Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
despite their transformation in his memory, lived on in solid fact
unchanged. The identical trees in the Boston Common blotted out the
same patterns against the New England stars; none of the streets had
swerved from off their prim and angular respectability. His mother he
found living in Lansingburg, just out from Albany, N. Y. There was the
same starched calico smell to his sister’s dresses, the same clang-tint
to his mother’s voice. Such was the calibre of his imagination, that he
must have found life at Lansingburg unbelievably like he knew it must
be, yet very different from what he was prepared to find.
His brothers must have first appeared intimate strangers to him. His
elder brother, Gansevoort, had given up his hat and fur shop, was
well established in law and had won a creditable name for himself
in politics. His younger brother, Allan, was beginning a successful
legal career, with his name emblazoned on a door at 10 Wall Street.
Maria was, after all, a Gansevoort; she was not too proud to keep her
brothers reminded that she had borne sons. Melville’s youngest brother,
Tom, had sprung from boyhood into the self-conscious maturity of youth.
From vagabondage in Polynesia to the stern yoke of self-supporting
citizenship was a dizzy transition. But Melville did not clear it at
a bound. The very violence of the impact between the two antipodal
types of experience for a time must have stunned Melville to their
incompatibility. Tanned with sea-faring, exuberant in health, rosy
with the after-glow of his proud companionship with Jack Chase, and
the respect and affection he had won from his associates on board the
_United States_, he was effulgent with amazing tales--the enviable
hero of endless incredible adventures. His home-coming may well have
been not only a staggering, but a joyous adventure. For he entered
Lansingburg trailing clouds of glory. He was panoplied in romance; and
though bodily he was in a suburb of Albany, his companion image was
the distant adventurer he saw mirrored in the admiring and jealous
imagination of his friends. With what melancholy--if any--he viewed
this reflected image, and to what degree he was, Narcissus-wise,
conscious of its irony, we do not know. But if _Typee_ and _Omoo_ be
any index of his mood, he returned home happier and wholesomer than at
any other period of his life. Before many years, unsolved problems of
his youth were to reassert themselves, heightened in difficulty and in
pertinacity. Yet for a time, at least, so it would appear, he reaped
very substantial benefits from his escape beyond civilisation.
According to J. E. A. Smith, Melville was soon beset by his enthralled
and wide-eyed friends to put his experiences into a book. Even if such
a challenge had never been made, it is difficult to see how Melville
could have escaped plunging into literature. For the hankering for
letters had earlier stirred in Melville’s blood,--a hankering that
he had before succumbed to, swathing a vacuity of experience in the
grave-wrappings of rhetoric and prolixity. Now he was rich in matter;
because of the very straitened circumstances of his family, he was
faced again by the necessity of earning some money if he stayed at
home; and in so far as we know, he was untempted to venture forth
either as vagabond or efficiency expert.
Soon after his arrival home he must have settled down to composition.
For the manuscript of _Typee_ was bought in London by John Murray, by
an agreement dated December, 1845.
At the time of the completion of _Typee_, Melville’s brother,
Gansevoort, was starting for London as Secretary to the American
Legation under Minister McLane. Gansevoort threw _Typee_ in among his
luggage, to try its luck among British publishers. Whether _Typee_ had
previously been refused in the United States has not yet transpired.
In any event, John Murray bought the English rights to print a
thousand copies of _Typee_--a purchase that cost him £100. Murray did
not close the sale, however, until he was assured that _Typee_ was a
sober account of actual experiences. _Typee_ appeared in two parts in
Murray’s “Colonial and Home Library.” Part I appeared on February 26,
1846; Part II on April 1 of the same year.
Encouraged by the temerity of John Murray, Wiley and Putnam of New
York bought the American rights for _Typee_. And by an agreement made
in England, _Typee_ appeared simultaneously in New York and London:
in America under the title, _Typee, a Peep at Polynesian Life During
Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas_. In 1849, Harper
Brothers took over _Typee_, and issued it shorn of some of the passages
the Missionaries had found most objectionable. Up to January 1, 1849,
Wiley and Putnam had sold 6,392 copies of _Typee_: a sale upon which
Melville gained $655.91. Up to April 29, 1851, 7,437 copies of _Typee_
had been sold in England, netting Melville, if accounts surviving in
Allan’s hand be correct, $708.40.
Under the date of April 3, 1846--two days after the appearance in
England of Part II of _Typee_, Gansevoort wrote Melville the following
letter--the last letter, it appears, he ever wrote:
“MY DEAR HERMAN:
“Herewith you have copy of the arrangement with Wiley & Putnam for
the publication in the U. S. of your work on the Marquesas. The
letter of W. & P. under date of Jan. 13th is the result of a previous
understanding between Mr. Putnam and myself. As the correspondence
speaks for itself, it is quite unnecessary to add any comment. By
the steamer of to-morrow I send to your address several newspaper
comments and critiques of your book. The one in the _Sun_ was written
by a gentleman who is very friendly to myself, and who may possibly
for that reason have made it unusually eulogistic.
“Yours of Feb. 28 was rec’d a few days ago by the daily packet
from Joshua Bates. I am happy to learn by it that the previous
intelligence transmitted by me was ‘gratifying enough.’ I am glad
that you continue busy, and on my next or the after that will
venture to make some suggestions about your next book. In a former
letter you informed me that Allan had sent you $100 home, the fruit
of my collection. (I refer to the money sent at your request). It
appears that this was not so, for Allan informs me that the $100
was part of the £90 s 10--making £100 which I sent out by the
Jan. 2 Steamer. Allan seems to find it entirely too much trouble
to send me the monthly accounts of receipts and disbursements. I
have received no accounts from him later than up to Nov. 30th and
consequently am in a state of almost entire ignorance as to what
is transpiring at No. 10, Wall Street. This is very unthinking in
him, for my thoughts are so much at home that much of my time is
spent in disquieting apprehensions as to matters & things there. I
continue to live within my income, but to do so am forced to live
a life of daily self-denial. I do not find my health improved by
the sedentary life I have to lead here. The climate is too damp &
moist for me. I sometimes fear I am gradually breaking up. If it
be so--let it be--God’s will be done. I have already seen about as
much of London society as I care to see. It is becoming a toil to
me to make the exertion necessary to dress to go out, and I am now
leading a life really as quiet as your own in Lansingburg.--I think I
am growing phlegmatic and cold. Man stirs me not, nor women either.
My circulation is languid. My brain is dull. I neither seek to win
pleasure or avoid pain. A degree of insensibility has been long
stealing over me, & now seems completely established, which, to my
understanding, is more akin to death than life. Selfishly speaking,
I never valued life very much--it were impossible to value it less
than I do now. The only personal desire I now have is to be out
of debt. That desire waxes stronger within me as others fade. In
consideration of the little egotism which my previous letters to you
have contained, I hope that mother, brothers & sister will pardon
this babbling about myself.
“Tom’s matter has not been forgotten. You say there is a subject,
etc., etc., ‘on which I intended to write but will defer it.’ What do
you allude to? I am careful to procure all the critical notices of
_Typee_ which appear & transmit them to you. The steamer which left
Boston on the 1st inst. will bring me tidings from the U. S. as to
the success of _Typee_ there. I am, with love and kisses to all,
“Affectionately, Your brother,
“GANSEVOORT MELVILLE.”
With this letter, Gansevoort enclosed fourteen lines from Act III,
Scene I of _Measure for Measure_, beginning “Ah, but to die.” On
May 12, he was dead. His countrymen celebrated his decease. _The
Wisconsin,_ a newspaper published in Milwaukee, for example, published,
on July 1, a florid tribute to his memory, declaring him “dear
to the people of the West.” “And though he died young in years,”
the _Wisconsin_ goes on to say, “for genius, thrilling eloquence
and enlarged patriotism, he was known to the people from Maine to
Louisiana.”
But already had Melville achieved a wider, if less beatified,
reputation. The notice that _Typee_ attracted extended considerably
beyond either Maine or Louisiana. And its success was none the less
brilliant because it was in part a _succes de scandal_. Christendom has
progressed since 1846, and _Typee_ has, for present-day readers, lost
its charm of indelicacy. Yet, despite the violation of the proprieties
of which Melville was accused, Longfellow records in his journal for
July 29, 1846: “In the evening we finished the first volume of _Typee_,
a curious and interesting book with glowing descriptions of life in
the Marquesas.” There is no indication that even Longfellow found it
discreet to omit any passages as he read _Typee_ to his family before
the fire. It is to be remembered, however, that in 1851 the _Scarlet
Letter_ was attacked as being nothing but a deliberate attempt to
attract readers by pandering to the basest taste: “Is the French era
actually begun in our literature?” a shocked reviewer asked.
The appearance of _Omoo_ on January 30, 1847, augmented Melville’s
notoriety, and contributed to his fame. Both _Typee_ and _Omoo_
stirred up a whole regiment of critics, at home, in England and
in France. France was patronising, of course, after the manner of
the period; but France flattered Melville by the prolixity of her
patronage. The interest of France in Melville was not a merely literary
absorption, however. Melville had arrived at the Marquesas in the wake
of Admiral Du Petit-Thouars; and at Tahiti Melville had been a prisoner
on board the _Reine Blanche_. In England, Melville was flattered not
only by vitriolic evangelistical damnation, and the uncritical flatter
of Gansevoort’s friends, but even _Blackwood’s_, the most anti-American
of British journals, said of _Omoo_: “Musing the other day over our
matutinal hyson, the volume itself was laid before us, and we found
ourselves in the society of Marquesan Melville, the Phœnix of modern
voyages--springing, it would seem, from the mingled ashes of Captain
Cook and Robinson Crusoe.” Writing of _Typee_, the insular _John Bull_
said: “Since the joyous moment when we first read _Robinson Crusoe_ and
believed it, we have not met so bewitching a book as this narrative
of Herman Melville’s.” The _London Times_ descended to amiability and
said: “That Mr. Melville will favour us with his further adventures in
the South Seas, we have no doubt whatever. We shall expect them with
impatience, and receive them with pleasure. He is a companion after our
own hearts. His voice is pleasant, and we are sure that if we could