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| J. C. Welling Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. |
Herman Melville's great American novel Moby-Dick, or The Whale (1851) got high, early praise in the nation's capital and beyond when the influential Washington National Intelligencer, a leading Whig newspaper, called it "a prose Epic on Whaling" by a magician with words. Spellbound, the reviewer marveled over the wizard-writer's "strange power to reach the sinuosities of a thought" and "depths of pathos that few can fathom." This remarkable unsigned review appeared under the heading, "Notes on New Books" in the Daily National Intelligencer for December 16, 1851. Taking Moby-Dick as obviously "the production of a man of genius," the reviewer also commended the author's "unrivalled" powers of description and "actually Shakespearean" depth of character development. Not without reservations, however: Melville ought to have curbed his "irreverent wit" and lewd imagination, especially as displayed in Chapter 40 Midnight, Forecastle "with its maudlin and ribald orgies." Nonetheless, this long and largely favorable notice in the National Intelligencer ended by extolling Moby-Dick as an "ingenious romance, which for variety of incident and vigor of style can scarcely be exceeded."
Who wrote so early and well about Melville and his legendarily neglected masterpiece?
Although confidently ascribed to William Allen Butler in previous Melville scholarship, including the Historical Note for the 1988 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Moby-Dick, or The Whale, Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and both volumes of Hershel Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 and 2002), the eloquent and appreciative review of Moby-Dick in the Washington Daily National Intelligencer for December 16, 1851 is far more likely to have been written by James Clarke Welling (1825-1894). Some time in 1850 or 1851, six months at least before this important review appeared under the heading "Notes on New Books," Welling had replaced Edward William Johnston as literary editor of the National Intelligencer. As reported late in April 1851, Johnston left that paper to conduct the Richmond Whig.
24 Apr 1851, Thu The National Era (Washington, District of Columbia) Newspapers.comAs shown below, multiple sources credit Welling with authorship of the regular "Notes on New Books" column in the Washington National Intelligencer from 1850 or 1851 to 1856. The span of Welling's known tenure as literary editor and book reviewer for the National Intelligencer encompasses the later review of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1856 as well as the 1851 review of Moby-Dick. Both reviews, as Hershel Parker has pointed out in the 3rd Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick, feature the distinctive conjunction of sinuosities and thought in the similarly phrased expressions, "sinuosities of a thought" (1851) and "sinuosities of thought" (1856).
James C. Welling's authorship of the "Notes on New Books" column during the period in which both the Melville and Whitman reviews appeared in the Washington National Intelligencer was first made public in late August of 1860, through a statement by owner-editor William W. Seaton that circulated widely in other U. S. newspapers--particularly in the south and west.
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| Charleston Courier - September 3, 1860 via genealogybank.com |
National Intelligencer.-- W. W. SEATON, Esq., the venerable survivor of the DAMON and PYTHIAS partnership of GALES & SEATON, announces the connection of JAMES C. WELLING with the editorship of the Intelligencer. Mr. WELLING is thus introduced:
Mr. Welling is no stranger in the columns of the Intelligencer, having been, in different capacities, connected with it for the last ten years, during the first five of which, after the retirement of the accomplished Edward William Johnston from the Literary department of the paper, Mr. Welling had charge of it, and was the author of those "Notes on New Books," which, by the scholarship and ability evinced in their composition, would, of themselves, be a sufficient evidence of the qualifications he brings to the tasks of journalism. But it is just to add that during the last five years he has participated in all the duties incident to the editorship of this journal, and has thus served a noviciate quite long enough to give full proof of his vocation to the exacting career upon which he has entered. Enjoying during this period, in the fullest degree, the confidence of my late lamented colleague, Mr. Gales, he has equally, by his high moral and conscientious character, no less than by his rare attainments, merited my own, and I avail myself of his temporary absence from Washington to make this announcement to the patrons whom it is the honor of the Intelligencer to address.
2. From the memorial volume by Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the "National Intelligencer": A Biographical Sketch (Boston, 1871) pages 360-361:
A month subsequent to the lamented death of Mr. Gales, Mr. Seaton announced that thenceforth Mr. James C. Welling would be associated with him in the editorial conduct of the Intelligencer, with which indeed, during the previous ten years, he had been connected; first, in charge of its literary department, after the retirement from that position of the accomplished gentleman and brilliant writer, the late Edward William Johnston. "Mr. Welling," adds Mr. Seaton, "was the author of those Notes on New Books, which, by their scholarship and ability, would of themselves be a sufficient evidence of the qualifications he brings to the tasks of journalism. Enjoying in the fullest degree the confidence of my late lamented colleague, Mr. Gales, he has equally by his high moral and conscientious character, no less than by his rare attainments, merited my own." Most ably indeed did Mr. Welling meet these flattering expectations. To a fulness of matured thought upon every point of theoretical or practical national polity, and an erudition ranging through every field of science and literature, Mr. Welling united a force and readiness of discussion with an appreciation of the conservative tone and dignity characterizing the Intelligencer, which gained the marked approval of the constituents of the time-honored journal, and amply justified the confidence reposed in him by Mr. Seaton.
3. From the 1881 Baptist Encyclopædia, edited by William Cathcart:
Welling, James C., LL.D., was born July 1, 1825, at Trenton, N. J. After pursuing his preliminary studies at the Trenton Academy, he entered Princeton College, from which he graduated in 1844. From 1844 to 1846 he was a private tutor in the family of Henry T. Garnett, Esq., of Westmoreland, Va. He afterwards entered upon the study of the law with the Hon. Willoughby Newton, of Virginia, but at the expiration of a year he was recalled to New Jersey by the illness of his father. On the death of his father, in 1848, he became one of the principals of the New York Collegiate School, the oldest grammar-school in that city. In 1853 he resigned this position to accept the associate editorship of The National Intelligencer, Washington, D. C., for which celebrated journal he had already, since 1850, written the "Notes on New Books," which were a characteristic feature of the paper. Dr. Welling, as editor of the Intelligencer during the trying period of the war, conducted it with signal ability.
4. Biographical Sketch of James C. Welling in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, edited by Allen Thorndike Rice. Sixth Edition (New York, 1888) page 643:
JAMES C. WELLING.
JAMES C. WELLING was born in Trenton, N. J., on the 14th of July, 1825. After graduation at Princeton College, in 1844, he studied law, but renounced its practice to become Associate Principal of the New York Collegiate School in 1848. In 1851, he became literary editor of the National Intelligencer at Washington, D. C., and, a few years later, succeeded to Joseph Gales in the political conduct of that old and influential journal. During the Civil War his relations with the members of President Lincoln's Cabinet were intimate and often confidential. Before, during, and after the war, Mr. Welling stood steadfastly by the Constitution and the Union, without, however, always approving the civil policies of the Administration. He resigned his editorial position in 1865, because of broken health. For several years he was one of the clerks of the United States Court of Claims. In 1870 he was appointed Professor of Belles Lettres in Princeton College, and, a year afterward, was called to the presidency of the Columbian University—an office which he still holds. During his administration of that institution it has received a new charter from Congress, has erected a new University building in the heart of Washington, and has enlarged the scope of its operations by adding a scientific school to the other schools already comprised in its system. By joint resolution of Congress in 1884, he was appointed a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, and is Chairman of its Executive Committee. He is also the President of the Board of Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and takes a deep interest in the prosperity of that institution—the most richly endowed institution of its kind in the country.
We have not now the time to speak of the parentage and birth of the late Dr. James C. Welling, of his early training, of his college course and graduation at Princeton, or of his teaching for a few years afterward in lower Virginia and in the city of New York. In 1853, some nine years after he left college, he became literary editor of the "National Intelligencer," then published in this city, having been already for some years a writer of book-notices for this journal. In 1856 he became its associate editor, and soon afterward its chief editorial manager; and this position he continued to fill until he resigned it in 1865. The "Intelligencer," both before and after he took charge of it, was one of the leading journals of the great Whig party, and exerted before our civil war a more powerful influence perhaps than any other political paper of the country.
6. Report of S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for the year ending June 30, 1895 (Washington D. C., 1896) page 33:
James Clark Welling, at the time of his death, September 4, 1894, was nearly 70 years of age. Descended from New England colonial ancestors, a native of one of the Middle States, in early manhood a teacher in the South, and for nearly half a century a resident of the national capital, he was an American of the best type, free from sectional bias, personifying the higher traits and tendencies of the nation, loyal to the traditions and aspirations of its founders.
He was graduated in 1844 from the College of New Jersey, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but soon afterwards entered upon the profession of journalism. He always retained, however, a strong inclination for the study of constitutional and international law, and of politics, and his interest in public affairs was greatly stimulated by his connection for fifteen years with the most important of Washington journals, at that time national in its influence. He became the literary editor of the National Intelligencer in 1850, and was its managing editor throughout the entire period of the civil war. In this capacity he had the privilege of personal acquaintance with all our public men, and confidential access to many of them, including Lincoln, Seward, and Stanton.
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| Washington, D. C. Evening Star - November 1, 1894 via genealogybank.com |
7. Princeton Alumni Association, tribute "In Memory of Dr. Welling," as printed in the Washington D. C. Evening Star on November 1, 1894:
"...literary editor of the National Intelligencer in its palmiest days."
8. Washington, D. C. Times, September 5, 1894:05 Sep 1894, Wed Times Herald (Washington, District of Columbia) Newspapers.com
"Then he became known as a newspaper contributor, and in 1850 he was engaged by Joseph Gales and William W. Seaton as literary editor of the National Intelligencer, then the leading paper of Washington. In 1856 he became associate editor and had chief management of it through the trying times of the civil war."
9. New York Herald, September 5, 1894:
"He was literary editor of the National Intelligencer in Washington from 1850 to 1856, and editor-in-chief to the close of the war."
10. William E. Ames, A History of the National Intelligencer (University of North Carolina Press, 1971) page 306:
Seaton’s absence from the Intelligencer probably never would have been possible if it had not been for a highly capable young editor hired in 1850. James Clarke Welling started work as literary editor for the Intelligencer, but before he finished his editorial duties he was the guiding hand behind the newspaper.
The unique review of Moby-Dick in the Washington, D. C. National Intelligencer was first ascribed to William A. Butler by Hugh W. Hetherington in his chapter on "Early Reviews of Moby-Dick" for Moby-Dick Centennial Essays, edited by Tyrus Hillway and Luther S. Mansfield (Southern Methodist University Press, 1953) at page 106. Promptly but erroneously endorsed by Perry Miller in The Raven and the Whale, the mistaken attribution to Butler was amplified by Hetherington in Melville's Reviewers: British and American (University of North Carolina Press, 1961) pages 214-215.
As best I can tell, the mistake originated in confusion about the nature of lawyer-poet William Allen Butler's involvement in 1850-1851 with the National Intelligencer. And perhaps in overestimating Butler's gifts as a literary critic. As correctly reported in 1937 by Luther Stearns Mansfield:
"Butler wrote a regular column for the National Intelligencer, "Notices of New Books, Literature, and the Fine Arts in New York," which he usually signed, "Jacques du Monde."
Mansfield, Luther Stearns. “Glimpses of Herman Melville’s Life in Pittsfield, 1850-1851: Some Unpublished Letters of Evert A. Duyckinck.” American Literature, vol. 9, no. 1, 1937, pp. 26–48. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2920071. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
William Allen Butler's signed contributions over the pseudonym "Jacques du Monde" began to appear in the National Intelligencer in July 1850 and only continued until March or so of the following year. His book notices (aptly billed as "Cursory Notices of New Books" in the first letter dated July 13, 1850) during this limited run were generally light and breezy announcements of new works, "cursory" indeed but full of compliments to their authors and publishers. Butler supplemented these typically short-and-sweet book notices with well-informed commentary on recent art exhibits and music concerts, along with the latest local news and gossip.
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| Washington Daily National Intelligencer - July 19, 1850 via genealogybank.com |
Early on, as Mansfield also reported, Butler had been gently instructed by the publishers not to bother Southern readers with boring literary gossip about the personal affairs of "writers in the North of whom they have scarcely heard." Presumably Gales and Seaton, knowing of Butler's close affiliation with the Duyckinck brothers, wanted to discourage their newest Manhattan correspondent from over-promoting literary stars of the Young America movement--particularly Cornelius Mathews, dubiously crowned the "American Dickens." As Butler explained to his good friend George L. Duyckinck in a letter dated August 24, 1850:
"I wrote a letter to the National Intelligencer in which I worked a little Berkshire experience & spoke of Melville, Mathews, Headley & Hawthorne & in my next note from Gales & Seaton they asked me to permit them to suggest in friendliness that the great mass of their readers could not feel much interest in the private pursuits habits & whereabouts of writers in the North of whom they have scarcely heard. Cool, wasn't it !"
https://archive.org/details/sim_american-literature_march-1937-january-1938_9/page/36/mode/2up
By his own account, Butler seems to have corresponded directly with co-publishers Gales and Seaton, rather than either the outgoing literary editor Edward William Johnston or his eventual replacement, James C. Welling. I don't yet know exactly when Welling started working for the National Intelligencer, but Johnston's departure as literary editor would not be formally announced until late in April 1851.
Very likely Welling either had not yet been hired, or had not yet been tasked with resuming Johnston's column of "Notes on New Books," when "Jacques du Monde" began submitting his weekly series of "Cursory Notices" from New York City. Gales and Seaton would have valued the book notices in Butler's New York correspondence all the more as a stopgap, until their new-hire Welling could get himself "trained in" and ready to produce book reviews for the National Intelligencer. One early sign of the transition then impending or already underway: "Notes on New Books" in January and February 1851 were reprinted from the New York Evening Mirror, evidently as a sort of placeholder.
Lots more investigative work remains to be done. Good!
Dated February 22, 1851, the last letter from Butler signed "Jacques du Monde" appeared in the National Intelligencer for March 1, 1851 under the heading "New York Correspondence." The next under the same heading, published on March 25, 1851, is unsigned, but the tone and contents resemble those in previous letters from William Allen Butler. Another unsigned item of "New York Correspondence" appeared on April 1, 1851, likewise similar in style and substance to earlier letters signed "Jacques du Monde." Aha! Here's something good and unexpected. The unsigned letter dated April 19, 1851 and published in the National Intelligencer on April 22nd under the heading "New York Correspondence" contains a glowing notice of Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Unrecorded in Hawthorne scholarship? I'm guessing this letter in the Daily National Intelligencer for April 22, 1851 might represent William Allen Butler's final report to Washington, D. C. on literary and cultural happenings in Manhattan.
Another, later review of Hawthorne's "NEW BOOK" House of the Seven Gables appeared on page 2 of the National Intelligencer for Monday, April 28, 1851, over the initials "P. S."
One short item of "New York Correspondence" dated May 1, 1851 and published in the National Intelligencer on May 3rd gives news of Jenny Lind and is subscribed with an asterisk. No books are mentioned in "New York Correspondence" published in the National Intelligencer on June 18, 1851. And no books receive notice in "New York Correspondence" published July 2, 1851 over the initials, "S.K.S."
When hired by Gales and Seaton (in 1850? or 1851?!) James Clarke Welling had been living in New York City, employed there as Associate Principal of the New York Collegiate School. Evidently he continued living in NYC for some time while reviewing books for the Washington D. C. newspaper. Perhaps he did other editorial jobs for Gales and Seaton before taking over "Notes on New Books." However it happened, Welling made a bold entrance on page 2 under the familiar old heading, with a blistering criticism of Yeast: A Problem by Charles Kingsley (Daily National Intelligencer, Tuesday June 24, 1851).
To wrap up for now, the main point here is that William Allen Butler, during his short stint as a New York correspondent of the National Intelligencer, contributed comparatively brief "Notices of New Books," never the weightier "Notes on New Books."
Many years later Butler recalled Jenny Lind and Barnum as highlights of his writing for the National Intelligencer:"Jenny Lind's first concert was given--of all places in the world--in Castle Garden! It was, of course, a great event. I was there, and wrote an account of it for The National Intelligencer of Washington, for which I was an occasional correspondent. I think the audience hardly equaled in numbers Barnum's expectations, but believe the results of the Jenny Lind concerts, as a whole, satisfied the showman. However, he afterward wisely confined himself to wild animals and the ring."As stated at page 234 in A Retrospect of Forty Years, edited by his daughter Harriet Allen Butler (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911) William Allen Butler was only ever "an occasional correspondent" for the Washington, D. C. National Intelligencer. Butler the industrious lawyer and good-humored satirist both in prose and verse did not write the regular column of "Notes on New Books" for the National Intelligencer and never reviewed Moby-Dick for that or (as far as we know) any other publication.
Update - done, here:
"whose duty it is, indeed, in the behoof of the commonwealth of Tartarus, to regard himself as a regularly licensed attorney-general of his satanic majesty, and whose function it is to rake, scrape, and collect all that can be truly or slanderously said, surmised, or thought against the claimant in this suit for an apotheosis among the saints.
sounds very like Melville giving his whale Extracts, conceived to have been painstakingly compiled by a "poor devil of a Sub-Sub" librarian and
solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird's-eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, Including our own.
Turns out, I'm not the only one impressed by the reviewer's appropriation of Melville's language and style in Moby-Dick. On Christmas Day 1851 the Richmond Watchman and Observer reprinted a long section of the first paragraph under the heading, "How Saints are Made," and credited the piece to Herman Melville himself.
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| Richmond Watchman and Observer December 25, 1851 |
How Saints are Made.
BY HERMAN MELVILLE
After a saint has been dead and buried long enough, that is, after his foibles and venial peccadilloes have been almost forgotten, and when accordingly it is proposed to affix his name to the long list of kindred worthies enrolled on the calendar, his pretensions to such canonization, it is well known, must be previously submitted to the ecclesiastical adjudication of the apostolic camarilla; and, still further to guard against the great scandal which might arise from the precipitate bestowal of this saintly investiture on personages whose lives have won for them an unenviable celebrity, and the symmetry of whose character has been marred by any one of the seven deadly sins, the merits and claims of every plaintiff for sainthood are subjected to inquisitorial post mortem examination, much as the Egyptians were wont to do before they would allow the defunct a burial ticket, save that the camarilla buries first and examines afterwards; for we shrewdly suspect that a few of the titled "saints" would never have attained their worshipful dignity if they had not been previously reduced to that condition which enables poets and fish, according to Peter Pindar, to shine with a lustre all their own. Now, in order that the plea for canonization may proceed after due process of law, an officer is attached to the apostolic chamber, known under the complimentary cognomen of the Devil's Advocate, whose duty it is, indeed, in the behoof of the commonwealth of Tartarus, to regard himself as a regularly licensed attorney general of his satanic majesty, and whose function it is to rake, scrape, and collect all that can be truly or slanderously said, surmised, or thought against the claimant in this suit for an apotheosis among the saints. Thus it is easy to see that the calendar is kept pure, though persons of a cavilling disposition might allege against the equity of this judicial arrangement that, in order to ensure a poetic justice, the devil should be invested with the sole appointment of his deputy, and that it should not be lodged with the court, as is actually the case, without at least his advice and consent. Still, so far as we have read in the "apostolic constitutions," about whose genuineness so much ink has been shed, they contain no proviso of this kind.
--from the Richmond, Virginia Watchman and Observer of 25 December 1851; found on Virginia Chronicle, The Library of Virginia.
Related posts
- Unabridged! Welling's review of Moby-Dick in the National Intelligencer
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/08/unabridged-wellings-review-of-moby-dick.html
- William Allen Butler's friendly notice of The House of the Seven Gables
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/09/william-allen-butlers-friendly-notice.html
- Moby Dick widely praised in 1851-2
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-widely-praised-in-1851-2.html
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