Sunday, May 28, 2023

Where is Melville?

A Man of the Sandwich Islands, with his Helmet
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Disappointed with Kiana: A Tradition of Hawaii (1857) by James Jackson Jarves, one contemporary reviewer complained that "Romance plainly is not Mr. Jarves' forte" and wondered,

"Where is Melville?"

Surely the author of Typee, Omoo, and Mardi would have made a more entertaining story out of the same Polynesian material. 

A newspaper clipping of the 1857 Kiana review was kept by the Melville family and eventually deposited at Harvard. I'm guessing it's still there:

 Jay Leyda put it in The Melville Log Volume 2 on page [583]:

Cited in the back of Volume 2 as "clipping, HCL-M" = "Papers & library of the Melville family, Harvard College Library."

Leyda got the place (Boston) right, along with the correct month (September) and year (1857) of the newspaper clipping. For those who care about such things, I'm happy to supply the missing name and date of the newspaper in which this interesting query appeared. Transcribed below, from the Boston Daily Traveller of September 14, 1857:

Boston Daily Traveller - September 14, 1857
 
Mr. Jarves' well known books--Parisian and Italian Sights--led us to look with favor upon anything coming from his pen. We are sorry to be disappointed in KIANA, a Tradition of Hawaii, just published by Munroe & Co. Romance plainly is not Mr. Jarves' forte. He had a charming subject, susceptible of the highest style of treatment in this difficult province of fiction. There is a tradition among the people of the Sandwich Islands, that during the reign of Kiana, eighteen generations of kings previous to Kamehameha I., a white priest came among them with an idol and a new god, lived with them long, and dying, left a reputation for goodness that was green in the memories of the Hawaiians three centuries later. The date of this tradition synchronizes with that of the loss of two vessels sent by Cortez upon an exploring expedition to California. Mr. Jarves supposes the possible identity of the white strangers of Hawaii with the missing adventurers of Cortez, and from this fertile source derives the materials for his story. 
 
With such a beginning one might look for a romance equal to Mayo's Kaloolah or Melville's Omoo and Typee. The field is illimitable, the colors of every hue, and the license ample, only the skill of the romancer was wanting. It is a pity so good a piece of canvass should be spoiled. Where is Melville? Will he not leave the mazes of Pierre or the Ambiguities, and the eccentricities of the Confidence Man, and with some such charming tradition as this bring back the days and the delights of beautiful Fayaway, or take us voyaging to another Mardi. -- Boston Daily Traveller, September 14, 1857.
 
Emily Dickinson's friend Samuel Bowles of the Springfield, Mass. Republican had served as editor of the Boston Traveller since April 1857. In Springfield, Bowles was formerly assisted by Melville's "friendly critic" Josiah Gilbert Holland, so identified by Jay Leyda:
  • Leyda, Jay. “Another Friendly Critic for Melville.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2, 1954, pp. 243–49. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/362806. Accessed 28 May 2023.  
After a short tenure as editor of the Traveller, Bowles would reclaim his position as editor of the Springfield Republican.
 
The departure of Samuel Bowles as editor of the Traveller was announced on September 10th in the Boston Evening Transcript. Possibly the Kiana review on September 14, 1857 was one of the last literary pieces that Bowles contributed or supervised as editor of the Boston Traveller

Where is Melville?

In the Boston Traveller Bowles or somebody wondered, "Where is Melville?" We might be able to answer the question, now that we know the date on which it appeared in print. Where WAS Herman Melville on September 14, 1857? Back home in Pittsfield, Mass., brainstorming lecture topics, as he revealed the next day in a letter to George W. Curtis:

-- I have been trying to scratch my brains for a Lecture. What is a good, earnest subject? "Daily progress of man towards a state of intellectual & moral perfection, as evidenced in history of 5th Avenue & 5 Points."
Even better, brainstorming lecture topics and satirizing utopian schemes of famous communists after reading Robert Owen:
By the wondrous and, hitherto, mysterious organic construction of man and woman, the adults of the first generation that shall acquire a practical knowledge of their own powers to re-form the matured character of each individual, will be enabled, almost to re-create the character of succeeding generations; to re-create it by training each individual from birth, by a new and very superior arrangement of external circumstances, to have a sound physical constitution, to have superior dispositions, habits and manners, to have much valuable knowledge, and to make a daily progress towards physical, intellectual and moral perfection.

-- Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World (London, 1836) page 103.

Robert Owen, Esq. via NYPL Digital Collections
 
Melville's words and phrasing, specifically the stipulation of "daily progress" in the march "towards" a condition of "intellectual and moral perfection" are Robert Owen's in The Book of the New Moral World (London, 1836). "Subjects: Communism" as catalogued by HathiTrust Digital Library
 
As it turned out, the real lecture Melville composed on Statues in Rome was delivered in Boston on December 2, 1857 and reported the next evening in the Boston Evening Traveller. Traces of Melville's epistolary parody of Owen linger in his reference to the utopian "scheme of Fourier" that had yet to dissolve the need for a whole code of laws against criminal conduct. 

 Related posts:

Friday, May 26, 2023

New York Dispatch, review of ISRAEL POTTER

This item is not collected in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; and 2009 in paperback). Contemporary Reviews gives two notices from the New York Dispatch, of The Piazza Tales on pages 477-8 and The Confidence-Man on pages 487-8.

New York Dispatch - April 22, 1855
via Genealogy Bank

 New Publications.

"ISRAEL POTTER." -- His fifty years of Exile,
by Herman Melville, Author of "Omoo" and "Typee," &c.
New York: Putnam & Co., 10 Park Place.

This last production from the pen of the author of "Typee," has been published in serial form in "Putnam's Magazine," where its monthly appearance has been looked for anxiously by the readers of that excellent periodical. It is the fanciful autobiography of a revolutionary soldier who spent his life in the unrequited service of his country. The celebrated naval hero, Captain Paul Jones, figures almost as prominently in the novel as does the hero himself--also Benjamin Franklin and others of the men of the Revolution. The tale is well told, the dialogue lively, and the incidents well strung together. In some respects this is the best of Herman Melville's works. It is more artistically finished than his former romances, and does not deal quite so luxuriantly in the marvellous, although the adventures of the Exile are wonderful enough to satisfy the most eager lovers of excitement. But we miss in this work the charming freshness which pervades every chapter of Mr. Melville's tales of the Pacific Ocean. He deals here in stern reality more than poetic beauty. As a tale of the Revolution, however, "Israel Potter" is second only to Cooper's Revolutionary novels, and it far surpasses those which have since flooded the country. Herman Melville knows his ground, and hence a thorough unity pervades the work. All who have read "Fifty years of Exile," as it passed through the pages of Putnam, will be desirous to procure the book complete; and those who have not heretofore read it have a rich treat in store. The book is very neatly got up. 

-- New York Dispatch, April 22, 1855.

 

Related posts:

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Augusta Melville, letter to Allan Melville, May 16th 1851

Here below is my transcription of Augusta Melville's letter to her brother Allan Melville in New York City, written on May 16, 1851 at the Van Rensselaer Manor House in Albany, New York. As she informs Allan, Augusta had been there for at least two weeks ("a long fortnight"), visiting and socializing with Albany relatives--2nd cousin Catherine "Kate" Van Rensselaer, for one, a younger sister of Augusta's close friend Cornelia "Nilly" Van Rensselaer Thayer.

Augusta's own home at the time was her brother Herman Melville's Arrowhead farm in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. While she was away in the month of May 1851, Herman was busy doing or supervising repairs and improvements to the farmhouse. 

"The whole place will have been so much improved by the time of my return, that I expect hardly to recognize it."

Before she left to rejuvenate in Albany, Augusta had been working hard as Herman's copyist, tasked with turning her brother's scribblings into a legible manuscript for the printer. To Allan, in passing, Augusta made what has to be the earliest comment on record by any reader of Moby-Dick, five months in advance of its publication in England as The Whale:

"So you had a flying visit from Herman? When does he make the longer one? That book of his, will create a great interest, I think. It is very fine. By the way, have you seen Willis' Hurry-Graphs?"

Believing Herman's new book to be nearly finished and ready for the press, Augusta predicted it would "create a great interest." After praising the Whale in manuscript as "very fine," Augusta went on to commend Hurry-Graphs; Or, Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities  and Society by Nathaniel Parker Willis (where "Herman Melville, with his cigar and his Spanish eyes" is mentioned at the start of the chapter on Lieut. Wise, Author of Los Gringos); and in a postscript, Jane Bouverie by Catherine Sinclair. 

Augusta Melville's letter to Allan Melville on May 16, 1851 is now at Arrowhead, donated by Anna Waller Morewood (1905-1994). Hershel Parker quoted it for the first time in "New Melville Documents and Sub-Intentioned Death," Chapter 17 in Suicidology: Essays in Honor of Edwin Shneidman (Jason Aronson Inc., 1993) pages 289-298 at 291. Generous excerpts are given in Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) on pages 840 and 867. However, a complete transcription has not been published before now. 

Dave Laczak, senior technician with the Local History Department of the Berkshire Athenaeum, helpfully directed me to the present location of Augusta's letter. At the Berkshire County Historical Society at Herman Melville's Arrowhead, assistance with obtaining scanned images was kindly provided by Lesley Herzberg, Executive Director; and Erin Hunt, Curator. I am sincerely grateful for their guidance. Mistakes are all mine.

Van Rensselaer Manor-House
via NYPL Digital Collections

Manor House
May 16th 1851

My dearest brother,

The letter you promised, has not yet made its appearance — & here I have been a long fortnight. But it is not too late yet, do not imagine that I have given up now all thoughts of receiving it, by no manner of means. I shall continue to expect it by each morning's mail, just as I have been doing ever since I came. I have only heard from home once, but I hope to have a letter tomorrow. They are all so busy there, that I suppose they dont feel as if they could spare the time to write often. The whole place will have been so much improved by the time of my return, that I expect hardly to recognize it. No doubt you have had letters since the date of mine & know just how far they have progressed. How I long to have everything in beautiful order, & you & Sophia & the children there enjoying the country air. Give my very warmest love to Sophia, & try to impress upon her mind the fact, that the receipt of a few lines from her, would afford me the highest satisfaction. I hope to hear that she feels stronger, & is no longer troubled with that wearisome pain in the back. Those arms, I trust, measure a little more in circumference, & those poor wrists are not quite so thin. I can imagine what a delicately slender appearance they present draped in the fashionable undersleeve. How much I should like to see that little Florence, & my darling little Maria. They will have grown almost out of my remembrance. Kisses by the dozen for them both; & a speedy transportation of them to Arrowhead.

[page 2:]
And now I must try to gather all the Albany news for you, & tell you something of my visit thus far. The first week I was here, the weather was exceedingly unpleasant. Nothing but a succession of violent showers, so we were kept almost prisoners, I believe I was only out of the house twice. For the past six or seven days, however, it has been very delightful, just cool enough to be pleasant with the exception of one sultry day, when the thermometer stood at 80. We have been out driving a good deal, & had a good deal of company to dinner. I have only passed one day out, and that was at Aunt Susan's, yesterday. They are all very polite there — Uncle, excessively so. What will you say to his calling to see me with Aunt Susan last week, & then to his inviting me to drive with him to Troy to call upon General & Mrs Wool, to whom, it would give him much pleasure to introduce me! —he said. 
 
General John Ellis Wool
Photo portrait by Matthew Brady via Library of Congress

 
Then too, they have really pressed me to make them a visit, when my visit here is over. This however I have declined doing, as I shall then be anxious to return home. Last evening, he again showered upon me his civilities, & ended by taking me to a grand Vocal & Instrumental Concert, which was given at Van Vechten Hall. Aunt Susan did not accompany us, as she is in mourning for Mr. Westerlo. By the way Mrs Westerlo & her daughters have almost determined upon removing to New York. Their annuity of $1500 a year died with Mr Westerlo, & the Van Rensselaer heirs have given them the house they occupy, which as it is upon such a valuable lot, they can dispose of to advantage. Some say it is will bring $16000; some $20,000. Did you know that Uncle had sold Grandmamma's house to Mr Delavan? Aunt Susan told me of it this morning, & said that he had received $13000 for it. Speaking of property makes me think of what an advantageous sale, Mr Van Rensselaer has lately made. They are to introduce the Tivoli water into the city, for which privilege, & the necessary 

[page 3:]
land for the Reservoirs, the city have paid him 150 000 dollars. That has enabled him to pay up those heavy debts, & remove many of his anxieties arising from the anti-rent troubles. Then too, he has been engaged for some time in filling up the his low lands bordering on the river & converting them into lumber yards & docks — which rent to such advantage, that this past year, they brought him in $30,000. All these little particulars, I have treasured up in my memory, thinking they might interest you. Such things generally pass immediately out of my mind. They are making preparations to alter the patroon's bridge, so as to place it more on a direct line with the Troy road.— 
 
A few days since, Kate Van Rensselaer & I took a long drive up on the new Albany-plank-road, went as far as Newtonville. We were with Mr and Mrs Sherman, in their beautiful open English Carriage. It was very pleasant. By the way, do you know that Mr Sherman has accepted the cashiership of a new private Bank about to be offered in New York, & is to lease his beautiful place this fall? To think of that, now, just when he has everything in such beautiful order. We were up there a few days ago to see a very magnificent Magnolia which was in bloom — over two hundred and fifty flowers upon it at one time, & as I walked round the grounds, I could not help thinking what a pity it was. Mr Duncan, of Providence, is to give the capital of this bank, $2000,000, & Mr Sherman puts in $100,000. 
 
Albany Evening Journal - May 7, 1851
via Genealogy Bank
We have been to see those great curiosities, the Aztec children. At first sight they impressed me very disagreeably. But, after a closer observation I found that there was nothing really repulsive about them. They are well called Lilliputians. They are said to have been brought from Central America, & with truth, I believe, for in profile they strikingly remind you of the illustrations in "Stevens Central America." They present the same facial angle, & no forehead. Mrs Trotter was in New York, last week for a couple of days - she went down to see Mrs Matthew Trotter who had just lost a child. She saw Aunt Mary in Brooklyn, & seems to be much affected by the great alteration in her appearance. She tells me that she 

[page 4:]
has almost entirely lost the use of her right hand (I never knew that,) & is very much depressed. You must go there very soon then & let us know how she is. Uncle Peter, did not even know that she had been ill, until the day I passed there. Henry & Kitty have both grown very much — Henry wants only an inch or two of Uncle's heighth. By the way, they have lost one of their neighbors—Judge Bronson who has removed to New York. Mr Thayer has just been passing a couple of days with us, he brought me an invitation to return with him to Boston, & make Cornelia a visit — but I shall defer that to some other time. We are expecting Justine home from Baltimore this afternoon. Her father went for her on Monday. She has been suffering from a most alarming cough, & the physicians recommended her taking a little trip to the South — so she availed herself of that opportunity to visit Margaret in her new home. Bayard returns from Scotland some time next month. He has finished at the University, & is now to go in business. They speak of putting him with Mr Thayer.
 
They are all well at the Van Vechtens. Mr Van Vechten's health is so much improved that he is able to take a drive every day, & attends church. The use of his hand however, is still denied him. There is some talk of Cuyler's going to Europe. He is more of an exquisite than ever. I met him at the Concert, the other evening. Judge Hurlbut, is passing a fortnight at his place in the country. Kate misses him very much. He has given up all business & is now a gentleman of leisure. Mr Van Vechten's attack was viewed, I believe, as a warning. Cousin Hetty Ten Eycke has given up her house, & removed, with her furniture to Whitehall, where she is to live. Leonard is there — but the other boys are scattered. Anthony boards at the Mansion House, & practices law. But everyone says he is worth nothing. Jacob is in California, Clinton in Mr Corning's store, & Cuyler at Paige's Furnace. 
 
Picture Credit: Courtesy of the Berkshire County Historical Society, Pittsfield, MA. www.berkshirehistory.org
 
Detail, page 4 of 4. Augusta Melville, letter to Allan Melville, 16 May 1851.
Courtesy of the Berkshire County Historical Society, Pittsfield, MA

So you had a flying visit from Herman? When does he make the longer one? That book of his, will create a great interest, I think. It is very fine. By the way, have you seen Willis' Hurry-Graphs? Mr Sherman, says there is a capital portraiture of Wise in it? He has been visiting him. Next month, he expects a visit from another author, Mr Mitchell of the "Reveries of a Bachelor." Ask Sophia to read them, they are so interesting. Did you see by the papers that Mrs Harmanus Bleecker is married to Mr Coster at Amsterdam. She is expected back in one of the early steamers. How is Mrs Charles. Tell her not to despair of receiving an answer to her letter. I will write before I leave Albany. I wrote Mary Blatchford a few days since. Now show a grateful heart & answer this voluminous letter by as voluminous a one. lovingly your sister.
 
[P.S. top of page 1:]
My love to Mrs Thurston & every member of the family. Remember me to both of the Elizas. Has Sophia, read "Jane Bouverie" — It is beautifully written. Miss Sinclair is the author. Remember me kindly to Mr & Mrs Duyckinck. Mr J. R. wanted me to go with him to Baltimore. How pleasant it must be in New York now. Tell Sophia Mrs Bigelow (Miss Poultney) has a little son, a month old. But perhaps she knows it. Now I believe I have told you everything that I can think of. Cousin Maggie Wynkoop sent her love. The Taylors asked about you all. 
 
* * *
Related post:

Monday, May 15, 2023

General and gentle readers

If Melville's lost "love letters" to Nathaniel Hawthorne should ever turn up (in manuscript, I mean, the actual, physical documents we only know because family members transcribed them for publication in the 19th century), I would first run for the one written on "a rainy morning" in May 1851 to confirm or disprove my hunch that Melville charged Hawthorne with disturbing the peace of "gentle" not "general" readers. I'm talking about that great "Dollars damn me" letter formerly and tentatively dated June1? but assigned to early May 1851 by Hershel Parker in the first volume of Herman Melville: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) pages 840-841. 

In the 21st century Parker dared some prominent Melville critics either to accept or challenge his moving it ahead to early May; see Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Northwestern University Press, 2012) pages 239-240. Since then the bad influence of fact-averse "critics without information" has only gotten worse. In this particular case, however, the underlying problem was that Parker had never clearly or sufficiently explained his reasoning. Given the chance to nail it in the 2nd and 3rd Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick (page 566) he said it was "complicated" and mistakenly gave the wrong year ("May 16, 1850" instead of 1851) when footnoting the crucial letter from Augusta to Allan Melville that justified the earlier date. To make everybody happy (except Neo-Communists, obviously), I will belatedly attempt to do what Parker asked back in 2012, and re-scrutinize the evidence for his re-dating of the "dollars damn me" letter. To that end I hope to obtain a photocopy or scan of Augusta's letter, currently at Arrowhead. When/if successful I will transcribe what I can and report back. 

Meanwhile, here is a possible emendation to mull over in the wonderful letter dated "[early May] 1851" in The Divine Magnet: Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Mark Niemeyer (Orison Books, 2016). My proposed revision (also begun, like Melville's epistle, on a rainy morning in May): instead of " 'general readers' " make it " 'gentle readers' " but keep the phrase enclosed in quotation marks. 

Granted, the difference might not be so compelling or meaningful as the universally accepted correction of "revere" to "reverse." Observing how the world laughs at truth and truth tellers (mocked in our time as conspiracy theorists), Melville flipped (reversed not revered) the legendary laughter-test of Lord Shaftesbury, wherein truth reveals itself by withstanding ridicule. 

About a different subject, the disturbing effects of Hawthorne's darkest fictions on his audience, here is what Melville had to say as transcribed and first printed in 1884 by Julian Hawthorne:

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 tremor of the tribe of “general readers.

--  Hawthorne and His Wife (Boston, 1884) page 404.

Melville found "Ethan Brand" in the May 1851 issue of  Holden's Dollar Magazine. The title character is one of Hawthorne's more devilish mad-scientist types, a psycho lime kiln operator who has abused others and made himself crazy in searching obsessively for "The Unpardonable Sin," instead of properly monitoring his own heart. With horror stories like that, Hawthorne stood accused by Melville of causing extreme discomfort in his readers. 

The extent to which the figurative shakes and tremors alleged by Melville are also supposed to indicate real mental and physical distress remains unclear, at least to me. For a visual image of the darkness that might impart "many a shake and tremor," literally or metaphorically, to any kind of reader, general or gentle, you have only to look at the frightening 1851 illustration,

"a frontispiece by Darley representing a wild figure with up-stretched arms, silhouetted against a mighty flame on the brow of a precipice."
--Katharine Lee Bates, Intro to The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (New York, 1899 and 1902).

Unchallenged before now, the expression "general readers" has been taken to mean ordinary or common, often with express or implied disparagement of skimmers as opposed to divers. The former stick to familiar but deceptive surfaces while the latter, eagle-eyed readers like you, me, and Melville, brave unknown and often unknowable depths of things. Already in Mardi (1849) William Charvat found symptoms of Melville's downright hostility "to the general reader, and to the world." 

Charvat, William. “Melville and the Common Reader.” Studies in Bibliography, vol. 12, 1959, pages 41–57 at page 49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40371255.
Accessed 15 May 2023.

In Charvat's influential view the "tribe of general readers" means those "who would not tolerate the unpleasant truth" but might be tricked by disguised "profundities," artfully hidden "under a pleasant or sensational narrative surface" (page 52). 

With more attention to context, as Charlene Avallone pointed out in the late 1980's, Melville's expression "general readers" may be understood to designate readers of magazines.

Avallone, Charlene. “Calculations for Popularity: Melville’s Pierre and Holden’s Dollar Magazine.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 43, no. 1, 1988, pages 82–110. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3044982. Accessed 15 May 2023.
 
Which is to say, most everyone. Although Avallone adopts the term general readers throughout, her excellent case for the familiarity of magazine readers with wildly sensational matter effectively undercuts Melville's reported claim that "the tribe of 'general readers' " would somehow have been distressed by provocative content in Hawthorne's magazine fictions. 
 
In usages at mid century, when Melville was writing to Hawthorne, the term general readers usually denotes readers either of periodical literature (magazines and newspapers) or works of non-fiction, for example textbooks of history and popular science, say Anatomy and Physiology. 
 
Springfield, Mass. Republican - April 28, 1851
Concerning the longer phrase "tribe of general readers," Melville's usage as transcribed by Julian Hawthorne in 1884 is the only one published in 19th century works accessible via Google Books and HathiTrust Digital Library. Zero hits before 1900 outside of Melville's letter to Hawthorne. 

 
On the other hand, searching in the same databases for "tribe of gentle readers" yields two results in British sources, each occurring in a piece of literary criticism. First, from the cutting review of The Spirit of Discovery, or, The Conquest of Ocean in the July 1805 number of The Edinburgh Review:

SOME years ago, Mr Bowles presented the public with a collection of sonnets and short poems. The reception it met with was not unfavourable, especially from that tribe of gentle readers to whom every running stream recals the memory of joys that are past, and every rustling leaf gives sad anticipation of coming sorrow.

 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000093204141?urlappend=%3Bseq=325%3Bownerid=13510798895677775-329

And second, from "Canons of Criticism" by "L." in The Monthly Magazine for November 1827:
... Law, physic, divinity, and politics are precisely on the same footing; and so, too, are music, and painting, and coach-building, and tailoring (male and female), porter-brewing, and the manufacture of polonies and sausages. To betray these secrets would not only be treason to the craft, but would deprive the whole tribe of gentle readers of seven-eighths of their pleasure. What would they say to a Marplot who should come on the stage and tell the audience, “ these jewels are paste”—“this robe calico, and not silk”—and this terrible irruption nothing in the world but a pennyworth of gunpowder and nitrate of strontian?” I would never sit in the same boat (as Horace says) with such a man: so do not look for it at my hands.

https://hdl.handle.netn/2027/umn.31951000903300n?urlappend=%3Bseq=490%3Bownerid=13510798902549127-552

The first-listed instance of the phrase tribe of gentle readers in the Edinburgh Review for July 1805 is most interesting for negative criticism of the attempt at epic poetry by William L. Bowles, satirized by Byron as "harmonious Bowles" in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. A footnote in many editions of Byron's poem directs readers to the April 1805 notice of Strangford's Camoëns in same volume with the essay on Bowles. One way or another, Melville could have encountered the sonnet loving "tribe of gentle readers" in Volume 6 of the Edinburgh Review and remembered it when writing to Hawthorne in May 1851.

As printed in 1884 the phrase "general readers" in Melville's letter is enclosed in quotation marks. Melville could be quoting magazine advertisements there, but the comprehensive sense of "general readers" would seem to render the quotation marks gratuitous. Arguably, the class of gentle readers might be regarded as narrower, more exclusive or refined, and therefore more deserving of quotation marks--whether used straightforwardly, or ironically employed as scare quotes

Hawthorne and his mosses - NYPL Digital Collections

In Hawthorne and His Mosses Melville put the word gentle in quotation marks when comparing Hawthorne to Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene:

"when Spencer was alive, he was thought of very much as Hawthorne is now,--was generally esteemed accounted just such a "gentle" harmless man.

Generally accounted by general readers, presumably. Melville's phrasing as printed in the Literary World on August 24, 1850 nicely anticipates his epistolary reference in May of the following year to "general readers." Even so, in "Hawthorne and His Mosses" the word gentle is what got the scare quotes. In similar fashion, perhaps, when inditing the May 1851 letter Melville might have conflated general and gentle readers--in his head, whichever word his hand finally wrote. Well! If Hawthorne can be generally regarded as "gentle," then I guess his readers can, too.

Related post:


Thursday, May 11, 2023

All I want is a good listener


 
New essay on Substack, excerpt below...

Inspired by recent encounters with Hawthorne, in particular by their heady and hearty barn-talk that March, Melville might have found a way to get the gist of their stimulating conversations into print. Echoes of Melville’s letters in the opening installment of “Scenes Beyond the Western Border” lead me to suspect it may be haunted by Hawthorne. At any rate, coincidence or no, the narrator of “Scenes Beyond the Western Border” talks to the reader like Melville talked in letters to Hawthorne. Here’s one example from the first of Melville’s Agatha letters to Hawthorne dated August 13, 1852.24

In this example, wording and structure of the Captain’s pledge to do most of the talking for his singular reader match the “and if / why I” construction in Melville's 1852 letter to Hawthorne (emphasis mine):

“… and if you are absolutely dumb, why I will sometimes answer for you.”

And if I thought I could do it well as you, why, I should not let you have it.”

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.84865/page/n197/mode/2up

Introducing likely topics of conversation, the Captain sounds quite like Melville when promising a good time to his invited guest:

MELVILLE

“Hark— There is some excellent Montado Sherry awaiting you & some most potent Port. We will have mulled wine with wisdom, & buttered toast with story-telling & crack jokes & bottles from morning till night.”
Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 29 January? 1851; emphasis mine.

CAPTAIN

We will talk on all subjects, from the shape of a horse-shoe to that of the slipper of the last favorite—say the 'divine Fanny,’ from great battles, or Napier's splendid pictures of such, down to the obscurest point of the squad drill—from buffalo bulls to elfin sprites.”
Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1851
25

These elaborate invites are similarly themed and structured. Each presents an inventory of delightful activities in store for the recipient, each inventory being divided in three main parts. Melville’s three groupings of promised events are separated by three ampersands; the Captain’s by the word from, used thrice. The invitation in each case extends to just one person: Melville to Hawthorne, the Captain to his Imaginary Friend the reader. The plural “We” brings together speaker and singular reader as joint enjoyers of good times ahead, chiefly to be spent in stimulating conversation....

https://open.substack.com/pub/melvilliana/p/all-i-want-is-a-good-listener?r=n51cr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Friday, April 28, 2023

Oliver G. Hillard, art lover

After Herman Melville's death on September 28, 1891 the New York Times (October 6, 1891) printed a memorial tribute in the form of a letter to the editor signed "O. G. H." Obviously a well-informed acquaintance of the deceased, "O. G. H." remembered Melville as "the man of culture, the congenial companion, and the honestest and manliest of all earthly friends." 

Minus the original and laughable heading The Late Hiram Melville, the Times letter was reprinted in The Critic Volume 16 on October 17, 1891 (alongside the earlier notice of Melville's death headed "Herman Melville / The Passing of Mr. Melville's Popularity") as "A LETTER TO THE Times FROM ONE WHO KNEW HIM." Google-digitized images from the 1891 Critic volume with the reprinted letter from "O. G. H." are accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library

The Critic editors appear less knowledgeable than "O. G. H." in their appended fact-check of his first paragraph. The editors claimed that Melville's first book was never "offered to or declined by the American publishers," but Melville's friend knew the truth. As verified in the "Recollections of Frederick Saunders," the Harper brothers initially declined Typee in manuscript since "it was impossible that it could be true and therefore was without real value." So quoted by Hershel Parker in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Northwestern University Press, 2012) page 147; Parker adds the testimony of Melville's niece Charlotte Hoadley who believed the Harpers' early rejection of Typee "embittered his whole life."

Melville's sincere friend and admirer "O. G. H." has been identified as O. G. Hillard in Jay Leyda's Melville Log; and Oliver Greene Hillard in Melville in His Own Time (University of Iowa Press, 2015), edited by Steven Olsen-Smith, where Hillard's communication is given in full on pages 182-183. To begin to remedy the death of biographical facts lamented by Olsen-Smith, obituaries from New York and Boston newspapers are transcribed below.

New York Tribune - August 8, 1903
<https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1903-08-08/ed-1/seq-9/>

 OBITUARY.

OLIVER G. HILLARD

Oliver G. Hillard, fr many years identified with Wall Street interests, died on Thursday in his home, No. 217 East Seventeenth-st., from septic pneumonia, in his eighty-first year. The funeral will take place to-morrow afternoon at the home of W. A. White, No. 158 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. Mr. Hillard was enjoying excellent health when, on Thursday of last week, he was struck by a Broadway car. He was not knocked down, but was badly bruised, and recently pneumonia set in. His health for many years had been so vigorous that he never wore an overcoat in the coldest weather.

Mr. Hillard came of an old Boston family. He left Boston in early manhood for New-York, and for forty years had been connected with an office in Wall-st. He retired from business about fifteen years ago. He was a bachelor, and a man of quiet, art loving tastes. Among artists he enjoyed a large acquaintance, and collected many paintings, which he prized highly.

Mr. Hillard was a brother of the late George Stillman Hillard, the writer of school books and the law partner of Charles Sumner. He leaves a brother, James Otis Hillard, a banker, of Boston, and three nieces--Mrs. W. A. White, of Columbia Heights; Mrs. R. H. Loines, of Garden Place, Brooklyn; and Mrs. Winslow Bell, of Poughkeepsie.

A confirmed bachelor and art lover with known connections on Wall Street, Oliver G. Hillard (1823-1903) was a brother of Hawthorne's old friend and benefactor George Stillman Hillard.

09 Aug 1903, Sun The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts) Newspapers.com

O. G. HILLARD DEAD.

Was Born in Boston, Was a Noted Art Lover
and the Brother of the
Late George Stillman Hillard.

NEW YORK, Aug 8-- The funeral services of Oliver G. Hillard, who died at his home, 217 East 17th st. Thursday of pneumonia, will be held tomorrow afternoon at the home of his niece, Mrs. William Augustus White, 15 Columbia heights.

Mr Hillard was 81 years old and was born in Boston. He had been a great lover of pictures and has left a choice collection.

The late George Stillman Hillard, the noted Boston lawyer, who was the author of several textbooks and books of travel, was his brother. James Otis Hillard, a banker in Boston, is another brother. Mr. Hillard was a bachelor.

-- Boston Globe, August 9, 1903.

What happened to Hillard's "choice collection"? Sold at auction by Silo's Art Galleries on March 9 and 10, 1905. As advertised in the New York Herald on March 7, 1905 the sale conducted by auctioneers James Patrick Silo and Augustus W. Clarke would include 

by order of the executrix

ESTATE OF O. G. HILLARD, DECEASED,
MANY IMPORTANT PAINTINGS
BY ANCIENT AND MODERN MASTERS.

Thursday, April 27, 2023

Whitman and "Marquesan Melville" in the ALBANY ARGUS

Orion constellation Hevelius
But a week or so ago there passed from earth a strong, virile and poetic mind that met nothing but contempt in America for years.

Notwithstanding the borrowed title "Marquesan Melville," the 1892 article transcribed herein begins with high praise for the late Walt Whitman as "a strong, virile and poetic mind." (Whitman died on March 26, 1892; Herman Melville passed the year before on September 28, 1891.) Previously unrecorded? Not in the Walt Whitman Archive, anyhow. This dual tribute to Whitman and Melville appeared on page 4 of the Albany NY Argus for Sunday morning, April 10, 1892. As indicated in the article, the heading and extensive quotations are taken from Henry S. Salt's long, lavish memorial of "Marquesan Melville" in the March 1892 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine

Herman Melville, despite embarrassing nationwide neglect of his writings, was "a man well known personally" in the Albany area. Nonetheless, criticism of Melville's supposedly ruinous descent into transcendentalism and mysticism follows Salt on "Marquesan Melville." Also from Salt, the cite of John Marr and Other Sailors as privately printed "story" and the closing quotation from Robert Buchanan's poem Socrates in Camden

But the comparison of Melville to The Farthing Poet Richard Hengist Horne, author of Orion: An Epic Poem, seems different and distinctive. Elizabeth Shaw Melville gave Herman's copy of Horne's Exposition of the False Medium and Barriers Excluding Men of Genius to Edmund Clarence Stedman. With markings by Horne and Melville, whereabouts unknown; Horne's Exposition is Sealts Number 284 in the catalog at Melville's Marginalia Online. Number 285 is a volume of three tragedies by Horne, owned by Stedman and borrowed by Melville. Shared interest in Whitman and Horne suggests that E. C. Stedman might have written or otherwise influenced the writing of "Marquesan Melville" as revisited in the Albany Argus.

MARQUESAN MELVILLE.

It is generally conceded that leading traits in the American character are self-esteem and assertiveness. One of the reasons the race has advanced so rapidly and now holds such high place is because of its thorough belief and confidence in itself. We know that our institutions are admirable, and that our natural resources are unlimited. We are certain that our destiny is as grand as that of any of the sons of man. We feel that our past stands in need of no apology. We are tenacious of our repute in the arts and sciences, and proclaim upon the housetops the undying fame of our writers. These general facts standing unchallenged, it is very peculiar that a single one of our master-minds should lack full recognition and appreciation in his own country. But a week or so ago there passed from earth a strong, virile and poetic mind that met nothing but contempt in America for years. It is true that at the last we were shamed into a tardy acceptance of the splendid gifts of Walt Whitman by the generous encouragement of the English people. Without attempting to understand the charm of his utterances, we admitted his genius and soothed his dying bed with sympathy. There were laid upon his bier some eloquent tributes from his countrymen, but these were rather the outpourings of love and sympathy than critical appreciation. It was England that recognized that a strong and original singer had left the earthly choir.

A case very similar to this was that of Herman Melville, a man well known personally in this vicinity. The difference between the two was that Melville had a measure of transient popularity during his early productive period, while at his death he was almost completely forgotten. His very name was unknown to the younger generation of American readers, and the rather perfunctory tributes in a few newspapers, when he died a number of months ago, were read with a mild interest not unmixed with astonishment. Here, again, England had an eye for genius when we were blind. It will surprise many here, even among those who would be critical, to learn that Robert Buchanan classes him as "the one great imaginative writer fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with Whitman on that continent," and that William Morris, Theodore Watts, Robert Louis Stevenson and W. Clark Russell, enroll themselves among the number of his enthusiastic admirers. It may be doubted whether the name of Melville is included among those that figure in the handbooks of American literature. it is certain, at any rate, that he has no following of readers here.

It is not to our credit that the first critical estimate of Melville should appear in England, and yet such is the case. Mr. Henry S. Salt writes an appreciative, discriminating and sympathetic sketch of the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine. He makes no allusion to the fact that Melville was so sadly lacking in appreciation from his own countrymen, and his article has a ring of triumphant admiration with no trace of apology nor pleading. It is impossible to summarize Mr. Salt's estimate, but we can quote a few detached passages. He declares that Melville was a genuine child of nature, a sort of nautical George Borrow, to whom he likens him more than once. Of "Typee," his masterpiece, he says: "Alike in the calm beauty of its descriptive passages and in the intense vividness of its character sketches, it was, and is, and must ever be, a most powerful and fascinating work--indeed, I think I speak within the mark in saying that nothing better of its kind is to be found in English literature, so firm and clear is it in outline, yet so dreamily suggestive in the dim, mystic atmosphere which pervades it." Then turning to his later work, Mr. Melville [rather, Mr. Salt] says: "As 'Typee' is the best production of the earlier and simpler phase of Melville's authorship, so undoubtedly is 'The Whale' the crown and glory of the later phase; less shapely and artistic than 'Typee,' it far surpasses it in immensity of scope and triumphant energy of execution. It is in 'The Whale' that we see Melville casting to the winds all conventional restrictions, and rioting in the prodigality of his imaginative vigor. It is the supreme production of a master mind; let no one presume to pass judgment on American literature until he has read, and re-read, and wonderingly pondered the three mighty volumes of 'The Whale.'"

One more brief quotation may be permitted: "His narratives are as racy and vigorous as those of Defoe, or Smollett, or Marryat; his character sketches are such as only a man of keen observation and as keen a sense of humor could have realized and depicted."

The man was well nigh as interesting as the author. Herman Melville, who, by the way, was a relative of leading Albany families, resided for years in Pittsfield. Here he was the near neighbor of Hawthorne, whose home was at  Lenox. He soon became a transcendentalist, and his beliefs strongly colored his writings. We have noted above the change between his earlier works, as exemplified in "Typee," and his later, as shown in "The Whale." As the mood grew upon him, his style became turgid and his books were filled with mysticism. It was the death blow to his popularity, and the fickleness of the public reacted strongly upon his nature. He became almost a recluse. He would do nothing to keep his name before the public, and in a spirit akin to that which led Hengist Horne to issue his grand epic "Orion" at a farthing, he limited one of the most beautiful of his later stories to twenty-five copies.

It is pleasant to know that the widow of the novelist has just sold the copyrights of her husband's works to an enterprising publisher, and that new editions of them all are to be brought out in America and England. An opportunity will be given us to atone for our neglect of this genius, of whom Buchanan, in his tribute to Whitman, wrote--

"The 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."

-- Albany Argus, April 10, 1892. Found on fultonhistory.com; images are also accessible courtesy of New York State Library via NYS Historic Newspapers:
http://nyshistoricnewaspapers.org/lccn/sn83045592/1892-04-10/ed-1/seq-4/

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Revolutionary Reminiscence by "M."

Marinus Willett via The Met

The following "Revolutionary Reminiscence" of Washington's Last Expedition tells of a brave officer facing amputation of his severely frostbitten legs. As dramatically related by "M.," the story has two heroes: the suffering warrior and the "humane Indian" who rescued him "from the amputating knife of a surgeon." The sympathetic and resourceful Indian is not named. His grateful patient was Captain Alexander Thompson (1759-1809). Then Lieutenant Thompson marched in February 1783 under Colonel Marinus Willett during the ill-fated Expedition to Oswego. Signed "M.," the "Revolutionary Reminiscence" first appeared in the Army and Navy Chronicle on March 26, 1840. Reprinted elsewhere, often without credit to any source or author, as in the Boston Weekly Magazine for Saturday, April 10, 1840 and Boston Recorder on September 11, 1840. Copied with credit "From the Army and Navy Chronicle" (including the subscribed initial "M.") in the New York Christian Intelligencer on May 16, 1840. 

REVOLUTIONARY REMINISCENCE.

In the winter of 1783, the father of the late Lieut. Colonel A. R. THOMPSON, (who fell in Florida at the head of his regiment, 25th Dec., 1837,) then a Lieutenant in the army of the Revolution, accompanied a detachment under Colonel WILLETT, with a view to surprise Fort Oswego, which was at that time in the occupation of the British. The treachery of their Indian guide, however, who led them a circuitous and roundabout way, caused, eventually, a failure in the enterprise, much to the chagrin and vexation of the American party.

The weather was excessively cold, the men and officers but poorly clad; but the soldier's duty oft compels him not only to forego the comforts of home and civilized life, but to endure summer's parching heat, and winter's piercing blast. The state of the country, also, at that period forbade repose or inactivity, while a foot of its soil was in the possession of the enemy. The deception practised by the guide, had protracted their journey, and consequently caused the endurance of much physical suffering, from the length of the route and intensity of the weather. Many of the men had their fingers, toes and ears, badly bitten by the frost. Lieutenant THOMPSON had both of his feet so severely frozen, that when the detachment arrived at the camp, he was in such a state that the surgeon in attendance deemed it necessary, in order to save his life, to amputate both his legs. Sad and heavily fell this decision upon the ears of poor THOMPSON, who, full of military ardor and zeal in his country's cause, was anxious to devote all his energies to assist in emancipating her from the tyranny of despotic power; but here he was in the vigor of youth, having entered the list with the brave and patriotic, to be rendered helpless and maimed for the rest of his life, (if he should survive the operation,) not by an honorable loss of limb in battle, from the ball of a warlike enemy, but from the amputating knife of a surgeon. The thought was painful in the extreme, and he almost wept at the prospect.

"Can nothing be done, Doctor, to save these limbs?" said the youthful officer, as he cast a look of the deepest inquiry at the surgeon, and continued, "they have not yet done half their duty. Cannot you save them, that I may yet serve my country, and participate in the honor of assisting throughout the struggle, and in consummating her entire freedom from the British yoke?"

"I can see no alternative," replied the doctor, as he bound around the ligature above the knee; "it is impossible to save them."

"Then may God give me grace to submit," said the lieutenant, placing his hand over his eyes and pressing his burning brow; and I must be sent home," he continued in soliloquy, "crippled in the service, but not in the field."

He was in this situation, with a few of his military friends around him, whose countenances bore the expression of the sympathy they felt for their beloved associate, and sad too, were his own reflections; but he summoned resolution to undergo the painful operation. At this crisis, a groupe had gathered around the tent, anxious to know the result. Among them was a friendly Indian who, hearing them say a man's legs were to be cut off, he turned, and raising the curtain, passed into the tent. Stepping up, he laid his hand upon the uplifted knife, just in the act of being used: "No!" said he, "that handsome young warrior shall not die! I will cure him!"

The surgeon said it was "impossible! that unless amputation was speedily performed, death from mortification must ensue."

"Halt! doctor," said Thompson, as his eyes turned quickly upon the Indian; "let him try, I would almost as soon die as lose my legs, now when they are so much needed as at the present."

"Let him, let him try," echoed the voices of all present; and the doctor laid down his knife and reluctantly submitted. Come, my good fellow, said they, save these legs, and you shall have a splendid rifle, and be constituted a chief.

The Indian threw off his blanket, commenced by removing the bandages, and by using friction, fomentations, poultices, &c. &c., succeeded in restoring circulation; and finally, after the patient had suffered much pain and anxiety, he recovered the use of his limbs, and was soon able to "report for duty.” 

The joy and gratitude of the young officer was unbounded; he generously rewarded the humane Indian, and often in after times, when marching in pursuit of the enemy, would he look down at his feet and bless the memory of the red man, who, under God, had been the means of saving his limbs, and perhaps his life. Mr. THOMPSON continued to serve throughout the war, with honor and reputation; and at the close of it was brevetted a Captain for his faithful and gallant conduct. 

M.

-- Army and Navy Chronicle, March 26, 1840.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044097894786?urlappend=%3Bseq=211%3Bownerid=27021597765398891-221

In family correspondence, Captain Armstrong himself disclosed the fact of his dangerous frostbite and hopes of recovery--without, however, describing any particulars of his successful treatment:

"We had one hundred and thirty bit with the frost, some very dangerously. I am myself one of the unfortunate number, but by frequent application I have made, my feet are much better and I flatter myself will soon be well."

-- Letter to Brother dated February 24, 1783 as transcribed in "Two Expeditions To Fort Ontario in 1783; Colonel Willett For War; Captain Thompson, For Peace" (Presented by Mr. Anthony Slosek, January 17, 1956) 19th publication of the Oswego County Historical Society, pages 1-16 at 16.

As mentioned early in the "Revolutionary Reminiscence" by "M." Captain Thompson was the father of Lt. Col. Alexander Ramsay Thompson, killed in Battle of Okeechobee during the Second Seminole War in Florida. Captain Alexander Thompson (1759-1809):

"served in the artillery during the Revolutionary war, was retained as captain in the peace establishment, and attached in 1794 to the artillery and engineer corps, and after his discharge in 1802 till his death, 28 Sept., 1809, was military store-keeper at West Point." 

-- Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography

More on Capt. Thompson from The Ancestry and Descendants of John Alexander Thompson Nexsen, compiled and arranged by Samuel Emory Rogers (1925) page 16:

Colonel Thompson was the son of Captain Alexander Thompson, (1759‑1809), who enlisted for the American Revolutionary struggle at the age of eighteen in the Artillery Regiment of Colonel John Lamb. He was soon promoted to Captain of Artillery and later served as Captain of Engineers. He drew the plans for the siege of York town, which plans hang under his portrait in the United States Military Academy at West Point. He entered New York with the victorious American troops and was selected by General Washington to bear the dispatches to the frontier forts at Oswego, Niagara, and Detroit, ordering cessation of hostilities. At the close of the Revolution his company was the only company of the American army not disbanded. On October 1, 1787, Captain Alexander Thompson was promoted to First Major in Lieutenant-Colonel Sebastian Baum's Artillery. He resigned his commission as Major on October 9, 1793 in order to accept appointment as Commissary of Ordnance at West Point at the foundation of the Military Academy, which post he held until his death. He is buried at the Military Academy at West Point.