Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
But how help it? I am writing to you; I know little about you, but
something about myself. So I write about myself,--at least, to you.
Don’t trouble yourself, though, about writing; and don’t trouble
yourself about visiting; and when you _do_ visit, don’t trouble
yourself about talking. I will do all the writing and visiting and
talking myself.--By the way, in the last _Dollar Magazine_ I read
‘The Unpardonable Sin.’ He was a sad fellow, that Ethan Brand. I
have no doubt you are by this time responsible for many a shake and
tremour of the tribe of ‘general readers.’ It is a frightful poetical
creed that the cultivation of the brain eats out the heart. But it’s
my _prose_ opinion that in most cases, in those men who have fine
brains and work them well, the heart extends down to hams. And though
you smoke them with the fire of tribulation, yet, like veritable
hams, the head only gives the richer and the better flavour. I stand
for the heart. To the dogs with the head! I had rather be a fool
with a heart, than Jupiter Olympus with his head. The reason the
mass of men fear God, and _at bottom dislike_ Him, is because they
rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.
(You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to
the Deity; don’t you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in
that usage?) Another thing. I was in New York for four-and-twenty
hours the other day, and saw a portrait of N. H. And I have seen and
heard many flattering (in a publisher’s point of view) allusions
to the _Seven Gables_. And I have seen _Tales_ and _A New Volume_
announced, by N. H. So upon the whole, I say to myself, this N. H.
is in the ascendant. My dear Sir, they begin to patronise. All Fame
is patronage. Let me be infamous: there is no patronage in _that_.
What ‘reputation’ H. M. has is horrible. Think of it! To go down
to posterity is bad enough, any way; but to go down as a ‘man who
lived among the cannibals’! When I speak of posterity, in reference
to myself, I only mean the babies who will probably be born in the
moment immediately ensuing upon my giving up the ghost. I shall go
down to some of them, in all likelihood. _Typee_ will be given to
them, perhaps, with their gingerbread. I have come to regard this
matter of Fame as the most transparent of all vanities. I read
Solomon more and more, and every time see deeper and deeper and
unspeakable meanings in him. I did not think of Fame, a year ago, as
I do now. My development has been all within a few years past. I am
like one of those seeds taken out of the Egyptian Pyramids, which,
after being three thousand years a seed and nothing but a seed, being
planted in English soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness,
and then fell to mould. So I. Until I was twenty-five, I had no
development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life. Three
weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, that
I have not unfolded within myself. But I feel that I am now come to
the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall
to the mould. It seems to me now that Solomon was the truest man who
ever spoke, and yet that he a little _managed_ the truth with a view
to popular conservatism; or else there have been many corruptions and
interpolations of the text--In reading some of Goethe’s sayings, so
worshipped by his votaries, I came across this, ‘_Live in the all_.’
That is to say, your separate identity is but a wretched one,--good;
but get out of yourself, spread and expand yourself, and bring to
yourself the tinglings of life that are felt in the flowers and the
woods, that are felt in the planets Saturn and Venus, and the Fixed
Stars. What nonsense! Here is a fellow with a raging toothache. ‘My
dear boy,’ Goethe says to him, ‘you are sorely afflicted with that
tooth; but you must _live in the all_, and then you will be happy!’
As with all great genius, there is an immense deal of flummery in
Goethe, and in proportion to my own contact with him, a monstrous
deal of it in me.
“H. MELVILLE.
“P. S. ‘Amen!’ saith Hawthorne.
“N. B. This ‘all’ feeling, though, there is some truth in. You must
often have felt it, lying on the grass on a warm summer’s day. Your
legs seem to send out shoots into the earth. Your hair feels like
leaves upon your head. This is the _all_ feeling. But what plays the
mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal
application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
“P. S. You must not fail to admire my discretion in paying the
postage on this letter.”
When Melville speaks of “the calm, the coolness, the silent
grass-growing mood in which a man _ought_ to compose,” he has
caught a demoralisation from Hawthorne. _Moby-Dick_, he says, was
“broiled in hell-fire”; and the complete “possession” that mastered
Hawthorne during the composition of _The Scarlet Letter_ has been
amply attested. Each man once, and once only, wrestled with the angel
of his inspiration gloriously to conquer. But Hawthorne had little
relish for such athletics: he preferred the relaxation of painstaking
placidity. He said of _The Scarlet Letter_ that “he did not think it a
book natural for him to write.” The pity of it is that he was not more
frequently so unnatural. As an old man, Melville looked back upon his
achievement, and recanted the corruption he had learned from Hawthorne:
ART
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate;
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study;--love and hate:
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--art.
Apropos of the two letters last quoted, Mr. Julian Hawthorne says: “Mr.
Melville was probably quite as entertaining and somewhat less abstruse,
when his communications were by word of mouth. Mrs. Hawthorne used to
tell of one evening when he came in, and presently began to relate the
story of a fight which he had seen on an island in the Pacific, between
some savages, and of the prodigies of valour one of them performed with
a heavy club. The narrative was extremely graphic; and when Melville
had gone, and Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne were talking over his visit, the
latter said, ‘Where is that club with which Mr. Melville was laying
about him so?’ Mr. Hawthorne thought he must have taken it with him;
Mrs. Hawthorne thought he had put it in the corner; but it was not
to be found. The next time Melville came, they asked him about it;
whereupon it appeared that the club was still in the Pacific island, if
it were anywhere.”
In the entry in his journal for July 30, 1851, Hawthorne wrote:
“Proceeding homeward, we were overtaken by a cavalier on horseback,
who saluted me in Spanish, to which I replied by touching my hat. But,
the cavalier renewing his salutation, I regarded him more attentively,
and saw that it was Herman Melville! So we all went homeward together,
talking as we went. Soon Mr. Melville alighted, and put Julian in the
saddle; and the little man was highly pleased, and sat on the horse
with the freedom and fearlessness of an old equestrian, and had a ride
of at least a mile homeward. I asked Mrs. Peters to make some tea for
Herman Melville, and so she did; and after supper I put Julian to bed,
and Melville and I had a talk about time and eternity, things of this
world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and
impossible matters, that lasted pretty deep into the night. At last he
rose, and saddled his horse and rode off to his own domicile, and I
went to bed....”
On August 8, 1851, Hawthorne reports in his journal: “To-day Herman
Melville and the two Duyckincks came in a barouche, and we all went to
visit the Shaker establishment at Hancock.” Of the Shakers, Hawthorne
wrote: “They are certainly the most singular and bedevilled set of
people that ever existed in a civilised land.” One wonders what would
have been Hawthorne’s report of the valley of Typee.
The next letter acknowledges a lost communication from Hawthorne. It is
dated, in Hawthorne’s writing: “received July 24, 1851.”
“MY DEAR HAWTHORNE: This is not a letter, or even a note, but merely
a passing word to you said over your garden gate. I thank you for
your easy flowing long letter (received yesterday), which flowed
through me, and refreshed all my meadows, as the Housatonic--opposite
me--does in reality. I am now busy with various things, not
incessantly though; but enough to require my frequent tinkering; and
this is the height of the haying season, and my nag is dragging home
his winter’s dinners all the time. And so, one way and another, I am
not a disengaged man, but shall be very soon. Meanwhile, the earliest
good chance I get, I shall roll down to you, my good fellow, seeing
we--that is, you and I--must hit upon some little bit of vagabondage
before autumn comes. Greylock--we must go and vagabondise there. But
ere we start, we must dig a deep hole, and bury all Blue Devils,
there to abide till the last Day.... Good-bye.”
HIS X MARK.
And the last letter is a dithyramb of gratitude to Hawthorne for a
letter of Hawthorne’s (would that it survived!) in appreciation of
_Moby-Dick_.
“PITTSFIELD, Monday Afternoon.
“MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:
“People think that if a man has undergone any hardship he should
have a reward; but for my part, I have done the hardest possible
day’s work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper
comfortably--why, then I don’t think I deserve any reward for my hard
day’s work--for am I not at peace? Is not my supper good? My peace
and my supper are my rewards, my dear Hawthorne. So your joy-giving
and exultation-breeding letter is not my reward for my ditcher’s work
with that book, but is the good goddess’s bonus over and above what
was stipulated for--for not one man in five cycles, who is wise,
will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of
them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is love appreciated? Why, ever since
Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory--the world?
Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but
ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity.
In my proud, humble way,--a shepherd-king,--I was lord of a little
vale in the solitary Crimea; but you have now given me the crown of
India. But on trying it on my head, I found it fell down on my ears,
notwithstanding their asinine length--for it’s only such ears that
sustain such crowns.
“Your letter was handed to me last night on the road going to Mr.
Morewood’s, and I read it there. Had I been at home, I would have
sat down at once and answered it. In me divine magnanimities are
spontaneous and instantaneous--catch them while you can. The world
goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can’t write
what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then--your heart beat in my
ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s. A sense of unspeakable
security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood
the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the
lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine
with you and all the Gods in old Rome’s Pantheon. It is a strange
feeling--no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it;
and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now