Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Smelling sweet in our dust by Christoph Irmscher
Smelling sweet in our dust by Christoph Irmscher: Christoph Irmscher reviews Herman Melville’s Complete Poems (Library of America), edited by Hershel Parker.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Clarel's name
No one has been able to conjecture a source or meaning for this unusual name.The eponymous quester of Herman Melville's great 1876 poem Clarel is an American divinity student in the Holy Land. His traveling companions there include fellow-Americans named Rolfe and Vine, and later on, Ungar. Clarel belongs to the New World by birth, but his name, like that of the Anglican priest Derwent, aligns him with the Old. (For more about Derwent and his name, "inescapably associated with Wordsworth," see Karen Lentz Madison and R. D. Madison, "Derwent: Revisiting Melville’s Clarel" in Leviathan, vol. 19 no. 3, 2017, pages 50-58. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lvn.2017.0034.)
-- William
The name Derwent is decidedly English. Clarel's name is suggestively Anglo-Norman. His Norman heritage evokes medieval tales of romance and knightly adventure that resonate with the role of pilgrim-wanderer. In view of Clarel's theological "vocation fled" (Clarel 1. 9) and the major theme in Clarel of faith in ruins, it also seems ironically fitting that the young hero's English namesakes were medieval clerics whose family hall in Yorkshire had been reduced by the early nineteenth century to "a heap of stones."
John Clarel founded an Augustinian friary in the time of Edward I, around 1256 according to David Hey in A History of the South Yorkshire Countryside (Pen & Sword Books, 2015) page 27. Thomas Clarel, as related in R. V. Taylor's Biographia Leodiensis (London, 1865), was "Vicar of Leeds from 1430-1469" and "descended from the ancient and knightly family of the Clarels, of Clarel Hall, near Tickhill."
"Thomas Clarell remained Vicar of Leeds forty years." -- D. H. Atkinson, Old Leeds: its Byegones and Celebrities (Leeds, 1868).
"Clarell-Hall, the seat of that ancient and respectable family, the Clarells, is now only to be found in a heap of stones, at no great distance from the Church." -- Thomas Langdale, Topographical History of Yorkshire (Northallerton, 1822). <https://books.google.com/books?id=HLAKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA431&d#v=onepage&q&f=false>
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| The Northern Star or Yorkshire Magazine for November 1817, page 324 |
As reported on the Tickhill and District Local History Society website, "the Northern Star published a further paragraph on Clarel Hall" in December 1817:CLARELL HALL.
Not far from the church resided that ancient, respectable, and powerful family of the Clarrels, who were the founders of the House of Austin Friers, in the vale below. Of this mansion nothing remains of its former grandure; a heap of stones only mark the spot, and as all terrestrial things perish and decay, I have given a sketch of what has survived the destroying hand of time. The premises now belong to E. Laughton, Esq. of Tickhill, a descendant of the Eastfields. -- The Northern star or Yorkshire Magazine for November 1817, page 324.
The ancient and knightly family of Clarel possessed this mansion for several generations, a younger son of which was Thomas Clarel, presbyter, who held the living of Leeds from 1430 to 1469. The Clarels were also of Aldwark, and resided there. Thomas Clarel, Esq. had an only daughter and heiress of his estates, who married Sir Richard Fitzwilliam, Knt., of Wadworth, in the 15th century; their son, Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam of Aldwark, married Lady Lucy Neville, co-heir of the Marquis of Montague. [The tomb-chest with effigies of Sir Thomas and Lady Lucy was moved to St Mary's Church after the dissolution of the Friary.] A daughter of Sir Richard Fitzwilliam by that marriage, married a Gascoigne of Gawthorpe, whose heir had an only daughter Margaret, married to Thomas Wentworth of Wentworth, Esq. who in right of this marriage was seised inter alia of lands in Tickhill. His grandson was the great Earl of Strafford. As the Aldwark estate had passed to the Foljambes, most probably these lands were the Clarel Hall estate, perhaps alienated with others by that unfortunate nobleman; became afterwards the property of the Farmerys and Laughtons of Eastfield, and lately have been sold to Mr Withers of Newark.
<http://www.tickhillhistorysociety.org.uk/local_snippets_clarel_hall.asp>
| Northern Star Or Yorkshire Magazine for December 1817, page 487 |
The environs of Tickhill are pleasant, and in most parts fertile. The vale, which extends north and south from the town, and the lower parts of the slopes on each side, produce abundant crops of corn. About a quarter of a mile west of the town, shaded by a grove of walnut trees, are the remains of Clarel Hall, anciently occupied by the family of Clarel, who held part of the manor under the lords of the fee. In a retired valley, about 200 yards distant from the remains of this house, stood a priory of Augustine Friars, founded by the ancestors of the Clarel family, who, as well as their descendants the Fitzwilliams, used the priory chapel as a place of sepulture ; but all monuments of them are gone, except a few shields of arms in the desecrated walls, and the splendid altar tomb now in the parish church. This house was surrendered in 1537, and there were at that time a prior and eight brethren. About the house were ninety fothers of lead, six bells, and sixteen ounces of plate. Part of the ruins are worked up in the outbuildings of the adjacent house; but the stable door, in the wall of what was the chapel, is very perfect, with a pointed arch, and double row of quatrefoils.
The environs of Tickhill are beautiful and interesting, and the town is well worth a visit from the passing tourist.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=LRgRAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false>Today that "splendid" Fitzwilliam Tomb is still at St. Mary's Church Tickhill, recently restored:
"St. Mary’s church has housed the Fitzwilliam Tomb for more than 450 years. According to tradition, the tomb came into St. Mary’s from Tickhill Friary in 1538, during the Dissolution. The figures on the tomb chest are Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam and his wife Lady Lucy Neville. It is possibly the earliest Italianate alabaster tomb in the country, and would originally ha[ve] been highly painted.
According to the inscription on the tomb, it commemorates Sir Richard Fitzwilliam, his wife Lady Elizabeth Clarell, their son, Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, and his wife, Lady Lucy Neville. Lucy was the daughter of the Marquis of Montacute and cousin to Edward IV, Richard III and his Queen, Anne Neville. She was also a niece of Warwick the Kingmaker." -- https://www.stmaryschurchtickhill.com/history-the-fitzwilliam-tomb/John Tomlinson, Stories and Sketches Relating to Yorkshire (London, 1868), page 11:
The tower is further adorned with several human figures, principally female, in niches, but whom they are intended to represent I never could discover, the interior of the building contains many curiosities in the shape of altar-tombs, and monuments, several of which date from the commencement of the fifteenth century, while one, at least, is said to have been removed from some more ancient religious edifice. The principal of these are an altar-tomb and inscription to William Eastfield, steward to Queen Philippa, and a magnificent alabaster tomb, richly sculptured and painted. Upon this latter are re- cumbent figures of a knight and his lady, while around the upper edge of the tomb runs a crowded inscription, now almost illegible, but which, many years ago was copied, and reads thus : —
"Pray for the soul of Sir Richd. Fitzwilliam, Knt., and Elizh. his wife, daughter and heiress to Thomas Clarel, the which Sir Richard departed the 22nd day of Sept., a.d. 1478, and dame Elizh., the 12th day of May, a.d. 1496: and also Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, and the Ladv Lucy Nevell, daughter and one of the heirs to the Lord John Nevell, Marquis Montague, his wife ; the which Sir Thomas deceased "But there was an earlier church at Tickhill — a Saxon or early Norman church. We have evidence that it was called All-Hallows, and situate a little distance from the present town ; but there our knowledge ends : not a relic of the building has occupied this site for many centuries.
We can gather only a few scanty materials concerning the religious houses of Tickhill. Leland mentions, "A house of freres a lytyl by west without Tikhil, where lay buried divers of the Fitzwilliams, as the grandfather and father to my Lord Privy Seal, the which be now translated to the Paroch Church of Tikhil. So ys Pure-foy alias Clearfoy. There were also buried divers of Clarells in Tikhil Priory. " The monuments translated to the Parish Church might include that tomb, the inscription of which we have just read, it being probably removed here a short time before the dissolution of religious houses. The Clarells are said to have founded this Priory towards the close of Henry the Third's reign, and it is sometimes designated Clarell Priory.
Accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library:Without having to know any Yorkshire history, Melville might have borrowed the family name of Alexis de Tocqueville, aka Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville, as William H. Shurr conjectured in The Mystery of Iniquity: Melville as Poet, 1857-1891 (University Press of Kentucky, 1972) page 266. Translator Henry Reeve puts Tocqueville's Clarels in the company of "gallant Norman adventurers who overran Britain" with William the Conqueror:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t8kd33r33?urlappend=%3Bseq=18
The family of Clerel, or, as it was anciently spelt, Clarel, has been established for many centuries in the peninsula of the Cotentin, on the Norman coast, and the village and lands of Tocqueville give them their territorial designation. The Clerels figure in the roll of Battle Abbey, among the companions of the Conqueror; for an extraordinary number of the gallant Norman adventurers who overran Britain, and filled the world with their exploits, drew their first breath in some manor-house of this district. --Introductory Notice, Democracy in America Vol. 1 (London, 1862), trans. Henry Reeve.Herman Melville had some interest in Reeve's authority, the roll of Battle Abbey, where the name of his own illustrious ancestor Guillaume Maleville or Malleville or Maleuile also appears in the list of William's Norman knights. In a letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated February 2, 1850, Herman Melville specifically mentions "Battle Abbey Directories" with other examples of "old fashioned London imprints" that he found "delicious, & full flavoured with suggestiveness."
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.84865/page/n141In the magazine story of Edith Clarel, serialized in The Money Bag (London, 1858) the heroine's mercenary suitor is happy to discover the name Clarel in The Roll of Battle Abbey.
A later annotated edition of The Battle Abbey Roll (London, 1889) has more on the Clarel or Clarell family.
Clarell. We find the Clarels seated in South Yorkshire during the thirteenth century. John Clarel founded Tickhill Priory in the time of Edward I.; Sir William Clarel, at about the same date, acquired Aldwark through his wife Agnes, daughter and heir of Sir William Walleis. "This William was contemporary with John Clarel the Warden, and the posterity of William entering into the patronage of the house of Augustine friars which John founded near the town of Tickhill, there can be no doubt that there was a very near alliance between them. The patronage of their little foundation was a beautiful flower in the state and condition of the Clarels. The chapel of that house was their cemetery. Besides Aldwark, they possessed other land, and especially the manor of Peniston.
"The arms which the Clarels used betray their clientelage to the Lords of Ecclesal. They were six silver martlets on a red field, arranged in perpendicular parallel rows, and adopted by the Ecclesals from their superior lords the Furnivalls, who bore their martlets on a bend; and had, in their turn, derived them from the Luterels, of whom they held certain manors, and who bore the martlets and bend in gold on an azure field."—Hunter's South Yorkshire. Sir William Clarel, who married the Lady of Aldwark, was Lord of Peniston, and the father of Thomas, who became the husband of another heiress, Isabel, daughter of Sir John Philibert. He held the manor of Adwick of the honour of Tickhill," and paid every two years towards keeping the Castle 7s 4d., and every third year 8s. and 10s. ad custodiam osterer (to keep a hawk). It remained in the family for two centuries and a half; the heir of Clarel married Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, whose son and heir, Thomas, was slain at Flodden in 1513."—Ibid. The last heir-male, Thomas, was the son of another Thomas who had been drowned in the Don in 1442. He had three daughters; Elizabeth Fitzwilliam; Alice, Prioress of Hampole, and Maud, married to the son and heir of Robert Ughtred; but all the lands of the Clarels in Yorkshire devolved on the eldest, Elizabeth, whose husband was in her right Lord of Aldwark. Her missal, containing twelve entries relating to births and deaths in the Clarel family, is preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. There was, however another Thomas Clarel, who was evidently one of this family. "He was living in the parish of St. Giles', Cripplesgate, in 1493, when he made his will, in which he described himself of London, citizen and grocer. He bequeathed some paintings to the church of Rotherham, and was also a benefactor to Rawmarsh, and other churches around." —Ibid. Leland mentions one of their houses: "There ys yet a Place by Tikhill caullid Clarelle's Haulle." This was still standing in 1831.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yV8JAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq#v=onepage&q&f=falseAlthough this 1889 volume was published more than a decade after Melville's Clarel, the primary source for most of the information about the Yorkshire Clarels is Joseph Hunter, South Yorkshire (London, 1828-1831).
Below, Clarel Street in Penistone, South Yorkshire via Google Maps:
Penistone Grammar School was founded in 1392 by Thomas Clarel. In 1992 Penistone Church installed a new window to commemorate the school's 600-year anniversary:
"Proudly on display is the Clarel coat of arms with its six footless 'martlet' birds."
-- Penistone Pictorial - Penistone Church
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| Penistone Church - PGS 600th anniversary window with Clarel coat of arms |
"Never Stop Flying."
Sunday, November 10, 2019
De Bow quotes The Swamp Angel and A Meditation from Melville's Battle-Pieces
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| J. D. B. De Bow via Library of Congress |
CHARLESTON — there she stood, piteously rained upon for nearly two years by shot and shell, a charred and crumbling ruin, yet proudly erect and defiant. No suppliant voice was heard. She had braved the lion and was not appalled by his roar. Mother of the revolution, she never disgraced her progeny. As battery after battery fell that had guarded her approaches, new and stronger ones were reared within. Grimly looking over the bay and over the ruined city sat Sumter, a new Gibraltar, guarded by devoted men under Rhett or Elliot, who, like the Spartans, literally fought under the shadow of the missiles of death which shrouded the sun. The world marveled that amid those ruins a foothold could still be had; but such was found, and the fortress which was wrested from the enemy by blows, refused to return until blows became of no avail. The city's doom had been settled in battle-fields far away.
We visited Charleston in those stirring days. An accidental fire had swept the abodes of her grand old historic personages, and the shot and shell of the foe had crushed and battered down her splendid business quarters, her warehouses and her quays. Frowning cannon looked out from behind embrasures in her beautiful East Bay battery; the paving stones of her streets had been removed for breastworks, and in the vast domain which stretched from what is called Calhoun street to the battery, no inhabitant was to be seen; houses were closed and deserted, or rather broken through and wrecked; nothing visible but an occasional soldier or negro, whilst the angry bolts fell thick and fast. What rejoicing throughout all the land of the foe as the unheralded ministers of death crashed in upon the devoted city, whilst yet its people reposed in confident security. The idea was expressed by one of their favorite poets:
“It comes like the thief in the gloaming,
It comes and none may foretell
The place of the coming—the glaring;
They live in a sleepless spell
That wizens, and withers, and whitens;
It ages the young, and the bloom
Of the maiden in ashes of roses—
The swamp angel broods in his gloom.
“Who weeps for the woeful city,
Let him weep for our guilty kind.”
. . . . .
“Vainly she calls upon Michael,
(The white man's seraph was he;)
For Michael has fled from his tower,
To the angel over the sea."
In the darkest hour it was written by one of her sons: “Let the vandal work proceed. The bells of St. Michael shall yet ring out merry peals for independence, and the stately mansions of those who claim the blood of the Rutledges, Middletons, and Pinkneys, shall hang out blazing lights from base to attic in honor of the great event.” . . . “The viper bites against a file. He batters Sumter into solidity and strength. He shells a city, the people of which have cheerfully conceded it as a sacrifice for freedom. He confirms them in their faith. He renders them doubly devoted to the cause.” “Ruin my house,” said a prominent citizen to the General, “but I expect you to defend the lot.” No other message came from any quarter.
-- Memories of the War [by editor J. D. B. De Bow] in DeBow's Review for January 1867, pages 1-12 at page 9.
https://books.google.com/books?id=j8Ycj0m8RagC&pg=PA9&dq#v=onepage&q&f=falseDe Bow's selection from "The Swamp Angel" avoids any direct reference to the blackness of the Parrott cannon that Melville pictures as "a coal-black Angel / With a thick Afric lip." De Bow represents Melville's verse as characteristic of enemy glee, and ignorance as to the depths of Southern resolve. To make "The Swamp Angel" illustrate Yankee rejoicing, however, the Charleston-born editor also had to displace Melville's final stanza and leave out the last two lines:
Who joys at her wild despairing—As originally published in Battle-Pieces, "The Swamp Angel" ended with a Bible-based appeal for transcendence. Jonathan A. Cook explains:
Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind.
In the final quatrain, the poet insists that whoever weeps for "the woeful City"--like those who wept for the fallen Babylon (Rev. 18:9-19)--should weep for humanity in general, while whoever feels joy at the city's despair should learn compassion from "Christ, the Forgiver" (79), whose Lord's Prayer specifically enjoined the need for mutual forgiveness.
-- "Melville and the Lord of Hosts: Holy War and Divine Warrior Rhetoric in Battle-Pieces" in "This Mighty Convulsion": Whitman and Melville Write the Civil War, ed. Christopher Sten and Tyler Hoffman (University of Iowa Press, 2019), pages 135-152 at page 146. <https://books.google.com/books?id=F0i4DwAAQBAJ>In Melville's terms, De Bow would acknowledge the alleged joying but deny the "wild despairing."
A portion of De Bow's article on "Memories of the War" with selected lines from Melville's poem "The Swamp Angel" was reprinted in North Carolina newspapers and perhaps elsewhere.
- Wilmington Daily Journal (Wilmington, NC), January 24, 1867
- The Southerner (Tarboro, NC), January 31, 1867
Thu, Jan 24, 1867 – Page 1 · The Daily Journal (Wilmington, North Carolina) · Newspapers.com
In the same first number of "Memories of the War," before the longer selection from Melville's "A Swamp Angel," De Bow also quoted four lines from A Meditation:
The war had indeed in reality opened, and its fratricidal strife was destined to reign for over four years, converting the land into a very pandemonium.
“What thoughts conflicting then were shared
. . .
And something of a strange remorse,
Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood,
And Christian wars of natural brotherhood.”
-- Debow's Review, January 1867, page 4; Google-digitized volume at the University of Iowa is accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library. <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/iau.31858033648415?urlappend=%3Bseq=14>
The University of Texas copy of this volume (digitized in September 2019) is accessible via Google Books. <https://books.google.com/books?id=j8Ycj0m8RagC&pg=PA4&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false>The quoted lines from "A Meditation" do not appear in the abbreviated newspaper reprintings cited above.
Later episodes in the "Memories of the War" series were posthumously published in Debow's Review after the editor's unexpected death on February 27, 1867.
Biography
- R. G. Barnwell, "The Late J. D. B. De Bow." Debow's Review, July & August, 1867.
https://books.google.com/books?id=AfRJJAzigx4C&pg=PA1&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false
- The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography
https://books.google.com/books?id=4NkbAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA161&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
- Robert F. Durden, J. D. B. De Bow: Convolutions of a Slavery Expansionist. The Journal of Southern History vol. 17, no. 3 (November 1951) via The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e4-4451-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
- Ottis Clark Skipper, J.D.B. De Bow: Magazinist of the Old South (University of Georgia Press, 1958).
- James Adelbert McMillen, The Works of James D. B. De Bow (Hattiesburg, MS, 1940).
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Frederic Swartwout Cozzens on Mardi
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| Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849). PS2384 .M3 1849 v1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
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| Frederic S. Cozzens, detail from Elliott and his Friends (1857) by Junius Brutus Stearns Image Credit: Graphic Arts Collection, Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University |
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| Frederic S. Cozzens via The New York Public Library Digital Collections |
In 1847 and again ten years later, the literary career of F. S. Cozzens closely tracked that of Herman Melville. Both wrote for Yankee Doodle, the New York humor magazine, although Cozzens is not named as a contributor by Luther Stearns Mansfield in Melville's Comic Articles on Zahchary Taylor. In the posthumously published Autobiographic Sketch, Cozzens admitted to writing "a humorous imitation of Spenser" (the illustrated verse tale of Sir Clod his Undoinge, published in Yankee Doodle on March 13, 1847, page 242); and a "Mythological History of the Heavens" (published under the general heading of Celestial Intelligence on March 20, 1847, page 256). In the mid 1850's both Cozzens and Melville wrote for Putnam's magazine. Submissions from both were initially rejected by George William Curtis, who wrote to publisher Joshua Dix on June 18, 1855 that
"Melville & Cozzens have not passed muster." -- quoted in The Melville Log, ed. Jay Leyda (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1951), volume 2, page 502. Houghton Library, Harvard has the original with correspondence of Dix, Edwards & Company that also includes letters from Frederick S. Cozzens in February and March 1856.
Curtis meant Melville's "The Bell-Tower," and maybe a sketch in Cozzens's "Living in the Country" series, neither of which appeared in the July 1855 issue. But Curtis changed his mind about "The Bell-Tower," as Hershel Parker points out in the second volume of Herman Melville: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), page 259. "Living in the Country" resumed with further rural adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sparrowgrass in the August 1855 issue of Putnam's, where The Bell-Tower also shows up on pages 123-130. In the December 1855 number of Putnam's, the third and final installment of Melville's short fiction Benito Cereno follows immediately after another episode of Living in the Country by Cozzens. ("Living in the Country" began in the December 1854 Putnam's; the same issue also featured three chapters of Melville's story Israel Potter, starting with John Paul Jones and his gallant call on the Countess of Selkirk.) By May 1856, both writers had book versions of their Putnam's sketches ready for sale: Melville's The Piazza Tales, published by Dix & Edwards; and Cozzens's The Sparrowgrass Papers, published by Derby & Jackson.CURTIS, George William ALS to: J. A. Dix Providence, R.I. June 18, 1855, 1855. Dix, Edwards & Company letters and agreements, MS Am 800.13, (58). Houghton Library, Harvard College Library. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/hou00666c00059/catalog Accessed October 24, 2019
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| "New Books" for sale by P. Allen & Son in Pittsfield, MA Pittsfield Sun - January 15, 1857 via GenealogyBank |
In The Raven and The Whale (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), Perry Miller correctly identified Cozzens as the author of remarks on Mardi in Graham's. As Miller knew without saying exactly how, Cozzens had received his reading copy from Lewis Gaylord Clark, then editor of The Knickerbocker:
Clark thought it so beneath contempt as not to deserve notice, and gave his copy to Cozzens, who in Graham's, under his pseudonym of "Richard Haywarde," found some particles of gold in a network of affectation. (248-9)Miller did not cite his source for the gift of Mardi to Cozzens. More generally, Miller did acknowledge reliance on The Melville Log, 2 vols. (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), where Jay Leyda had recorded that on April 27, 1849 "Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of The Knickerbocker, presents a copy of Mardi to Frederick S. Cozzens" (Volume 1, page 301).
Hugh Hetherington approved the attribution in Melville's Reviewers, British and American, 1846-1891 (University of North Carolina Press, 1961), page 124:
But the reaction of Frederick S. Cozzens (under the pseudonym Richard Haywarde) in a column in the August Graham's Magazine was mixed and exasperated: "Confound the book! there are such beautiful Aurora-flashes of light in it that you can almost forgive the puerilities — it is a great net-work of affectation, with some genuine gold shining through the interstices . . ." (Cozzens was the Knickerbocker set's authority on wine).
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015004756162?urlappend=%3Bseq=142
http://www.questia.com/read/3574589/melville-s-reviewers-british-and-american-1846-1891.In The Melville Log (vol. 1, page 375) Jay Leyda proposed Cozzens as also the author, possibly, of the unsigned review of White-Jacket in The Knickerbocker for May 1850. Leyda's conjecture is reported in The Recognition of Herman Melville, edited by Hershel Parker (University of Michigan Press, 1967). There Parker notes also that Perry Miller attributed the White-Jacket review to Lewis Gaylord Clark. The Knickerbocker review of White-Jacket is ascribed to Frederick Swartwout Cozzens without Leyda's qualifying question mark by Watson G. Branch in Herman Melville: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1974), page 235.
https://books.google.com/books?id=LsdGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA448&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=falseThe Knickerbocker review of White-Jacket is accepted as Cozzens's and reprinted in Bloom's Classic Critical Views: Herman Melville, ed. Harold Bloom and Tony McGowan (Chelsea House Publications, 2008), pages 62-63. However, no external documentary evidence has yet been adduced for Cozzens's authorship of the White-Jacket review. Perry Miller may have been right, again, in assuming that Clark wrote it.
As Miller and Hetherington each observed, Cozzens's authorship of the bookish commentary on Mardi in Graham's magazine for August 1849 is established by the use of his known pseudonym, "Richard Haywarde." The closing signature, "Richard Haywarde" does not appear in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, where only the first half of the "Lender's Books" article, with matter directly pertaining to Melville and Mardi, is reprinted. Over the same pseudonym, Cozzens wrote articles for The Knickerbocker and other periodicals, some of which were collected in the 1853 volume, Prismatics by Richard Haywarde. The Literary World (April 23, 1853) classed Prismatics as a type of "genial, humorous, and warm-hearted" writing after the manner of Washington Irving. In the first paragraph, the reviewer openly called it "Frederick Cozzens's 'Prismatics' " (page 328).
The choice of pseudonyms honored one of Cozzens's ancestors. As Cozzens informed Lewis Gaylord Clark on June 23, 1855, "Richard Haywarde was my father's maternal great grandfather."
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:6h443r81gClark forwarded the letter to Rufus W. Griswold who adapted the information for a page on Cozzens in the updated Poets and Poetry of America (Philadelphia, 1856).
For anybody who still did not know who "Richard Haywarde" was, The Knickerbocker for May 1860 officially linked Cozzens to his nom de plume. With extreme admiration, the Editor's Table surveys past contributions by Cozzens, aka Richard Haywarde. The first was a poem titled Stanzas: Worship, printed over the humble initial "C." in the December 1847 issue of The Knickerbocker. Cozzens's second contribution to be published in The Knickerbocker was a prose sketch, Thoughts from the Top of Trinity, written under the pseudonym Richard Haywarde and published in the July 1848 issue.
Cozzens is duly identified as Richard Haywarde in William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises, Volume 1 (New York, 1885), page 127.
Part of the Charvat Collection of American Fiction, Cozzens's Mardi is now held by The Ohio State University in the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, catalog number PS2384 .M3 V1 and V2. Both volumes of the 1849 first American edition are listed in the OSU Library Catalog.
https://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b1712450~S7OSU also has the 1849 British edition of Mardi, published in three volumes by Richard Bentley. To date, however, only the first volume of the American edition is Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100587543The Mardi that Cozzens used bears the bookplate of esteemed collector Carroll Atwood Wilson. The set was well described in Atwood's posthumously published work, Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., ed. Jean C. S. Wilson and David A. Randall (Privately printed for Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950).
... 2 Vols. New York, 1849. Of considerable association interest, the end-paper of Vol. I bearing a presentation inscription from Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, to F. S. Cozzens, author of the Sparrowgrass Papers, etc. The end-paper of Vol. II has the same inscription, with initials only, but a railway man named Ruben McGrath has added pencil inscriptions therein, alleging that he was born in 1492 and other like matter. The inscription is dated April 27, 1849, the book having been published April 14.
https://archive.org/details/thirteenauthorco000417mbp/page/n324
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| Inscription in Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849). PS2384 .M3 1849 v1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
Cozzens plainly had this particular copy of Mardi, Volume 1 before him while writing the article, "Lender's Books--No. II" for the August 1849 issue of Graham's. In the persona of "Richard Haywarde" Cozzens acknowledges his review-copy as
"the gift of my warm-hearted friend, L. G. C. of the Knickerbocker"and the OSU Mardi is inscribed in the first volume to "F. S. Cozzens / With kind regards of / His Friend / L. Gaylord Clark." As Wilson noted, the inscription from Clark to Cozzens is dated April 27, 1849.
https://books.google.com/books?id=DdVEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PP3&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=falseAs shown below, all but one of Richard Haywarde's quotations from Mardi are marked in the OSU copy inscribed to F. S. Cozzens. Turning to chapter 50, Yillah in Ardair, Haywarde recasts Melville's first prose sentence as poetry. The hexameter form and romantic content of the resulting verses remind Haywarde of Longfellow's Evangeline, a tale of Acadie (1847). Haywarde's comparison is matched in the marginalia on this page of Cozzens's Mardi. In the left margin, Melville's first sentence in chapter 50 is marked with a vertical pencil line. Next to the penciled line is the added word "Evangeline," apparently in the handwriting of Ferderic S. Cozzens. To compare handwriting, see the autograph letter from Cozzens to Lewis Gaylord Clark in the Griswold Collection, accessible in Massachusetts Collections Online via Digital Commonwealth:
Cozzens, Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout), and Lewis Gaylord Clark. Frederick Swartwout Cozzens, Yonkers, NY., autograph letter signed to [Lewis Gaylord?] Clark, 23 June 1855. 23 Jun 1855. Web. 21 Oct 2019. <https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/6h443r81g>.Herman Melville's copy of Evangeline, the 1848 Ticknor edition, was given to him by Hope Savage Shaw and is now at Harvard, Houghton Library, GEN *AC85 M4977 Zz848ℓ . Melville's Evangeline is Sealts Number 332 in the Online Catalog at Melville's Marginalia Online. Cozzens would pen his own "Evangeliad" in Acadia, or, A Month with the Blue Noses (1859).
The untitled first number of "Lender's Books" sampled poetry by Dante, Milton, Coleridge and Wordsworth among others, and was published in the form of a letter signed "Richard Haywarde" in the May 1849 issue of Graham's American Monthly Magazine, pages 333-4. Transcribed below, the second number of "Lender's Books" appeared in Graham's for August 1849. Images from Herman Melville's Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) Vol. 1 are from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries. For expert assistance with locating and reproducing these images for use on Melvilliana, I am grateful to Rebecca Jewett and Orville Martin at Thompson Library Special Collections.
LENDERS BOOKS. — NO. II.
By my right hand, Graham: by my right hand, which for odd years hath traveled and travailed over much foolscap, (and under much fool's-cap quoth the fiend,) I am more and more convinced of the truth of the words of the preacher, “Vanity of vanities: all is vanity." I have just laid aside “Mardi,” (the gift of my warm-hearted friend, L. G. C. of the Knickerbocker,) it lies atop of old Du Bartas and some withered budlets of forget-me-not, and in like manner I sit with a few fragmentaries of old literature at bottom for my primiter, some tender remembrances for my secondary, and for the alluvial stratum of my pericranicks (as gentle Charles hath it) these fripperies by the Author of Typee. Confound the book! there are such beautiful Aurora-flashes of light in it that you can almost forgive the puerilities—it is a great net-work of affectation, with some genuine gold shining through the interstices.
Let us turn over the leaves a little–hear ye now—
“And what to me thus pining for some one to page me a quotation from Burton on Blue-Devils.” V. I. p. 15. [marked]
What is paging a quotation ?
“Anoint the ropes and they will travel deftly through the subtle windings of the blocks.” p 33. [marked]
Why not say—“apply some oleaginous substance to the ambulatory cords, and prevent the inarticulate dissonance caused by the inharmonious attrition of the flaxen fibres against the ligneous particles?”
But this passage I especially commend:
“Good old Arcturion: Maternal craft, that rocked me so often in thy heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted thee on the broad deep. (‘Maternal craft—maternal old oaken-hearted craft—maternal old oaken-cradle hearted craft' is good!) So far from home, with such a motley crew, so many islands, whose heathen babble echoing through thy Christian hull must have grated harshly on every carline.” p. 38.
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| Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) volume 1, page 38. PS2384 .M3 1849 v.1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
“Many there are who can fall,” says Martinus Scriblerius, “but few can arrive at the felicity of falling gracefully.
How beautifully he embellishes the most commonplace ideas:
“Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part, accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in despair the savage would disdain to recline.” p. 96. [marked]
“At Ravavai I had stepped ashore some few months previous; and now was embarked on a cruise for the whale, whose brain enlightens the world!” p. 1. [not marked]
Jarl steals a keg of tobacco —
“From the Arcturion he had brought along with him a small half keg, at bottom impacted with a solitary layer of sable Negrohead, fossil-marked, like the primary stratum of the geologists.” (Ahem! primary stratum fossil marked !) p. 68. [marked]
He surmiseth that Samoa likes to get swipesy—
“Nor did I doubt but that the Upoluan, like all Polynesians, much loved getting high of head; and in that state would be more intractable than a Black Forest boar.” [page 130, marked]
Sometimes he breaks into hexameter:
“In the verdant glen of Ardair, far in the silent interior of Amma,
Shut in by hoar old cliffs, Yillah the maiden abode.”
This reminds one of Evangeline —
"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the basin of Minos,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pré
Lay in the fruitful valley.”
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| Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) volume 1, page 183. PS2384 .M3 1849 v.1 from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries |
Let us hexametrize another passage, and we will have done with these fopperies:
“ 'Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado
On lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alli-
Gator dies in his mail, and the sword-fish never surrenders.
To expire, mild-eyed, in one's bed, transcends the death [of Epam-
Inondas."p.46. [marked]
I have done with Mardi—one is reminded in reading it (after Typee) that "there is as much skill in making dikes as in raising mounts—there is an art of diving as well as flying,” [Pope, on the Art of Bathos] and who knows but what the author, after attaining a comfortable elevation by his former works, may not have made this plunge on purpose, as men do who climb to the top of a high mast that they may dive the deeper.
. . . . . . . . . .
Now do those crushed, withered budlets of forget-me-not, peeping from under the book covers, remind me of those beautiful hope-flowers that opened their pale blue eyes in the morning of my life, and bloomed and drooped— and passed away—
“How fair was then the flower— the tree :Alas! alas! young life, and young hopes are not perennials; even in the lofty conservatories and crystal hothouses of wealth and station they flush into a sickly existence, and then perish like the meanest flower by the wayside. Did it ever strike you how much we are alike in this particular? Every one looking back upon his past life as the shipwrecked merchant looks upon the broad sea that hath swallowed up irretrievable treasures. Do you believe that if one had the power of investing his new created babes with a course of life, that he would say, “Do as I have done—pass through my joys and my afflictions, and in the experience of my experience you will be happy!” Do you believe that any one—even the wisest, the purest, the best could say this? By my faith, I do not! And the great focal-glass of a common destiny brings down prismatic, many-hued humanity to a point hue, as a convex lens gathers and concentrates prism-bundles of light and heat from the broad disk of the sun. Human suffering is the chord universal that swells from the vibration of numberless strings.
How silver-sweet the fountain's fall !
The soulless had a soul to me !
My life its own life lent to all!
The universe of things seemed swelling
The panting heart to burst its bound,
And wandering fancy found a dwelling
In every shape, thought, deed and sound.
Germed in the mystic buds, reposing,
A whole creation slumbered mute;
Alas! when from the buds unclosing,
How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!’’
“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy;
This vast and universal theatre
Contains more woful pageants than the scene
Whereon we play—”
But, “Mardi” and forget-me-nots have spoiled three good sheets of foolscap, and I fear that I am too much is the sentimental vein; let me therefore conclude with quoting a sweet little piece of philosophy, and lay aside these lender’s books for a period.
“A swallow in the spring
Came to our granary, and 'neath the eaves
Essayed to make a nest, and then did bring
Wet earth, and straw, and leaves.
Day after day she toiled
With patient heart; but ere her work was crowned
Some sad mishap the tiny fabric spoiled,
And dashed it to the ground.
She found the ruin wrought
But, not cast down, forth from the place she flew,
And, with her mate, fresh earth and grasses brought,
And built her nest anew.
But scarcely had she placed
The last soft feather on its ample floor,
When wicked hand, or chance, again laid waste,
And wrought the ruin o’er.
But still her heart she kept,
And toiled again; and last night, hearing calls,
I looked, and lo! three little swallows slept
Within the earth-made walls.
What truth is here, O man!
Hath hope been smitten in its early dawn!
Have clouds o'ercast thy purpose, trust or plan?
Have FAITH and struggle on!" [Richard Salter Storrs Andros]
Here endeth the second fith.
RICHARD HAYWARDE. [Frederic Swartwout Cozzens]
https://books.google.com/books?id=QNYRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq#v=onepage&q&f=falseGraham's American Monthly Magazine had already published a formal review of Mardi in the June 1849 issue. Author unknown.
Mardi, and a Voyage Thither. By Herman Melville. New York : Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo.
Mr. Melville has given us here an acknowledged romance, and those who doubted the veracity of “Typee” and “Omoo,” may now have an opportunity of noticing the difference between Mr. Melville recording what he has observed, and Mr. Melville recording what he has imagined. It appears to us that the two processes in the author’s mind have little in common, and the best evidence of the truthfulness of his former books is the decidedly romantic character of much of the present.
“Mardi” is altogether the most striking work which Mr. Melville has produced, exhibiting a range of learning, a fluency of fancy, and an originality of thought and diction, of which “Typee,” with all its distinctness and luxuriance of description, gave little evidence. At the same time it has defects indicating that the author has not yet reached the limits of his capacity, and that we may hope from him works better even than the present. “Mardi” is of the composite order of mental architecture, and the various rich materials which constitute it are not sufficiently harmonized to produce unity of effect. It has chapters of description, sketches of character, flashes of fanciful exaggeration, and capital audacities of satire, which are inimitable, but confusion, rather than fusion, characterizes the book as a whole. Of the two volumes the first is by far the best, but both contain abundaut evidence of the richness, strength and independence of the author's mind, and are full of those magical touches which indicate original genius.
https://books.google.com/books?id=TKQ2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA385&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Auburn Christian Advocate, notice of White-Jacket
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| Auburn, New York Northern Christian Advocate - April 3, 1850 |
WHITE-JACKET; or, the World in a Man-of-War. By Herman Melville. New York: Harper & Brothers.The Northern Christian Advocate was edited from 1848 to 1856 by William Hosmer (1810-1889), as related in Elliot G. Storke's History of Cayuga County.
This work purports to be a narrative of the author's personal observations and adventures as a private sailor on board of a United States frigate. We know nothing of Mr. Mellville's personal history, and hence cannot say whether he was ever at sea or not. The "note" which prefaces the work, taken by itself, would lead us to say, the story is a fiction. But, however this may be, the writer has made a book that any one may read with profit. It is not always that we find so much good sense mingled with nautical phrases. Mr. Mellville is a fascinating writer. For sale by J. M. Alden.
White Jacket in Fredonia
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| Fredonia Censor - July 30, 1850 via fultonhistory.com |
WEATHERING CAPE HORN.
BY WHITE JACKET.
And now, through drizzling fogs and vapors, and under damp, double-reefed top-sails, our wet-decked frigate drew nearer and nearer to the squally Cape.
Who has not heard of it? Cape Horn, Cape Horn—a horn indeed, that has tossed many a good ship. Was the descent of Orpheus, Ulysses, or Dante into Hell, one whit more hardy or sublime than the first navigator’s weathering of that terrible Cape? ....
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Bartleby in Syracuse
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| via The Century Association Archives Foundation |
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| Syracuse, New York Evening Chronicle - November 21, 1853 |
"Bartleby the Scrivener, is a new story, which opens curiously and excites considerable interest."I'm guessing this late but favorable notice of Putnam's magazine for November 1853 is by editor Robert Raikes Raymond (1817-1888), who went on to become Professor of English at Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute.
The timelier notice of Putnam's for December 1853 (Syracuse Evening Chronicle, November 28, 1853) mentioned "Bartleby, the Scrivener" along with "Wensley" and "Reminiscences of an Ex-Jesuit" as "well-written sketches."
Here are links to Herman Melville's short fiction "Bartleby, The Scrivener" as it originally appeared in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2 (July-December 1853), via Google Books:
- Part I, November 1853 Putnam's
https://books.google.com/books?id=BgE0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA546&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
- Part II, December 1853 Putnam's
https://books.google.com/books?id=BgE0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA609&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
- https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b5218189?urlappend=%3Bseq=558
- https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b5218189?urlappend=%3Bseq=620
"Bartleby" appeared anonymously in Putnam's, and the Syracuse reviewer does not name Melville as the author. Earlier in 1853, the Evening Chronicle had favorably compared the narrative style of The History of an Adopted Child by Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury with the "verisimilitude and simplicity" of Typee. There, however, the reviewer lamented the lack of those qualities in Melville's subsequent books, perhaps with Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852) in mind. From the Syracuse Evening Chronicle, February 22, 1853:
This little volume purports to be written to teach forbearance to those "grown-up aunts and elder sisters," who "are not fond of children." The story is interesting, and the style in which it is told partakes of that verisimilitude and simplicity of statement, which characterize the writings of De Foe, and the first work (and alas, only that) of our own writer Melville.-- "Our unrivalled corps of critics" round the editorial hearth pronounce it a book to be read at a single sitting, and read without skipping.On September 4, 1854, the Syracuse Evening Chronicle reprinted a long passage from Israel Potter, chapter 5 under the heading, "George the Third." Herman Melville had already been identified as the author of "Israel Potter" in the notice of the September 1854 Putnam's, published in the Evening Chronicle on August 23, 1854. The excerpt from Putnam's was introduced as
"A characteristic scene in which this famous monarch was an actor, is given in the interesting story of "Israel Potter, " now in course of publication in Putnam's Magazine."
-- Syracuse Evening Chronicle (Syracuse, New York), September 4, 1854.
Sat, Nov 17, 1888 – 1 · The Standard Union (Brooklyn, New York) · Newspapers.com
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