James Lorimer Graham, Jr.- obit in the New York Tribune by Bayard Taylor

From the New York Tribune, May 2, 1876; image is available online in the Historic American Newspapers at the Library of Congress-Chronicling America. Transcribed below, this unsigned obituary is by Bayard Taylor, as acknowledged in Taylor's letter of condolence to Graham's widow (quoted by Andrew M. Kavalecs in his essay on Graham as "Fosterer of American-German Literary Relations," published in Anglo-German and American Cross-Currents, volume 4).

JAMES LORIMER GRAHAM, JR.

The ocean cable informs us that Mr. James Lorimer Graham, jr., American Consul in Florence, died in that city on Sunday. Mr. Graham was the nephew of Messrs. James Lorimer Graham and John A. Graham of this city, and the brother of Mr. R. M. C. Graham, President of the Metropolitan Insurance Company. He was born in New-York in January 1835, but educated partly at Amiens, in France, where on account of his precocious literary skill he was selected to deliver a poetical address of welcome to Lamartine, when that statesman visited the school in 1848. Mr. Graham afterward lived for a time in Rio Janeiro; then, returning to New York, sailed again in the ill-fated steamer San Francisco, which foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras. The hardship and exposure he underwent at the time left lasting physical disturbances. In 1856 he married Miss Josephine Garner, the sister of Commodore William T. Garner, and remained for several years in this city, where he soon became widely known through his taste for art and literature, his gentle and generous nature, and his brilliant conversational talent. As a member of the Century Club, the Geographical Society, and other kindred institutions, he acquired a large circle of cordial friends, especially among the artists and authors. The years 1862 and ’63 he spent in Europe, and then returned to New-York until the close of 1866. His collections of coins, autographs, drawings, and books were very interesting and valuable, and his house in East Seventeenth-st. became quite a treasury of rare articles. 

Some time after his return to Europe (we believe in 1869), Mr. Graham was appointed Consul-General of the United States for Italy, and took up his residence in Florence, then the capital. His spacious apartments in the Orsini Palace were always opened, with the most free and bountiful hospitality, to his countrymen, and very few who visited Florence escaped a welcome there. When the capital was transferred to Rome, Mr. Graham remained behind, preferring to accept the simple position of Consul rather than change his Italian home. Although his health has been gradually declining for the past two or three years, the end has come suddenly, and the news of it will be a mournful surprise to his many friends here. His nature was singularly sweet and loveable; he was unselfish almost to a fault; ardent in his attachments, placable, high-minded—in short, a man who was never so happy as in making others happy. No one who knew him can forget him.   --New York Tribune, May 2, 1876

Not all of the biographical facts in this obit are strictly accurate. James Lorimer Graham, Jr. and Josie A. Garner were married November 19, 1855 in New York City, according to The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record cited at Ancestry. I'm still working on the uncertain date of Graham's birth. The March 1866 gathering that Melville attended I thought must have take place at 21 Washington Square North, but Taylor locates Graham's house "in East Seventeenth-st." More work to do, clearly.

Later: Trow's via Fold3 backs up Bayard Taylor on the home address. Trow's New York City Directory "For the Year Ending May 1, 1866" gives the address for James Lorimer Graham, jr. as "3 E. 17th." Most likely the March 26, 1866 gathering happened here, at 3 East Seventeenth Street.

The 1860 United States Federal Census shows James L. Graham [Jr.] living in Newtown, Queens with his wife Josephine and four servants, all from Ireland. Graham's age: 25. Occupation: "Gentleman." His 1861 passport application corroborates the January 1835 date of birth that Bayard Taylor gives in the obituary notice transcribed above. Ink blot makes it hard to read the exact number: 21st? of January 1835. 

About Graham's immediate family, Bayard Taylor has it right: James Lorimer Graham, Jr. is the nephew of James Lorimer Graham. JLG Jr.'s father is Nathan Burr Graham, as the 1869 United States Insurance Gazette nicely confirms. 

Related posts

• Melville in March 1866, socializing with the Wanderer's Club
• Identifying the good fellows with Herman Melville at "Lorry" Graham's

Identifying the good fellows with Herman Melville at "Lorry" Graham's, March 1866

The previous post found Herman Melville partying at the Manhattan residence of James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (as the 1865 Trow's NYC Directory indicates, JLG Jr. had moved back to his father uncle JLG Sr.'s place at 21 Washington Square North) on the evening of March 26, 1866. 

UPDATE: But wait, Fold3 and NYPL Digital Collections come through with images from the better source here, Trow's New York City Directory "For the Year Ending May 1, 1866":

A-ha. Now Trow's gives the address for James Lorimer Graham, jr. as "3 E. 17th." That's the address Bayard Taylor remembers in his 1876 obit. Most likely the March 26, 1866 gathering happened here, at 3 East Seventeenth Street.

Melville would count as one of the "invited guests," I'm guessing, rather than an official member of "The Wanderer's Club." Possibly the newspaper notice should say "Wanderers,'" plural. This Wanderers' Club resembles the "Travellers" who likewise met on Monday nights, as we know from the invitation Bayard Taylor sent to Melville on February 24, 1865. In that 1865 letter Taylor identified two fellow Travellers (Darley and Bierstadt) who also would be named as guests of James Lorimer Graham, Jr. on Monday night, March 26, 1866. Hershel Parker muses about the mutual interests of this bunch in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative.

By late March 1866, Melville was a confirmed New Yorker, again, as well as a working and (at last!) published poet. Two Civil War poems from his forthcoming volume Battle-Pieces were already out in Harper's (with a third, "Sheridan at Cedar Creek," soon to appear under the title "Philip" in the April 1866 issue), but Melville had not yet written the prose "Supplement." So he could hold his head up among the poets there at "Lorry" Graham's soiree: William Cullen Bryant, Henry T. Tuckerman, Bayard Taylor, and Richard Henry Stoddard. At least two of Melville's fellow guests (Richard Henry Stoddard and "Barry Gray") would soon enough be his co-workers at the New York Custom House. A fine time for socializing, though deep griefs awaited Melville and his family the very next year--his wife Elizabeth contemplated leaving him by May 1867, then in September their eldest son Malcolm killed himself.

The Wanderer's Club. 

The members of the "Wanderer's Club," together with invited guests, were pleasantly entertained last evening at the residence of Mr. James Lorimer Graham, Jr. The gathering was of a social character, and allowed a free and agreeable interchange of thought among the guests. The many rare and curious books, old engravings, valuable autograph letters and articles of vertu, to be found in Mr. Graham's library, were a source of unfailing interest and enjoyment to every one present. Among the guests were Messrs. Bryant, Bancroft, Tuckerman, Herman Melville, Bayard Taylor, Ripley, Duyckinck, Stoddard, Savage, "Barry Gray," W. T. Blodgett, John Van Buren, Leutze, Kensett, Gifford, Bierstadt, Laing, H. P. Gray, Launt Thompson, Darley, Ehninger, Hunt, Key, Baron Osten Sacken, Gilman, and others.  --New York Evening Post, Tuesday, March 27, 1866

Let's go through the list and try to identify the good fellows at Lorrie Graham's party:

• Bryant must be William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) whose status as living literary giant gets him named first on any properly arranged guest-list.

• Bancroft = the great historian of America George Bancroft (1800-1891).

• Tuckerman = of course Melville's good friend Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1813-1871). Related melvilliana post: H. T. Tuckerman in the Boston Evening Transcript

• Bayard Taylor = none other than Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), poet and travel writer.

• Ripley = who else? reformer, journalist and literary critic George Ripley (1802-1880).

• Duyckinck = Evert Augustus Duyckinck (1816-1878), Melville's old friend, the old rift of 1852 happily repaired.

• Stoddard = Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903).

• Savage = probably the Irish-American journalist and poet John Savage (1828-1888). Contributed to the satirical weekly magazine, The Lantern.

• Barry Gray = writer and Home Journal critic Robert Barry Coffin (1826-1886).

• W. T. Blodgett = William Tilden Blodgett (1823-1875) the art connoisseur, future founder and Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• John Van Buren (1810-1866): Albany lawyer and politico, second son of President Martin Van Buren. JVB must have known Herman's brother Gansevoort in the old days.

In the late 1840s he joined his father in opposing the spread of slavery as a member of the Free Soil Party. John Van Buren, nicknamed "Prince John" by the press, was a highly regarded trial lawyer, famed nationwide for his tall, commanding appearance and his eloquence. He was Chairman of the New York Democratic Party in 1862, and was the party's unsuccessful candidate for state Attorney General in 1865. During the Civil War he continued his opposition to slavery by organizing "Union League" clubs of Democrats and Republicans loyal to the United States. He was known to alternate between periods of overwork followed by periods of dissolution, including excessive drinking and gambling that often left him in financial distress. He died at sea of kidney failure while traveling from Liverpool to New York.  

-- Bill McKern - Find A Grave  

A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie
Albert Bierstadt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After writers and critics, the Evening Post names many artists in attendance. Shades, intimations perhaps of the departed artists and their dialogue in Melville's poem "At the Hostelry" (text available in John Bryant's edition of Tales Poems and Other Writings, and in the 1963 Russell & Russell issue of Melville's Works, volume 16 at the HathiTrust Digital Library). As mentioned already in the previous post, their radiant patron James Lorimer Graham, Jr. was a lot like Melville's conception of the Marquis de Grandvin.

•  Leutze = Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816-1868), famous painter of Washington Crossing the Delaware.

• Kensett = painter John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872), friend of George W. Curtis.

• Gifford = Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), the artist whose painting A Coming Storm inspired one of Melville's poems in Battle-Pieces, "The Coming Storm."

• Bierstadt = Albert Bierstadt 1830-1902). best known for paintings of the Rocky Mountains and other grand, romantic western scenes.

• Laing = Louis Lang (1814-1893), another accomplished German-American painter.

• H. P. Gray = Henry Peters Gray (1819-1877), student of Daniel Huntington and painter of The Wages of War

• Launt Thompson = Launt Thompson (1833-1894), Irish-American sculptor, protege of Erastus Dow Palmer and close friend of Edwin Booth, 

• Darley = Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822-1888), the Hall-Of-Fame illustrator who visited Melville at Arrowhead in August 1853, as told by Hershel Parker in his Herman Melville: A Biography, V2.174.

• Ehninger = John Whetten Ehninger (1827-1889). Aka John Whetton Ehninger, portrait painter and etcher--1847 graduate of Columbia University, with European training.

• Hunt = Hmmm. Not William Morris Hunt (1824-1879) the American painter, a Vermonter and Bostonian, but his brother Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) the great New York architect. Corroborated by Stedman's poetical reference (in the 1994 memorial to James Lorimer Graham, Jr.) to "architraves and friezes" of Hunt and Thompson.

• Key = John Ross Key (1832-1920), American painter and grandson of Francis Scott Key.

Last but not least, a brace of academic diplomatists, or diplomatic academics:

• Baron Osten Sacken = Carl Robert Osten-Sacken (1828-1906), Entomologist and Russian consul general in New York.

• Gilman = ?? Only problem is having so many distinguished Gilmans to worry over...how about Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908), the Yale librarian, scholar, professor, and future first president of Johns Hopkins University. Gilman's early diplomatic experience "as attaché of the United States legation at St. Petersburg, Russia from 1853 to 1855" (Wikipedia) would seem to intersect somehow with that of Russian general consul in NYC and former secretary to the Russian legation, Baron Osten Sacken--which may be why the two names appear together at the end of the guest-list.

Lots here to absorb and ponder. For one thing, was the writer one of the persons listed in the Evening Post report, or a different, unnamed guest? Parke Godwin?

The University of Virginia Library has a manuscript poem to James Lorimer Graham dated November 16, 1866--the night of the honorary dinner at Delmonico's referenced by Edmund Clarence Stedman in the 1894 Century Club memorial. I'm trying to get a scan or other image of the

"Poetic tribute to Graham by an unidentified writer"

who might be Stoddard or Taylor or Stedman, or another of the select company.

And speaking of good fellows, what happened to that precious manuscript book, listed in the Century Club memorial to James Lorimer Graham, Jr. as

Ye Booke of ye Goode Fellowes

 Does The Century Association still have "Ye Booke of ye Goode Fellowes" in the archives?

Related melvilliana post:

• Melville in March 1866, socializing with the Wanderer's Club
• Obit in the New York Tribune by Bayard Taylor

Melville in March 1866, socializing with The Wanderer's Club at the home of James Lorimer Graham, Jr.

Image Credit: Consulate General of the United States 
Note: this is the Wall Street broker JLG, NOT James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (1835-1876)

Monday evening, March 26, 1866 to be exact, according to the report published the next day in the New York Evening Post. The home address of James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (as listed in the 1867 Trow's New York City Directory) was his father's uncle's mansion at 21 Washington Square North.

UPDATE: Fold3 has the better source here, Trow's New York City Directory "For the Year Ending May 1, 1866." Now Trow's gives the address for James Lorimer Graham, jr. as "3 E. 17th." That's the address Bayard Taylor remembers in his 1876 obit. Most likely the March 26, 1866 gathering happened here, at 3 East Seventeenth Street. Also, James Lorimer Graham, Jr. is the NEPHEW of James Lorimer Graham. Graham, Jr.'s father is Nathan Burr Graham, as explained in the 1869 United States Insurance Gazette and Magazine of Useful Knowledge.

UPDATE #2:
If you thought the photo up top looks too late for the subject of our post, James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (1835-1876), you were right!  Naively I had thought the United States Consulate General would know one of their own in Florence, Italy. Alas, they and we had the wrong man. The sharp looking JLG above is of course the Wall Street broker, partner of S. F. Johnson and Charles W. Miller. 

S. F. JOHNSON & CO.. Bankers and Brokers, No. 18 Wall Street.— This well-known concern was founded originally in January, 1869, by Johnson & Day, who were succeeded by G wynne, Johnson & Day. and in 1879, Messrs. S. Fisher Johnson and Charles W. Miller formed a partnership under the present firm title. Both are thoroughly experienced men, and devote their close attention to the wants of their patrons. In 1892 Mr. James Lorimer Graham, who has been connected with the house ever since its inception, was admitted into the firm, with no change of title. They deal in all kinds of bonds, stocks, securities, etc., on commission only, for cash or on margin, and, as they are members of the New York Stock Exchange, all their transactions for patrons are governed by the strict rules controlling that honorable and reliable organization. They also do a general banking business.... --New York, 1894 Illustrated

So like the U. S. Consulate General in Florence, Italy, we're still in want of any photo of the real James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (1835-1876).

Well! Just the sort of enticements to draw out Melville as we know him in the second volume of Hershel Parker's biography: books, engravings, and heady talk with good fellows like Tuckerman, Duyckinck. and Darley. From the New York Evening Post, Tuesday, March 27, 1866; found in the online Newspaper Archives at Genealogy Bank.

New York Evening Post, Tuesday, March 27, 1866

The Wanderer's Club.

The members of the "Wanderer's Club," together with invited guests, were pleasantly entertained last evening at the residence of Mr. James Lorimer Graham, Jr. The gathering was of a social character, and allowed a free and agreeable interchange of thought among the guests. The many rare and curious books, old engravings, valuable autograph letters and articles of vertu, to be found in Mr. Graham's library, were a source of unfailing interest and enjoyment to every one present. Among the guests were Messrs. Bryant, Bancroft, Tuckerman, Herman Melville, Bayard Taylor, Ripley, Duyckinck, Stoddard, Savage, "Barry Gray," W. T. Blodgett, John Van Buren, Leutze, Kensett, Gifford, Bierstadt, Laing, H. P. Gray, Launt Thompson, Darley, Ehninger, Hunt, Key, Baron Osten Sacken, Gilman, and others.

First order of business will be to identify all concerned, if we can, starting in this post with the host: James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (1835-1876), familiarly known as "Lorrie" Graham. Below are links to the 1894 memorial and the catalog of his library, both published by the Century Association:

• James Lorimer Graham, Jr.  (at Google Books);
  and also available at the Internet Archive:

• A Catalogue of the James Lorimer Graham Library at Google Books; 
• A Catalogue of the James Lorimer Graham Library at the Internet Archive

The Online Books Page has links to both items in the HathiTrust Digital Library.

Reading things like the passage below from the 1894 memorial, "Lorrie" Graham begins to look like a real-life model for Melville's imaginary Marquis de Grandvin:

One of the most distinguished of his literary friends, who is with us to-night, is reported, at a dinner of literary and kindred spirits not long ago, to have offered the following toast to the memory of Lorrie Graham:

"Here's to Graham! Let us keep his memory green; for when we poor fellows lived on hard tack all the week, we knew that there were always champagne and oysters for us at Graham's whenever we chose to go there."

In another passage from the 1894 memorial, Edmund Clarence Stedman recalled the dinner for Graham at Delmonico's on November 16, 1866 as a "unique and unforgettable" evening. The honorary "Supper" was

given to Lorimer Graham before his departure for Europe. This came off at Delmonico's, Fourteenth Street, on the 16th of November, 1866. From twenty to twenty-five gentlemen were there, nearly all of them Centurions, the Committee in charge being Messrs. William Bond, C. P. Cranch, Bayard Taylor, R. H. Stoddard, Launt Thompson, and the present speaker. In addition to the lyrics in hand, poems were also contributed by Cranch and Boker, but these were not so available for reproduction after the interval of twenty-eight years. Brief speeches in affectionate honor of Mr. Graham were made by the other guests. The evening was in some respects unique, and unforgetable.

The night before, J. Lorimer Graham had served as honorary President of one of the tables at the lavish banquet for Cyrus W. Field. Sponsored by the New York Chamber of Commerce, the Field affair took place in the great hall of the Metropolitan Hotel. The much more intimate dinner for Graham happened at Delmonico's, which provides the setting for At the Hostelry, one of Melville's Burgundy Club poems. Melville, however, is not named as one of the select twenty-five, most of whom belonged to the Century Club.

HathiTrust Digital Library has the 1963 re-issue by Russell & Russell of the 1922-24 Constable edition of Melville's works with The Marquis De Grandvin and Jack Gentian sketches in the thirteenth volume. Admittedly, there's no getting around the fact that Melville's Marquis de Grandvin is a Frenchman,

"a countryman of Lafayette and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi."  --Herman Melville: A Biography, V2.833

But good lord! look what the American Consulate in Florence, Italy has to say about former U. S, Consul James Lorimer Graham, Jr. :

"During his sojourn abroad he became a proficient French scholar and retained his fluency and perfect accent all his life. As such, he was often mistaken for a Frenchman."  --U.S. Consulate - Florence

Likewise the Appleton's Encylcopedia entry offers a number of suggestive points of comparison with Melville's convivial de Grandvin, in particular his being "widely known through his taste for art and literature and his brilliant conversational talents." (Later note: the entry below is copied nearly verbatim from the obituary by Bayard Taylor in the New York Tribune, May 2, 1876.)

James Lorimer Graham

GRAHAM, James Lorimer, consul, born in New York City in January, 1835; died in Florence, Italy, 30 April, 1876. He was partly educated at Amiens, France, where, on account of his precocious literary talent, he was selected to deliver a poetical address of welcome to Lamartine when the latter visited the school in 1848. Mr. Graham lived for a time in Rio Janeiro, and, after returning to New York, was a passenger in the steamer '" San Francisco," which foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras. His experience in this wreck injured his health and hastened his death. In 1856 he married and settled in New York, where he became widely known through his taste for art and literature and his brilliant conversational talents. As a member of the Century club, the Geographical society, and kindred institutions, he made the acquaintance of many artists and authors. He spent the years 1862-'3 in Europe, and after remaining in New York until 1866 again went abroad. Meantime he had been busily engaged in acquiring whatever curiosities he had found in his travels, until he had large collections of coins, autographs, drawings, and books. Some time after his return to Europe, Mr. Graham was appointed United States consul-general for Italy, and resided in Florence. When the capital was transferred to Rome, he preferred to accept the office of a simple consul rather than change his home. --Famous Americans - James Lorimer Graham

Graham's diplomatic service in Italy seems transferred in Melville's Burgundy Club material to Major Jack Gentian--a disciple of the Marquis de Grandvin whom Melville imagines as the appointed American consul in Naples.

Andrew M. Kavalecs writes informatively of Graham as "Fosterer of American-German Literary Relations" through his correspondence with Adolf Strodtmann.

A helpful biography by Jeffrey Begeal is available online at The Florin Website. The online biography lists a title by Mr. Begeal that would be lovely to have, if I could only find it:

• Begeal, Jeffrey. James Lorimer Graham, Jr. c. 1832-1876. Biography of an American Savant. Villa de Bella Silva Press: Smithfield, NC. 2004.

How much of "Lorrie" Graham and the wonderful Wanderer's Club do we find memorialized in Melville's uncompleted writing about the Burgundy Club?

Related melvilliana post:

• Identifying the good fellows with Herman Melville at "Lorry" Graham's
• Obit in the New York Tribune by Bayard Taylor

Melville's cameo role in Nation-Famous New York Murders (1914) by Alfred Henry Lewis

Image Credit: Ron Scheer - Buddies in the Saddle

Among other things eastern journalist, muckraker, biographer, and western storyteller Alfred Henry Lewis wrote fictionalized tales of real-life crime. One of Lewis's supposedly true crime stories, originally published in the March 1913 issue of Pearson's Magazine, features a brief but fascinating appearance by Herman Melville. I don't remember seeing any notice in Melville scholarship of Melville's cameo role in Nation-Famous New York Murders (published in book form by the G. W. Dillingham Company in 1914). Another melvilliana exclusive? I stumbled over it while hunting up published mentions of Melville's Civil War poem, "Sheridan at Cedar Creek."

In his dramatic account of the Harvey Burdell murder case, Lewis definitely gets his facts mixed up about Herman Melville. Essentially Lewis has magically transported the 1880's Melville thirty years back in time, to Manhattan on a cold winter's day in early 1857. Specifically (as clarified in the revised book version), January 28, 1857. Impossible for Melville really to have been there, since most of that month he spent in Jerusalem and Lebanon on his 1856-7 Mediterranean tour. Melville's The Confidence-Man would be published in April 1857. The year before, Melville (still living in Pittsfield) was composing "The Piazza" to induce his forthcoming volume of magazine stories titled The Piazza Tales. Lewis's Melville, however, is already a curmudgeonly New Yorker, another frustrated writer employed in the Custom House. Lewis misquotes the line from "Sheridan at Cedar Creek" and miscalls it (as did Stoddard in his published Recollections) by the title of Buchanan Read's poem "Sheridan's Ride."

Some facts of Melville's life Lewis might have got from the biographical introduction to Typee by Arthur Stedman, son of Edmund Clarence Stedman who is also a character in the Burdell chapter of Nation-Famous New York Murders. As shown below, however, the most interesting factual details are reworked from the autobiography of Richard Henry Stoddard. When Melville shows up for dinner at the brand new Metropolitan Hotel, he joins the table of fellow writers Stoddard, Bayard Taylor, and George Henry Boker. Stedman sits at a nearby table with fellow lawyers David Dudley Field and Charles O'Connor. Lewis seats Fitz-James O'Brien at another table with Frederick Swartwout Cozzens (both fresh from Pfaff's beer cellar) along with Walt Whitman. At one point in the literary table-talk, Melville's gloomy looks remind O'Brien of Hamlet, "the melancholy Dane." Lewis makes O'Brien laughably ignorant of Melville and his reputation ("Never heard of him."). One year after the events recorded by Lewis, O'Brien would critically survey Melville's entire career to date in the April 1857 issue of Putnam's Monthly Magazine.

Excepting Stoddard, the literati at the Metropolitan as described by Alfred Henry Lewis are mostly Pfaff's regulars.

Despite his numerous factual errors, Lewis does seem to know something about Melville and other literary New Yorkers in the 1870's and 1880's especially. He knows, for instance, about the Century Club, about Stoddard's job at the Custom House and Stoddard's Echo Club. Much if not all this knowledge derives from Stoddard's Recollections, Personal and Literary. For example, Stoddard remembers that Bayard Taylor "had learned by heart" the "Opium Fantasy" poem by Lowell's wife. And when Lewis makes Cozzens say

 "Stoddard insists that next to Emerson he's the great American mystic."

the words of Stoddard are quoted verbatim from Stoddard's 1903 book, Recollections, Personal and Literary.

Intentionally or not, Melville's unfriendly critique of Mrs. Lowell's poetry as "privately published" for good reason is heavily ironic given Melville's later choice to privately publish two volumes of his own poetry, John Marr and Timoleon in limited edtions of 25 copies each. Below, Lewis's fictionalized glimpse of Herman Melville at the Metropolitan Hotel with links to the magazine and book versions of Nation-Famous New York Murders:

While waiting for the coming of Officer Matzell, with his word about Burdell, suppose we look about the room. It should be as good a way of killing time as any other.

Over near a window are Bayard Taylor, the poet Stoddard, and Boker who wrote Francisca da Rimini in which Miss Julia Dean is playing at Wallack's.

The sepulchral Herman Melville enters, and saunters funereally across to Taylor, Stoddard and Boker.

Beyond them sits Edmund Clarence Stedman, with lawyers David Dudley Field and Charles O'Connor.

The second table from the door is taken by "Sparrow Grass" Cozzens and Fitz-James O'Brien, who have adjourned from Pfaff's beer cellar near Leonard street where, under the Broadway sidewalk, they were quaffing lager, and getting up an appetite for dinner on onions, pretzels and cheese. They have with them Walt Whitman, who, silently and wholly wanting jn that "barbaric yawp," is distinguished by what William Dean Howells—ever slopping over in his phrase-making—will one day speak of as his "branching beard and Jovian hair."

...

"By the way, I've got a treasure," exclaims Taylor; "it's a copy of Mrs. Lowell's poems. They were privately printed, you know."

"May I see it?" asks the sepulchral Melville.

"It's in my desk at the Tribune office. There's one poem in it, An Opium Fantasy, which struck me greatly. It runs like this:

Oh, it is but a little owl,
The smallest of its kin,
That sits beneath the midnight cowl.
And makes its airy din.

"'And makes its airy din,'" repeats the lugubrious Melville, more sepulchral than ever. "I can understand why it was printed privately."'

Melville, soured by several failures, is inclined to cynicism in the presence of the poems of others. He has not yet written, you must remember, his Sheridan's Ride, which will begin, "Oh, shoe the horse with silver which bore him to the fray."

Taylor pays the bill, and he and the others depart for Stoddard's house in Third street, where their Echo Club is to have a meeting.

"Who's the melancholy Dane?" demands O'Brien, as the trio go talking themselves into Broadway.

"That's Melville," says "Sparrow Grass." "Thought you knew him. Works with Dick Stoddard in the Custom House."

"Never heard of him," returns the case-hardened O'Brien.

"Never heard of him? You amaze me! Why, he's written Typee, and Omoo and Mardi. Stoddard insists that next to Emerson he's the great American mystic."

O'Brien receives this with a Celtic grunt. "He looks as if he were," says he.

There is Matzell now; the broad, thick, stocky personage with the police expression of face. Wood greets him with the off-hand manner practised by New York mayors when they deal with members of the police.

--Pearson's Magazine Volume 29 - March 1913; and

--The Bond Street Mystery in Nation-Famous New York Murders

Other chapters of special interest to Melville fans deal with riots from the perspective of New York City police officers: one on the 1863 Draft Riots (subject of "The House-Top" in Battle-Pieces) and another on the 1849 Astor Place riots (before which Melville had co-signed a published letter backing Macready). The book version of the Burdell chapter gives Melville extra lines of dialogue that are not present in the magazine version. In the book, Lewis introduces Bayard Taylor's recitation of  Maria White Lowell's "An Opium Fantasy" by having Melville ask forlornly:

“You’ve been up to Cambridge?” put in Melville, glancing gloomily across at Taylor. “You’ve seen Lowell and the Atlantic Monthly crowd ?”

Maria White Lowell via Digital Commonwealth