Herman Melville
Richmond, where one meets Lord Ashburton’s nephew, and Baron This and
Baroness That and Mr. Peabody the Boston merchant, a warm old soul:
where the glasses and the silver are brilliant and the conversation
ripples in reflection of it, or at least seems to, as one intricate
piece of French cookery gives place to another, as white wine,
champagne, hock, claret, port, and Madeira follow in grand procession:
Taji dined no better among the five-and-twenty kings.
Yes: but then the melancholy of a day when one has spoken no more than
“Good morning” to the slavey: when a frightful nightmare fills with a
turbid residue the commonplaces of the diurnal routine: when one feels
lonely and apart in the haunts that thrilled one most: when one sits
at night in a damp chamber, thinking back to poor Gansevoort, who,
two years before, three, was sitting in such a chamber, in the midst
of such a silence, withdrawn, homesick, alone. What deep thoughts one
seems on the brink of in that silence and solitude: no wonder the
Greeks made silence the vestibule of the mysteries. But the weariness
of this inward communion, too--oh, solitude, where are thy charms!
One’s desires are fulfilled indeed: but always wryly, never in the
right proportion....
While one waits around doggedly, hoping for more favourable offers, one
had better seize the opportunity and make a flying trip to France: one
never knows if one is coming this way again; and besides, if one does
that story of the revolutionary beggar, Potter, one ought to be able to
follow him on his French mission. Very well: by steamer to Boulogne,
then by rail to Paris. A lodging-house on the Rue de Bussy, then a
room at Mme. Capelie’s on the Left Bank. This is civilization: the
Rue de Rivoli: the Place de la Concorde: the Tuileries: the Sorbonne:
these things have the imprint of logic and law. Chaos and old time are
somehow set at naught. The Louvre makes the National Gallery itself
seem a little provincial: Notre Dame, under repair, is still a noble
mass: there is a vivacity, an eagerness, an upright peasant homeliness
in the housewives in felt shoes, in the rosy-cheeked market-women,
that makes one feel a little nearer home. Courtesy takes the place
of servility here, innate courtesy; a market-woman may have it as
well as a duchess. The Hôtel de Cluny, on the site of the old Roman
bath, is just such a house as one would like to live in, venerable,
spacious, solid; and the bookstalls by the Palais Royal, with their
Latin translations and their Voltaire and their Fénelon, give one a
sense of a nation bred to thought and expression, not merely sharp and
acquisitive, like the Yankees, although, obviously, they do not let
the sous go by. And yet--well, the devilish nonsense of this passport
business: the tapeworm of an ancient bureaucracy. What a disappointment
to stand on line, once, twice, to get admission to Rachel in Phèdre,
and be turned away. Rachel acting at the Palais Royal: Victor Cousin
lecturing at the Sorbonne--and somehow, one remains out of it, unable
to get sight of, much less to understand, these things. For consolation
one has _eau de vie_ and a metaphysical talk with the ubiquitous Dr.
Adler.
One is a little downcast: but what did one expect? The truth is, one’s
heart is not altogether in it: one wants Lizzie and Barney, now,
far more than one wants Rachel, Cousin, and the triumphs of culture
generally. Still: one will make one last try: by train to Brussels,
that venerable but obviously stodgy place, Paris minor, and then over
into Germany for a little trip up the Rhine to Cologne, an antiquated,
gable-ended town, with the crane still aloft in the unfinished tower
of the Cathedral, full of associations that go back as far as
Charlemagne. How concentrated history becomes in Europe: here Rubens
was born and Marie de Médicis died: much lore and history to interest
a pondering man. Down the Rhine itself at night, between black cliffs
and crags, from Cologne to Coblentz. Metternich was born near this
great fortress, Ehrenbreitstein, but, more significant symbol than
this, the finest Rhenish wine-grapes are grown right under its guns.
Does not that stand for life itself? Our rarest triumphs and ecstasies
are touched with the shadow of ancient death. At dusk one finds oneself
standing in the place where the two rivers meet: opposite towers
the fortress: some four thousand miles away are Lizzie and America.
Tomorrow, the last lap begins: definitely one is homeward bound.
London itself seems halfway home, when one returns to the old chamber
overlooking the Thames. Back in London with a few presents, a pair of
gloves and shoes from Paris for Lizzie, a medallion one bought from
an old woman near the Arc de Triomphe, and a breast-pin one bought in
Cologne from a rascally shopwoman who cheated one, cheated--and by a
woman--and not even a pretty woman! If only one could splurge a little
on presents. No: one must be sensible: a trencher and breadknife,
as used of old at commons in New College: fine thing. One for Mrs.
Shaw, too. At last Mr. Bentley has come around to one’s terms; it
was worth waiting for. Two hundred pounds sterling on a note of
hand for six months, on White-Jacket. If only Lizzie and the Little
One were here--thank heaven for good letters from Lizzie--one might
settle down to a little enjoyment. The Duke of Rutland has sent one a
courteous invitation to visit Belvoir Castle in January. Alas! that
is three weeks ahead. Can one put another three weeks between one and
home? If one does not go, one will miss a royal opportunity to see
the aristocracy under the best possible conditions: not merely an
interesting experience in itself, but--a prudent author mustn’t forget
it--so much good material to be hoarded up for another book. If one
passes this up, Allan, shrewd fellow, will set one down for a ninny.
Ah! if only one could get over the three weeks: if the two images at
home would only down for that space of time. Another cigar: one must
weigh it over carefully. No: no: the visit to Leicester would be very
agreeable--at least very valuable--but the three weeks couldn’t be
borne. It is bad enough to have to go back in a thirty-day boat to
save money, instead of dashing in on a twelve- or fifteen-day packet
steamer. That’s settled: one goes. Yes: one goes. Now one can enjoy a
bright day, and an hour at the National Gallery looking at Rembrandt’s
Jew and the saints of Taddeo Gaddi and Guido’s Murder of the Innocents.
One is going home. Things brighten. Davidson has promised to discount
Bentley’s note at the banker’s; one even begins to enjoy old Bentley:
he is a fine, frank, off-handed old gentleman, opening up gradually,
like all Englishmen, but as solid as oak once he is sure of you and of
his own feelings. One begins to like these English: they are not all
masked and corseted in iron. There is Alfred Crowquill, for example,
Punch’s funny man, whom one meets at Bentley’s--a good fellow, free and
easy, and no damned nonsense. The Benchers at the Temple Bar are men
after one’s own heart: a Paradise of Bachelors, this! Well, one sails
a week hence. Ironically, one leaves for the old home just as one is
beginning to feel settled in the new one! One breakfasts for the last
time at the old place; one says good-bye to Bentley; one has one’s last
dinner at Morley’s; one’s first and last glimpse of the Reform Club, a
last good-bye to the somehow pleasantly dingy room in Craven Street.
Waterloo Station--Portsmouth--and one steps, with Captain Fletcher,
aboard the Independence, a small, ancient-looking wooden ship. In less
than twenty-four hours we are past Land’s End.
Nothing happens between December 26, when one sets sail, and January
30, when one gets sight of a pilot boat: nothing can possibly happen
outside that would compete with the memories, the stimuli, the
anticipations, the impetuous dreams, the regrets at visits forgotten
and experiences omitted, the whole inner tumult of this four months
away from home. Or rather, what happens most importantly now, comes by
way of books: De Quincey, Rousseau’s Confessions, Ben Jonson, Thomas
Browne, The Castle of Otranto, Lamb’s Essays, Hudibras, Marlowe,
Anastasius, Vathek, Goethe’s autobiography. The vessel is again one’s
cloister: but instead of a long, unconscious growth it contains a vivid
and conscious development: every day one is aware of new shoots, ideas,
emotions, feelings, insights, sprouting out of one: why, before one had
reached twenty-five one hardly had any growth one could point to at
all. And now.... If one could not write books one would burst. One is
big with a book; it kicks at the walls of the womb; it wakes one in the
night with its anticipatory motions.
The low-lying hills of Staten Island at last. The clack and clamour
of Whitehall, Broadway. Lizzie. Barney no longer says, “Where dat old
man?” He has a dozen other things to talk about. Lizzie is busy with
the household, her mother, her mother-in-law, Sam, Father, Uncle Peter,
Allan, the sisters: she chatters on about all of them, and about what
baby did last week. She will never quite realize, perhaps, what one
has been through, how deep one’s longing is, how strong one’s need
for escape is, too. She loves one, yes, but not with that gnawing
intensity; she will never appreciate how lonely one has been. Before
a fortnight is over one wonders why one had ever been so feverishly
anxious to come back. Lizzie would have waited another three weeks: an
invitation from the Duke of Rutland is irretrievable. No matter: spring
is coming, and one must get down to work, and be midwife to one’s own
progeny. What earthly shape will this embryo take on?
(_Exit Herman Melville, pondering his future._)
TITAN
CHAPTER SIX: RED CLOVER
It was time for Melville to begin work again. In February, 1850, he
owed his publisher, Harper’s, more than seven hundred dollars in
advances not covered by royalties. He did what he could to reduce
the scale of his living. In the spring, he left New York and went up
to Broadhall with his family--the old homestead that his Grand-Uncle
Thomas had sold when he emigrated to Ohio, had now been converted into
an inn: his grandfather’s old desk was still mildewing in the barn, and
Melville brought it to light, cleaned it up for his own use, and sat
down to it.
The Berkshires were “home” for Melville quite as much as Albany or New
York; perhaps more so, for he had a feeling for the open country and
its ways. By October he had found a near-by farmstead, with a house
that had been an inn during the eighteenth century, an apple orchard on
the south side, broad hay fields to the north, and pasture rising in
back of the house to the west, which ended in a wood lot on the summit
of the hill. The countryside was well cultivated. Maple trees lined the
highroad on each side, the willows dropped lazily over the banks of the
Housatonic, and, on the poorer upland soils, where the amaranth grew,
the white threads of birch trees stood out against the dark pattern of
the woods. Pittsfield, a village with metropolitan pretensions, the
capital of the Berkshires and the resort of palpable celebrities, was
only two miles or so away by a road that led down the valley and across
the river, past a sawmill, and through the parklike streets of the
village itself.
Judge Shaw advanced Melville funds on a friendly sort of mortgage to
purchase Arrowhead; and Melville doubtless intended by modest and
spasmodic farming, with a vegetable garden, hay fields, a wood lot,
a cow, and a horse, to eke out the narrow income derived from his
books. For a man in prime health there was nothing injudicious in
this arrangement: winter leaves a considerable amount of free time
from farm work, and, with only a few hundred dollars in ready cash