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Thursday, October 3, 2024

Gottschalk reminiscence by Charles G. Whiting, with "Corrupt as Lima" quoted from MOBY-DICK

Signed "C. G. W." this reminiscence of the brilliant New Orleans-born pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk by Charles Goodrich Whiting appeared in the Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts) on January 29, 1870. Notices of Gottschalk's death in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in December 1869 had reached the United States nine days before, via steamship. Responding to the sad news, Whiting offers a heartfelt tribute to Gottschalk's genius and patriotism, informed by random personal encounters with the celebrated pianist in 1862, while vacationing in Saratoga, New York. Whiting also shares a memorable story (extracted from the report of another, unidentified Saratoga tourist) about Gottschalk's fired-up playing of the Star Spangled Banner in Saratoga, around the start of the Civil War. 

Springfield Daily Republican - January 29, 1870
via genealogybank.com

For Melville fans, another point of interest in Charles G. Whiting's published tribute to Gottschalk will be found in a casual allusion to Moby-Dick, specifically Chapter 54: The Town-Ho's Story. After the Civil War and rumors of a scandalous romance in San Francisco, Gottschalk left the United States for South America, touring in Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. According to Whiting,

"He found more luxurious rest in the city of the Incas, whose wickedness has become a proverb,--"Corrupt as Lima,"--or among the orange groves around Rio Janeiro."

Glossing Gottschalk's warm and apparently forgiving reception in Lima, Peru, Whiting quotes the expression "Corrupt as Lima" as a supposedly well-known "proverb" of sinfulness. However pervasive the association of Lima with immortality may have become, that particular way of expressing it with the simile, "Corrupt as Lima" was always Melville's own invention, creatively inspired by a passage in one of his favorite source-books, A Visit to the South Seas (New York: John P. Haven, 1831) by Charles S. Stewart. Charles Goodrich Whiting would not have found the cited "proverb" outside of "The Town-Ho's Story" from Moby-Dick; or, The Whale in some version or other, as it first appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for October 1851 or later in Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick. 

Transcribed below from the Springfield MA Daily Republican of January 29, 1870; this item was reprinted in the weekly edition of the Springfield Republican on February 4, 1870.

LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK 

Reminiscences from a Saratoga Season.  

So Gottschalk is dead! The passionate pulse is still, the generous heart is hushed, the poet-soul is fled. Some cannot think of anything in his varied and brilliant life, but one strange episode which banished him from the northern world's regard, four years ago in San Francisco. I knew about this man, though merely by observation, only three years previous to his fall,--if fall it were, and not a fatal mistake of the world's. It was at Saratoga in the hight of the season of 1862. He was of course an object of great interest to all the transient idlers, and I, idle like the rest, was drawn toward him irresistibly the first time I saw him. It was in a church, and a certain reverend beggar, with a wondrous gift of story-telling, was effectively stirring the sympathies of a large audience, even in a sweltering sultriness of air which invited sleep.

The usher inducted me into a pew where sat a young man, whose face would hardly have challenged a second glance, and whose presence even I did not at first heed. When my attention was drawn to him it was by a nervous motion of his fingers upon the seat before him, and I was struck by the rare refinement and delicacy of his hand. Hands have their expression no less truly than faces; Lavater said once that he would venture to pronounce upon the character of each person in a miscellaneous assembly, while passing around a contribution plate, and looking only on the hand as it dispensed or refused the chance of charity. This right hand was not slender, but its proportion and grace would not have shamed the immortality of marble. In its restlessness it showed as supple as silk, yet as strong as steel, and the nails were like shells, transparent and scrupulously trimmed. Then I scrutinized the man. Dark, wavy hair, a low brow, liquid and poetic eyes,--the only really fine feature his face held,--a handsome nose, though thick-nostriled as I once saw in a French sculpture of Apollo, a heavy moustache, a weak lower lip, a chin cleft with a deep dimple, and not too full cheeks,--these made his physiognomy. His dress was rich but not obtrusive or foppish, a large diamond shone on his left hand. It flashed across me, "This is Gottschalk!"

What impelled the artist to such a place, if he was merely a man of luxury and self-indulgence, is an enigma I should decline the attempt to solve. More astonishing than his presence was the emotion he plainly felt as the orator wrought up a painful tale of ruin and shame in the great city. I lost my interest in the story in watching the musician. And a lesser than Lavater would have been satisfied to call him "generous" on the evidence of the banknote he added to the collection of bits and fractions that followed the appeal.

I saw him often after that, and heard, too, many an incident of like tenor, testifying to a liberal, open-handed sharing of his rapidly gained fortunes with the needy; though I confess to having heard unpleasant tales enough about the unchecked riot of his passions. And yet in Saratoga he was the fast friend of the blind preacher, Rev. W. H. Milburn. Both were at the same Hotel--Union Hall--and they were much in each other's society; Mr. Milburn deeply loved music, and for his benefit Gottschalk's improvisations flowed freely. The pianist and the orator joined forces during this season in a charity entertainment, Gottschalk giving an hour's concert, Milburn his lecture on Milton.

I find in a letter written from Saratoga a description of an incident occurring there before my visit, but which I often heard alluded to by those present. It should be premised that the war had then but begun, and the old secesh element had not yet given place to the shoddy in that favorite resort of southern chivalry. Gottschalk was playing at a concert, a rare treat always. He had entranced all with his sensuous, brilliant, dreamy, gorgeous imagery of tone, his mastery of touch,--and now the struck into the "Star Spangled Banner." "The audience hissed him,--a thing unheard of, utterly out of his experience! They hissed him, as I said; the man turned, his face,--not a notable one,--flushed, his eyes flamed, intense scorn vibrated through his frame, he looked a lion! 'Now we shall hear playing,' whispered a friend at my elbow. And we did. He turned to his piano. Such a Star Spangled Banner I never before heard or shall hear again. The audience held their breath, patriots in despite of themselves. There followed Hail Columbia, and an interwoven rendering of other tunes, and mingling therein, still the Star Spangled Banner, glorious, unshaken, triumphant! They'll never try again to hiss down Louis Moreau Gottschalk!" One who never heard Gottschalk play cannot fully understand the possibilities of the piano. There is no one left like him. Sebastian Bach Mills plays mystically, Alide Topp is a marvel of artistic decision and delicacy, Ritter's splendid touch is a mere memory of Gottschalk's own,--but his genius has no successor. His vanity, which was undeniably great, as his kindliness of heart, always led him freely to display his marvelous talent for the entertainment of others. And the piano of Union Hall was a Mecca of music lovers the season through. Amid a society in which I never mingled, to be sure, but in regard to which I was more or less au fait, he was a prince.

A delicate courtesy or an ardent gallantry characterized his manner with women; and I have heard it said that his exquisite refinement rendered him the most dangerous assailant of woman's honor, and that he was not nearly so wicked as he might have been. His passions were like his birth, tropical; I have tried to believe less of their evil results than the gossip-mongers have bruited abroad, but the San Francisco story is not to be hid by any blind faith soever. Gottschalk's friends are said to claim that he was grossly abused at that time, and that all the damning record of lust, abduction, shame and hasty flight before the indignant avengers thereof, was half distortion, half fabrication. But they have not published their defensive version, and certainly since that hour he has never set  foot on northern shores. He found more luxurious rest in the city of the Incas, whose wickedness has become a proverb,--"Corrupt as Lima,"--or among the orange groves around Rio Janeiro.

But how magnificent, how enviable, his death-stroke! Leading a monster concert, stilling a storm of applause with the awful tenderness and mystery of his own inspired "La Mort," and amid the hushed listeners smitten by la mort in verity, and falling there, with a farewell clangor of chords he should never strike again on earth,--could ambition have wished a more ideal end to his life of prodigal passion and glowing genius?

C. G. W.
Springfield, January  28.

As recounted by C. G. Whiting, the hisses Gottschalk got from secesh-leaning listeners in Saratoga motivated a defiant performance of his patriotic composition "The Union: Concert Paraphrase on National Airs," still appreciated well into this our 21st century as A Rousing Anthem of National Unity. A similar anecdote circulated widely in Northern U. S. newspapers after an 1862 performance in Montreal, Canada.

12 Aug 1862, Tue St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri) Newspapers.com

GOTTSCHALK ON THE UNION.-- During the late provincial tour of this celebrated pianist in the Canadas, he gave an exhibition of his patriotism to our neighbors. At his concert in Montreal, the house being crammed to overflowing, loud calls were made for "Dixie" as soon as the pianist took his seat. Such a reception for a moment naturally confused the pianist, but collecting his ideas at once, he faced his audience and sat in silence for a few moments, with folded arms. When the tumult ceased he turned to his piano and, as one of his companions says, played "Hail Columbia," the "Star Spangled Banner," and "Yankee Doodle," as they were never before played on that instrument. The audience was completely shamed, and acknowledging the rebuke, were liberal in their applause during the rest of the evening. It may not be generally known that Gottschalk is a native of New Orleans, and for this exhibition of his patriotism he should have full credit. After the concert, he remarked to a friend that he would have seen the audience in Tophet before he would have complied with their demand.

-- St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 12, 1862.
In case you're wondering if Melville knew Gottschalk, the answer is "maybe." 
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878. A.L.s.(Bayard Taylor) to [Herman Melville];[New York] 24 Feb 1865., 1865.. Herman Melville papers, MS Am 188-188.6, MS Am 188, (339), Box: 7. Houghton Library.
Archived with Herman Melville papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University is an 1865 letter to Melville from Bayard Taylor naming Gottschalk as one of several members of "The Travellers" Club that Melville might already know and enjoy socializing with. 
No. 139 East 8th St.
(Between B'way & 4th Avenue)
Feb. 24, 1865.

My dear Sir:

On Monday evening next, the 27th, "The Travellers" meet here, and it will give me great pleasure to see you among the guests of the Club. Many of the members are no doubt old friends of yours--Darley, Church, Bierstadt, Gottschalk, Cyrus Field, Hunt, Bellows and Townsend Harris. We simply meet to talk, winding up our evenings with a cigar and frugal refreshments.

Very truly yours,
Bayard Taylor.
-- printed text is available in Selected Letters of Bayard Taylor, edited by Paul C. Wermuth (Associated University Presses, 1997) on page 238; also in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Herman Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth on page 696. 
New York Observer - March 23, 1865

Face-time with L. M. Gottschalk and other members of "The Travellers" seems at least conceivable. Newspaper ads confirm that Gottschalk at the time of Bayard's invitation to Melville was definitely still performing in New York City. In late February and March of 1865, "the most brilliant pianist that our country has produced" gave a series of "Farewell Concerts" at Niblo's Saloon. Early in April he would sail for California via Panama. 

As it happened, Gottschalk was still aboard the steamer Constitution when he learned that President Lincoln had been assassinated, as Barbara Cohen-Stratyner has related on the NYPL Blog in a moving 2015 post, An Incommensurable Grief... Louis Moreau Gottschalk on Lincoln's Assassination.



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