“That was in the lion month of March. Not forgotten are some of the

blue noses of the carpenters and how they scouted at the greenness of

the cit, who would build his sole piazza to the north. But March don’t

last forever; patience, and August comes. And then, in the cool elysium

of my northern bower, I, Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, cast down the hill

a pitying glance on poor old Dives, tormented in the purgatory of his

piazza to the south.

“But, even in December, this northern piazza does not repel--nipping

cold and gusty though it be, and the north wind, like any miller,

bolting by the snow in finest flour--for then, once more, with frosted

beard, I pace the sleety deck, weathering Cape Horn.

“In summer, too, Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of

the sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain,

and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as

their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray,

and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and

a still August noon broods over the deep meadows, as a calm upon the

Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the

silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house,

rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the

Barbary coast, an unknown sail.”

In _I and My Chimney_ Melville makes the old chimney at Arrowhead

the chief character in a sketch of his domestic life at Pittsfield:

himself and his wife, both freely idealised, are the other actors.

This chimney, twelve feet square at the base, was built by Capt.

David Bush who erected the house in 1780. It has three fireplaces on

the first floor and the one formerly used for the kitchen fireplace

is large enough for a log four feet long. This fireplace is panelled

in pine, and above it hangs an Indian tomahawk, found and hung there

by Melville. Around it are many nooks and cupboards. In _I and My

Chimney_ Melville wrote: “And here I keep mysterious cordials of a

choice, mysterious flavour, made so by the constant naturing and subtle

ripening of the chimney’s gentle heat, distilled through that warm

mass of masonry. Better for wines it is than voyages to the Indies; my

chimney itself is a tropic. A chair by my chimney in a November day is

as good for an invalid as a long season spent in Cuba. Often I think

how grapes might ripen against my chimney. How my wife’s geraniums bud

there! But in December. Her eggs too--can’t keep them near the chimney

on account of hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my chimney.”

Col. Richard Lathers, in his reminiscences of his Pittsfield residence,

writes: “One of my nearest neighbours at Pittsfield was Herman

Melville, author of the interesting and very original sea tales,

_Typee_ and _Omoo_ (which were among the first books to be published

simultaneously in London and New York), and of various other volumes

of prose and verse. I visited him often in his well-stocked library,

where I listened with intense pleasure to his highly individual views

of society and politics. He always provided a bountiful supply of good

cider--the product of his own orchard--and of tobacco, in the virtues

of which he was a firm believer. Indeed, he prided himself on the

inscription painted over his capacious fireplace: ‘I and my chimney

smoke together,’ an inscription I have seen strikingly verified more

than once when the atmosphere was heavy and the wind was east.”

When Melville set up his family at Arrowhead, Hawthorne had already

been settled at Lenox, some miles away, for a number of months. “I have

taken a house in Lenox”--so he announced his removal--“I long to get

into the country, for my health is not what it has been. An hour or two

in a garden and a daily ramble in country air would keep me all right.”

Though Melville and Hawthorne were at this time neither in very

affluent circumstances, Hawthorne was, to all outward appearances,

the more straitened of the two. He described his new home as “the

very ugliest little bit of an old red farmhouse you ever saw,” “the

most inconvenient and wretched house I ever put my head in.” His

wife, however, was not so precipitous in her damnation, and writing

to her mother on June 23, 1850, said: “We are so beautifully arranged

(excepting the guest-chamber), and we seem to have such a large

house _inside_, though outside the little reddest thing looks like

the smallest of ten-feet houses. Enter our old black tumble-down

gate,--no matter for that,--and you behold a nice yard, with an oval

grass-plot and a gravel walk all round the borders, a flower-bed,

some rose-bushes, a raspberry-bush, and I believe a syringa, and also

a few tiger-lilies; quite a fine bunch of peonies, a stately double

rose-columbine, and one beautiful Balsam Fir tree, of perfect pyramidal

form, and full of a thousand melodies. The front door is wide open.

Enter and welcome.” Mrs. Hawthorne then elaborates upon the wealth

of beauty she finds in her tactful disposition of the pictures, the

furniture, and flowers, in the cramped interior. In this tabernacle

she enshrined her two small children; and in the “immortal endowments”

of her husband, she was inarticulate in felicity. “I cannot possibly

conceive of my happiness,” she wrote, “but, in a blissful kind of

confusion, live on. If I can only be so great, so high, so noble,

so sweet, as he in any phase of my being, I shall be glad. I am not

deluded nor mistaken, as the angels know now, and as all my friends

well know, in open vision!”

Of the actual daily events at Arrowhead and the Red House there is a

great inequality in the wealth of records. Of the Red House we know

much; of Arrowhead we know only too little. Though Mrs. Hawthorne was

always childlike in her modesty and simplicity, “her learning and

her accomplishments were rare and varied.” She not only read Latin,

Greek and Hebrew, but she kept an invaluable journal of the momentous

trifles of her husband’s life; and she wrote letters home that her

Mother very properly preserved for posterity. Mrs. Melville positively

knew no Hebrew; and what accounts of her husband she wrote have all

disappeared. Only one letter of hers of this period survives:

“ARROWHEAD, Aug. 3, 1851.

“MY DEAR MOTHER:

“I have been trying to write to you ever since Sam came, but could

not well find a chance. As it proved, I was not mistaken in supposing

the little parcel he brought was a present from you, though I had no

letter. The contents were beautiful and very acceptable. Do accept my

best thanks for them. We were delighted to see Sam Savage on Tuesday,

but as he did not notify us of the day we were not in waiting for him

at the depot. However, he found his way out to us. To-day he and Sam

have gone over to Lebanon to see the Shakers. The girls were much

pleased with the collars, and Mother M. with her remembrance. The

scarf you sent me was very handsome, but I am almost sorry you did

not keep it for yourself, for it does not seem to me as if I should

ever wear it--and certainly not this summer as I go nowhere not even

to church. It will look very handsome with my new shawl, if ever I do

wear it, though.

“You need not be afraid of the boys staying too long--I am only sorry

that they cannot stay longer, but they think or rather Sam Savage

thinks he must go to Red Hook this week. You know we do not make any

difference for them and let them do just as they please and take

care of themselves. Yesterday they went with Herman and explored a

neighbouring mountain.

“Oh, you will be glad to hear, and I meant to have written it to

father the other day, that in consideration of the recent decisions

with regard to the copyright question, Mr. Bentley is to give Herman

£150 and half profits after, for his new book--a much smaller sum

than before, to be sure, but certainly worth waiting for--and quite

generous on Mr. Bentley’s part considering the unsettled state of

things.

“I cannot write any more--it makes me terribly nervous--I don’t know

as you can read this I have scribbled it so.”

At the time of Melville’s moving to Arrowhead he was writing

_Moby-Dick_. In the brief life of Melville in her journal, Mrs.

Melville says: “Wrote _White-Whale_ or _Moby-Dick_ under unfavourable

circumstances--would sit at his desk all day not writing anything till

four or five o’clock--then ride to the village after dark--would be up

early and out walking before breakfast--sometimes splitting wood for

exercise. Published _White-Whale_ in 1851--wrote _Pierre_, published

1852. We all felt anxious about the strain on his health in the spring

of 1853.”

When Hawthorne moved to Lenox he was forty-six years old--Melville’s

senior by fifteen years. “Bidding good-bye for ever to literary

obscurity and to Salem,” Mr. Julian Hawthorne says in his _Nathaniel

Hawthorne and His Wife_, “Hawthorne now turned his face towards the

mountains. The preceding nine months had told upon his health and

spirits: and, had _The Scarlet Letter_ not achieved so fair a success,

he might have been long in recovering his normal frame of mind. But

the broad murmur of popular applause, coming to his unaccustomed ears

from all parts of his native country, and rolling in across the sea

from academic England, gave him the spiritual refreshment born of the

assurance that our fellow-creatures think well of the work we have

striven to make good. Such assurance is essential, sooner or later, to

soundness and serenity of mind. No man can attain secure repose and

happiness who has never found that what moves and interests him has

power over others likewise. Sooner or later he will begin to doubt

either his own sanity or that of all the rest of the world.” Melville

was never to know any such repose and happiness.

Within the sanctities of the Red House, and among the solitudes of

the surrounding country, Hawthorne enjoyed all the companionship he

desired. In 1842, Mrs. Hawthorne had written to her mother: “Mr.

Hawthorne’s abomination of visiting still holds strong, be it to see

no matter what angel;” and in 1850, Hawthorne was no more eager for

alliances even with celestials. Not, indeed, that he was indifferent to

his fellowmen: that, his literary vocation would not permit. In _Sights

from a Steeple_ he states: “The most desirable mode of existence might

be that of a spiritualised Paul Pry, hovering invisible round men and

women, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing

brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and

retaining no emotion peculiar to himself.” Hawthorne’s son writes:

“Now Hawthorne, both by nature and by training, was of a disposition

to throw himself imaginatively into the shoes (as the phrase is) of

whatever person happened to his companion. For the time being, he

would seem to take their point of view and to speak their language;

it was the result partly of a subtle sympathy and partly of a cold

intellectual insight, which led him half consciously to reflect what

he so clearly perceived. Thus, if he chatted with a group of rude

sea-captains in the smoking-room of Mrs. Blodgett’s boarding-house,

or joined a knot of boon companions in a Boston bar-room, or talked

metaphysics with Herman Melville on the hills of Berkshire, he would

aim to appear in each instance a man like as they were; he would have

the air of being interested in their interests and viewing life by

their standards. Of course, this was only apparent; the real man stood

aloof and observant.” “Seeing his congenial aspect towards their little

round of habits and beliefs, they would leap to the conclusion that he

was no more and no less than one of themselves; whereas they formed

but a tiny arc in the great circle of his comprehension.” Yet even

when not in the rôle of unimpassioned spectator, Hawthorne was not

the man to sit in pharisaical judgment upon his fellows. In _Fancy’s

Show-Box_ he wrote: “Man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even

with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart has

surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity.” Emerson

once said that there was no crime he could not commit: an amiable

vanity he shared with many a more prosaic fellow. Hawthorne studied

his own pure heart and learned that “men often over-estimate their

capacity for evil.” “I used to think,” he wrote, “that I could imagine

all feelings, all passions, and states of the heart and mind.” Again:

“Living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept

the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart. Had I sooner made

my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been

covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by

rude encounters with the multitude.” G. P. Lathrop, in his _Study of

Hawthorne_, says: “The visible pageant is only of value to him as it

suggests the viewless host of heavenly shapes that hang above it like

an idealising mirage.” Yet never for a second did he lose himself among

these heavenly visitations. He was eminently a man of sound sense: as

W. C. Brownell has pointed out, he was “distinctly the most hard-headed

of our men of genius.” His son said of him: “He was the slave of no

theory and no emotion; he always knew, so to speak, where he was and

what he was about.” His nature clearly was self-sustaining. He never

felt the need of the support that in the realm of the affections is the

reward of self-surrender. “He had no doubt an ideal family life,” W. C.

Brownell points out--“that is to say, ideal in a peculiar way, for he

had it on rather peculiar terms, one suspects. These were, in brief,

his own terms. He was worshipped, idolised, canonised, and on his side

it probably required small effort worthily to fill the rôle a more

ardent nature would have either merited less or found more irksome. He

responded at any rate with absolute devotion. His domestic periphery

bounded his vital interests.”

[Illustration: ARROWHEAD]

[Illustration: THE FIREPLACE

ARROWHEAD]

J. E. A. Smith, however, who knew Hawthorne in the flesh, undertakes

to portray Hawthorne in less austere outline. In his book _Taghconic:

The Romance and Beauty of the Hills_ (Boston, 1879) J. E. A. Smith,

writing under the pseudonym “Godfrey Greylock,” says: “But that Mr.

Hawthorne’s heart was warm and tender, I am well assured by more than

one circumstance, which I do not know that I am at liberty to recall

here. But there can be no wrong in mentioning the origin, as I have

heard it, of the brotherly friendship between him and Herman Melville.

As the story was told me, Mr. Hawthorne was aware that Melville was

the author of a very appreciative review of the _Scarlet Letter_ which

appeared in the _Literary World_, edited by their common friends, the

Duyckincks; but this very knowledge, perhaps, kept two very sensitive

men shy of each other, although thrown into company. But one day it

chanced that when they were out on a picnic excursion, the two were

compelled by a thunder-shower to take shelter in a narrow recess of the

rocks of Monument Mountain. Two hours of enforced intercourse settled

the matter. They learned so much of each other’s character, and found

that they held so much of thought, feeling and opinion in common, that

the most intimate friendship for the future was inevitable.”

Mr. Julian Hawthorne reports that Herman Melville--or Omoo, as they

called him,--soon became familiar and welcome at the Red House. In

a letter dated September 4, 1850, Mrs. Hawthorne reported to her

mother: “To-day, Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Melville have gone to dine

at Pittsfield.” It is in this letter that Mrs. Hawthorne wrote the

characterisation of Melville quoted in Chapter I.

Hawthorne finished _The House of the Seven Gables_ on January 27, 1851.

The four months following Hawthorne gave over to a vacation. “He had

recovered his health,” his son says, “he had done his work, he was

famous, and the region in which he dwelt was beautiful and inspiriting.

At all events, he made those spring days memorable to his children. He

made them boats to sail on the lake, and kites to fly in the air; he

took them fishing and flower-gathering, and tried (unsuccessfully for

the present) to teach them swimming. Mr. Melville used to ride or drive

up, in the evenings, with his great dog, and the children used to ride

on the dog’s back.”... “It was with Herman Melville that Hawthorne

held the most familiar intercourse at this time, both personally and

by letter.” Hawthorne’s son quotes “characteristic disquisitions”

by Melville; “but Hawthorne’s answers, if he wrote any,” Mr. Julian

Hawthorne goes on to say, entertaining a philosophical doubt in the

face of Melville’s specific mention of letters from Hawthorne, “were

unfortunately destroyed by fire.”

What would appear to be the earliest of the surviving letters of

Melville to Hawthorne follows:

“PITTSFIELD, Wednesday morning.

“MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,--

“Concerning the young gentleman’s shoes, I desire to say that a

pair to fit him, of the desired pattern, cannot be had in all

Pittsfield,--a fact which sadly impairs that metropolitan pride I

formerly took in the capital of Berkshire. Henceforth Pittsfield must

hide its head. However, if a pair of _bootees_ will at all answer,

Pittsfield will be very happy to provide them. Pray mention all this

to Mrs. Hawthorne, and command me.

“‘_The House of the Seven Gables_: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.

One vol. 16mo, pp. 344.’ The contents of this book do not belie

its rich, clustering, romantic title. With great enjoyment we

spent almost an hour in each separate gable. This book is like a

fine old chamber, abundantly, but still judiciously, furnished

with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish it.

There are rich hangings, wherein are braided scenes from tragedies!

There is old china with rare devices, set out on the carved buffet;

there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there

is an admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands;

there is a smell as of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one

corner, there is a dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps,

entitled _Hawthorne: A Problem_. It has delighted us; it has piqued

a re-perusal; it has robbed us of a day, and made us a present of

a whole year of thoughtfulness; it has bred great exhilaration and

exultation with the remembrance that the architect of the Gables

resides only six miles off, and not three thousand miles away,

in England, say. We think the book, for pleasantness of running

interest, surpasses the other works of the author. The curtains are

more drawn; the sun comes in more; genialities peep out more. Were

we to particularise what most struck us in the deeper passages, we

would point out the scene where Clifford, for a moment, would fain

throw himself forth from the window to join the procession; or the

scene where the judge is left seated in his ancestral chair. Clifford

is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the finest,

truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here we

would say that, did circumstances permit, we should like nothing

better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full

consideration and analysis of the purport and significance of what

so strongly characterises all of this author’s writings. There is a

certain tragic phase of humanity which, in our opinion, was never

more powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne. We mean the tragedies of

human thought in its own unbiassed, native, and profounder workings.

We think that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the

usable truth ever entered more deeply than into this man’s. By

usable truth, we mean the apprehension of the absolute condition of

present things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not,

though they do their worst to him,--the man who, like Russia or the

British Empire, declares himself a sovereign nature (in himself)

amid the powers of heaven, hell, and earth. He may perish; but so

long as he exists he insists upon treating with all Powers upon an

equal basis. If any of those other Powers choose to withhold certain

secrets, let them; that does not impair my sovereignty in myself;

that does not make me tributary. And perhaps, after all, there is

_no_ secret. We incline to think that the Problem of the Universe

is like the Freemason’s mighty secret, so terrible to all children.

It turns out, at last, to consist in a triangle, a mallet, and an

apron,--nothing more! We incline to think that God cannot explain His

own secrets, and that He would like a little information upon certain

points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us. But it is

this _Being_ of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke

ourselves. As soon as you say _Me_, a _God_, a _Nature_, so soon you

jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is

the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary, and you would have Him

in the street.

“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in

thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say _yes_. For all men

who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,--why, they are in the happy

condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross

the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,--that is

to say, the Ego. Whereas those _yes_-gentry, they travel with heaps

of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom

House. What’s the reason, Mr. Hawthorne, that in the last stages of

metaphysics a fellow always falls to _swearing_ so? I could rip an

hour. You see, I began with a little criticism extracted for your

benefit from the _Pittsfield Secret Review_, and here I have landed

in Africa.

“Walk down one of these mornings and see me. No nonsense; come.

Remember me to Mrs. Hawthorne and the children.

“H. MELVILLE.

“P. S. The marriage of Phœbe with the daguerreotypist is a fine

stroke, because of his turning out to be a _Maule_. If you pass

Hepzibah’s cent-shop, buy me a Jim Crow (fresh) and send it to me by

Ned Higgins.”

When, at the end of this letter, Melville found himself in Africa, he

mistook gravely if he imagined he occupied the same continent with

Hawthorne. Emile Montégut, it is true, has described Hawthorne as a

“romancier pessimiste.” Pessimist Hawthorne doubtless was,--a pessimist

being precisely a nature without illusions. Hawthorne of course had,

as Brownell has sufficiently taken pains to show, “the good sense,

the lack of enthusiasm, the disillusioned pessimism of the man of

the world.” Hawthorne did say “No!” to life: but never, as Melville

deceived himself into believing, “in thunder.” Such an emphatic denial

would have been an expression of ardour: and Hawthorne was as without

ardour as he was without illusion. Both Melville and Hawthorne were, in

a sense, pessimists. Both were repelled by reality; both were quite out

of sympathy with their time and its tendencies. But they had arrived at

this centre of meeting from opposite points of the compass. Hawthorne

was a pessimist from lack of illusions; the ardour of illusion,

because of its exuberance in Melville, was at the basis of Melville’s

despair. Hawthorne took the same severely fatalistic view of himself

and the life about him, as he did of life in his books. He accepted

the universe as being unalterable, and towards his own destiny he felt

satisfaction without elation. Like the Mohammedans who believe that

they are preordained--but preordained to conquer,--so Hawthorne in his

Calvinism, despite his depressed moods, had no serious doubts as to his

election. Melville’s endless questioning of “Providence and futurity,

and of everything else that lies beyond human ken” were to Hawthorne

merely a weariness of the flesh: he was satisfied in his fatalism, and

without interest in speculation.

The next two letters announce that _Moby-Dick_ is going through the

press,--but they contain other incidental matter that must have been

interesting--as a “human document” at least--even to Hawthorne. It is

true that at this time, so his own son says, “Hawthorne became a sort

of Mecca of pilgrims with Christian’s burden upon their backs. Secret

criminals of all kinds came to him for counsel and relief.” He was

weary, perhaps, of human documents: and Melville came to him, not for

counsel, but in the intimate fraternity of the disenchanted.

“PITTSFIELD, June 29, 1851.

“MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,--

“The clear air and open window invite me to write to you. For some

time past I have been so busy with a thousand things that I have

almost forgotten when I wrote you last, and whether I received an

answer. This most persuasive season has now for weeks recalled me

from certain crotchety and over-doleful chimeras, the like of which

men like you and me, and some others, forming a chain of God’s

posts round the world, must be content to encounter now and then,

and fight them the best way we can. But come they will,--for in the

boundless, trackless, but still glorious wild wilderness through

which these outposts run, the Indians do sorely abound, as well as

the insignificant but still stinging mosquitoes. Since you have been

here, I have been building some shanties of houses (connected with

the old one) and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays. I

have been ploughing and sowing and raising and printing and praying,

and now begin to come out upon a less bristling time, and to enjoy

the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza at the north of the

old farmhouse here.

“Not entirely yet, though, am I without something to be urgent

with. The _Whale_ is only half through the press; for, wearied with

the long delays of the printers, and disgusted with the heat and

dust of the Babylonish brick-kiln of New York, I came back to the

country to feel the grass, and end the book reclining on it, if I

may. I am sure you will pardon this speaking all about myself; for

if I _say_ so much on that head, be sure all the rest of the world

are thinking about themselves ten times as much. Let us speak,

though we show all our faults and weaknesses,--for it is a sign of

strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it; not in set way and

ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

But I am falling into my old foible,--preaching. I am busy, but shall

not be very long. Come and spend a day here, if you can and want

to; if not, stay in Lenox, and God give you long life. When I am

quite free of my present engagements, I am going to treat myself to

a ride and a visit to you. Have ready a bottle of brandy, because I

always feel like drinking that heroic drink when we talk ontological

heroics together. This is rather a crazy letter in some respects,

I apprehend. If so, ascribe it to the intoxicating effects of the

latter end of June operating upon a very susceptible and peradventure

feeble temperament. Shall I send you a fin of the _Whale_ by way of a

specimen mouthful? The tail is not yet cooked, though the hell-fire

in which the whole book is broiled might not unreasonably have

cooked it ere this. This is the book’s motto (the secret one), _Ego

non baptiso te in nomine_--but make out the rest yourself.

“H. M.”

“MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,--

“I should have been rumbling down to you in my pine-board chariot a

long time ago, were it not that for some weeks past I have been more

busy than you can well imagine,--out of doors,--building and patching

and tinkering away in all directions. Besides, I had my crops to

get in,--corn and potatoes (I hope to show you some famous ones

by and by),--and many other things to attend to, all accumulating

upon this one particular season. I work myself; and at night my

bodily sensations are akin to those I have so often felt before,

when a hired man, doing my day’s work from sun to sun. But I mean

to continue visiting you until you tell me that my visits are both

supererogatory and superfluous. With no son of man do I stand upon

any etiquette or ceremony, except the Christian ones of charity and

honesty. I am told, my fellow-man, that there is an aristocracy of

the brain. Some men have boldly advocated and asserted it. Schiller

seems to have done so, though I don’t know much about him. At any

rate, it is true that there have been those who, while earnest in

behalf of political equality, still accept the intellectual estates.

And I can well perceive, I think, how a man of superior mind can,

by its intense cultivation, bring himself, as it were, into a

certain spontaneous aristocracy of feeling,--exceedingly nice and

fastidious,--similar to that which, in an English Howard, conveys a

torpedo-fish thrill at the slightest contact with a social plebeian.

So, when you see or hear of my ruthless democracy on all sides, you

may possibly feel a touch of a shrink, or something of that sort.

It is but nature to be shy of a mortal who boldly declares that a

thief in jail is as honourable a personage as Gen. George Washington.

This is ludicrous. But Truth is the silliest thing under the sun.

Try to get a living by Truth--and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens!

Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold,

the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own

pulpit bannister. It can hardly be doubted that all Reformers are

bottomed upon the truth, more or less; and to the world at large are

not reformers almost universally laughing-stocks? Why so? Truth is

ridiculous to men. Thus easily in my room here do I, conceited and

garrulous, revere the test of my Lord Shaftesbury.

“It seems an inconsistency to assert unconditional democracy in all

things, and yet confess a dislike to all mankind--in the mass. But

not so.--But it’s an endless sermon,--no more of it. I began by

saying that the reason I have not been to Lenox is this,--in the

evening I feel completely done up, as the phrase is, and incapable

of the long jolting to get to your house and back. In a week or so,

I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story room, and work and

slave on my _Whale_ while it is driving through the press. _That_ is

the only way I can finish it now,--I am so pulled hither and thither

by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing

mood in which a man _ought_ always to compose,--that, I fear, can

seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is for

ever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. My dear Sir, a

presentiment is on me,--I shall at last be worn out and perish, like

an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by the constant attrition of

the wood, that is, the nutmeg. What I feel most moved to write, that

is banned,--it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the _other_ way I

cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

I’m rather sore, perhaps, in this letter; but see my hand!--four

blisters on this palm, made by hoes and hammers within the last few

days. It is a rainy morning; so I am indoors, and all work suspended.

I feel cheerfully disposed, and therefore I write a little bluely.

Would the Gin were here! If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal

times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in

some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means

be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won’t believe in a

Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in

the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses

and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert,--then,

O my dear fellow-mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all

the things manifold which now so distress us,--when all the earth

shall be but a reminiscence, yea, its final dissolution an antiquity.

Then shall songs be composed as when wars are over; humorous, comic

songs,--‘Oh, when I lived in that queer little hole called the

world,’ or, ‘Oh, when I toiled and sweated below,’ or, ‘Oh, when

I knocked and was knocked in the fight’--yes, let us look forward

to such things. Let us swear that, though now we sweat, yet it is

because of the dry heat which is indispensable to the nourishment

of the vine which is to bear the grapes that are to give us the

champagne hereafter.

“But I was talking about the _Whale_. As the fishermen say, ‘he’s

in his flurry’ when I left him some three weeks ago. I’m going to

take him by his jaw, however, before long, and finish him up in

some fashion or other. What’s the use of elaborating what, in its

very essence, is so short-lived as a modern book? Though I wrote

the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.--I talk

all about myself, and this is selfishness and egotism. Granted.

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

of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

“Whence came you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my

flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips--lo, they are yours and

not mine. I feel that the God-head is broken up like the bread at the

Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity

of feeling. Now, sympathising with the paper, my angel turns over

another leaf. You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and

then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled

the book--and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel

enough to praise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. Once you

hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and

heard the rushing of the demon,--the familiar,--and recognised the

sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes.

“My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric scepticisms steal over me now,

and make me doubtful of my sanity in writing you thus. But, believe

me, I am not mad, most noble Festus! But truth is ever incoherent,

and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little

stunning. Farewell. Don’t write me a word about the book. That

would be robbing me of my miserable delight. I am heartily sorry I

ever wrote anything about you--it was paltry. Lord, when shall we

be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have

done nothing. So, now, let us add _Moby-Dick_ to our blessing, and

step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish;--I have heard of

Krakens.

“This is a long letter, but you are not at all bound to answer it.

Possibly if you do answer it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you

will missend it--for the very fingers that now guide this pen are

not precisely the same that just took it up and put it to the paper.

Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it is a long stage, and no

inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a

passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world,

I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing

you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

“What a pity that, for your plain, bluff letter, you should get such

gibberish! Mention me to Mrs. Hawthorne and to the children, and so,

good-bye to you, with my blessing.

“HERMAN.

“P. S. I can’t stop yet. If the world was entirely made up of

Magians, I’ll tell you what I should do. I should have a paper-mill

established at one end of the house, and so have an extra riband for

foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I

should write a thousand--a million--a billion thoughts, all under the

form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is on you, and my magnet

responds. Which is the bigger? A foolish question--they are _one_.

“H.

“P. P. S. Don’t think that by writing me a letter, you shall always

be bored with an immediate reply to it--and so keep both of us

delving over a writing-desk eternally. No such thing! I sha’n’t

always answer your letters and you may do just as you please.”

Hawthorne had written Melville a “plain, bluff letter,” and in reply

was to be told, with “infinite fraternity,” that “the god-head is

broken up like the bread at the Supper” and that he was one of the

pieces. Melville had dedicated _Moby-Dick_ to Hawthorne, and Hawthorne

made some sort of acknowledgment of the tribute. Melville, shrewdly

suspected him, however, of caring “not a penny” for the book, but in

archangelical charity praising less the “imperfect body” than the

“pervading thought” which “now and then” he understood.

_Moby-Dick_ was an allegory, of course--but withal an allegory of a

solidity and substance that must have appeared to Hawthorne little

short of grossly shocking. Hawthorne had been praised from his “airy

and charming insubstantiality.” And of himself he wrote, with engaging

candour: “Whether from lack of power, or an unconquerable reserve,

the Author’s touches have often an effect of tameness.” Hawthorne’s

“reserve” is, of course, all myth. Both Hawthorne and Melville, though

each a recluse in life, overflow to the reader. And as Brownell says

of Hawthorne: “He does not tell very much, but apparently he tells

everything.” But to Hawthorne, Melville’s overflowing, like a spring

freshet, or a tidal wave, must have been little less than appalling.

Hawthorne’s was eminently a neat, fastidious style, as free from any

eccentricity or excess as from any particular pungency or colour.

Melville’s was extravagant, capricious, vigorous, and “unliterary”: the

energy of his undisciplined genius is its most significant quality.

After all, was it possible for Hawthorne to feel any deep sympathy for

Melville’s passionate enthusiasms, for Melville’s catholic toleration,

for Melville’s quenchless curiosity, for Melville’s varied laughter,

for Melville’s spiritual daring? It is true that Hawthorne found

Story’s “Cleopatra”--inspired, it might appear, by a fancy of the

young Victoria in discreet negligée--“a terrible, dangerous woman,

quite enough for the moment, but very like to spring upon you like a

tigress.” He never visited George Eliot because there was another Mrs.

Lewes. He was much troubled by the nude in art. He pronounced Margaret

Fuller’s “in many respects,” a “defective and evil nature,” and

“Providence was kind in putting her and her clownish husband and their

child on board that fated ship.” It is true that he wrote a graceful if

not very genial introductory essay--once mistaken for a marvel quite

eclipsing “Elia”--to relieve the dark tone of _The Scarlet Letter_. And

it is also true that he accepted the adoration of his wife with the

utmost gravity and appreciation. Mrs. Hawthorne, in one of her letters

to her mother, by a transition in praise of Hawthorne’s eyes--“They

give, but receive not”--comments at some length, on her husband’s

“mighty heart,” that “opens the bosom of men.” “So Mr. Melville,” she

says, “generally silent and incommunicative, pours out the rich floods

of his mind and experience to him, so sure of appreciation, so sure of

a large and generous interpretation.”

What interpretation Hawthorne gave to _Moby-Dick_ has not transpired.

Hawthorne mentions _Moby-Dick_ once in his published works. In the

_Wonder Book_ he says: “On the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman

Melville, shaping out the gigantic conception of his white whale, while

the gigantic shape of Greylock looms upon him from his study window.”

Only one available Hawthorne-Melville document is still unprinted: the

“Agatha” letter, mentioned by Mr. Julian Hawthorne. But the “Agatha”

letter says nothing of _Moby-Dick_; and though of impressive bulk, its

biographical interest is too slight to merit its publication.

Born in hell-fire, and baptised in an unspeakable name, _Moby-Dick_

is, with _The Scarlet Letter_, among the few very notable literary

achievements of American literature. There has been published no

criticism of Melville more beautiful or more profound than the essay

of E. L. Grant Watson on _Moby-Dick_ (_London Mercury_, December,

1920). It is Mr. Watson’s contention in this essay, that the _Pequod_,

with her monomaniac captain and all her crew, is representative of

Melville’s own genius, and in the particular sense that each character

is deliberately symbolic of a complete and separate element. Because

of the prodigal richness of material in _Moby-Dick_, the breadth and

vitality and solid substance of the setting of the allegory, the

high quality of _Moby-Dick_ as a psychological synthesis has very

generally been lost sight of. Like Bunyan, or Swift, Melville has

enforced his moral by giving an independent and ideal verisimilitude

to its innocent and unconscious exponents. The self-sustaining

vitality of Melville’s symbols has been magnificently vouched for by

Mr. Masefield in his vision of the final resurrection. And the superb

irony--whether unconscious or intended--of _Moby-Dick’s_ “towing

the ship our Lord was in, with all the sweet apostles aboard of

her,” would surely have delighted Melville. _Pilgrim’s Progress_ is

undoubtedly a tract; but, as Brownell observes, if it had been only

a tract, it would never have achieved universal canonisation. Both

_Pilgrim’s Progress_ and _Moby-Dick_ are works of art in themselves,

each leaning lightly--though of course to all the more purpose--on

its moral. Most persons probably read _Gulliver_ for the story, and

miss the satire. In the same way, a casual reader of _Moby-Dick_

may skip the more transcendental passages and classify it as a book

of adventure. It is indeed a book of adventure, but upon the highest

plane of spiritual daring. Ahab is, of course, the atheistical captain

of the tormented soul; and his crew, so Melville says, is “chiefly

made of mongrel renegades, and cast-aways and cannibals.” And Ahab is

“morally enfeebled, also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or

rightmindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollitry of indifference

or recklessness of Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity of Flash!”

But Ahab is Captain; and his madness is of such a quality that the

white whale and all that is there symbolised, needs must render its

consummation, or its extinction. On the waste of the Pacific, ship

after ship passes the _Pequod_, some well laden, others bearing awful

tidings: yet all are sane. The _Pequod_ alone, against contrary winds,

sails on into that amazing calm, that extraordinary mildness, in which

she is destroyed by _Moby-Dick_. “There is a wisdom that is woe, and

there is a woe that is madness.” And in _Moby-Dick_, the woe and the

wisdom are mingled in the history of a soul’s adventure.

Though _Moby-Dick_ is not only an allegory, but an allegory designed

to teach woeful wisdom, nowhere in literature, perhaps, can one find

such uncompromising despair so genially and painlessly administered.

Indeed, the despair of _Moby-Dick_ is as popularly missed as is the

vitriolic bitterness of _Gulliver_. There is an abundance of humour in

_Moby-Dick_, of course: and there is mirth in much of the laughter.

In _Moby-Dick_, it would appear, Melville has made pessimism a gay

science. “Learn to laugh, my young friends,” Nietzsche counsels, “if

you are at all determined to remain pessimists.” If there are tears,

he smiles gallantly as he brushes them aside. “There are certain

queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life,”

Melville says, “when a man takes this whole universe for a vast

practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discovers, and

more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.

There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and

easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I regard this

whole voyage of the _Pequod_, and the great white whale its object.”

And for the most part, he does. But he declares, withal, that “the

truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books

is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.

All is vanity. ALL.” _Moby-Dick_ was built upon a foundation of this

wisdom, and this woe; and so keenly did Melville feel the poignancy of

this woe, so isolated was he in his surrender to this wisdom, that this

wisdom and this woe, which he had learned from Solomon and from Christ,

he felt to be of that quality which in our cowardice we call madness.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GREAT REFUSAL

“My towers at last! These rovings end,

Their thirst is slacked in larger dearth:

The yearning infinite recoils,

For terrible is earth.”

--HERMAN MELVILLE: _L’Envoi_.

On a bleak and snowy November day in 1851, the Hawthorne family, with

their trunks, got into a large farm wagon and drove away from the

little red house. And with the departure of Hawthorne, Melville had

dreamed the last of his avenging dreams. There may have been some

association between the two men while Hawthorne was in West Newton,

and later in Concord, but no records survive. In 1856, on his way to

the Holy Land, Melville visited Hawthorne at Southport two days after

arriving in Liverpool. Melville’s account of the meeting is thus

recorded in his journal:

“_Sunday, Nov. 9_: Stayed home till dinner. After dinner took

steamboat for Rock Ferry to find Mr. Hawthorne. On getting to R. F.

learned he had removed thence 18 months previous and was now residing

out of town.

“_Monday, Nov. 10_: Went among the docks to see the Mediterranean

steamers. Saw Mr. Hawthorne at Consulate. Invited me to stay with

him during my sojourn at Liverpool. Dined at Anderson’s, a very nice

place, and charges moderate.

“_Tuesday, Nov. 11_: Hawthorne for Southport, 20 miles distant on the

seashore, a watering place. Found Mrs. Hawthorne & the rest awaiting

tea for us.

“_Wednesday, Nov. 12_: At Southport, an agreeable day. Took a long

walk by the sea. Sand & grass. Wild & desolate. A strong wind. Good

talk. In the evening stout & fox & geese. Julian grown into a fine

lad. Una taller than her brother. Mrs. Hawthorne not in good health.

Mr. Hawthorne stayed home with me.

“_Thursday, Nov. 13_: At Southport till noon. Mr. H. & I took train

then for Liverpool. Spent rest of day putting enquiries among

steamers.

“_Friday, Nov. 14_: Took bus for London Road. Called at Mr.

Hawthorne’s. Met a Mr. Bright. Took me to his club and luncheoned me

there.

“_Sunday, Nov. 16_: Rode in the omnibus. Went out to Foxhill Park,

&c. Grand organ at St. George’s Hall.”

Three days later, Melville was off for Constantinople. In his _English

Note-boo_k, under November 30th, 1856, Hawthorne wrote:

“_November 30_: A week ago last Monday, Herman Melville came to

see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do, and with

his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... We soon found

ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and

confidence.... He is thus far on his way to Constantinople. I do

not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through

the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labour, following

upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was. I invited him to

come and stay with us at Southport, as long as he might remain in

this vicinity, and accordingly he did come the next day.... On

Wednesday we took a pretty long walk together, and sat down in a

hollow among the sand-hills, sheltering ourselves from the high cool

wind. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and

futurity, and of everything else that lies beyond human ken.... He

has a very high and noble nature, and is better worth immortality

than the most of us.... On Saturday we went to Chester together. I

love to take every opportunity of going to Chester; it being the one

only place, within easy reach of Liverpool, which possesses any old

English interest. We went to the Cathedral.”--And then architecture

gives place to personal comment.

Mr. Julian Hawthorne reports of this meeting: “At Southport the chief

event of interest during the winter was a visit from Herman Melville,

who turned up at Liverpool on his way to Constantinople, and whom

Hawthorne brought out to spend a night or two with us. ‘He looked

much the same as he used to do; a little paler, perhaps, and a little

sadder, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner. I

felt rather awkward at first, for this is the first time I have met

him since my ineffectual attempt to get him a consular appointment

from General Pierce. However, I failed only from real lack of power

to serve him; so there was no reason to be ashamed, and we soon

found ourselves on pretty much the former terms of sociability and

confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; he has been affected

with neuralgic complaints, and no doubt has suffered from too constant

literary occupation, pursued without much success latterly; and his

writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of

mind. So he left his place in Pittsfield, and has come to the Old

World. He informed me that he had “pretty much made up his mind to be

annihilated”; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation,

and I think will never rest until he gets hold of some definite belief.

It is strange how he persists--and has persisted ever since I knew him,

and probably long before--in wandering to and fro over these deserts,

as dismal and monotonous as the sandhills amidst which we were sitting.

He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is

too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he

were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and

reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth

immortality than most of us.’

“Melville made the rounds of Liverpool under the guidance of Henry

Bright; and afterwards Hawthorne took him to Chester; and they parted

the same evening, ‘at a street corner, in the rainy evening. I saw him

again on Monday, however. He said that he already felt much better

than in America; but observed that he did not anticipate much pleasure

in his rambles, for that the spirit of adventure is gone out of him.

He certainly is much overshadowed since I saw him last; but I hope

he will brighten as he goes onward. He sailed on Tuesday, leaving

a trunk behind him, and taking only a carpet-bag to hold all his

travelling-gear. This is the next best thing to going naked; and as he

wears his beard and moustache, and so needs no dressing-case,--nothing

but a toothbrush,--I do not know a more independent personage. He

learned his travelling habits by drifting about, all over the South

Seas, with no other clothes or equipage than a red flannel shirt and

a pair of duck trousers. Yet we seldom see men of less criticisable

manners than he.’”

There is no record of these two men ever meeting again.

From the beginning, there had been, between Melville and Hawthorne, a

profound incompatibility. When they met, Melville was within one last

step of absolute disenchantment. One illusion, only, was to him still

unblasted: The belief in the possibility of a Utopian friendship that

might solace all of his earlier defeats. Ravished in solitude by his

alienation from his fellows, Melville discovered that the author of

_The Scarlet Letter_ was his neighbour. He came to know Hawthorne: and

his eager soul rushed to embrace Hawthorne’s as that of a brother in

despair. Exultant was his worship of Hawthorne, absolute his desire for

surrender. He craved of Hawthorne an understanding and sympathy that

neither Hawthorne, nor any other human being, perhaps, could ever have

given. His admiration for Hawthorne was, of course, as he inevitably

discovered, built upon a mistaken identity. Yet, on the evidence of

his letters, he for a time drew from this admiration moments both

of tensest excitement and of miraculous and impregnating peace. It

would be interesting, indeed, to know what _Moby-Dick_ owed to this

inspiration. It is patent fact, however, that with the publication of

_Moby-Dick_, and Hawthorne’s departure from Lenox, Melville’s creative

period was at its close. At the age of thirty-two, so brilliant, so

intense, so crowded had been the range of experience that burned

through him, that at the period of his life when most men are just

beginning to strike their gait, Melville found himself looking forward

into utter night. Nearly forty years before his death, he had come

to be the most completely disenchanted of all considerable American

writers.

From his youth, Melville had felt the flagrant and stubborn discord

between aspiration and fact. He was born with an imagination of

very extraordinary vigour, and with a constitution of corresponding

vitality. In sheer capacity to feel, most American writers look pale

beside him. Fired by his rebellious imagination, and abetted by his

animal courage, he sallied forth in quest of happiness. Few men have

ever compassed such a span of experience as he crowded within the

thirty-two years of his quest; few men have lived with such daring,

with such intensity. And one by one, as he put his illusions to the

test, the bolts of his imagination, discharged against reality, but

blazed out charred avenues to despair. It was Dante, he says in

_Pierre_, who first “opened to his shuddering eyes the infinite cliffs

and gulfs of human mystery and misery;--though still more in the way of

experimental vision, than of sensational presentiment or experience.”

By the age of thirty-two, he had, by first-hand knowledge of life,

learned to feel the justice of Schopenhauer’s statement: “Where did

Dante find the material for his _Inferno_ if not from the world; and

yet is not his picture exhaustively satisfactory? But look at his

Paradise; when he attempted to describe it he had nothing to guide him,

this pleasant world could not offer a single suggestion.” This passage

is marked in Melville’s copy of Schopenhauer. And in _Pierre_ he wrote:

“By vast pains we mine into the pyramid; by horrible gropings we come

to the central room; with joy we espy the sarcophagus; but we lift the

lid--and nobody is there!--appallingly vacant, as vast as the soul of

a man.”

Melville’s disillusionment began at home. The romantic idealisation

of his mother gave place to a recoil into a realisation of the cold,

“scaly, glittering folds of pride” that rebuffed his tormented love;

and he studied the portrait of his father, and found it a defaming

image. In _Pierre_ this portrait thus addresses him: “To their young

children, fathers are not wont to unfold themselves.... Consider this

strange, ambiguous, smile; more narrowly regard this mouth. Behold,

what is this too ardent and, as it were, unchastened light in these

eyes. Consider. Is there no mystery here?” In _Pierre_, he thought that

there was.

In his boyhood, poverty added its goad to launch him forth to find

happiness in distance. He discovered hideousness; and later, escaped

into virgin savagery, he saw by contrast the blatant defaults of

civilisation; and he learned that it was the dubious honour of the

white civilised man of being “the most ferocious animal on the face

of the earth.” In Tahiti he was brought face to face with the bigotry

and stupid self-righteousness of the proselyting Protestant mind; and

there he learned that Christianity--or what passes for it--may under

some circumstances be not a blessing but a blight. In _Typee_ and

_Omoo_ he innocently turned his hand to right matters to a happier

adjustment, soon to reap the reward of such temerity. In the navy he

was made hideously aware of the versatility of the human animal in

evil. There he found not only a rich panorama of human unloveliness,

but “evils which, like the suppressed domestic drama of Horace Walpole,

will neither bear representing, nor reading, and will hardly bear

thinking of.” There, he was also struck by the criminal stupidity of

war. In _White-Jacket_ he asked, “are there no Moravians in the Moon,

that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours,

to civilise civilisation and Christianise Christendom?” He was, as he

calls himself, a “pondering man”: and in his evaluation of individual

human life he soon came to share the judgment of Josiah Royce, another

“pondering man”: “Call it human life. You can not find a comparison

more thoroughly condemning it.” And he marked Schopenhauer’s tribute to

his fellows: “They are just what they seem to be, and that is the worst

that can be said of them.”

As “the man who lived among the cannibals” he was famous by the

age of twenty-eight. But when he attempted to put his earnest

convictions on paper, he was to discover that the value of the paper

deteriorated thereby. When he made this discovery he was married,

and a father: and debtors had to be held at bay by the point of the

pen. On April 30, 1851, Harper and Brothers denied him any further

advance on his royalties: they were making “extensive and expensive

improvements”--and besides, he had already overdrawn nearly seven

hundred dollars.

He had, too, sought personal happiness in the illusion of romantic

love. The romantic lover is in especial peril of finding in marriage

the sobered discovery that all his sublime and heroic effort has

resulted simply in a vulgar satisfaction, and that, taking all things

into consideration, he is no better off than he was before. In his poem

_After the Pleasure Party_ (in _Timoleon_, 1891) Melville tells such

a “sad rosary of belittling pain.” As a rule, Theseus once consoled,

Ariadne is forsaken; and had Petrarch’s passion been requited, his

song would have ceased. Francesca and Paolo, romantic lovers who had

experienced the limits of their desire, were by Dante put in Hell:

and their sufficient punishment was their eternal companionship.

By the very ardour of his idealisation, Melville was foredoomed to

disappointment in marriage. Though both he and his wife were noble

natures--indeed for that very reason--their marriage was for each a

crucifixion. For between them there was deep personal loyalty without

understanding. Bacon once said, “he that hath wife and children

hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great

enterprises, either of virtue or of mischief.” Melville gave such

hostages to fortune: but, such was his temperament, it is difficult

to believe that unencumbered he would have magnified his achievement.

Mrs. Melville is remembered as a gentle, gracious, loyal woman who bore

with him for over forty years, in his disillusion, his loss of health,

his poverty, his obscurity. And his father-in-law, Chief Justice Shaw,

befriended him with forbearance and with more substantial gifts.

With the departure of Hawthorne from Lenox, Melville was left without

companionship and without illusions. And he was aware of the approach

of his Nemesis even before it overtook him. He confessed to Hawthorne

while finishing _Moby-Dick_ his feeling that he was approaching

the limit of his power. And these intimations were prophetic. With

_Moby-Dick_ his creative period closed.

Of the end of this period his wife says: “Wrote _White Whale_ or

_Moby-Dick_ under unfavourable circumstances--would sit at his desk

all day not writing anything till four or five o’clock--then ride

to the village after dark--would be up early and out walking before

breakfast--sometimes splitting wood for exercise. Published _White

Whale_ in 1851.--Wrote _Pierre_: published 1852. We all felt anxious

about the strain on his health in Spring of 1853.”

In _Pierre_, Melville coiled down into the night of his soul, to

write an anatomy of despair. The purpose of the book was to show

the impracticability of virtue: to give specific evidence, freely

plagiarised from his own psychology, that “the heavenly wisdom of

God is an earthly folly to man,” “that although our blessed Saviour

was full of the wisdom of Heaven, yet his gospel seems lacking in

the practical wisdom of the earth; that his nature was not merely

human--was not that of a mere man of the world”; that to try to live in

this world according to the strict letter of Christianity would result

in “the story of the Ephesian matron, allegorised.” The subtlety of

the analysis is extraordinary; and in its probings into unsuspected

determinants from unconsciousness it is prophetic of some of the

most recent findings in psychology. “Deep, deep, and still deep and

deeper must we go,” Melville says, “if we would find out the heart

of a man; descending into which is as descending a spiral stair in a

shaft, without any end, and where that endlessness is only concealed

by the spiralness of the stair, and the blackness of the shaft.” In

the winding ambiguities of _Pierre_ Melville attempts to reveal man’s

fatal facility at self-deception; to show that the human mind is like

a floating iceberg, hiding below the surface of the sea most of its

bulk; that from a great depth of thought and feeling below the level

of awareness, long silent hands are ever reaching out, urging us to

whims of the blood and tensions of the nerves, whose origins we never

suspect. “In reserves men build imposing characters,” Melville says;

“not in revelations.” _Pierre_ is not conspicuous for its reserves.

_Pierre_ aroused the reviewers to such a storm of abuse that legend

has assigned Melville’s swift obscuration to this dispraise. The

explanation is too simple, as Mr. Mather contends. But there is,

doubtless, more than a half truth in this explanation. The abuse

that _Pierre_ reaped, coming when it did in Melville’s career,

and inspired by a book in which Melville with tragic earnestness

attempted an apologia of worldly defeat, must have seemed to him in

its heartlessness and total blindness to his purpose, a definitive

substantiation of the thesis of his book.

_Pierre_ has been very unsympathetically handled, even by Melville’s

most penetrating and sympathetic critics. Mr. Frank Jewett Mather,

Jr., for example, in the second of his two essays on _Herman Melville_

(_The Review_, August 9 and 16, 1919), says of _Pierre_ that “it is

perhaps the only positively ill-done book” of Melville’s. Mr. Mather

grants power to the book, but he finds it “repellent and overwrought.”

He recommends it only as a literary curiosity. And as a literary

curiosity Mr. Arthur Johnson studied its stylistic convolutions in _The

New Republic_ of August 27, 1919. It is certainly true, as Mr. Johnson

has said, that “the plot or theme, were it not so ‘done’ as to be

hardly decipherable, would be to-day considered rather ‘advanced.’” Mr.

Johnson contends that for morbid unhealthy pathology, it has not been

exceeded even by D. H. Lawrence. All this may be very excellent ethics,

but it is not very enlightening criticism.

Melville wrote _Pierre_ with no intent to reform the ways of the

world. But he did write _Pierre_ to put on record the reminder that

the world’s way is a hypocritic way in so far as it pretends to be any

other than the Devil’s way also. In _Pierre_, Melville undertook to

dramatise this conviction. When he sat down to write, what seemed to

him the holiest part of himself--his ardent aspirations--had wrecked

itself against reality. So he undertook to present, in the character

of Pierre, his own character purged of dross; and in the character of

Pierre’s parents, the essential outlines of his own parents. Then he

started his hero forth upon a career of lofty and unselfish impulse,

intent to show that the more transcendent a man’s ideal, the more

certain and devastating his worldly defeat; that the most innocent

in heart are those most in peril of being eventually involved in

“strange, _unique_ follies and sins, unimagined before.” Incidentally,

Melville undertakes to show, in the tortuous ambiguities of _Pierre_,

that even the purest impulses of Pierre were, in reality, tainted of

clay. _Pierre_ is an apologia of Melville’s own defeat, in the sense

that in _Pierre_ Melville attempts to show that in so far as his own

defeat--essentially paralleling Pierre’s--was unblackened by incest,

murder, and suicide, he had escaped these disasters through accident

and inherent defect, rather than because of superior virtue. Pierre had

followed the heavenly way that leads to damnation.

Such a thesis can be met by the worldly wisdom that Melville slanders

in _Pierre_, only with uncompromising repugnance. There can be no

forgiveness in this world for a man who calls the wisdom of this world

a cowardly lie, and probes clinically into the damning imperfections of

the best. His Kingdom is surely not of this world. And if this world

evinces for his gospel neither understanding nor sympathy, he cannot

reasonably complain if he reaps the natural fruits of his profession.

Melville agreed with the Psalmist: “Verily there is a reward for the

righteous.” But he blasphemed when he dared teach that the reward of

virtue and truth in this world must be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Like Dante, Melville set himself up against the world as a party of

one. A majority judgment, though it has the power, has not necessarily

the truth. It is theoretically possible that Melville, not the world,

is right. But one can assent to Melville’s creed only on penalty

of destruction; and the race does not welcome annihilation. Hence

this world must rejoice in its vengeance upon his blasphemy: and the

self-righteous have washed their feet in the blood of the wicked.

After _Pierre_, any further writing from Melville was both an

impertinence and an irrelevancy. No man who really believes that all

is vanity can consistently go on taking elaborate pains to popularise

his indifference. Schopenhauer did that thing, it is true; but

Schopenhauer was an artist, not a moralist; and he was enchanted with

disenchantment. Carlyle, too, through interminable volumes shrieked

out the necessity of silence. But after _Pierre_, Melville was without

internal urgings to write. “All profound things, and emotions of

things,” he wrote in _Pierre_, “are preceded and attended by silence.”

“When a man is really in a profound mood, then all merely verbal or

written profundities are unspeakably repulsive, and seem downright

childish to him.” Infinitely greater souls than Melville’s seem to

have shared this conviction. Neither Buddha nor Socrates left a single

written word; Christ wrote once only, and then in the sand.

As if the gods themselves were abetting Melville in his recoil from

letters and his contempt for his hard-earned fame, the Harper’s fire

of 1853 destroyed the plates of all his novels, and practically all

of the copies of his books then in stock. One hundred and eighty-five

copies of _Typee_ were burned; 276 copies of _Omoo_; 491 copies of

_Mardi_; 296 copies of _Redburn_; 292 copies of _White-Jacket_; 297

copies of _Moby-Dick_; 494 copies of _Pierre_. There survived only 10

copies of _Mardi_, 60 copies of _Moby-Dick_ and 110 copies of _Pierre_.

All of these books except _Pierre_ were reissued, but with no rich

profit either to Harper’s or to Melville. A typical royalty account is

that covering the period between October 6, 1863, and August 1, 1864.

During this period, 54 copies of _Typee_ were sold; 56 of _Omoo_; 42

of _Redburn_; 49 of _Mardi_; 29 of _White-Jacket_; 48 of _Moby-Dick_;

and 27 of _Pierre_. It was a fortunate year, indeed, for Melville that

brought him in $100 royalties. During most of his life, Melville’s

account with Harper’s was overdrawn: a fact that speaks more for the

generosity of his publisher than for the appreciation of his public.

Melville surely never achieved opulence by his pen. Convinced of the

futility of writing and effort, Melville wanted only tranquillity for

thought. But his health was breaking, and his family had to be fed. So

he looked about him for some unliterary employment.

The following letter from Richard Henry Dana explains itself:

“BOSTON, May 10, 1853.

“DEAR SIR:

“I am informed by the Chief Justice that my friend, Mr. Herman

Melville, has been named to the Government as a suitable person for

the American Consulship at the Sandwich Islands.

“I acknowledge no little personal interest in Mr. Melville, but apart

from that, I know, from my early experience, and from a practice of

many years in Admiralty & Maritime causes, the great importance of

having a consul at the Sandwich Islands who knows the wants of our

vast Pacific Marine, and shall stand clear of those inducements of

trade consignments which lead so many consuls to neglect seamen and

lend their influence indiscriminately in favour of owners and masters.

“Mr. Melville has been all over the Pacific Ocean, in all sorts of

maritime service & has the requisite acquaintance & interest to an

unusual degree. Beyond this, his reputation, general intelligence

& agreeable manners will be sure to make him a popular and useful

officer among all our citizens who visit the Islands. I cannot

conceive of a more appropriate appointment, & I sincerely hope it

will be given him.

“If I knew the President or the Secretary of State, personally, I

would take the liberty to write them. As I do not, I beg you will use

whatever influence I may have in any quarter in his favour.

“Very truly yours,

“RICHARD H. DANA, JR.

“ALLAN MELVILLE, ESQ.”

Melville was not appointed to a consular post in the Pacific: so his

brother Allan busied himself in looking for an appointment elsewhere,

as the following letter, addressed to Hon. Lemuel Shaw, shows:

“NEW YORK, June 11, 1853.

“MY DEAR SIR:

“Yours of the 8th reached me yesterday advising me of the recent

information you have received through a confidential source from

Washington respecting a consulate for Herman.

“There can be no consulship in Italy, not even Rome, where the fees

would amount to sufficient to make it an object for Herman to accept

a position there.

“I have positive information of the value of the Antwerp consulate

and understand it to be worth from $2,500 to $3,000. Should this be

tendered, Herman ought to accept it.

“I don’t know that I can say anything more on this subject.

“Herman is in town and will see you on your arrival.

“Very truly yours,

“ALLAN MELVILLE.

“I may add that Herman has been specially urged for the Antwerp

position & that Mr. Hawthorne spoke to Mr. Cushing of that place.

“A. M.”

Of the domestic happenings at Arrowhead at this time, very little is

known. One letter of Mrs. Melville’s survives:

“ARROWHEAD, Aug. 10th, 1853.

“MY DEAR FATHER:

“I did not mean that so long a time should elapse, of your absence

from home, without my writing you, especially when I have two letters

of yours to answer. It is not because I have not thought of you much

and often, but really because I can not find the time to seat myself

quietly down to write a letter--that is more than for a hasty scrawl

to mother occasionally--and inasmuch as my occupations are of the

useful and not the frivolous kind I know you will appreciate the

apology and accept it. Three little ones to look after and ‘do for’

takes up no little portion of the day, and my baby is as restless a

little mortal as ever crowed. She is very well and healthy in every

respect, but not very fat, as she sleeps very little comparatively

and is very active. A few weeks since Malcolm made his début as a

scholar at the white school house of Dr. Holmes’. I was afraid he

would lose the little he already knew ‘of letters’ and as I could not

find the time to give him regular instruction, I sent him to school

rather earlier than I should have done otherwise. The neighbours’

children call for him every morning, and he goes off with his pail

of dinner in one hand and his primer in the other, to our no small

amusement. The grand feature of the day to him seems to be the

‘eating his dinner under the trees’--as he always gives that as

his occupation when asked what he does at school--and as his pail

is invariably empty when he returns, he does full justice to the

noon-tide meal. Stannie begins to talk a great deal, and seems to be

uncommonly forward for his age. He has a severe cough, which I think

will prove the whooping-cough as there is a great deal of it about at

present.”

Failing of a consular appointment, Melville was forced to continue

writing. He busied himself with the story of the “revolutionary

beggar.” Melville based his story upon “a little narrative, forlornly

published on sleazy grey paper,” that he had “rescued by the

merest chance from the rag-pickers.” Copies of this narrative are

not excessively rare. The title page reads: “_Life and Remarkable

Adventures of Israel R. Potter_ (a native of Cranston, Rhode Island)

who was a soldier in the American Revolution, and took a distinguished

part in the Battle of Bunker Hill (in which he received three wounds)

after which he was taken Prisoner by the British, conveyed to England,

where for thirty years he obtained a livelihood for himself and family,

by crying ‘_Old Chairs to Mend_’ through the Streets of London.--In

May last, by the assistance of the American Consul, he succeeded

(in the 79th year of his age) in obtaining a passage to his native

country, after an absence of 48 years. Providence: Printed by Henry

Trumbull--1824 (Price 28 cents).” The result was _Israel Potter_,

published in book form by G. P. Putnam in 1855, after having appeared

serially in _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_. _Israel Potter_ is, in most

part, a spirited narrative containing, so Mr. Mather states, “the best

account of a sea fight in American fiction.” It was praised, too, by

Hawthorne for its delineations of Franklin and John Paul Jones, and

doubtless deserves a wider recognition than has ever been given it.

Interestingly enough, the book is dedicated to Bunker Hill Monument.

Between 1853 and 1856, Melville published twelve articles, inclusive

of _Israel Potter_, in _Putnam’s Magazine_ and in _Harper’s Monthly_.

Melville made from a selection from these his _Piazza Tales_ (1856),

published in New York by Dix and Edwards, in London by Sampson Low.

Of these, _The Bell Tower_, _Don Benito Cereno_ and _The Encantadas_

show the last glow of Melville’s literary glamour, the final momentary

brightening of the embers before they sank into blackness and ash.

There exists a letter from _Putnam’s Monthly_, dated May 12, 1854, and

signed by Charles T. Briggs--refusing a still unpublished story of

Melville’s out of fear of “offending the religious sensibilities of

the public and the Congregation of Grace Church.” This letter is less

important because of its exquisite sensitiveness, than because of its

mention of a letter from Lowell; a letter in which Lowell is reported

to have read _The Encantadas_. According to Briggs’ communication,

Lowell was so moved that “the figure of the cross on the ass’ neck

brought tears into his eyes, and he thought it the finest touch of

genius he had seen in prose.” Swinburne speaks of “the generous

pleasure of praising”: this pleasure Lowell indulged frequently, and

in his wholesome and whole-hearted way. Of Hawthorne, Lowell said:

“The rarest creative imagination of the century, the rarest in some

ideal respects since Shakespeare.” _The Confidence Man_ was published

in 1857: but it was a posthumous work. Thereafter, Melville was to try

his hand at poetry, and with results little meriting the total oblivion

into which his poetry has fallen; and in his old age he was again to

turn to prose: but before Melville was half through his mortal life his

signal literary achievement was done. The rest, if not silence, was

whisper.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LONG QUIETUS

“The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. ‘His dinner is

ready. Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?’

“‘Lives without dining,’ said I, and closed the eyes.

“‘Eh! He’s asleep, ain’t he?’

“‘With kings and counsellors,’ murmured I.”

--HERMAN MELVILLE: _Bartleby the Scrivener_.

“The death of Herman Melville,” wrote Arthur Stedman, “came as a

surprise to the public at large, chiefly because it revealed the fact

that such a man had lived so long.” The New York _Times_ missed the

news of Melville’s death (on September 28, 1891) and published a few

days later an editorial beginning:

“There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week,

at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the

generation now in the vigour of life, that only one newspaper contained

an obituary account of him, and this was of but three or four lines.”

In 1885, Robert Buchanan published in the London _Academy_ a pasquinade

containing the following lines:

“... Melville, sea-compelling man,

Before whose wand Leviathan

Rose hoary white upon the Deep,

With awful sounds that stirred its sleep;

Melville, whose magic drew Typee,

Radiant as Venus, from the sea,

Sits all forgotten or ignored,

While haberdashers are adored!

He, ignorant of the draper’s trade,

Indifferent to the art of dress,

Pictured the glorious South Sea maid

Almost in mother nakedness--

Without a hat, or boot, or stocking,

A want of dress to most so shocking,

With just one chemisette to dress her

She _lives_--and still shall live, God bless her,

Long as the sea rolls deep and blue,

While Heaven repeats the thunder of it,

Long as the White Whale ploughs it through,

The shape my sea-magician drew

Shall still endure, or I’m no prophet!”

In a footnote, Buchanan added:

“I sought everywhere for this Triton, who is still living somewhere in

New York. No one seemed to know anything of the one great writer fit to

stand shoulder to shoulder with Whitman on that continent.”

If this man, who had in mid-career been hailed at home and abroad as

one of the glories of our literature, died “forgotten and ignored,” it

was, after all, in accordance with his own desires. Adventurous life

and action was the stuff out of which his reputation had been made.

But in the middle of his life, he turned his back upon the world, and

in his recoil from life absorbed himself in metaphysics. He avoided

all unnecessary associations and absorbed in his own thoughts he lived

in sedulous isolation. He resisted all efforts to draw him out of

retirement--though such efforts were very few indeed. Arthur Stedman

tells us: “It is generally admitted that had Melville been willing to

join freely in the literary movements of New York, his name would have

remained before the public and a larger sale of his works would have

been insured. But more and more, as he grew older, he avoided every

action on his part and on the part of his family that might look in

this direction, even declining to assist in founding the Authors Club

in 1882.” With an aggressive indifference he looked back in _Clarel_ to

“Adventures, such as duly shown

Printed in books, seem passing strange

To clerks which read them by the fire,

Yet be the wonted common-place

Of some who in the Orient range,

Free-lances, spendthrifts of their hire,

And who in end, when they retrace

Their lives, see little to admire

Or wonder at, so dull they be.”

When Titus Munson Coan was a student at Williams College, prompted by

a youthful curiosity to hunt out celebrities, he called upon Melville

at Arrowhead. In an undated letter to his mother he thus recounted

the experience: “I have made my first literary pilgrimage--a call

upon Herman Melville, the renowned author of _Typee_, &c. He lives in

a spacious farm-house about two miles from Pittsfield, a weary walk

through the dust. But it was well repaid. I introduced myself as a

Hawaiian-American and soon found myself in full tide of talk--or rather

of monologue. But he would not repeat the experiences of which I had

been reading with rapture in his books. In vain I sought to hear of

Typee and those Paradise islands, but he preferred to pour forth his

philosophy and his theories of life. The shade of Aristotle arose like

a cold mist between myself and Fayaway. We have quite enough of Greek

philosophy at Williams College, and I confess I was disappointed in

this trend of the talk. But what a talk it was! Melville is transformed

from a Marquesan to a gypsy student, the gypsy element still remaining

strong in him. And this contradiction gives him the air of one who has

suffered from opposition, both literary and social. With his liberal

views he is apparently considered by the good people of Pittsfield as

little better than a cannibal or a ‘beach-comber.’ His attitude seemed

to me something like that of an Ishmael; but perhaps I judged hastily.

I managed to draw him out very freely on everything but the Marquesas

Islands, and when I left him he was in full tide of discourse on all

things sacred and profane. But he seems to put away the objective side

of life and to shut himself up in this cold North as a cloistered

thinker.”

An article appearing in the New York _Times_, under the initials

O. G. H., a week after Melville’s death, said of him:

“He had shot his arrow and made his mark, and was satisfied. With

considerable knowledge of the world, he had preferred to see it from a

distance.... I asked the loan of some of his books which in early life

had given me pleasure and was surprised when he said that he didn’t own

a single copy of them.... I had before noticed that though eloquent in

discussing general literature he was dumb when the subject of his own

writings was broached.”

In her sketch of her husband’s life, Mrs. Melville says: “In February,

1855, he had his first attack of severe rheumatism--and in the

following June an attack of sciatica. Our neighbour in Pittsfield, Dr.

O. W. Holmes, attended and prescribed for him. A severe attack of what

he called crick in the back laid him up at his mother’s in Gansevoort

in March, 1858--and he never regained his former vigour and strength.”

In 1863, so runs the account of J. E. A. Smith, while Melville was in

process of moving from Arrowhead, “he had occasion for some household

articles he left behind, and, with a friend, started in a rude wagon to

procure them. He was driving at a moderate pace over a perfectly smooth

and level road, when a sudden start of the horse threw both occupants

from the wagon; probably on account of an imperfectly secured seat.

Mr. Melville fell with his back in a hollow of the frozen road, and

was very severely injured. Being conveyed to his home by Col. George

S. Willis, near whose farm on Williams Street the accident happened,

he suffered painfully for many weeks. This prolonged agony and the

confinement and interruption of work which it entailed, affected him

strangely. He had been before on mountain excursions a driver daring

almost to the point of recklessness.... After this accident he not

only abandoned the rides of which he had been so fond, but for a time

shrank from entering a carriage. It was long before the shock which

his system had received was overcome; and it is doubtful whether

it ever was completely.” Ill health certainly contributed more to

Melville’s retirement from letters than any of his critics--Mr. Mather

excepted--have ever even remotely suggested.

[Illustration: HERMAN MELVILLE IN 1868]

During the last half of his life, Melville twice journeyed far from

home. In her journal Mrs. Melville says: “In October, 1856, his health

being impaired by too close application, he again sailed for London.

He went up the Mediterranean to Constantinople and the Holy Land. For

much of his observation and reflection in that interesting quarter

see his poem of _Clarel_. Sailed for home on the steamer _City of

Manchester_ May 6, 1857. In May, 1860, he made a voyage to San

Francisco, sailing from Boston on the 30th of May with his brother

Thomas Melville who commanded the _Meteor_, a fast sailing clipper

in the China trade--and returning in November, he being the only

passenger. He reached San Francisco Oct. 12th--returned in the _Carter_

Oct. 20 to Panama--crossed the Isthmus & sailed for New York on the

_North Star_. This voyage to San Francisco has been incorrectly given

in many of the papers of the day.”

Of this trip to the Holy Land there survive, beside _Clarel_ and

Hawthorne’s accounts of the meeting _en route_, a long and closely

written journal that Melville kept during the trip, and twenty-one

shorter poems printed in _Timoleon_ under the caption “Fruit of Travel

Long Ago.” Typical of these shorter poems is

THE APPARITION

(The Parthenon uplifted on its rock first challenging the view on the

approach to Athens)

Abrupt the supernatural Cross,

Vivid in startled air,

Smote the Emperor Constantine

And turned his soul’s allegiance there

With other power appealing down,

Trophy of Adam’s best!

If cynic minds you scarce convert

You try them, shake them, or molest.

Diogenes, that honest heart,

Lived ere your date began:

Thee had he seen, he might have swerved

In mood nor barked so much at man.

The journal was surely never written with a view to publication. It

is a staccato jotting down of impressions, chiefly interesting (as is

Dr. Johnson’s French journal) as another evidence of Melville’s scope

of curiosity and keenness of observation. A typical entry is that for

Saturday, December 13,--Melville’s first day in Constantinople:

“Up early; went out; saw cemeteries where they dumped garbage. Sawing

wood over a tomb. Forest of cemeteries. Intricacies of the streets.

Started alone for Constantinople and after a terrible long walk found

myself back where I started. Just like getting lost in a wood. No plan

to streets. Pocket compass. Perfect labyrinth. Narrow. Close, shut

in. If one could but get _up_ aloft, it would be easy to see one’s

way out. If you could get up into a tree. Soar out of the maze. But

no. No names to the streets no more than to natural alleys among the

groves. No numbers, no anything. Breakfasted at 10 A. M. Took guide

($1.25 per day) and started for tour. Took Cargua for Seraglio. Holy

ground. Crossed some extensive grounds and gardens. Fine buildings of

the Saracenic style. Saw the Mosque of St. Sophia. Went in. Rascally

priests demanding ‘baksheesh.’ Fleeced me out of 1/2 dollar; following

me round, selling the fallen mosaics. Ascended a kind of hose way

leading up, round and round. Came into a gallery fifty feet above the

floor. Superb interior. Precious marbles. Prophyry & Verd antique.

Immense magnitude of the building. Names of the prophets in great

letters. Roman Catholic air to the whole. To the hippodrome, near which

stands the six towered mosque of Sultan Achmed; soaring up with its

snowy white spires into the pure blue sky. Like light-houses. Nothing

finer. In the hippodrome saw the obelisk with Roman inscription on the

base. Also a broken monument of bronze, representing three twisted

serpents erect upon their tails. Heads broken off. Also a square

monument of masoned blocks. Leaning over and frittered away,--like

an old chimney stack. A Greek inscription shows it to be of the time

of Theodoric. Sculpture about the base of the obelisk, representing

Constantine & wife and sons, &c. Then saw the ‘Burnt Column.’ Black and

grimy enough & hooped about with iron. Stands soaring up from among a

bundle of old wooden stakes. A more striking fire mount than that of

London. Then to the cistern of 1001 columns. You see a rounded knoll

covered with close herbage. Then a kind of broken cellar-way you go

down, and find yourself on a wooden, rickety platform, looking down

into a grove of marble pillars, fading away into the darkness. A

palatial sort of Tartarus. Two tiers of pillars, one standing on the

other; lower tier half buried. Here and there a little light percolates

through from breaks in the keys of the arches; where bits of green

struggle down. Used to be a reservoir. Now full of boys twisting silk.

Great hubbub. Flit about like imps. Whirr of the spinning Jenns. In

going down, (as into a ship’s hold) and wandering about, have to beware

the innumerable skeins of silk. Terrible place to be robbed or murdered

in. At whatever place you look, you see lines of pillars, like trees in

an orchard arranged in the quincunx style.--Came out. Overhead looks

like a mere shabby common, or worn out sheep pasture.--To the bazaar.

A wilderness of traffic. Furniture, arms, silks, confectionery, shoes,

saddles,--everything. (Cario) Covered overhead with stone arches,

with wide openings. Immense crowds. Georgians, Armenians, Greeks,

Jews & Turks are the merchants. Magnificent embroidered silk & gilt

sabres & caparisons for horses. You lose yourself & are bewildered and

confounded with the labyrinth, the din, the barbaric confusion of the

whole.--Went to Watch Tower within a kind of arsenal (Immense arsenal)

the tower of vast girth & height in the Saracenic style--a column. From

the top, my God, what a view! Surpassing everything. The Propontis, the

Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, the domes, the minarets, the bridges, the

men-of-war, the cypresses.--Indescribable. Went to the Pigeon Mosque.

In its court, the pigeons covered the pavement as thick as in the West

they fly in hosts. A man feeding them. Some perched upon the roof of

the colonnades & upon the fountain in the middle & on the cypresses.

Took off my shoes and went in. Pigeons inside, flying round in the

dome, in & out the lofty windows. Went to Mosque of Sultan Suleiman.

The third one in point of size and splendour. The Mosque is a sort of

marble mosque of which the minarets (four or six) are the stakes. In

fact when inside it struck me that the idea of this kind of edifice

was borrowed from the tent. Though it would make a noble ball room.

Off shoes and went in. This custom more sensible than taking off hat.

Muddy shoes; but never muddy head. Floor covered with mats & on them

beautiful rugs of great size & square. Fine light coming through the

side slits below the dome. Blind dome. Many Turks at prayer; lowering

head to the floor towards a kind of altar. Charity going on. In a

gallery saw lot of portmanteaux, chests & bags; as in a R. R. baggage

car. Put there for safe-keeping by men who leave home, or afraid of

robbers and taxation. ‘Lay not up your treasures where moth and rust do

corrupt’ &c. Fountains (a row of them) outside along the side of the

mosque for bathing the feet and hands of worshippers before going in.

Natural rock.--Instead of going in in stockings (as I did) the Turks

wear overshoes and doff them outside the mosque. The tent-like form

of the Mosque broken up & dumbfounded with infinite number of arches,

trellises, small domes, colonnades, &c, &c, &c. Went down to the

Golden Horn. Crossed bridge of pontoons. Stood in the middle and not a

cloud in the sky. Deep blue and clear. Delightful elastic atmosphere,

although December. A kind of English June cooled and tempered

sherbet-like with an American October; the serenity & beauty of summer

without the heat.--Came home through the vast suburbs of Galatea,

&c. Great crowds of all nations--money changers coins of all nations

circulate--placards in four or five languages: (Turkish, French, Greek,

Armenian) Lottery advertisements of boats the same. Sultan’s ship in

colours--no atmosphere like this for flags. You feel you are among the

nations. Great curse that of Babel; not being able to talk to a fellow

being, &c.--Have to tend to your pockets. My guide went with his hands

to his.--The horrible grimy tragic air of the Streets. (Ruffians of

Galatea) The rotten & wicked looking houses. So gloomy & grimy seem

as if a suicide hung from every rafter within.--No open spaces--no

squares or parks. You suffocate for room.--You pass close together.

The cafés of the Turks. Dingy holes, faded splendour, moth eaten. On

both sides rude seats and divans where the old musty Turks sit smoking

like conjurers. Saw in certain kiosks (pavilions) the crowns of the

late Sultan. You look through gilt gratings & between heavy curtains

of lace, at the sparkling things. Near the Mosque of Sultan Suleiman

saw the cemetery of his family--big as that of a small village, all his

wives and children and servants. All gilt and carved. The women’s tombs

carved with heads (women no souls). The Sultan Suleiman’s tomb & that

of his three brothers in a kiosk. Gilded like mantel ornaments.”

_Clarel_ was, in 1876, printed at Melville’s expense. More accurately,

its printing was made possible by his uncle, Hon. Peter Gansevoort,

who, as Melville says in the dedication, “in a personal interview

provided for the publication of this poem, known to him by report, as

existing in manuscript.”

Not the least impressive thing about _Clarel_ is its length: it extends

to 571 pages. Mr. Mather states: “Of those who have actually perused

the four books (of verse) and _Clarel_, I am presumably the only

survivor.” Mr. Mather is mistaken: there are two. But since, because of

the excessive length of _Clarel_ and the excessive scarcity of _John

Marr_ and _Timoleon_ (both privately printed in an edition of only

twenty-five copies) it would be over-optimistic to presume that there

will soon be a third, some account must be given of Melville’s poetry.

Stevenson once said: “There are but two writers who have touched the

South Seas with any genius, both Americans: Melville and Charles

Warren Stoddard; and at the christening of the first and greatest,

some influential fairy must have been neglected; ‘He shall be able to

see’; ‘He shall be able to tell’; ‘He shall be able to charm,’ said

the friendly godmothers; ‘But he shall not be able to hear!’ exclaimed

the last.” When Stevenson wrote his passage, the artist in him seems

for the moment to have slept; taking no account of Melville’s frequent

mastery of the magic of words, he berates Melville’s genius for

misspelling Polynesian names as a defect of genius. That Melville had

an ear sensitive to the cadences of prose is shown by the facility with

which he on occasion caught the rhythm both of the Psalms and of Sir

Thomas Browne. Yet the same man who at his best is equalled only by Poe

in the subtle melody of his prose, at times fell into ranting passages

of obvious and intolerable parody of blank verse. The following from

_Mardi_ is an example: “From dawn till eve, the bright, bright days

sped on, chased by the gloomy nights; and, in glory dying, lent their

lustre to the starry skies. So, long the radiant dolphins fly before

the sable sharks; but seized, and torn in flames--die, burning:--their

last splendour left, in sparkling scales that float along the sea.”

In his poetry, as in his prose, is the same incongruous mating of

astonishing facility and flagrant defect. It is the same paradox that

one finds in Browning and in Meredith,--whose poetry Melville’s more

than superficially resembles. Melville shared with these men a greater

interest in ideas than in verbal prettiness, and like the best of them,

when mastered by a refractory idea, he was not over-exquisite in his

regard for prosody and syntax in getting it said. When he had a mind

to, however, he could pound with a lustiness that should endear him to

those who delight in declamation contests: a contemptible distinction,

perhaps--but even that has been denied him. The poem to the Swamp

Angel, for example, the great gun that reduced Charleston, is fine in

its irony and vigour. The poem begins:

There is a coal-black Angel

With a thick Afric lip

And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)

In a swamp where the green frogs dip

But his face is against a City

Which is over a bay by the sea,

And he breathes with a breath that is blastment

And dooms by a far degree.

Though there are memorable lines and stanzas in _Battle-Pieces_, only

one of the poems in the volume has ever been at all noticed: _Sheridan

at Cedar Creek_, beginning:

Shoe the steed with silver

That bore him to the fray,

When he heard the guns at dawning

Miles away;

When he heard them calling, calling--

Mount! nor stay.

The following letter to his brother Tom bears upon Melville’s

_Battle-Pieces_.

“PITTSFIELD, May 25th, 1862.

“MY DEAR BOY: (or, if that appears disrespectful)

“MY DEAR CAPTAIN:

“Yesterday I received from Gansevoort your long and very entertaining

letter to Mamma from Pernambuco. Yes, it was very entertaining.

Particularly the account of that interesting young gentleman whom you

so uncivilly stigmatise for a jackass, simply because he improves

his opportunities in the way of sleeping, eating & other commendable

customs. That’s the sort of fellow, seems to me, to get along with.

For my part I love sleepy fellows, and the more ignorant the better.

Damn your wide-awake and knowing chaps. As for sleepiness, it is one

of the noblest qualities of humanity. There is something sociable

about it, too. Think of those sensible & sociable millions of good

fellows all taking a good long friendly snooze together, under the

sod--no quarrels, no imaginary grievances, no envies, heartburnings,

& thinking how much better that other chap is off--none of this:

but all equally free-&-easy, they sleep away & reel off their nine

knots an hour, in perfect amity. If you see your sleepy ignorant

jackass-friend again, give him my compliments, and say that however

others may think of him, I honour and esteem him.--As for your

treatment of the young man, there I entirely commend you. You

remember what the Bible says:--

“Oh ye who teach the children of the nations,

Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,

I pray ye _strap_ them upon all occasions,

It mends their morals--never mind the pain.”

“In another place the Bible says, you know, something about sparing

the strap & spoiling the child.--Since I have quoted poetry above,

it puts me in mind of my own doggerel. You will be pleased to learn

that I have disposed of a lot of it at a great bargain. In fact, a

trunk-maker took the whole lot off my hands at ten cents the pound.

So, when you buy a new trunk again, just peep at the lining & perhaps

you may be rewarded by some glorious stanza staring you in the

face & claiming admiration. If you were not such a devil of a ways

off, I would send you a trunk, by way of presentation-copy. I can’t

help thinking what a luckless chap you were that voyage you had a

poetaster with you. You remember the romantic moonlight night, when

the conceited donkey repeated to you about three cables’ length of

his verses. But you bore it like a hero. I can’t in fact recall so

much as a single _wince_. To be sure, you went to bed immediately

upon the conclusion of the entertainment; but this much I am sure of,

whatever were your sufferings, you never gave them utterance. Tom, my

boy, I admire you. I say again, you are a hero.--By the way, I hope

in God’s name, that rumour which reached your owners (C. & P.) a few

weeks since--that dreadful rumour is not true. They heard that you

had begun to take to--drink?--Oh no, but worse--to sonnet-writing.

That off Cape Horn instead of being on deck about your business, you

devoted your time to writing a sonnet on your mistress’ eyebrow, &

another upon her thumbnail.--‘I’ll be damned,’ says Curtis (he was

very profane) ‘if I’ll have a sonneteer among my Captains.’--‘Well,

if he has taken to poetising,’ says Peabody--‘God help the ship!’

* * * * *

And now, my boy, if you knew how much laziness I overcame in writing

you this letter, you would think me, what I am

“Always your affectionate brother,

“HERMAN.”

Melville’s family seem all to have been more sceptical of his verse

than they were of his prose. In 1859 Mrs. Melville wrote to her mother

“Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell any one, for you

know how such things get around.” Mrs. Melville was too optimistic:

her husband’s indiscreet practice is still pretty much a secret to the

world at large. And _Clarel_, his longest and most important poem, is

practically impossible to come by.

In 1884, Melville said of _Clarel_ in a letter to Mr. James Billson: “a

metrical affair, a pilgrimage or what not, of several thousand lines,

eminently adapted for unpopularity.” Though this is completely true,

Melville used in _Clarel_ more irony, vividness, and intellect than

the whole congregation of practising poets of the present day (a few

notable names excepted) could muster in aggregate. Yet with all this

wealth of the stuff of poetry, the poem never quite fulfils itself. In

_Clarel_ Melville brings together in the Holy Land a group of pilgrims;

pilgrims nearly all drawn from the life, as a study of his Journal of

1856-7 shows. In this group there are men devout and men sceptical,

some suave in orthodoxy, and some militant in doubt. There are dreamers

and men of action; unprincipled saints, and rakes without vice. In

the bleak and legend-haunted Holy Land Melville places these men, and

dramatises his own reactions to life in this setting. The problem of

faith is the pivot of endless discussion: and upon this pivot is made

to turn all of the problems of destiny that engage a “pondering man.”

These discussions take place against a panorama of desert and monastery

and shrine. In some of the interpolated songs of _Clarel_, Melville

almost achieved the lyric mood.

My shroud is saintly linen,

In lavender ’tis laid;

I have chosen a bed by the marigold

And supplied me a silver spade.

And there are, too, incidental legends and saints’ tales:

Those legends which, be it confessed

Did nearer bring to them the sky--

Did nearer woo it in their hope

Of all that seers and saints avow--

Than Galileo’s telescope

Can bid it unto prosing science now.

_Clarel_ is by all odds the most important record we have of what was

the temper of Melville’s deeper thoughts during his long metaphysical

period. Typical quotations have already been made.

The most recurrent note of the poem is a parched desire for

companionship; a craving for

A brother that he well might own

In tie of friendship.

Could _I_ but meet

Some stranger of a lore replete,

Who, marking how my looks betray

The dumb thoughts clogging here my feet

Would question me, expound and prove,

And make my heart to burn with love.

* * * * *

Doubt’s heavy hand

Is set against us; and his brand

Still warreth for his natural lord

King Common-place.

* * * * *

Art thou the first soul tried by doubt?

Shall prove the last? Go, live it out.

But for thy fonder dream of love

In man towards man--the soul’s caress--

The negatives of flesh should prove

Analogies of non-cordialness

In spirit.

* * * * *

Why then

Remaineth to me what? the pen?

Dead feather of ethereal life!

Nor efficacious much, save when

It makes some fallacy more rife.

My kin--I blame them not at heart--

Would have me act some routine part.

Subserving family, and dreams

Alien to me--illusive schemes.

This world clean fails me: still I yearn.

Me then it surely does concern

Some other world to find. But where?

In creed? I do not find it there.

* * * * *

This side the dark and hollow bound

Lies there no unexplored rich ground?

_Some other world_: well, there’s the New--

Ah, joyless and ironic too!

* * * * *

Ay, Democracy

Lops, lops; but where’s her planted bed?

The future, what is that to her

Who vaunts she’s no inheritor?

’Tis in her mouth, not in her heart.

The past she spurns, though ’tis the past

From which she gets her saving part--

That Good which lets her evil last.

Behold her whom the panders crown,

Harlot on horseback, riding down

The very Ephesians who acclaim

This great Diana of ill fame!

Arch strumpet of an impious age,

Upstart from ranker villainage:

Asia shall stop her at the least

That old inertness of the East.

* * * * *

But in the New World things make haste:

Not only men, the _state_ lives fast--

Fast breed the pregnant eggs and shells,

The slumberous combustibles

Sure to explode. ’Twill come, ’twill come!

One demagogue can trouble much:

How of a hundred thousand such?

* * * * *

Indeed, those germs one now may view:

Myriads playing pygmy parts--

Debased into equality:

Dead level of rank commonplace:

An Anglo-Saxon China, see,

May on your vast plains shame the race

In the Dark Ages of Democracy.

* * * * *

Your arts advance in faith’s decay:

You are but drilling the new Hun

Whose growl even now can some dismay;

Vindictive is his heart of hearts.

He schools him in your mines and marts

A skilled destroyer.

* * * * *

Old ballads sing

Fair Christian children crucified

By impious Jews: you’ve heard the thing:

Yes, fable; but there’s truth hard by:

How many Hughs of Lincoln, say,

Does Mammon, in his mills, to-day,

Crook, if he does not crucify?

The impieties of “Progress” speak;

What say _these_, in effect to God?

“How profits it? And who art Thou

That we should serve Thee? Of Thy ways

No knowledge we desire; _new_ ways

We have found out, and better. Go--

Depart from us!”--And if He do?

Is aught betwixt us and the hells?