Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
person inviolable forever. In _Iles Marquises, ou Nouka-Hiva, Histoire,
Géographie, Mœurs et Considérations Générales_ (Paris, 1843) by
Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz is to be found (pages 356-359) a history
of two more of these vagabonds: one Joseph Cabri, a Frenchman, and one
E. Roberts, an Englishman. Cabri returned to Europe, for a time, to
find the novelty of his tattooing both an embarrassment and a source of
livelihood. He was examined by grave learned societies, was presented
before several crowned heads, and submitted his person to intimate
examination to any one who would pay his fee. In 1818 he died in
obscurity and poverty in Valenciennes, his birth place. His historians
regret that his precious person was not preserved in alcohol to
delight the inquiring mind of later generations. The Pacific, it would
appear, was early a place of refuge for men with an insurmountable
homesickness for the mud. Melville soon came to believe that the
gifts of civilisation to the South Seas were without exception very
doubtful blessings; he came to be a special pleader for the barbaric
virtues; when these virtues were practised by legitimate barbarians;
but the spectacle of such men as Hardy fell beyond the pale of his
unusually broad sympathies. Though he was despairingly alert to the
vices of Christendom, never was he betrayed into a corrupt hankering to
recapitulate into savagery. Though he excused the cannibalism of the
Marquesans as an amiable weakness, he gazed upon Hardy “with a feeling
akin to horror.” Hardy’s tattooing was to Melville the outward and
visible sign of the lowest degradation to which a mortal, nurtured in a
civilisation that had for thousands of years a pathetically imperfect
struggle striven to some significance above the beast, could possibly
descend. “What an impress!” Melville exclaimed in superlative loathing.
“Far worse than Cain’s--_his_ was perhaps a wrinkle, or a freckle,
which some of our modern cosmetics might have effaced.” But Hardy’s
tattooing was to Melville a mark indelible of the blackest of all
betrayals.
More worthy emissaries than the pilot to the port of Tyohee were to
welcome Melville to the Marquesas. The entrance of the _Acushnet_
brought from the shore a flotilla of native canoes. “Such strange
outcries and passionate gesticulations I never certainly heard or saw
before,” Melville says. “You would have thought the islanders were on
the point of flying at one another’s throats, whereas they were only
amiably engaged in disentangling their boats.” Melville was surprised
at the strange absence of a single woman in the invading party, not
then knowing that canoes were “taboo” to women, and that consequently,
“whenever a Marquesan lady voyages by water, she puts in requisition
the paddles of her own fair body.”
As the _Acushnet_ approached within a mile and a half of the foot of
the bay, Melville noticed a singular commotion in the water ahead of
the vessel: the women, swimming out from shore, eager to embrace the
advantages of civilisation. “As they drew nearer,” Melville says,
“and as I watched the rising and sinking of their forms, and beheld
the uplifted right arm bearing above the water the girdle of tappa,
and their long dark hair trailing beside them as they swam, I almost
fancied they could be nothing else but so many mermaids. Under slow
headway we sailed right into the midst of these swimming nymphs, and
they boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold of the chain-plates
and springing into the chains; others, at the peril of being run over
by the vessel in her course, catching at the bob-stays, and wreathing
their slender forms about the ropes, hung suspended in the air. All
of them at length succeeded in getting up the ship’s side, where
they clung dripping with the brine and glowing with the bath, their
jet-black tresses streaming over their shoulders, and half enveloping
their otherwise naked forms. There they hung, sparkling with savage
vivacity, laughing gaily at one another, and chattering away with
infinite glee. Nor were they idle the while, for each performed the
simple offices of the toilet for the other. Their luxuriant locks,
wound up and twisted into the smallest possible compass, were freed
from the briny element; the whole person carefully dried, and from a
small little round shell that passed from hand to hand, anointed with
a fragrant oil: their adornments were completed by passing a few loose
folds of white tappa, in a modest cincture, around the waist. Thus
arrayed, they no longer hesitated, but flung themselves lightly over
the bulwarks, and were quickly frolicking about the decks. Many of
them went forward, perching upon the headrails or running out upon the
bowsprit, while others seated themselves upon the taffrail, or reclined
at full length upon the boats.”
The ship was fairly captured, and it yielded itself willing prisoner.
In the evening, after anchor had been struck, the deck was hung with
lanterns, and the women, decked in flowers, danced with “an abandoned
voluptuousness” that was a prelude “to every species of riot and
debauchery.” According to Melville’s account, on board the _Acushnet_
“the grossest licentiousness and the most shameful inebriety prevailed,
with occasional and but short-lived interruptions, through the whole
period of her stay.”
Nor were the French at the Marquesas neglectful of their duties to the
islanders. Admiral Du Petit-Thouars had stationed about one hundred
soldiers ashore, according to Melville’s account. Every other day
the troops marched out in full regalia, and for hours went through
all sorts of military evolutions to impress a congregation of naked
cannibals with the superior sophistications of Christendom. “A
regiment of the Old Guard, reviewed on a summer’s day in the Champs
Elysées,” Melville vouches, “could not have made a more critically
correct appearance.” The French had also with them, to enrich their
harvest of savage plaudits, a _puarkee nuee_, or “big hog”--in more
cultivated language, a horse. One of the officers was commissioned to
prance up and down the beach at full speed on this animal, with results
that redounded to the glory of France. This horse “was unanimously
pronounced by the islanders to be the most extraordinary specimen of
zoology that had ever come under their observation.”
It would be an ungracious presumption to contend that the French, while
at the Marquesas, exhibited to the natives only the sterner side of
civilisation. The behaviour of the French at Tahiti leaves room for
the hope that they were no less gallant at the Marquesas. An officer
of the _Reine Blanche_, writing at sea on October 10, 1842, of the
exploits of his countrymen at Tahiti, says, in part: “In the evening,
more than a hundred women came on board. At dinner time, the officers
and midshipmen invited them gallantly to their tables; and the repasts,
which were very gay, were prolonged sufficiently late at night, so
that fear might keep on board those of the women who were afraid to
sail home by the doubtful light of the stars.” The last three lines of
this letter were suppressed by the _Journal de Debats_, it is true,
but given in the _National_ and other journals. Three days later the
letter was officially pronounced “inexact” by the _Moniteur_, which
courageously asserted that “it is utterly false that a frigate has been
the theatre of corruption, in any country whatever; and French mothers
may continue to congratulate themselves that their sons serve in the
navy of their country.”
While the Frenchmen at the Marquesas--no less than the Americans, one
hopes with pardonable patriotic jealousy--were giving their mothers
at home cause for congratulation, Melville came to the determination
to leave the ship; “to use the concise, point-blank phrase of the
sailors, I had made up my mind to ‘run away.’” And that his reasons
for resolving to take this step were numerous and weighty, he says,
may be inferred from the fact that he chose rather to risk his fortune
among cannibals than to endure another voyage on board the _Acushnet_.
In _Typee_ he gives a general account of the captain’s bad treatment
of the crew, and his non-fulfilment of agreements. Life aboard the
_Acushnet_ has already been sufficiently expatiated upon.
Melville knew that immediately adjacent to Nukuheva, and only separated
from it by the mountains seen from the harbour, lay the lovely valley
of Happar, whose inmates cherished the most friendly relations with
the inhabitants of Nukuheva. On the other side of Happar, and closely
adjoining it, lay the magnificent valley of the dreaded Typee, the
unappeasable enemies of both these tribes. These Typees enjoyed a
prodigious notoriety all over the islands. The natives of Nukuheva,
Melville says, used to try to frighten the crew of the _Acushnet_
“by pointing to one of their own number and calling him a Typee,
manifesting no little surprise when we did not take to our heels at so
terrible an announcement.” But having ascertained the fact that the
tribes of the Marquesas dwell isolated in the depths of the valleys,
and avoided wandering about the more elevated portions of the islands,
Melville concluded that unperceived he might effect a passage to the
mountains, where he might easily and safely remain, supporting himself
on such fruits as came in his way, until the sailing of the ship. The
idea pleased him greatly. He imagined himself seated beneath a cocoanut
tree on the brow of the mountain, with a cluster of plantains within
easy reach, criticising the ship’s nautical evolutions as she worked
her way out of the harbour, and contrasting the verdant scenery about
him with the recollections of narrow greasy decks and the vile gloom of
the forecastle.
Melville at first prided himself that he was the only person on board
the _Acushnet_ sufficiently reckless to attempt an idyllic sojourn
on an island of irreclaimable cannibals. But Toby’s perennially
hanging over the side of the ship, gazing wistfully at the shore in
moody isolation, coupled with Melville’s knowledge of Toby’s hearty
detestation of the ship, of his dauntless courage, and his other
engaging traits as companion in high adventure, led Melville to
share with Toby his schemes. A few words won Toby’s most impetuous
co-operation. Plans were rapidly made and ratified by an affectionate
wedding of palms, when, to elude suspicion, each repaired to his
hammock to spend a last night aboard the _Acushnet_.
On the morrow, with as much tobacco, ship’s biscuit and calico as they
could stow in the front of their frocks, Melville and Toby made off for
the interior of Nukuheva,--but not before Melville “lingered behind
in the forecastle a moment to take a parting glance at its familiar
features.” Their five days of marvellous adventures that landed them
finally in the valley of Typee has abidingly tried the credulity of
Melville’s readers--though never for an instant their patience.
After reading these adventures, Stevenson expressed his slangy approval
by hailing Melville as “a howling cheese.” It has been questioned in
passing whether or not the number of days that two strong male humans,
going through incredible exertion, can support themselves upon a hunk
of bread soaked in sweat and ingrained with shreds of tobacco, must
not be fewer than Melville makes out. And did they, in sober verity,
critics have asked, lower themselves down the cliff by swinging from
creeper to creeper with horrid gaps between them--was it as steep
as Melville says, and the creepers as far apart? And did they, on
another occasion, as Melville asserts, break a second gigantic fall by
pitching on the topmost branches of a very high palm tree? During these