets (four or six) are the stakes. In fact when inside it struck me that the idea of this kind of edifice was borrowed from the tent. Though it would make a noble ball room. Off shoes and went in. This custom more sensible than taking off hat. Muddy shoes; but never muddy head. Floor covered with mats & on them beautiful rugs of great size & square. Fine light coming through the side slits below the dome. Blind dome. Many Turks at prayer; lowering head to the floor towards a kind of altar. Charity going on. In a gallery saw lot of portmanteaux, chests & bags; as in a R. R. baggage car. Put there for safe-keeping by men who leave home, or afraid of robbers and taxation. ‘Lay not up your treasures where moth and rust do corrupt’ &c. Fountains (a row of them) outside along the side of the mosque for bathing the feet and hands of worshippers before going in. Natural rock.--Instead of going in in stockings (as I did) the Turks wear overshoes and doff them outside the mosque. The tent-like form of the Mosque broken up & dumbfounded with infinite number of arches, trellises, small domes, colonnades, &c, &c, &c. Went down to the Golden Horn. Crossed bridge of pontoons. Stood in the middle and not a cloud in the sky. Deep blue and clear. Delightful elastic atmosphere, although December. A kind of English June cooled and tempered sherbet-like with an American October; the serenity & beauty of summer without the heat.--Came home through the vast suburbs of Galatea, &c. Great crowds of all nations--money changers coins of all nations circulate--placards in four or five languages: (Turkish, French, Greek, Armenian) Lottery advertisements of boats the same. Sultan’s ship in colours--no atmosphere like this for flags. You feel you are among the nations. Great curse that of Babel; not being able to talk to a fellow being, &c.--Have to tend to your pockets. My guide went with his hands to his.--The horrible grimy tragic air of the Streets. (Ruffians of Galatea) The rotten & wicked looking houses. So gloomy & grimy seem as if a suicide hung from every rafter within.--No open spaces--no squares or parks. You suffocate for room.--You pass close together. The cafés of the Turks. Dingy holes, faded splendour, moth eaten. On both sides rude seats and divans where the old musty Turks sit smoking like conjurers. Saw in certain kiosks (pavilions) the crowns of the late Sultan. You look through gilt gratings & between heavy curtains of lace, at the sparkling things. Near the Mosque of Sultan Suleiman saw the cemetery of his family--big as that of a small village, all his wives and children and servants. All gilt and carved. The women’s tombs carved with heads (women no souls). The Sultan Suleiman’s tomb & that of his three brothers in a kiosk. Gilded like mantel ornaments.”

_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 days sped on, chased by the gloomy nights; and, in glory dying, lent their lustre to the starry skies. So, long the radiant dolphins fly before the sable sharks; but seized, and torn in flames--die, burning:--their last splendour left, in sparkling scales that float along the sea.” In his poetry, as in his prose, is the same incongruous mating of astonishing facility and flagrant defect. It is the same paradox that one finds in Browning and in Meredith,--whose poetry Melville’s more than superficially resembles. Melville shared with these men a greater interest in ideas than in verbal prettiness, and like the best of them, when mastered by a refractory idea, he was not over-exquisite in his regard for prosody and syntax in getting it said. When he had a mind to, however, he could pound with a lustiness that should endear him to those who delight in declamation contests: a contemptible distinction, perhaps--but even that has been denied him. The poem to the Swamp Angel, for example, the great gun that reduced Charleston, is fine in its irony and vigour. The poem begins:

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)
“MY DEAR CAPTAIN:

“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 rewarded by some glorious stanza staring you in the
face & claiming admiration. If you were not such a devil of a ways
off, I would send you a trunk, by way of presentation-copy. I can’t
help thinking what a luckless chap you were that voyage you had a
poetaster with you. You remember the romantic moonlight night, when
the conceited donkey repeated to you about three cables’ length of
his verses. But you bore it like a hero. I can’t in fact recall so
much as a single _wince_. To be sure, you went to bed immediately
upon the conclusion of the entertainment; but this much I am sure of,
whatever were your sufferings, you never gave them utterance. Tom, my
boy, I admire you. I say again, you are a hero.--By the way, I hope
in God’s name, that rumour which reached your owners (C. & P.) a few
weeks since--that dreadful rumour is not true. They heard that you
had begun to take to--drink?--Oh no, but worse--to sonnet-writing.
That off Cape Horn instead of being on deck about your business, you
devoted your time to writing a sonnet on your mistress’ eyebrow, &
another upon her thumbnail.--‘I’ll be damned,’ says Curtis (he was
very profane) ‘if I’ll have a sonneteer among my Captains.’--‘Well,
if he has taken to poetising,’ says Peabody--‘God help the ship!’

* * * * *

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,

“HERMAN.”

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.” Though this is completely true, Melville used in _Clarel_ more irony, vividness, and intellect than the whole congregation of practising poets of the present day (a few notable names excepted) could muster in aggregate. Yet with all this wealth of the stuff of poetry, the poem never quite fulfils itself. In _Clarel_ Melville brings together in the Holy Land a group of pilgrims; pilgrims nearly all drawn from the life, as a study of his Journal of 1856-7 shows. In this group there are men devout and men sceptical, some suave in orthodoxy, and some militant in doubt. There are dreamers and men of action; unprincipled saints, and rakes without vice. In the bleak and legend-haunted Holy Land Melville places these men, and dramatises his own reactions to life in this setting. The problem of faith is the pivot of endless discussion: and upon this pivot is made to turn all of the problems of destiny that engage a “pondering man.” These discussions take place against a panorama of desert and monastery and shrine. In some of the interpolated songs of _Clarel_, Melville almost achieved the lyric mood.

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 is hard to meet a man whose
opinion as a reader is worth having who does not speak of your
works in such terms as he might hesitate to employ, with all his
patriotism, towards many renowned English writers.

“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 it affords
a fair prospect of being a permanent benefit to your health, and
it will afford me the greatest pleasure to do anything in my power
to aid your preparation, and make the voyage most agreeable and
beneficial to you.

“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 conveyances Mr. Colt will explain it to you fully. I have
written to him and enclosed him a draft of a deed for you to execute
to me and my deed executed to be delivered to you and your notes to
be surrendered. I have explained the whole matter to Mr. Colt and I
have full confidence in his prudence and fidelity. I do not see any
advantage in giving the business any more notoriety than will arise
from putting the deeds on record.

“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 myself. You will then leave home with the conscious
satisfaction of knowing that you are free from debt: that if by a
Providential dispensation you should be prevented from ever returning
to your beloved family, provision will have been made at least for a
home, for your wife and children.

“Affectionately and ever faithfully

“Your sincere friend

“LEMUEL SHAW.”

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.

1857-1858

November 24 Concord, Mass. $30.00
December 2 Boston, Mass. 40.00
„ 10 Montreal 50.00
„ 30 New Haven, Conn. 50.00
January 5 Auburn, N. Y. 40.00
„ 7 Ithaca, N. Y. 50.00
„ 10 Cleveland, Ohio 50.00
„ 22 Clarksville 75.00
Chillicothe, Ohio 40.00
n. d. Cincinnati, Ohio 50.00
Feb. 10 Charleston, Mass. 20.00
„ 23 Rochester, N. Y. 50.00
n. d. New Bedford, Mass. 50.00
------
645.00

Travelling expenses 221.30
------
423.70

1858-9

Dec. 6, 1858 Yonkers, N. Y. $30.00
„ 14, „ Pittsfield, Mass. 50.00
Jan. 31, 1859 Boston, Mass. 50.00
Feb. 7, „ New York, N. Y. 55.00
„ 8, „ Baltimore, Md. 100.00
„ 24, „ Chicago, Ill. 50.00
„ 25, „ Milwaukee, Wisc. 50.00
„ 28, „ Rockford, Ill. 50.00
Mar. 2, „ Quincy, Ill. 23.50
„ 16, „ Lynn, Mass. (2 lec) 60.00
------
518.50

1859-60

November 7, Flushing, L. I. $30.
February 14, Danvers, Mass. 25.
„ 21, Cambridgeport, Mass. 55.
----
110.

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 awe. The speaker gave
a very eloquent description of the attitude and the spirit of Apollo.
The elevating effect of such statues was exhibited in the influence
they exerted upon the mind of Milton during his visit to Italy.

“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.”