PEDAGOGY, PUGILISM AND LETTERS
“It is often to be observed, that as in digging for precious metals
in the mines, much earthly rubbish has first to be troublesomely
handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one’s soul for the fine
gold of genius, much dulness and common-place is first brought to
light. Happy would it be, if the man possessed in himself some
receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but he is like the
occupant of a dwelling, whose refuse cannot be clapped into his own
cellar, but must be deposited in the street before his own door, for
the public functionaries to take care of.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _Pierre_.
The record of the next three and a half years of Melville’s life is
extremely scant. What he was doing and thinking and feeling must be
left almost completely to surmise. In the brief record of his life
preserved in the Commonplace Book of his wife, this period between
Liverpool and the South Seas is dismissed in a single sentence: “Taught
school at intervals in Pittsfield and in Greenbush (now East Albany)
N. Y.” Arthur Stedman (who got his facts largely from Mrs. Melville),
in his “Biographical and Critical Introduction” to _Typee_, slightly
enlarges upon this statement. “A good part of the succeeding three
years, from 1837 to 1840,” says Stedman, “was occupied with school
teaching. While so engaged at Greenbush, now East Albany, N. Y., he
received the munificent salary of ‘six dollars a quarter and board.’
He taught for one term at Pittsfield, Mass., ‘boarding around’ with
the families of his pupils, in true American fashion, and early
suppressing, on one memorable occasion, the efforts of his larger
scholars to inaugurate a rebellion by physical force.” J. E. A. Smith,
in his _Biographical Sketch_ already cited, dates this “memorable”
mating of pedagogy and pugilism somewhat earlier.
Besides teaching during these years, Melville was engaged in another
activity, which all of his biographers--if they knew of it at all--pass
over in decent silence: an activity to which Melville devotes a whole
book of _Pierre_.
“It still remains to be said,” says Melville, “that Pierre himself had
written many a fugitive thing, which had brought him not only vast
credit and compliments from his more immediate acquaintances, but
the less partial applauses of the always intelligent and extremely
discriminating public. In short, Pierre had frequently done that
which many other boys have done--published. Not in the imposing form
of a book, but in the more modest and becoming way of occasional
contributions to magazines and other polite periodicals. Not only
the public had applauded his gemmed little sketches of thought and
fancy; but the high and mighty Campbell clan of editors of all sorts
had bestowed upon them those generous commendations which, with one
instantaneous glance, they had immediately perceived was his due....
One, after endorsingly quoting that sapient, suppressed maxim of Dr.
Goldsmith’s, which asserts that whatever is new is false, went on to
apply it to the excellent productions before him; concluding with this:
‘He has translated the unruffled gentleman from the drawing-room into
the general levee of letters; he never permits himself to astonish; is
never betrayed into anything coarse or new; as assured that whatever
astonishes is vulgar, and whatever is new must be crude. Yes, it is the
glory of this admirable young author, that vulgarity and vigour--two
inseparable adjuncts--are equally removed from him.’”
In _Pierre_, Melville spends more than twenty-five closely printed
pages--half satirical, half of the utmost seriousness--discussing his
own literary growth: a passage of the highest critical and biographical
interest. In its satirical parts the passage is consistently
double-edged; therein, Melville ironically praises his early writing
for possessing those very defects which his maturer work was damned
for not exhibiting. It is doubtless true that his juvenile works were
“equally removed from vulgarity and vigour.” They were “characterised
throughout by Perfect Taste,” as he makes one critic observe “in an
ungovernable burst of admiring fury.” But the Perfect Taste was the
Perfect Taste of Hannah More, and Dr. Akenside, and _Lalla Rookh_. With
the publication of _Typee_, Melville was charged not only with the
crimes of vulgarity and vigour, but with the milder accompanying vices
of indecency and irreverence. His earliest writings were untouched
by any of these taints. In _Pierre_, Melville speaks of “a renowned
clerical and philological conductor of a weekly religious periodical,
whose surprising proficiency in the Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaic, to
which he had devoted by far the greater part of his life, peculiarly
fitting him to pronounce unerring judgment upon works of taste in the
English.” Melville makes this critic thus deliver himself on Pierre’s
early efforts in letters: “He is blameless in morals, and harmless
throughout.” Another “unhesitatingly recommended his effusions to the
family circle.” A third had no reserve in saying that “the predominant
end and aim of this writer was evangelical piety.” Melville is here
patently satirising the vitriolic abuse which _Typee_ and _Omoo_
provoked.
Only two of Melville’s earliest effusions, written before the world had
“fairly Timonised him” are known to survive. These appeared in _The
Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser_ for May 4, and May 18,
1839. The first is signed “L. A. V.”; the second, known to exist only
in a single mutilated clipping, in lacking the closing paragraphs,
can give no evidence as to concluding signature. Copies of these two
articles are preserved among Melville’s papers, each autographed by him
in faded brown ink. The interest of the earlier paper is heightened by
this inscription, in Melville’s hand, boldly scrawled across the inner
margin: “When I woke up this morning, what the Devil should I see but
your cane along in bed with me. I shall keep it for you when you come
up here again.” It is more easy to imagine Melville’s astonishment
in waking to find such a stately novelty as a walking-stick for a
bed-fellow, than to fancy how the walking-stick found itself in such
an unusual environment. It is about as futile to inquire into the
history and meaning of this incident as soberly to debate “what songs
the sirens sang and what name Achilles bore among the daughters of the
King of Scyros.” It is certain, however, that the Sirens had little
hand in Melville’s juvenile effusions. And of this fact Melville grew
to be keenly aware. “In sober earnest,” he says in _Pierre_, “those
papers contained nothing uncommon; indeed, those fugitive things were
the veriest commonplace.” Yet as the initial literary efforts of a
man who wrote _Typee_ and _Moby-Dick_ they are intensely interesting:
interesting, like the longer prayers of St. Augustine, less because
of their content than because of the personality from which they were
derived.
What would seem to be Melville’s first published venture in letters is
here given, nearly complete.
For the Democratic Press
FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING DESK
No. 1
MY DEAR M----, I can imagine you seated on that dear, delightful,
old-fashioned sofa; your head supported by its luxurious padding, and
with feet perched aloft on the aspiring back of that straight limbed,
stiff-necked, quaint old chair, which, as our facetious W---- assured
me, was the identical seat in which old Burton composed his Anatomy
of Melancholy. I see you reluctantly raise your optics from the
huge-clasped quarto which encumbers your lap, to receive the package
which the servant hands you, and can almost imagine that I see those
beloved features illumined for a moment with an expression of joy,
as you read the superscription of your gentle protégé. Lay down I
beseech you that odious black-lettered volume and let not its musty
and withered leaves sully the virgin purity and whiteness of the
sheet which is the vehicle of so much good sense, sterling thought,
and chaste and elegant sentiment.
You remember how you used to rate me for my hang-dog modesty, my
_mauvaise honte_, as my Lord Chesterfield would style it. Well!
I have determined that hereafter you shall not have occasion to
inflict upon me those flattering appellations of “Fool!” “Dolt!”
“Sheep!” which in your indignation you used to shower upon me, with a
vigour and a facility which excited my wonder, while it provoked my
resentment.
And how do you imagine that I rid myself of this annoying hindrance?
Why, truly, by coming to the conclusion that in this pretty corpus of
mine was lodged every manly grace; that my limbs were modelled in
the symmetry of the Phidian Jupiter; my countenance radiant with the
beams of wit and intelligence, the envy of the beaux, the idol of the
women and the admiration of the tailor. And then my mind! why, sir, I
have discovered it to be endowed with the most rare and extraordinary
powers, stored with universal knowledge, and embellished with every
polite accomplishment.
Pollux! what a comfortable thing is a good opinion of one’s self when
I walk the Broadway of our village with a certain air, that puts me
down at once in the estimation of any intelligent stranger who may
chance to meet me, as a _distingué_ of the purest water, a blade of
the true temper, a blood of the first quality! Lord! how I despise
the little sneaking vermin who dodge along the street as though they
were so many footmen or errand boys; who have never learned to carry
the head erect in conscious importance, but hang that noblest of
the human members as though it had been boxed by some virago of an
Amazon; who shuffle along the walk with a quick uneasy step, a hasty
clownish motion, which by the magnitude of the contrast, set off to
advantage my own slow and magisterial gait, which I can at pleasure
vary to an easy, abandoned sort of carriage, or to the more engaging
alert and lively walk, to suit the varieties of time, occasion, and
company.
And in society, too--how often have I commiserated the poor wretches
who stood aloof, in a corner, like a flock of scared sheep; while
myself, beautiful as Apollo, dressed in a style which would extort
admiration from a Brummel, and belted round with self-esteem as with
a girdle, sallied up to the ladies--complimenting one, exchanging a
repartee with another; tapping this one under the chin, and clasping
this one round the waist; and finally, winding up the operation by
kissing round the whole circle to the great edification of the fair,
and to the unbounded horror, amazement and ill-suppressed chagrin of
the aforesaid sheepish multitude; who with eyes wide open and mouths
distended, afforded good subjects on whom to exercise my polished
wit, which like the glittering edge of a Damascus sabre “dazzled all
it shone upon.”
* * * * *
By my halidome, sir, this same village of Lansingburgh contains
within its pretty limits as fair a set of blushing damsels as one
would wish to look upon on a dreamy summer day!--When I traverse
the broad pavements of my own metropolis, my eyes are arrested
by beautiful forms flitting hither and thither; and I pause to
admire the elegance of their attire, the taste displayed in their
embellishments; the rich mass of the material; and sometimes, it may
be, at the loveliness of the features, which no art can heighten and
no negligence conceal.
But here, sir, here--where woman seems to have erected her throne,
and established her empire; here, where all feel and acknowledge her
sway, she blooms in unborrowed charms; and the eye undazzled by the
profusion of extraneous ornament, settles at once upon the loveliest
faces which our clayey natures can assume.
* * * * *
Nor, my dear M., does there reign in all this bright display,
that same monotony of feature, form, complexion, which elsewhere
is beheld; no, here are all varieties, all the orders of Beauty’s
architecture; the Doric, the Ionic, the Corinthian, all are here.
I have in “my mind’s eye, Horatio,” three (the number of the Graces,
you remember) who may stand, each at the head of their respective
orders.
* * * * *
When I venture to describe the second of this beautiful trinity,
I feel my powers of delineation inadequate to the task; but
nevertheless I will try my hand at the matter, although like an
unskilful limner, I am fearful I shall but scandalise the charms I
endeavour to copy.
Come to my aid, ye guardian spirits of the Fair! Guide my awkward
hand, and preserve from mutilation the features ye hover over and
protect! Pour down whole floods of sparkling champagne, my dear
M----, until your brain grows giddy with emotion; con over the
latter portion of the first Canto of Childe Harold, and ransack your
intellectual repository for the loveliest visions of the Fairy Land,
and you will be in a measure prepared to relish the epicurean banquet
I shall spread.
The stature of this beautiful mortal (if she be indeed of earth) is
of that perfect height which, while it is freed from the charge of
being low, cannot with propriety be denominated tall. Her figure is
slender almost to fragility but strikingly modelled in spiritual
elegance, and is the only form I ever saw which could bear the trial
of a rigid criticism.
Every man who is gifted with the least particle of imagination, must
in some of his reveries have conjured up from the realms of fancy,
a being bright and beautiful beyond everything he had ever before
apprehended, whose main and distinguishing attribute invariably
proves to be a form the indescribable loveliness of which seems to
“--Sail in liquid light,
And float on seas of bliss.”
The realisation of these seraphic visions is seldom permitted us; but
I can truly say that when my eyes for the first time fell upon this
lovely creature, I thought myself transported to the land of Dreams,
where lay embodied, the most brilliant conceptions of the wildest
fancy. Indeed, could the Promethean spark throw life and animation
into the Venus de Medici, it would but present the counterpart of
----.
Her complexion has the delicate tinge of the Brunett, with a little
of the roseate hue of the Circassian; and one would swear that none
but the sunny skies of Spain had shone upon the infancy of the being,
who looks so like her own “dark-glancing daughters.”
* * * * *
And then her eyes! they open their dark, rich orbs upon you like the
full moon of heaven, and blaze into your very soul the fires of day!
Like the offerings laid upon the sacrificial altars of the Hebrew,
when in an instant the divine spark falling from the propitiated
God kindled them in flames; so, a single glance from that Oriental
eye as quickly fires your soul, and leaves your bosom in a perfect
conflagration! Odds Cupids and Darts! with one broad sweep of vision
in a crowded ball-room, that splendid creature would lay around
her like the two-handed sword of Minotti, hearts on hearts, piled
round in semi-circles! But it is well for the more rugged sex that
this glorious being can vary her proud dominion, and give to the
expression of her eye a melting tenderness which dissolves the most
frigid heart and heals the wounds she gave before.
If the devout and exemplary Mussulman who dying fast in the faith of
his Prophet anticipates reclining on beds of roses, gloriously drunk
through all the ages of eternity, is to be waited on by Houris such
as these: waft me ye gentle gales beyond this lower world and
“Lap me in soft Lydian airs!”
But I am falling into I know not what extravagances, so I will
briefly give you a portrait of the last of these three divinities,
and will then terminate my tiresome lucubrations.
* * * * *
Here, my dear M----, closes this catalogue of the Graces, this
chapter of Beauties, and I should implore your pardon for trespassing
so long on your attention. If you, yourself, in whose breast may
possibly be extinguished the amatory flame, should not feel an
interest in these three “counterfeit presentments,” do not fail to
show them to ---- and solicit her opinion as to their respective
merits.
Tender my best acknowledgments to the Major for his prompt attention
to my request, and, for yourself, accept the assurance of my
undiminished regard; and hoping that the smiles of heaven may
continue to illuminate your way,
I remain, ever yours,
L. A. V.
These “chaste and elegant sentiments” are, surely, “embellished with
every polite accomplishment.” Melville called down the Nine Gods, and a
host of minor deities; he ransacked Athens, Rhodes, Cyprus, Circassia,
Lydia, Lilliputia, Damascus, this world and the next, for geographical
adornments; he called up Burton, Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Milton,
Coleridge and Chesterfield, as well as Prometheus and Cinderella,
Mahomet and Cleopatra, Madonnas and Houris, Medici and Mussulman,
to strew carelessly across his pages. “Not in vain,” says Melville
of the idealisation of himself in the character of Pierre, “had he
spent long summer afternoons in the deep recesses of his father’s
fastidiously picked and decorous library.” Not in vain, either, had
he been submitted to three years of elementary drill in the classics
at the Albany Academy. “Not that as yet his young and immature soul
had been accosted by the wonderful Mutes, and through the vast halls
of Silent Truth, had been ushered into the full, secret, eternally
inviolable Sanhedrim, where the Poetic Magi discuss, in glorious
gibberish, the Alpha and Omega of the Universe,” says Melville; “but
among the beautiful imaginings of the second and third degree of
poets he freely and comprehendingly ranged.” Melville was always a
wide if desultory reader, more and more interested after the manner
of Sir Thomas Browne, and the Burton with reference to whom he began
his career in letters, in “remote and curious illusions, wrecks of
forgotten fables, antediluvian computations, obsolete and unfamiliar
problems, riddles that no living Œdipus would care to solve.” And this
preoccupation--first made manifest in _Mardi_ (1849)--must always stand
in the way of his most typical writings ever becoming widely popular.
His earliest known piece of juvenile composition is interesting as
revealing the crude beginnings of one of the manners superbly mastered
in parts of _Moby-Dick_. This early effusion, by revealing so crudely
the defects of his qualities, reads as a dull parody of one of his most
typical later manners.
With a Miltonic confidence in his own gifts, Melville came to view
these earlier pieces as the first “earthly rubbish” of his “immense
quarries of fine marble.” Melville goes on to say that “no commonplace
is ever effectually got rid of, except by essentially emptying one’s
self of it into a book; for once trapped into a book, then the book can
be put into the fire and all will be well.” “But they are not always
put into the fire,” he said with regret. And because of his own laxity
in cremation, his crude first fruits stalk abroad to accuse him.
At this early period, Melville had nothing very significant to say; but
he seems to have been urged to say it with remorseless pertinacity.
In _Pierre_, he satirises his youthful and reckless prolixity where
he speaks of his manuscripts as being of such flying multitudes that
“they were to be found lying all round the house; gave a great deal of
trouble to the housemaids in sweeping; went for kindlings to the fires;
and forever flitting out of the windows, and under the doorsills, into
the faces of people passing the manorial mansion.”
Having nothing very particular to write about, he followed an ancient
tradition, and wrote of love. In _Pierre_, which is Melville’s
spiritual autobiography, and in _Pierre_ alone, does Melville
elaborately busy himself with romantic affection. And in _Pierre_,
his is no sugared and conventional preoccupation. He traces his own
development through the love-friendship of boyhood, the miscellaneous
susceptibility of adolescence, to a crucifixion in manhood between the
images of his wife and his mother. His first _Fragment from a Writing
Desk_ seems to have been conceived at a time before his “innumerable
wandering glances settled upon some one specific object.”
His second _Fragment from a Writing Desk_ concerns itself with an
allegorical quest of elusive feminine loveliness: a kind of _Coelebs
in Search of a Wife_, allegorised and crossed with _Lalla Rookh_.
It survives, as has been said, only as a fragment of a Fragment.
Its conclusion must remain a mystery until some old newspaper file
disgorges its secrets. It begins as follows:
For the Democratic Press
FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING DESK
No. 2
“Confusion seize the Greek!” exclaimed I, as wrathfully rising from
my chair, I flung my ancient Lexicon across the room and seizing
my hat and cane, and throwing on my cloak, I sallied out into the
clearer air of heaven. The bracing coolness of an April evening
calmed my aching temples, and I slowly wended my way to the river
side. I had promenaded the bank for about half an hour, when
flinging myself upon the grassy turf, I was soon lost in revery, and
up to the lips in sentiment.
I had not lain more than five minutes, when a figure effectually
concealed in the ample folds of a cloak, glided past me, and hastily
dropping something at my feet, disappeared behind the angle of an
adjoining house, ere I could recover from my astonishment at so
singular an occurrence.
“Cerbes!” cried I, springing up, “here is a spice of the marvellous!”
and stooping down, I picked up an elegant little, rose-coloured,
lavender-scented billet-doux, and hurriedly breaking the seal (a
heart, transfixed with an arrow) I read by the light of the moon, the
following:--
“GENTLE SIR:
If my fancy has painted you in genuine colours, you will on the
receipt of this, incontinently follow the bearer where she will lead
you.
INAMORITA.”
“The deuce I will!” exclaimed I,--“But soft!”--And I re-perused this
singular document, turned over the billet in my fingers, and examined
the hand-writing, which was femininely delicate, and I could have sworn
was a woman’s. Is it possible, thought I, that the days of romance are
revived?--No, “The days of chivalry are over!” says Burke.
As I made this reflection, I looked up, and beheld the same figure
which had handed me this questionable missive, beckoning me forward.
I started towards her; but, as I approached, she receded from me,
and fled swiftly along the margin of the river at a pace which,
encumbered as I was with my heavy cloak and boots, I was unable to
follow; and which filled me with sundry misgivings, as to the nature
of the being, who could travel with such amazing celerity. At last,
perfectly breathless, I fell into a walk; which, my mysterious fugitive
perceiving, she likewise lessened her pace, so as to keep herself still
in sight, although at too great a distance to permit me to address
her.”
The hero hastens after his guide but always she eludes him. Piqued by
her repeated escapes, he stops in a rage, and relieves his feelings
in “two or three expressions that savoured somewhat of the jolly
days of the jolly cavaliers.” And under the circumstances, he felt
fully justified in his profanity. “What! to be thwarted by a woman!
Peradventure; baffled by a girl? Confusion! It was too bad! To be
outwitted, generated, routed, defeated, by a mere rib of the earth? It
could not be borne!” Recovering his temper, he followed his capricious
guide out of the town, into a shadowy grove to “an edifice, which
seated on a gentle eminence, and embowered amidst surrounding trees,
bore the appearance of a country villa.”
“The appearance of this spacious habitation was anything but inviting;
it seemed to have been built with a jealous eye to concealment; and its
few, but well-defended windows were sufficiently high from the ground,
as effectually to baffle the prying curiosity of the inquisitive
stranger. Not a single light shone from the narrow casement; but all
was harsh, gloomy and forbidding. As my imagination, ever alert on
such an occasion, was busily occupied in assigning some fearful motive
for such unusual precautions, my leader suddenly halted beneath a
lofty window, and making a low call, I perceived slowly descending
therefrom, a thick silken cord, attached to an ample basket, which
was silently deposited at our feet. Amazed at this apparition, I was
about soliciting an explanation: when laying her fingers impressively
upon her lips, and placing herself in the basket, my guide motioned
me to seat myself beside her. I obeyed; but not without considerable
trepidation: and in obedience to the same low call which had procured
its descent, our curious vehicle, with sundry creakings, rose in air.”
This airy jaunt terminated, of course, in an Arabian Nights exterior,
which Melville particularises after the “voluptuous” traditions of
_Vathek_ and _Lalla Rookh_. “The grandeur of the room,” of course,
“served only to show to advantage the matchless beauty of its inmate.”
This matchless beauty was, after established tradition, “reclining
on an ottoman; in one hand holding a lute.” Her fingers, too, “were
decorated with a variety of rings, which as she waved her hand to me
as I entered, darted forth a thousand coruscations, and gleamed their
brilliant splendours to the sight.”
“As I entered the apartment, her eyes were downcast, and the expression
of her face was mournfully interesting; she had apparently been lost
in some melancholy revery. Upon my entrance, however, her countenance
brightened, as with a queenly wave of the hand, she motioned my
conductress from the room, and left me standing, mute, admiring and
bewildered in her presence.”
“For a moment my brain spun round, and I had not at command a single of
my faculties. Recovering my self-possession, however, and with that, my
good-breeding, I advanced en cavalier and, gracefully sinking on one
knee, I bowed my head and exclaimed ‘Here do I prostrate myself, thou
sweet Divinity, and kneel at the shrine of thy--’”
But here, just at the climax of the quest, the clipping is abruptly
torn, and the reader is left cruelly suspended.
From the publication of _Lalla Rookh_, in 1817, to the publication
of Thackeray’s _Our Street_ in 1847, there settled upon letters and
life in England an epidemic of hankering for the exotic. At the
instigation of _Lalla Rookh_, England made a prim effort to be “purely
and intensely Asiatic,” and this while delicately avoiding “the
childishness, cruelty, and profligacy of Asia.” In the fashionable
literature of the period, the harem and the slave-market unburdened its
gazelles and its interior decorations, and by a resort to divans and
coruscating rubies, and ottar of roses, and lutes, and warm panting
maidens, the “principled goodness” of Anglo-Saxon self-righteousness
was thrilled to a discreet voluptuousness.
In his second _Fragment_, Melville has caught at some of the drift-wood
of this great tidal wave that was washed across the Atlantic. And in
acknowledgment of this early indebtedness, he in _Pierre_ speaks of
Tom Moore with an especial burst of enthusiasm, mating him with Hafiz,
Anacreon, Catullus and Ovid.
Reared in a New England environment that had been soberly tempered by
Mrs. Chapone and Mrs. Barbauld, Melville had, under the goadings of
poverty, the frustrations of his environment, and the teasing lure of
some stupendous discovery awaiting him at the rainbow’s end, plunged
into the hideousness of life in the forecastle of a merchantman.
At both extremes of his journey he reaped only disillusion. As a
practically penniless sailor in Liverpool he enjoyed the freedom of
the streets: and the architecture of the city impressed him less
than did the sights of the poverty and viciousness to which he was
especially exposed. Back he came to Lansingburg, to the old pump in the
yard, the stiff-corseted decorum, and the threadbare and pretentious
proprieties of his mother, to decline into the enforced drudgery
of teaching school. The sights of Liverpool and the forecastle had
given no permanent added beauty to home. He did not comfortably fit
into any recognised socket of New England respectability. He sought
escape in books, in amateur authorship. And Burton, and Anacreon,
and Tom Moore are not guaranteed to reconcile a boy in ferment to a
tame and repugnant environment. He was like a strong wine that clears
with explosive violence. He had been to sea once, and there acquired
some skill as a sailor. The excitement and hardship and downrightness
of ocean life, when viewed through the drab of the ensuing years,
treacherously suffered a sea-change. After three and a half years of
mounting desperation, he was ripe for a transit clean beyond the pale
of civilisation.
“I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote,” he later
wrote in an effort to explain his second hegira; “I love to sail
forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” The trip to Liverpool
had slammed the sash on one magic casement; but the greater part of the
watery world was still to be viewed. “Why,” he asks himself perplexed
at his own mystery, “is almost every healthy boy with a robust healthy
soul, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why did the old
Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate
deity, and own brother to Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.
And still deeper the story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp
the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and
was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and
oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is
the key to all.” The key he here offers to the heart of his mystery is
itself locked in mystery; though when he compared himself to Narcissus
tormented by the irony of being two, Melville may have been hotter on
the trail of the truth than he was aware. His deepest insight, perhaps,
came to him one midnight, out on the Pacific, where in the glare and
the wild Hindoo odour of the tryworks of a whaler in full operation,
he fell asleep at the helm. “Starting from a brief standing sleep,” he
says, “I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. I thought
my eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the
lids and mechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite
of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by. Nothing
seemed before me but a jet of gloom, now and then made ghastly by
flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift,
rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern.”
In a headlong retreat from all havens astern, on January 3, 1841,
Melville shipped on board the _Acushnet_, a whaler bound for the South
Seas.