The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick by Howard P. Vincent, 1949 | Online Research Library: Questia

The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick by Howard P. Vincent, 1949 | Online Research Library: Questia

Vincent on Leyda

Found on Newspapers.com

Review by Howard P. Vincent of the 1949 anthology Complete Stories of Herman Melville, edited by Jay Leyda; transcribed below from the Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review of May 29, 1949:

Treasure of Melville Gems

 COMPLETE STORIES OF HERMAN MELVILLE.
Edited With an Introduction and Note[s], by Jay Leyda. Random House: New York. 472 pp. $4.

 

by Howard P. Vincent

THIS book brings together all of Herman Melville's short stories, so that his writings in this genre may be assessed.

There can be no doubt of the final judgment of the critics: Melville was a master of the short story. This is not to say that every story he wrote was a masterpiece, but it is certainly true that the author of Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, Bartleby the Scrivener, The Tartarus of Maids and I and My Chimney ranks with his friend, Hawthorne, among short-story writers.

It is interesting to observe that all of these stories were written between 1852 and 1855, and were Melville's attempts to reach a public which would not buy Moby Dick and Pierre.

Anyone who holds to the myth, too long current, that Melville's genius faded out after Moby Dick will be here confounded by the subtle artistry of these magnificent stories—stories which sound the depths of the human heart, and which explore the far reaches of evil, both social and personal.

JAY LEYDA deserves special praise for his editorial work. Not a professional scholar in the academic sense, Leyda has in recent years discovered a tremendous mass of new material concerning the life and writings of Melville, most of which is to be presented in his forthcoming A Melville Log.

Leyda has modestly incorporated some of this new information in his instruction and notes. I say modestly because where the professional scholar would have announced each "new" fact with a "we now know for the first time," or some such trumpeting phrase, Leyda presents the material with disarming casualness.

LEYDA'S skill in criticism is no less remarkable than his research. The introduction is excellent—the best I know to lead one into these stories.

His wealth of new facts does not interfere with the flow of intelligent interpretation. We move easily from the valuable discussion of Melville's undeveloped notes—"story tentatives" Leyda calls them—to shrewd insight.

Consider, for instance: "Though some duty of communication is present in his artistic work (else the work would not have been brought into existence), much of these stories' materiality seems a minutely pointed and deceptive screen erected across what is really taking place behind it—in Melville's mind. We are compelled to regard these stories as an artist's resolution of that constant contradiction—between the desperate need to communicate and the fear of revealing too much. In these stories the contradiction is expressed on various levels of tension—the fiercer the pull, the higher the accomplishment."

Leyda's notes are readable little sketches showing, insofar as is known, the genesis of each story.

There is one touch which many Melville students will appreciate: the dedication to Raymond Weaver, the first biographer of Melville.

Since his Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic was the basis on which later scholars have built, the dedication is especially appropriate.

via Good Reads

Tattooing in the Penny Cyclopaedia

Digitized by Google Books from a volume at NYPL, formerly (as the stamp in the front shows) in the Astor Library, New York.



As the Penny Cyclopaedia article indicates, illustrations and much of the text for this entry are from The New Zealanders. On Melville's imaginative uses of The New Zealanders in Moby-Dick, you have to read Whipscars and Tattoos by Geoffrey Sanborn. And Sanborn's classy website is well worth checking out, not least for the helpful links.

Did the entry on Tattooing prompt Melville to consult The New Zealanders? Howard Vincent suggested a similar pattern might be evident in White-Jacket, of seeing articles in the Penny Cyclopaedia, then consulting works cited as sources for those articles--for instance, Guthrie on Gun-Shot Wounds.

"...it is more probable that Melville had read these articles and then turned to the basic medical authorities from which the encyclopedists themselves had taken their materials."  --The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket, 131

Morgan's History of Algiers

Ex-Voto of a Naval Battle between a Turkish ship from Alger and a ship of the Order of Malta under Langon, 1719
PHGCOM, anonymous 1719 painting, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

But I found ample entertainment in a few choice old authors, whom I stumbled upon in various parts of the ship, among the inferior officers. One was "Morgan's History of Algiers," a famous old quarto, abounding in picturesque narratives of corsairs, captives, dungeons, and sea-fights; and making mention of a cruel old Dey, who, toward the latter part of his life, was so filled with remorse for his cruelties and crimes that he could not stay in bed after four o'clock in the morning, but had to rise in great trepidation and walk off his bad feelings till breakfast time.  --White-Jacket, A Man-of-War Library

Howard Vincent thought Melville had both Morgan's History and another book, Knox's Captivity in Ceylon, "at hand" when writing White-Jacket:

Melville's third paragraph about a couple of "choice old authors, whom I stumbled upon in various parts of the ship" is clearly his improvisation, or use, of two books from which he, now author in 1849, was then reading: Morgan's History of Algiers, and Knox's Captivity in Ceylon. That these were at hand in Melville's New York study is suggested by his adequately accurate quotation from the second work.
--The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket, 118

Vincent says "improvisation" to distinguish this section of more original writing from other passages in the same chapter of White-Jacket that Melville adapted from Mercier's Life in a Man-of-War.  John or Joseph Morgan's Complete History of Algiers does look like a potentially useful source-book for remarkable North African scenery and military history, with tales of captivity and piracy on the Barbary coast. For a start, what about that restless, remorseful Dey? Wonder if we can find any trace of him trying to "walk off his bad feelings" in either volume of Morgan's History. If he's there somewhere, it might be fun to compare the original text with Melville's paraphrase. I am guessing "breakfast time" at least is Melville's contribution.

Volume 1 at the Hathi Trust Digital Library:



Here's a link to the second volume: Morgan's Complete History of Algiers, vol. 2 

1952 Hendricks House Moby-Dick

Important edition by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent, with extensive notes. Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.

• https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015046801760

Harder to find now than the first American edition!


Available online courtesy of  HathiTrust Digital Library.

nuts and bolts of rewriting from sources: "owing to"

Some years back I began to scrutinize Melville's mechanics of revision. One thing I noticed was how much Melville liked to use "owing to" when rewriting his sources.  He evidently favored this device especially for explaining causes and supplying missing information.  Significantly, owing to occurs repeatedly in works where Melville is borrowing heavily from known sources, at least 13x in "Benito Cereno" and 17x in Israel Potter.

So, having taken the trouble to document some uses of owing to in my 2006 conference paper on traces of Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," I got a kick out of predicting then confirming another one in chapter 35 of Moby-Dick.  Easily amused, that's me alright.

Ishmael's comic take, or take-off, on the crow's nest of Captain Sleet is based on a passage in vol. 2 of William Scoresby's Account of the Arctic Regions.  Melville's debt to Scoresby for the comic bit on Sleet's crow's nest was first demonstrated by Frederick B. Adams, Jr., in Colophon (Autumn 1936).  In The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick Howard Vincent (citing Adams) comments:

Melville pounced upon Scoresby's long, prideful account, parodying its pedantry as well as its piety, its over-particularity.  Even without knowledge of the parody, one enjoys the mockery of Melville's paragraphs, but an awareness of the parodic intent, hidden to all but the source hunter or the student of whaling, enhances one's relish of the humor.  (159)

Now I did not have the Colophon article by Adams, but reading the above in Vincent prompted me to look closer at the text of Melville's parody in Moby-Dick.  Looking then in at Melville's re-write of Scoresby in chapter 35 I encountered that phrase again:

When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing.  (Classic Reader)

Mind you, it was only because of my earlier investigations that I even noticed "owing to."  I had not yet looked up the original source for the passage in Scoresby.  But seeing "owing to" again and recognizing it as a favorite device, I had a strong hunch it was Melville's contribution.  Next step, find the source in Scoresby, which I did at Google Books.

And (drum roll please).... Voila!  Here it is, in a footnote:

 The rifle has been occasionally used for shooting narwhales: when fired at from the deck, it is almost impossible to kill them, partly on account of the resistance of the water, which the ball must pass through, and partly on account of the deception in their position, produced by the refractive property of the water. Shooting from the mast head nearly perpendicularly downwards, in a great measure obviates both these inconveniences.  (Scoresby, Account of the Arctic Regions, vol. 2, p205)

 Yep, owing to is all Melville's doing. Melville likes "owing to" so much he has to change Scoresby's perfectly fine "on account of," while keeping "the resistance of the water."  Cool, huh?

Also Melville's (while we're at it) are
popping off (instead of tedious "shooting")

and
the stray in "stray narwhales"

UPDATE:
more additions by to his source in Scoresby, along with "vagrant sea unicorns" for narwhales:

"infesting"
and
"a very different thing"

And for more on Scoresby, check out the Melvilliana post on Scoresby's crow's nest Melvillized

iron belaying pins flying in the dark

Related posts:

• 1848 Journal is digitized and online
• Flogging John and Peter
• speaking a whaler, homeward bound

As reported previously here, the 1848 manuscript journal of William S. W. Ruschenberger is now available online "for use in research, teaching, and private study."

To my mind, certain portions of Ruschenberger's journal appear to have been mined by Herman Melville in the writing of White-Jacket (1850).

The Plymouth

For example, take a look at the belaying pin incident in Ruschenberger's eyewitness account, reported while on board  the sloop-of-war Plymouth in the entry for April 3, 1848.  Significantly, there is no entry for April 3rd in the published version of Ruschenberger's 1848 journal, as originally printed in the Southern Literary Messenger 16 (1852).  The Southern Literary Messenger series "Notes and Commentaries on a Voyage to China" jumps from April 2nd in the April 1852 installment to April 4th in the May 1852 installment, and thus entirely deletes Ruschenberger's dramatic narrative of the events of April 3, 1848:

Monday April 3d.  Wind ahead.  This day completes seventeen years since the day of my commission as a surgeon in the navy.  Capt. Gedney plays whist every afternoon in the cabin with different officers of the ship and Lt. Davis.  To day three men were brought up for card playing on the berth deck, and Gedney stood up on his stick, cripple as he is, and counted off a dozen lashes to each one of these men for doing what he does every day.  In consequence of the Master at Arms having reported the card-playing by these men, an iron belaying pin was thrown at his head in the dark.  Fortunately the missile missed its aim.  The offender could not be discovered.  With a view to his detection, all hands were called on deck, and Gedney hobbled up to the capstan and made the following speech:

"Men — I suppose you all know what you are mustered here for — if you don't, I'll tell you — Somebody threw a belaying pin last night at the Master at Arms.  It was my intention to give you liberty at Rio; but I won't give you no indulgence until I find the rascal that threw the pin.  If I find him out, I will try him by a drum head court-martial, without waiting for any flag-ship, and whatever the sentence is, if it is five hundred lashes, or hang him, I will carry it out, by God — lick him or hang him, I'll be damned if I don't.  Pipe down, Mr Page." — This is a specimen of quarter deck eloquence, and of the effects of reading the bible on Sundays & attending church service.  How can a man compound with his conscience to act in this silly way.  Nay, this bare faced injustice is monstrous when we consider that Gedney sets an example and then flogs the men for following it.

Citation:

Ruschenberger, W. S. W. (William Samuel Waithman), 1807-1895. William S. W. Ruschenberger journal. 18 Feb. 1848 - 6 Mar. 1849. William S. W. Ruschenberger Papers. 0629-b3-fa. East Carolina University Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/2147.

The censored narrative which I have transcribed above from Ruschenberger's 1848 manuscript journal seems to have inspired Melville's portrait in White-Jacket chapter 42, "Killing Time in a Man-of-war in Harbor") of Captain Claret and that officer's response to an airborne belaying pin:

One other way of killing time while in port is playing checkers; that is, when it is permitted; for it is not every Navy captain who will allow such a scandalous proceeding. But, as for Captain Claret, though he did like his glass of Madeira uncommonly well, and was an undoubted descendant from the hero of the battle of the Brandywine, and though he sometimes showed a suspiciously flushed face when superintending in person the flogging of a sailor for getting intoxicated against his particular orders, yet I will say for Captain Claret that, upon the whole, he was rather indulgent to his crew, so long as they were perfectly docile. He allowed them to play checkers as much as they pleased. More than once I have known him, when going forward to the forecastle, pick his way carefully among scores of canvas checkercloths, spread upon the deck, so as not to tread upon the men— the checker-men and man-of-war's men included; but, in a certain sense, they were both one; for, as the sailors used their checker-men, so, at quarters, their officers used these man-of-war's men.

But Captain Claret's leniency in permitting checkers on board his ship might have arisen from the following little circumstance, confidentially communicated to me. Soon after the ship had sailed from home, checkers were prohibited; whereupon the sailors were exasperated against the captain, and one night, when he was walking round the forecastle, bim! came an iron belaying-pin past his ears; and while he was dodging that, bim! came another, from the other side; so that, it being a very dark night, and nobody to be seen, and it being impossible to find out the trespassers, he thought it best to get back into his cabin as soon as possible. Some time after—just as if the belaying-pins had nothing to do with it—it was indirectly rumoured that the checker-boards might be brought out again, which—as a philosophical shipmate observed—showed that Captain Claret was a man of a ready understanding, and could understand a hint as well as any other man, even when conveyed by several pounds of iron.

To be sure, at sea the iron belaying pin makes the handiest of weapons as any sailor or pirate knows.  Nautical literature is full of bludgeonings with belaying pins.  Nevertheless, consider the parallel particulars in the accounts of Ruschenberger and Melville.  In both narratives the incident happens at night, in the dark.  A belaying pin (or two, in Melville's telling) is sent flying in both narratives, in both accounts by the hand of an unknown assailant or assailants who are never discovered.  Moreover, the motives for the attacks are strikingly similar, having to with the enforced suppression of recreational games.  In Ruschenberger's 1848 narrative, the target of the flying belaying pin was enforcing Captain Gedney's unfair and hypocritical prohibition of card-playing.  In Melville's narrative, the hypocritical Captain Claret (who flogs sailors for drunkenness while tipsy himself) had prohibited checkers.  The big difference in the two accounts is in the reaction of the respective captains.  The belligerent and unrepentant Gedney vowed to flog or hang the unknown offender, but Melville's timid Claret is quick to change his mind and approve the playing of checkers, having been personally assaulted, twice.

Before getting too far along we have to consult Howard Vincent's essential study, The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket (Northwestern University Press, 1970). We need to know if Vincent located any source for the belaying pin incident in White-Jacket.

Whew!  At p. 123 Vincent does quote extensively from the passage in question.  And while Vincent does not identify Melville's source, he knows there is one:

When anything is "confidentially communicated," as he says this information was, to one of Melville's narrators, it is certain that a bookish source is the communicator.

And Vincent immediately goes on to say

Sources for the latter half of the chapter have not appeared.

 Hey, it's on and poppin!

On the same subject, check out Melvilliana posts on Flogging John and Peter and speaking a whaler, homeward bound.

Don't forget, as reported at Melvilliana in our inaugural message to the world, Ruschenberger's 1848 journal is digitized and online!