We have seldom or ever read the equal of this chapter [Benito Cereno] in point of profound cunning and deception....
Here's something new concerning the early reception of Herman Melville's short fiction in Canada. Published in the Liverpool, Nova Scotia Transcript on July 31, 1856, this favorable and unusually detailed Canadian review of The Piazza Tales is not collected in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). As indicated on the masthead, the Liverpool Transcript was a weekly newspaper "devoted to moral, political and general intelligence and progress," then owned and edited by S. J. M. Allen.
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| Liverpool [Nova Scotia, Canada] Transcript July 31, 1856 via Nova Scotia Archives |
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE PIAZZA TALES. From the pen of Herman Melville, author of "Typee," "Omoo," etc. Dix & Edwards, New York. E. G. Fuller, Halifax.
The first chapter is devoted to pleasant reminiscences in favor of piazzas, and an "inland voyage to fairyland. A true voyage; but, take it all in all, interesting as if invented."
The second chapter consists of passages in the life of Bartleby, "who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of," with some mention of the author, his employees, his business, chambers and general surroundings, as a means of better understanding the chief character of this chapter. It will be found interesting--very.
The third chapter introduces to our notice the captain of an American Sealer, who displays stirling qualities in the capture of a Spanish slaver at the island of St. Maria, Chili. The slaves having risen, murder their owner and some of the officers and crew of the ship, take full command of the vessel, place the captain and the remainder of the crew under strict watchful guards to navigate and work the vessel. The ringleader Babo with his right hand man Atuful [Atufal] act, in the presence of the American captain a most conspicuous part in all the powers of deception and mock submission to the behests of the captain, who is completely tho' reluctantly compelled at the risk of his life to assist in carrying out their designs, so as to appear as the despotic commander and sole owner of ship and cargo. The whole story with Benito Cerino's [Cereno's] protest is admirably written, deleneating certain characters with an unmistakable hand. We have seldom or ever read the equal of this chapter in point of profound cunning and deception.
The fourth chapter gives a humorous memorandum of "The Lightning-Rod Man" endeavoring to sell, during a storm of rain accompanied with thunder and lightning, certain rods to attract the lightning and convey it from the building.
The fifth tale is divided into ten chapters and is romantically discriptive of the Encantadas or Enchanted Isles--Gallipagos, the land, its singular appearance--the rocks--the peaks of mountains, the queer birds, reptiles, tortoises, etc., which inhabit those sun burnt regions of the Equator. The lone widow and her rescue occupies the eighth chapter. In fact "the enchanted isles" is enchantingly written.
The last tale in this admirably written work is that of "The Bell-Tower, built by the mechanician, the unblest foundling, Baunadonna," [Bannadonna] in Italy three hundred feet in air will repay the reader for his pains.
Two weeks before the favorable notice of the Piazza Tales appeared in the Liverpool Transcript, the same Canadian newspaper dropped an odd reference to "the firm of Bartleby, Benito Cereno" into a notice of The Schoolfellow, a well-regarded magazine for children.
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| Liverpool Transcript - July 14, 1856 |
The School-fellow's Magazine, for June, illustrated. This appears to be a commendable work for boys and girls, many of the best American writers being engaged upon it, among whom we may mention Bayard Taylor. It is from the firm of Bartleby, Benito Cereno.
Agents for the above works, E. G. Fuller, Halifax.
At this time both the Schoolfellow and Putnam's Monthly Magazine were published in New York City by Dix, Edwards & Co. The same "firm" had just issued Melville's new volume The Piazza Tales which of course contained the Putnam's stories "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno." Evidently the phrasing of this 1856 reference to "the firm of Bartleby, Benito Cereno" in some way points to Joshua Augustus Dix and Arthur T. Edwards as publishers of the Schoolfellow and Putnam's. Dix and Edwards were then "very young and very green" as Justin Martin has observed in Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted (Da Capo Press, 2011) page 109.
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| The Old Glory: costume sketches for Benito Cereno, 1976 via The New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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