Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
soft blue eyes, & his long flaxen curls. How I long to press him to my
heart. There! I can write no more. The last proof sheets are through.
_Mardi’s_ a book.” Augusta concludes with a quotation from _Mardi_:
“‘Oh my own Kagtanza, child of my prayers. Oro’s blessing on thee!’”
In her search of the Genealogical Tree, Augusta had contemptuously
brushed by all female branches: she had determined that Melville’s
first child should be a son--and a son with blue eyes and blond
hair--and in her choice of a name for the unborn infant, she
contemptuously ignored the possibility of the child turning out to be
a girl. On February 16, 1849, was born in Boston, to Melville and his
wife, their first child. There was potency in Augusta’s prayers. It was
a boy.
On April 14, 1849, _Mardi_ appeared, published, as was _Omoo_, by
Harper and Brothers in America, by Richard Bentley in London. _Redburn_
appeared on August 18 of the same year. By February 22, 1850 (the date
of Melville’s fifth royalty account from Harper and Brothers), 2,154
copies of _Mardi_, and 4,011 copies of _Redburn_ had been sold. On
February 1, 1848, Melville had overdrawn his account with Harper’s to
the extent of $256.03. On December 5, 1848, Harper’s advanced Melville
$500; on April 28, 1848, $300; on July 2, 1849, $300; on September 14,
1849, $500. Though _Mardi_ and _Redburn_ had had a fairly generous
sale, the deduction of his royalties on February 22, 1850, left him
in debt to Harper’s $733.69. The outlook was not bright for the
responsibilities of fatherhood.
On April 23, Melville sent to his father-in-law a note “conveying
the intelligence of Lizzie’s improving strength, and Malcolm’s
precocious growth. Both are well.” Melville went on to say that
Samuel, the brother-in-law for whom he felt not the most enthusiastic
affection, was expected by all “to honour us with his presence during
the approaching vacation: and I have no doubt he will not find it
difficult to spend his time pleasantly with so many companions.” Does
Melville here imply that for himself, as a sensible man, he would
prefer more solitude? In conclusion, Melville says: “I see that _Mardi_
has been cut into by the _London Atheneum_, and also burnt by the
common hangman by the _Boston Post_. However, the _London Examiner_
& _Literary Gazette_ & other papers this side of the water have done
differently. These attacks are matters of course, and are essential to
the building up of any permanent reputation--if such should ever prove
to be mine--‘There’s nothing in it!’ cried the dunce when he threw
down the 47th problem of the 1st Book of Euclid--‘There’s nothing in
it!’--Thus with the posed critic. But Time, which is the solver of all
riddles, will solve _Mardi_.”
The riddle of _Mardi_ goes near to the heart of the riddle of
Melville’s life. “Not long ago,” Melville says in the preface to
_Mardi_, “having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific,
which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought
occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure,
and publishing it as such; to see whether the fiction might not,
possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my
previous experience. This thought was the germ of others, which have
resulted in _Mardi_.”
_Mardi_, as _Moby-Dick_, starts off firmly footed in reality. The
hero, discontented on board a whaler, hits upon the wild scheme of
surreptitiously cutting loose one of the whale boats, and trusting to
the chances of the open Pacific. It is sometimes the case that an old
mariner will conceive a very strong attachment for some young sailor,
his shipmate--a Fidus-Achates-ship, a league of offence and defence, a
copartnership of chests and toilets, a bond of love and good-feeling.
Such a relationship existed between the hero of _Mardi_ and his Viking
shipmate Jarl. Jarl was an old Norseman to behold: his hands as brawny
as the paws of a bear; his voice as hoarse as a storm roaring round the
peak of Mull; his long yellow hair waving about his head like a sunset.
In the crow’s-nest of the ship the project of escape was confided to
Jarl. Jarl advised with elderly prudence, but seeing his chummy’s
resolution immovable, he changed his wrestling to a sympathetic hug,
and bluntly swore he would follow through thick and thin. The escape
was successfully made, and for days the two men drifted at sea: and
it was an eventful if solitary drifting. After sixteen days in their
open boat, “as the expanded sun touched the horizon’s rim, a ship’s
uppermost spars were observed, traced like a spider’s web against
its crimson disk. It looked like a far-off craft on fire.” Bent upon
shunning a meeting--though Jarl “kept looking wistfully over his
shoulder; doubtlessly praying Heaven that we might not escape”--they
lowered sail. As the ship bore down towards them, they saw her to
be no whaler--as they had feared--but a small, two-masted craft in
unaccountable disarray. They lay on their oars, and watched her in
the starlight. They hailed her loudly. No return. Again. But all was
silent. So, armed with a harpoon, they eventually boarded the strange
craft. The ship was in a complete litter; the deserted tiller they
found lashed. Though it was a nervous sort of business, they explored
her interior. Many were the puzzling sights they saw; but except for a
supernatural sneeze from the riggings, there was no evidence of life
aboard. At dawn, however, they discovered, in the maintop, a pair of
South Sea Islanders: Samoa, and Annatoo. “To be short, Annatoo was a
Tartar, a regular Calmuc; and Samoa--Heaven help him--her husband.”
Upon this pair, Melville has lavished chapter after chapter of the most
finished and competent comedy. Annatoo is as perfect, in her way, as is
Zuleika Dobson. And Samoa--well, Samoa, on occasion, thinks it discreet
to amputate his wounded arm.
“Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part,
accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in
despair, the savage would disdain to recline.
“More yet. In Polynesia, every man is his own barber and surgeon,
cutting off his beard or arm, as occasion demands. No unusual thing,
for the warriors of Varvoo to saw off their own limbs, desperately
wounded in battle. But owing to the clumsiness of the instrument
employed--a flinty, serrated shell--the operation has been known to
last several days. Nor will they suffer any friend to help them;
maintaining, that a matter so nearly concerning a warrior is far better
attended to by himself. Hence it may be said, that they amputate
themselves at their leisure, and hang up their tools when tired. But,
though thus beholden to no one for aught connected with the practice
of surgery, they never cut off their own heads, that ever I heard; a
species of amputation to which, metaphorically speaking, many would-be
independent sort of people in civilised lands are addicted.
“Samoa’s operation was very summary. A fire was kindled in the little
caboose, or cook-house, and so made as to produce much smoke. He then
placed his arm upon one of the windlass bitts (a short upright timber,
breast-high), and seizing the blunt cook’s axe would have struck the
blow; but for some reason distrusting the precision of his aim, Annatoo
was assigned to the task. Three strokes, and the limb, from just above
the elbow, was no longer Samoa’s; and he saw his own bones; which
many a centenarian can not say. The very clumsiness of the operation
was safety to the subject. The weight and bluntness of the instrument
both deadened the pain and lessened the hemorrhage. The wound was then
scorched, and held over the smoke of the fire, till all signs of blood
vanished. From that day forward it healed, and troubled Samoa but
little.
“But shall the sequel be told? How that, superstitiously averse to
burying in the sea the dead limb of a body yet living; since in that
case Samoa held, that he must very soon drown and follow it; and how,
that equally dreading to keep the thing near him, he at last hung it
aloft from the topmast-stay; where yet it was suspended, bandaged over
and over in cerements. The hand that must have locked many others in
friendly clasp, or smote a foe, was no food, thought Samoa, for fowls
of the air nor fishes of the sea.
“Now, which was Samoa? The dead arm swinging high as Haman? Or the
living trunk below? Was the arm severed from the body, or the body from
the arm? The residual part of Samoa was alive, and therefore we say it
was he. But which of the writhing sections of a ten times severed worm,
is the worm proper?”
There are more cosy pleasures aboard the old ship, however, than
amputation: “Every one knows what a fascination there is in wandering
up and down in a deserted old tenement in some warm, dreamy country;
where the vacant halls seem echoing of silence, and the doors creak
open like the footsteps of strangers; and into every window the old
garden trees thrust their dark boughs, like the arms of night-burglars;
and ever and anon the nails start from the wainscot; while behind it
the mice rattle like dice. Up and down in such old spectre houses one
loves to wander; and so much the more, if the place be haunted by some
marvellous story.
“And during the drowsy stillness of the tropical sea-day, very much
such a fancy had I, for prying about our little brigantine, whose
tragic hull was haunted by the memory of the massacre, of which it
still bore innumerable traces.”
After delightful and exciting, and irresponsible days spent sailing
without chart, they find the vessel unseaworthy, leaking in every pore;
so again they take to their whale boat soon to fall in with strangers.
With this meeting, _Mardi_ swings into allegory,--and then it is that
Melville first tries his hand at the orphic style.
This second part of _Mardi_ in its manner defies simple
characterisation, though its purpose is simple enough. It is a quest
after Yillah, a maiden from Oroolia, the Island of Delight. A voyage is
made through the civilised world for her: and though they find occasion
for much discourse on international politics, and an array of other
topics, Yillah is not found. And in an astonishing variety of fantastic
and symbolic scenes--many conceived in the manner of the last three
books of Rabelais--they go on in futile search for her. They search
among the Islands of “those Scamps the Plujii,” where all evil which
the inhabitants could impute neither to the gods nor to themselves were
blamed upon the Plujii. There they meet an “old woman almost doubled
together, both hands upon her abdomen; in that manner running about
distracted.” When asked of the occasion of her distraction she screamed
“The Plujii! The Plujii!” affectionately caressing the field of their
operations.
“And why do they torment you?” she was soothingly asked.
“How should I know? and what good would it do me if I did?”
And on she ran.
“Hearing that an hour or two previous she had been partaking of some
twenty unripe bananas, I rather fancied that that circumstance might
have had something to do with her suffering. But whatever it was, all
the herb-leeches on the island would not have been able to alter her
own opinions on the subject.”
They visit jolly old Borabolla, and discuss the hereafter of fish. “As
for the possible hereafter of the whale,” says Melville, “a creature
eighty feet long without stockings, and thirty feet round the waist
after dinner is not inconsiderably to be consigned to annihilation.”
They are entertained by the gentry of Pimminee, and their host, being
told they were strolling divinities, demigods from the sun “manifested
not the slightest surprise, observing incidentally, however, that the
eclipses there must be a sad bore to endure.” They are entertained