Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
unconscious aversion to human society.” Though Melville grew to a most
uncomplimentary rating of the human biped, he always cherished a very
deep reverence for some of his four-footed brothers. “There are unknown
worlds of knowledge in brutes,” he wrote; “and whenever you mark a
horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure
he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries
in man.”
The trip back across the Atlantic, after six weeks in Liverpool,
though longer than the out-bound passage, was for Melville less of
an ordeal. He was no longer a bewildered stranger in the forecastle
or in the riggings, so he turned his eye to other parts of the ship.
It was the steerage of the _Highlander_ packed with its four or five
hundred emigrants, that gave him most bitter occasion to reflect
on the criminal nature of the universe. Because of insufficient
provisions in food for an unexpectedly prolonged voyage, the dirty
weather, and the absence of the most indispensable conveniences,
these emigrants suffered almost incredible hardships. Before they
had been at sea a week, to hold one’s head down the fore hatchway,
Melville says, was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool.
The noisome confinement in this close unventilated and crowded
den, and the deprivation of sufficient food, helped by personal
uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever among the emigrants. The
result was the death of some dozens of them, a panic throughout the
ship, and a novel indulgence in spasmodic devotions. “Horrible as the
sights of the steerage were, the cabin, perhaps, presented a scene
equally despairing. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even
prayer-meetings were held over the very tables across which the loud
jest had been so often heard.”
But with the coming of fair winds and fine weather the pestilence
subsided, and the ship steered merrily towards New York. The steerage
was cleaned thoroughly with sand and water. The place was then
fumigated, and dried with pieces of coal from the gallery: so that when
the _Highlander_ streamed into New York harbour no stranger would have
imagined, from her appearance, that the _Highlander_ had made other
than a tidy and prosperous voyage. “Thus, some sea-captains take good
heed that benevolent citizens shall not get a glimpse of the true
condition of the steerage while at sea.”
As they came into the Narrows, “no more did we think of the gale and
the plague; nor turn our eyes upward to the stains of blood still
visible on the topsail, whence Jackson had fallen. Oh, he who has never
been afar, let him once go from home, to know what home is. Hurra!
Hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our anchor, fathoms down
into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of which was now
worth a broad manor in England.”
Melville spent the greater part of the night “walking the deck
and gazing at the thousand lights of the city.” At sunrise, the
_Highlander_ warped into a berth at the foot of Wall street, and the
old ship was knotted, stem and stern, to the pier. This knotting of
the ship was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors; for, the ship
once fast to the wharf, Melville and his shipmates were free. So with
a rush and a shout they bounded ashore--all but Melville. He went
down into the forecastle and sat on a chest. The ship he had loathed,
while he was imprisoned in it, grew lovely in his eyes when he was
free to bid it forever farewell. In the tarry old den he sat, the only
inhabitant of the deserted ship but for the mate and the rats. He sat
there and let his eyes linger over every familiar old plank. “For the
scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past,” he
says, inverting the reflection of Dante; “and the silent reminiscence
of hardship departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.”
According to this philosophy, the more accumulated and overwhelming the
hardships we survive, the richer and sweeter will be the ensuing hours
of thoughtful recollection. For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.
And pleasure’s crown of pleasure is remembering sorrier things. So
indoctrinated, Melville should have viewed the concluding scene with
the captain of the _Highlander_, on the day the sailors drew their
wages, with eternal thanksgiving.
“Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous inlaid desk, sat
Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial
as the Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
deferentially in a semi-circle before him, while the captain held the
ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
mellow bank notes--beautiful sight!--paid them their wages.... The
sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing all was
right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they would have
demanded another, salaamed and withdrew, leaving me face to face with
the Paymaster-general of the Forces.”
Melville stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, he says, and
expecting every moment to hear his name called. But no such name
did he hear. “The captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a
very fragrant cigar, took up the morning paper--I think it was the
_Herald_--threw his leg over one arm of the chair, and plunged into the
latest intelligence from all parts of the world.”
Melville hemmed, and scraped his foot to increase the disturbance. The
Paymaster-general looked up. Melville demanded his wages. The captain
laughed, and taking a long inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and
sat sideways looking at Melville, letting the vapour slowly wriggle and
spiralise out of his mouth.
“Captain Riga,” said Melville, “do you not remember that about four
months ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in
this very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship,
and receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain
Riga, I have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I’ll thank
you for my pay.”
“Ah, yes, I remember,” said the captain. “_Mr. Jones!_ Ha! Ha! I
remember Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop--_you_, too,
are the son of a wealthy French importer; and--let me think--was not
your great-uncle a barber?”
“No!” thundered Melville, his Gansevoort temper up.
Captain Riga suavely turned over his accounts. “Hum, hum!--yes, here it
is: Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
that’s twelve dollars: less three dollars advanced in Liverpool--that
makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
overboard--that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four
dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?”
“So it seems,” said Melville with staring eyes.
“And now let me see what you owe me, and then we’ll be able to square
the yards, Monsieur Redburn.”
“Owe him!” Melville confesses to thinking; “what do I owe him but a
grudge.” But Melville concealed his resentment. Presently Captain Riga
said: “By running away from the ship in Liverpool, you forfeited your
wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and there has been advanced to
you, in money, hammers and scrapers, seven dollars and seventy-five
cents; you are therefore indebted to me for precisely that sum. I’ll
thank you for the money.” He extended his open palm across the desk.
The precise nature of Melville’s eloquence at this juncture of his
career has not been recorded. Penniless, he left the ship, to trail
after his shipmates as they withdrew along the wharf to stop at a
sailors’ retreat, poetically denominated “The Flashes.” Here they all
came to anchor before the bar.
“Well, maties,” said one of them, at last--“I s’pose we shan’t see each
other again:--come, let’s splice the mainbrace all round, and drink to
the _last voyage_.”
And so they did. Then they shook hands all round, three times three,
and disappeared in couples through the several doorways.
Melville stood on the corner in front of “The Flashes” till the last
of his shipmates was out of sight. Then he walked down to the Battery,
and within a stone’s throw of the place of his birth, sat on one of the
benches, under the summer shade of the trees. It was a quiet, beautiful
scene, he says; full of promenading ladies and gentlemen; and through
the fresh and bright foliage he looked out over the bay, varied with
glancing ships. “It would be a pretty fine world,” he thought, “if I
only had a little money to enjoy it.” He leaves it ambiguous whether or
not he imbibed his optimism at “The Flashes.” Equally veiled does he
leave the mystery by which he came by the money to pay his passage on
the steamboat up to Albany: a trip he took that afternoon. “I pass over
the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into embraces, long and
loving,” he says:--“I pass over this.”
For the home we return to, is never the home that we leave, and the
more desperate the leave-taking, the more bathetic the return.
CHAPTER VI
PEDAGOGY, PUGILISM AND LETTERS
“It is often to be observed, that as in digging for precious metals
in the mines, much earthly rubbish has first to be troublesomely
handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one’s soul for the fine
gold of genius, much dulness and common-place is first brought to
light. Happy would it be, if the man possessed in himself some
receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but he is like the
occupant of a dwelling, whose refuse cannot be clapped into his own
cellar, but must be deposited in the street before his own door, for
the public functionaries to take care of.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _Pierre_.
The record of the next three and a half years of Melville’s life is
extremely scant. What he was doing and thinking and feeling must be
left almost completely to surmise. In the brief record of his life
preserved in the Commonplace Book of his wife, this period between
Liverpool and the South Seas is dismissed in a single sentence: “Taught
school at intervals in Pittsfield and in Greenbush (now East Albany)
N. Y.” Arthur Stedman (who got his facts largely from Mrs. Melville),
in his “Biographical and Critical Introduction” to _Typee_, slightly
enlarges upon this statement. “A good part of the succeeding three
years, from 1837 to 1840,” says Stedman, “was occupied with school
teaching. While so engaged at Greenbush, now East Albany, N. Y., he
received the munificent salary of ‘six dollars a quarter and board.’
He taught for one term at Pittsfield, Mass., ‘boarding around’ with
the families of his pupils, in true American fashion, and early
suppressing, on one memorable occasion, the efforts of his larger
scholars to inaugurate a rebellion by physical force.” J. E. A. Smith,
in his _Biographical Sketch_ already cited, dates this “memorable”
mating of pedagogy and pugilism somewhat earlier.
Besides teaching during these years, Melville was engaged in another
activity, which all of his biographers--if they knew of it at all--pass
over in decent silence: an activity to which Melville devotes a whole
book of _Pierre_.
“It still remains to be said,” says Melville, “that Pierre himself had
written many a fugitive thing, which had brought him not only vast
credit and compliments from his more immediate acquaintances, but
the less partial applauses of the always intelligent and extremely
discriminating public. In short, Pierre had frequently done that
which many other boys have done--published. Not in the imposing form
of a book, but in the more modest and becoming way of occasional
contributions to magazines and other polite periodicals. Not only
the public had applauded his gemmed little sketches of thought and
fancy; but the high and mighty Campbell clan of editors of all sorts