Abridged "Admiral of the White" in the St. Paul SUNDAY PIONEER PRESS

Following up on my discovery that Allen Thorndike Rice arranged for the simultaneous publication of Melville's poem "The Admiral of the White" in multiple U. S. newspapers including the Cincinnati Times-Star, I confirmed this morning that an abridged version of Melville's poem did in fact appear on May 17, 1885 in the Sunday edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Minnesota Historical Society's Gale Family Library has the relevant issue on microfilm. Parking at the Minnesota History Center in downtown St. Paul (across from our magnificent Cathedral) is still free for library users--but not for long, they tell me. With a reserved reader/printer and kind help from library staff I was able to find and view the right reel during my visit earlier today. 

Many thanks to all at the Gale Family Library, and to John Gretchko for prodding me to go. The long version of Melville's 1885 poem "The Admiral of the White" was later collected in John Marr and Other Sailors (1888), slightly revised and re-titled The Haglets. The Minnesota abridgment of Melville's poem appears on page 17 of the Sunday Pioneer Press along with two prose articles, "Letters of Marque" by Gail Hamilton (the pseudonym of Mary Abigail Dodge) and a tribute to Kingsley by Frederic William Farrar. While I expected to find some version of "The Admiral of the White," I was surprised and of course delighted by the high praise extended in the header, by way of introducing "A Striking Tale in Verse from the Pen of Herman Melville." True, the editor in his enthusiasm does not seem to know or care about Battle-Pieces (1866) and Clarel (1876) and appears to mistake "White" for the name of the doomed ship, but what of that. It's always good to find Melville highly placed in "A Galaxy of Genius," ranking first among other "Eminent Authors."

Sunday Pioneer Press - St. Paul, MN
May 17, 1885

Our shortened St. Paul version of "The Admiral of the White" omits many lines of verse including all of the first two stanzas and part of the third, lines 1-18 of "The Haglets" as printed on pages 218-225 in the 2009 Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Published Poems, edited by Robert C. Ryan, Harrison Hayford, Alma MacDougall Reising and G. Thomas Tanselle. Who supplied the three prose transitions, highlighted in my transcription below, added to fill gaps in the story resulting from editorial deletions? Allen Thorndike Rice? Chief editor Joseph Albert Wheelock himself, or an assistant in the literary department? Probably not the poet, I suppose. None of these clever connectors appears in the differently abridged version printed on the same Sunday in the New York Daily Tribune. 

From the St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press of May 17, 1885, page 17:

A GALAXY OF GENIUS.

ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM
EMINENT AUTHORS.

A Striking Tale in Verse from the Pen of Herman Melville—In "Letters of Marque" Gail Hamilton Discusses in Her Own Characteristically Breezy and Independent Fashion a Number of Questions Concerning the Modern Young —Rev. Canon Farrar Contributes an Appreciative Tribute to the Memory of the Late Charles Kingsley.

THE ADMIRAL OF THE WHITE.

BY HERMAN MELVILLE.
[Copyright, 1885, by Thorndyke Rice. All rights reserved.]

The famous author of "Omoo," "Typee" and other widely known books has dropped into poetry, and in this domain of literature displays the same breeziness, the same dash and spirit that characterized his former works. He tells the story of the fate of the gallant crew of the White, wrecked and lost in Southern seas. The admiral has just fought the "arm'd Plate Fleet whose sinking flagship's colors fell," and is now crowding sail ahead to carry the news of his victory.

The eddying waters whirl astern,
The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray;
With bellying sails and buckling spars
The black hull leaves a Milky Way;
Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll,
She reveling speeds exulting with pennon at pole. 

 

But ah, for standards captive trailed
For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride—
Castilian towers that dominate Spain,
Naples, and either Ind beside;
Those haughty towers, armorial ones,
Rue the salute from the admiral’s dens of guns. 

* * * * * * * [omitting "Ensigns and arms...conflict sped," lines 31-42]

But out from cloistral gallery dim,
In early night his glance is thrown;
He marks the vague reserve of heaven,
He feels the touch of ocean lone;
Then turns, in frame part undermined,
Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan behind.

There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly,
And follow, follow fast in wake
Where slides the cabin-luster shy,
And sharks from man a glamour take.
Seething along the line of light,
In lane that endless rules the war-ship’s flight.

The storm increases in a terrific furry [fury] and the good ship narrowly escaped being driven on land. 

[omitting "The sea fowl here..."luminous antlers vast," lines 55-90]

In trim betimes they turn from land,
Some shivered sails and spars they stow;
One watch, dismissed, they troll the can.
While loud the billow thumps the bow—
Vies with the fist that smites the board,
Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word. 

 

Of royal oak by storms confirmed,
The tested hull her lineage shows;
Vainly the plungings whelm her prow—
She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows.
Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home,
With batteries housed she rams the watery dome.

* * * * * * * [omitting "Dim seen adrift...eager neighborhood," lines 103-114]

Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea,
Heaved in a combing pyramid full,
Spent at its climax, in collapse
Down headlong thundering stuns the hull:
The trophy drops; but, reared again,
Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the main.

It is midnight of the Old Year. "The Old Year fades, the Old Year dies at sea." During a lull the sailors 

[keeping line 138 but omitting everything else from "Rebuilt it stands..." to "Laced Sleeves round the board," lines 121-137 and 139- 153]

Draw near in heart to keep them warm:
"Sweethearts and wives!" clink, clink, they meet,
And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of sleet.

"Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn,
So here her hearth-light memory fling,
So in this wine-light cheer be born,
And honor’s fellowship weld our ring—
Honor, our Admiral’s aim foretold;
A tomb or a trophy,, and lo, ’t is a trophy and gold!" 

 

But he, a unit, sole in rank,
Apart needs keep his lonely state,
The sentry at his guarded door
Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate;
Belted he sits in drowsy light,
And hatted nods—the Admiral of the White.

He dozes on, unmindful of the present, dreaming of old victories and of rich armadas that he has captured. But the end is at hand.

 [omitting "He dozes, aged with watches...old Armadas drowned," lines 169-192] 

 

Ha—yonder! are they Northern Lights?
Or signals flashed to warn or ward?
Yes, signals lanced in breakers high;
But doom on warning follows hard;
While yet they veer in hope to shun,
They strike! and thumps of hull and heart are one.  

 

 [omitting "But beating hearts ... lit the magnet's case," lines 199- 210]

Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,
Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid,
Or cable span? Must victors drown—
Perish, even as the vanquished did?
Man keeps from man the stifled moan,
They shouldering stand, yet each in heart how lone. 

 

Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs
Prayer and despair alike deride
In dance of breakers forked or peaked.
Pale maniacs of the maddened tide;
While, strenuous yet some end to earn,
The haglets spin; though now no more astern.
Like shuttles hurrying in the looms
Aloft through rigging frayed they ply—
Cross and recross—weave and inweave,
Then lock the web with clinching cry
Over the seas on seas that clasp
The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the gasp.

Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,
The victor’s voucher, flags and arms;
Never they’ll hang in Abbey old
And take Time’s dust with holier palms;
Nor less content, in liquid night,
Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the White.

Imbedded deep with shells

And drifted treasure deep,

Forever he sinks deeper in

Unfathomable sleep—

His cannon round him thrown,

His sailors at his feet,

The wizard sea enchanting them

Where never haglets beat.

On nights when meteors play

And light the breakers dance,

The Oreads from the caves

With silvery elves advance;

And up from ocean stream,

And down from heaven far,

The rays that blend in dream

The abysm and the star.

Of the seven scheduled appearances of "The Admiral of the White" announced as forthcoming in the Cincinnati Times-Star for May 14, 1885, three have yet to be verified: 

1. New York Tribune ✅
2. Boston Herald ✅
3. Philadelphia Press
4. Detroit Post
5. St. Paul Pioneer-Press ✅ 
6. Chicago Times
7. Cincinnati Times-Star  ✅

Still looking to confirm printings of Melville's poem in the Philadelphia Press, Detroit Post, and Chicago Times on or about May 17, 1885.

Related posts:

• Syndicated in Cincinnati
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/syndicated-in-cincinnati-and-beyond.html

• More on Thorndike Rice and his 1885 newspaper syndicate
• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/more-on-thorndike-rice-and-his-1885.html

• 1885 check endorsed by Herman Melville for deposit https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/02/1885-check-endorsed-by-herman-melville.html

Herman Melville's Clarel - In The Shadow Of Greatness

1885 check "endorsed by Herman Melville for deposit"

As previously shown on Melvilliana 

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/syndicated-in-cincinnati-and-beyond.html

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/more-on-thorndike-rice-and-his-1885.html

Herman Melville's 1885 poem The Admiral of the White, later printed in John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) as "The Haglets," was syndicated by Allen Thorndike Rice for publication in more newspapers than we knew, including the Cincinnati Times-Star. Admiral of the White appeared in the weekly edition of the Cincinnati Times-Star on May 21, 1885, "Copyrighted by Allen Thorndike Rice."

Today (Happy Mardi Gras y'all 🎉🎉🎉) I stumbled on a documentary record of what might well have been Melville's payment for the poem in the form of a check from "A. Rice" dated May 2, 1885 and "endorsed by Herman Melville for deposit." Said check (no longer extant?) was included as a signed Melville item with "Literary Letters and Manuscripts" in the auction catalog of Anderson Galleries for Sale Number 2298. A brief description appears on page 89 of the Anderson Galleries catalog, Autograph Collection of a Late American Author (New York, 1928). Listed as item #658, the check with Melville's signature was offered in the Third Session on December 4, 1928:

658 MELVILLE (HERMAN). Printed and written D. s., 1 p., oblong 8vo. New York. May 2, 1885. Check by A. Rice endorsed by Herman Melville for deposit. 

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015078674242?urlappend=%3Bseq=531%3Bownerid=13510798895671981-541

Less than two years later, the check resurfaced in the Plaza Art Galleries, Inc. catalog of Noted American and English authors of the last 150 years, in first editions from the library of Philo C. Calhoun. Evidently Bridgeport, Connecticut lawyer and book collector Philo Clarke Calhoun (1889-1964) had acquired the May 2, 1885 letter (at the 1928 Anderson auction?) and stuck it in the front of his highly collectible 1st edition of Moby-Dick, "Rare in any form, and particularly so in BLUE cloth."

Calhoun's first American edition of Moby-Dick is listed #320 in the Plaza Art Galleries catalog for "Public Sale No. 776," held on March 20 and 21, 1930. According to the description on page 44, the date of the attached cheque with Melville's signature is May 2, 1885, same as the date of the check described in the 1928 Anderson Galleries catalog.

"... Affixed to the inner front cover is a cheque dated May 2, 1885; bearing MELVILLE"S SIGNATURE as an endorsement. Melville autograph material is seldom met with."

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015033687156?urlappend=%3Bseq=52%3Bownerid=13510798883686487-56

The 1930 Plaza Art Galleries catalog does not name the issuer of the "cheque" that Melville endorsed, but it bears the identical date and thus would appear to be the same "check" from "A. Rice" described in the 1928 Anderson Galleries catalog. This "A. Rice" I take to be Allen Thorndike Rice who had arranged for the newspaper syndication of Melville's poem "The Admiral of the White" later on in May 1885. 

Allen Thorndike Rice was still paying authors by check in November. On November 29, 1885 Rice wrote a check for 120 dollars to author Harriet Prescott Spofford. Signed "A. T. Rice" and endorsed by Spofford on the back, this item is now in the Abernethy collection at Middlebury College Special Collections & Archives.

So now we at least have some reason to believe Rice paid Melville, and a better idea of when. Who knows how much? Or what happened to the physical check from Rice that Melville endorsed? If you now have or ever happen to see a 1st American edition of Moby-Dick in blue, take a look. 

Related post:

• Abridged Admiral of the White in St Paul Pioneer Press https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/02/abridged-admiral-of-white-in-st-paul.html

Professor Longhair - Mardi Gras in New Orleans

Professor Longhair - They Call Me Dr Professor Longhair

"Well you know I know I'm not a Doctor,

But I wouldn't advise you to try to prove I'm not a Doctor's son...."

The Arrotino, Knife-Grinder aka The Listening Slave, Melville's "carved Roman slave" in MOBY-DICK chapter 126

What famous classical sculpture does Herman Melville invoke in Moby-Dick Chapter 126, the Life-Buoy when he or his narrator Ishmael compares the rapt attentiveness displayed by startled sailors to that of "the carved Roman slave"?

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch—then headed by Flask—was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly—like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s murdered Innocents—that one and all, they started from their reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry remained within hearing. 

-- Moby-Dick Chapter 126, The Life-Buoy

Melville's use here of the definite article (the not a) indicates one specific work, evidently a marble statue of some kind, or bust, although the object is not further particularized. I take this work of art to be real and pretty well-known, famous enough that Melville could expect readers to recognize it with minimal descriptive fussing on his part. The biggest clue to the thing he means is conveyed in the main point of comparison between sailors and the marble slave, their shared attitude as rapt listeners. As Ishmael relates, upon hearing an eerie cry in the dark, "plaintively wild and unearthly," the whale-men on watch froze like statues. For a time they remained stationary, "transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave." Via Ishmael's simile, Melville thus compares the crew's motionless bewitchment to that exhibited by an apparently familiar work of visual art.  Although unnamed, whichever "carved Roman slave" Melville had in mind is introduced in the Life-Buoy chapter of Moby-Dick as a model of eternally attentive listening.

In his end-notes for the 1972 Penguin edition of Moby-Dick, Harold Beaver suggested that Melville's "carved Roman slave" might designate "the 'Dying Gaul' often called the 'Dying Gladiator.'" Online, the Melville Electronic Library offers a textual note that makes similarly tentative connections to the famous Dying Gaul or Dying Gladiator in the Capitoline Museum. In earlier writings (Mardi and White-Jacket) Melville had referred specifically to the Dying Gladiator, so clearly he knew of it. But the sculpture alluded to in Moby-Dick has a characteristic, fixed expression of listening (Melville's word) that the suffering figure of the Gaul manifestly lacks. Mortally wounded, the fallen warrior looks downward, however intently. In his sad condition the Dying Gaul or Gladiator is always dying, rather than listening. 

The far more likely candidate for Melville's "carved Roman slave" is the well-known sculpture at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence called the Arrotino or Knife-Grinder, also known as "The Scythian." Both the statue and a place Melville might have seen it in some form before writing Moby-Dick have been positively identified by Hershel Parker in a footnote to Chapter 126 for the 3rd Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick, on page 376:

"In London, Melville could have seen a cast of this famous statue, which is in the Tribune of the Uffizi Museum, in Florence, Italy."

Melville had visited London and the Continent in 1849-1850.

The sculpture is well described by Cristiana Barandoni on the Uffizi Galleries website:

The sculpture, sold by the Mignanelli family to Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, and was bought to Florence in 1677 and placed on display in the Tribune, where it can still be seen. It is known as the “Arrotino” and shows a kneeling man who is sharpening a knife on a stone. The man, who has long eyebrows, recessed pupils and swollen eyelids, is looking upwards, his forehead marked with deep frown lines. The semi-naked figure, wearing a light cloak over his right shoulder, was initially thought to be a Scythian, or even a royal barber plotting against the state. In the 16th century, the idea was put forward that the sculpture could be part of a group depicting the flaying of Marsyas. The figure was therefore identified as a slave, preparing the blade used to torture the satyr. 

 https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/knife-grinder-tribune

Joseph Addison, in frequently reprinted Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, influentially described the Arrotino as "the Roman Slave whetting his Knife and listening." Then as now, the sculpture was exhibited in the Tribune, Uffizi Gallery with other world-famous works including the celebrated Medici Venus, Dancing Faun or Dancing Satyr, and Wrestlers:

In the same Chamber is the Roman Slave whetting his Knife and listening, which from the Shoulders upward is incomparable. The two Wrestlers are in the same Room.

Guidebooks of Melville's time noted that the Arrotino was 

"called also the Knife-grinder and the Listening Slave" 

-- Italy by Josiah Conder Volume 3 (London, 1834) page 373.

Melville and his contemporary readers took the sculpted Arrotino for a "Roman slave," as Addison had called him. In England and also America the carved figure was called "The Listening Slave." Considered together with "Roman slave," this formerly popular but now forgotten name for the Knife-Grinder perfectly explains Melville's choice of words in the Life-Buoy chapter, when Ishmael depicts startled sailors as "transfixedly listening" and then compares them in that regard to the statue of a Roman slave known as 

THE LISTENING SLAVE.

Shown below, the figure of "The Listening Slave" as illustrated on the front page of the Saturday Magazine Supplement in February 1842:

The Listening Slave 
(From the Antique Statue in the Royal Gallery of Florence.)

Architect James Hakewill noted the popularity of the "Listening Slave" title in England: 

... the Arrotino, or the Grinder, commonly known in England under the name of the Listening Slave, has been supposed by some to have been raised in honour of a slave who detected the secret machinations of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Nothing however is really known relative to the original design of the artist, but its taste and execution are such as seem worthy of the best sculptors of Greece.  -- A Picturesque Tour of Italy  

In New York City, the National Academy of Design owned a reproduction they called "The Listening Slave," listed as #166 in the 1846 Catalogue of Statues, Busts, Studies, Etc. Forming the Collection of the Antique School.

If he never saw a copy of "The Listening Slave" in Manhattan, or London, Melville eventually got to view the original in Florence. At the Uffizi on March 26, 1857 Melville was "not pleased with the Venus de Medici" but "very much astonished at the Wrestlers" he would have seen in the Tribune gallery. He must have examined the Arrotino there, too, one of numerous other works of art he regarded as "Idle to enumerate" after repeated tours of the Uffizi Galleries. Documented in Melville's Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant, edited by Howard C. Horsford (Princeton University Press, 1955) page 218; also the 1989 Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Journals, edited by Horsford with Lynn Horth, page 115.

Whether or not Melville ever read John Thomas James on Italian sculpture, the effect of Ishmael's freezing sailors in a momentary state of "transfixedly listening" like the Listening Slave accords well with the aesthetic of "picturesqueness" as the Rev. James developed it in The Italian Schools of Painting; with Observations on the present State of the Art (London, 1820): 

"As to picturesqueness of character, or that quality which is best suited to a picture, there has been so much already written, and though not very conclusively, yet so well, on the subject, that it is a fearful matter to touch upon it again. One point, however, may be adverted to, as being that, which will be found in a great degree conducive to this end. If we investigate with attention the works of the ancient sculptors, we shall discover a peculiarity in their practice, which has not been generally noticed, and this regards the time of action selected by them as fittest for their purpose. It is never the middle of an action that is represented, but in every example a momentary pause, or suspension of motion: and this, it will be seen, may be so chosen, as to give the fullest perception of all that has immediately preceded, or, in other words, to tell the story. Thus the Apollo Belvedere is not exhibited as if in the act of shooting; but the arrow is already gone, and he rests for a moment, following its flight with his eye: even the figure of the Laocoon is not represented actually in motion, but the moment given is the end of one of the paroxysms of his agony, when he is for a while fixed: the same may be observed in the fighting gladiator, in the listening slave, and all the greatest works of 
antiquity. This principle may be applied most strictly also to painting, and we shall observe the same momentary pause of action to have been purposely selected by all the great masters of design. A figure of Raffael, or M. Angelo, &c. is never drawn as if actually moving; but the point taken is during a momentary stagnation of action, or while they are for an instant rapt, if the phrase may be allowed."

https://archive.org/details/gri_33125009319647/page/n47/mode/2up

In the manner of Raffael, Michelangelo, or the unknown sculptor who made the carved Roman slave variously called the Arrotino, Knife-Grinder, or Listening Slave, Melville drew his whalemen during a pause when, hearing the crying of young seals nearby, probably, they were (to apply the formulation of ideal picturesqueness offered in 1820 by J. T. James) "for an instant rapt."