Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
had bestowed upon them those generous commendations which, with one
instantaneous glance, they had immediately perceived was his due....
One, after endorsingly quoting that sapient, suppressed maxim of Dr.
Goldsmith’s, which asserts that whatever is new is false, went on to
apply it to the excellent productions before him; concluding with this:
‘He has translated the unruffled gentleman from the drawing-room into
the general levee of letters; he never permits himself to astonish; is
never betrayed into anything coarse or new; as assured that whatever
astonishes is vulgar, and whatever is new must be crude. Yes, it is the
glory of this admirable young author, that vulgarity and vigour--two
inseparable adjuncts--are equally removed from him.’”
In _Pierre_, Melville spends more than twenty-five closely printed
pages--half satirical, half of the utmost seriousness--discussing his
own literary growth: a passage of the highest critical and biographical
interest. In its satirical parts the passage is consistently
double-edged; therein, Melville ironically praises his early writing
for possessing those very defects which his maturer work was damned
for not exhibiting. It is doubtless true that his juvenile works were
“equally removed from vulgarity and vigour.” They were “characterised
throughout by Perfect Taste,” as he makes one critic observe “in an
ungovernable burst of admiring fury.” But the Perfect Taste was the
Perfect Taste of Hannah More, and Dr. Akenside, and _Lalla Rookh_. With
the publication of _Typee_, Melville was charged not only with the
crimes of vulgarity and vigour, but with the milder accompanying vices
of indecency and irreverence. His earliest writings were untouched
by any of these taints. In _Pierre_, Melville speaks of “a renowned
clerical and philological conductor of a weekly religious periodical,
whose surprising proficiency in the Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaic, to
which he had devoted by far the greater part of his life, peculiarly
fitting him to pronounce unerring judgment upon works of taste in the
English.” Melville makes this critic thus deliver himself on Pierre’s
early efforts in letters: “He is blameless in morals, and harmless
throughout.” Another “unhesitatingly recommended his effusions to the
family circle.” A third had no reserve in saying that “the predominant
end and aim of this writer was evangelical piety.” Melville is here
patently satirising the vitriolic abuse which _Typee_ and _Omoo_
provoked.
Only two of Melville’s earliest effusions, written before the world had
“fairly Timonised him” are known to survive. These appeared in _The
Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser_ for May 4, and May 18,
1839. The first is signed “L. A. V.”; the second, known to exist only
in a single mutilated clipping, in lacking the closing paragraphs,
can give no evidence as to concluding signature. Copies of these two
articles are preserved among Melville’s papers, each autographed by him
in faded brown ink. The interest of the earlier paper is heightened by
this inscription, in Melville’s hand, boldly scrawled across the inner
margin: “When I woke up this morning, what the Devil should I see but
your cane along in bed with me. I shall keep it for you when you come
up here again.” It is more easy to imagine Melville’s astonishment
in waking to find such a stately novelty as a walking-stick for a
bed-fellow, than to fancy how the walking-stick found itself in such
an unusual environment. It is about as futile to inquire into the
history and meaning of this incident as soberly to debate “what songs
the sirens sang and what name Achilles bore among the daughters of the
King of Scyros.” It is certain, however, that the Sirens had little
hand in Melville’s juvenile effusions. And of this fact Melville grew
to be keenly aware. “In sober earnest,” he says in _Pierre_, “those
papers contained nothing uncommon; indeed, those fugitive things were
the veriest commonplace.” Yet as the initial literary efforts of a
man who wrote _Typee_ and _Moby-Dick_ they are intensely interesting:
interesting, like the longer prayers of St. Augustine, less because
of their content than because of the personality from which they were
derived.
What would seem to be Melville’s first published venture in letters is
here given, nearly complete.
For the Democratic Press
FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING DESK
No. 1
MY DEAR M----, I can imagine you seated on that dear, delightful,
old-fashioned sofa; your head supported by its luxurious padding, and
with feet perched aloft on the aspiring back of that straight limbed,
stiff-necked, quaint old chair, which, as our facetious W---- assured
me, was the identical seat in which old Burton composed his Anatomy
of Melancholy. I see you reluctantly raise your optics from the
huge-clasped quarto which encumbers your lap, to receive the package
which the servant hands you, and can almost imagine that I see those
beloved features illumined for a moment with an expression of joy,
as you read the superscription of your gentle protégé. Lay down I
beseech you that odious black-lettered volume and let not its musty
and withered leaves sully the virgin purity and whiteness of the
sheet which is the vehicle of so much good sense, sterling thought,
and chaste and elegant sentiment.
You remember how you used to rate me for my hang-dog modesty, my
_mauvaise honte_, as my Lord Chesterfield would style it. Well!
I have determined that hereafter you shall not have occasion to
inflict upon me those flattering appellations of “Fool!” “Dolt!”
“Sheep!” which in your indignation you used to shower upon me, with a
vigour and a facility which excited my wonder, while it provoked my
resentment.
And how do you imagine that I rid myself of this annoying hindrance?
Why, truly, by coming to the conclusion that in this pretty corpus of
mine was lodged every manly grace; that my limbs were modelled in
the symmetry of the Phidian Jupiter; my countenance radiant with the
beams of wit and intelligence, the envy of the beaux, the idol of the
women and the admiration of the tailor. And then my mind! why, sir, I
have discovered it to be endowed with the most rare and extraordinary
powers, stored with universal knowledge, and embellished with every
polite accomplishment.
Pollux! what a comfortable thing is a good opinion of one’s self when
I walk the Broadway of our village with a certain air, that puts me
down at once in the estimation of any intelligent stranger who may
chance to meet me, as a _distingué_ of the purest water, a blade of
the true temper, a blood of the first quality! Lord! how I despise
the little sneaking vermin who dodge along the street as though they
were so many footmen or errand boys; who have never learned to carry
the head erect in conscious importance, but hang that noblest of
the human members as though it had been boxed by some virago of an
Amazon; who shuffle along the walk with a quick uneasy step, a hasty
clownish motion, which by the magnitude of the contrast, set off to
advantage my own slow and magisterial gait, which I can at pleasure
vary to an easy, abandoned sort of carriage, or to the more engaging
alert and lively walk, to suit the varieties of time, occasion, and
company.
And in society, too--how often have I commiserated the poor wretches
who stood aloof, in a corner, like a flock of scared sheep; while
myself, beautiful as Apollo, dressed in a style which would extort
admiration from a Brummel, and belted round with self-esteem as with
a girdle, sallied up to the ladies--complimenting one, exchanging a
repartee with another; tapping this one under the chin, and clasping
this one round the waist; and finally, winding up the operation by
kissing round the whole circle to the great edification of the fair,
and to the unbounded horror, amazement and ill-suppressed chagrin of
the aforesaid sheepish multitude; who with eyes wide open and mouths
distended, afforded good subjects on whom to exercise my polished
wit, which like the glittering edge of a Damascus sabre “dazzled all
it shone upon.”
* * * * *
By my halidome, sir, this same village of Lansingburgh contains
within its pretty limits as fair a set of blushing damsels as one
would wish to look upon on a dreamy summer day!--When I traverse
the broad pavements of my own metropolis, my eyes are arrested
by beautiful forms flitting hither and thither; and I pause to
admire the elegance of their attire, the taste displayed in their
embellishments; the rich mass of the material; and sometimes, it may
be, at the loveliness of the features, which no art can heighten and
no negligence conceal.
But here, sir, here--where woman seems to have erected her throne,
and established her empire; here, where all feel and acknowledge her
sway, she blooms in unborrowed charms; and the eye undazzled by the
profusion of extraneous ornament, settles at once upon the loveliest
faces which our clayey natures can assume.
* * * * *
Nor, my dear M., does there reign in all this bright display,
that same monotony of feature, form, complexion, which elsewhere
is beheld; no, here are all varieties, all the orders of Beauty’s
architecture; the Doric, the Ionic, the Corinthian, all are here.
I have in “my mind’s eye, Horatio,” three (the number of the Graces,
you remember) who may stand, each at the head of their respective
orders.
* * * * *
When I venture to describe the second of this beautiful trinity,
I feel my powers of delineation inadequate to the task; but
nevertheless I will try my hand at the matter, although like an
unskilful limner, I am fearful I shall but scandalise the charms I
endeavour to copy.
Come to my aid, ye guardian spirits of the Fair! Guide my awkward
hand, and preserve from mutilation the features ye hover over and
protect! Pour down whole floods of sparkling champagne, my dear
M----, until your brain grows giddy with emotion; con over the
latter portion of the first Canto of Childe Harold, and ransack your
intellectual repository for the loveliest visions of the Fairy Land,
and you will be in a measure prepared to relish the epicurean banquet
I shall spread.
The stature of this beautiful mortal (if she be indeed of earth) is
of that perfect height which, while it is freed from the charge of
being low, cannot with propriety be denominated tall. Her figure is
slender almost to fragility but strikingly modelled in spiritual
elegance, and is the only form I ever saw which could bear the trial
of a rigid criticism.
Every man who is gifted with the least particle of imagination, must
in some of his reveries have conjured up from the realms of fancy,
a being bright and beautiful beyond everything he had ever before
apprehended, whose main and distinguishing attribute invariably
proves to be a form the indescribable loveliness of which seems to
“--Sail in liquid light,
And float on seas of bliss.”
The realisation of these seraphic visions is seldom permitted us; but
I can truly say that when my eyes for the first time fell upon this
lovely creature, I thought myself transported to the land of Dreams,
where lay embodied, the most brilliant conceptions of the wildest
fancy. Indeed, could the Promethean spark throw life and animation
into the Venus de Medici, it would but present the counterpart of
----.
Her complexion has the delicate tinge of the Brunett, with a little
of the roseate hue of the Circassian; and one would swear that none