Project MUSE - Twenty-three Melville Letters That Have Appeared Since 1993: An Addendum to the CORRESPONDENCE Volume

Inventoried by the great trailblazer and stargazer John M. J. Gretchko in the latest Leviathan

Project MUSE - Twenty-three Melville Letters That Have Appeared Since 1993: An Addendum to the <i>Correspondence</i> Volume

Project MUSE - The Library of Jane L. Melville: With Some Provocations toward the Creativity of Herman Melville

Project MUSE - The Library of Jane L. Melville: With Some Provocations toward the Creativity of Herman Melville

A One-footed or One-Legged American God

Guest post by John M. J. Gretchko 

 

From the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer via Mexicolore

A One-footed or One-legged American God 

Herman Melville explored the mythologies of many nations, from India to Egypt to classical Greece and Rome. Would he have ignored North American mythology? Chapter 36 “The Quarter-deck” of Moby-Dick suggests he may have significantly dabbled in it. 

Melville writes of Ahab: 

“Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints of his one unsleeping ever-pacing thought” 

-- Moby-Dick Northwestern-Newberry Edition page 160. 

True, these metaphorical footprints on Ahab's forehead are not real---or are they? In the ancient lore of North Americans, footprints, appearing on the bodies of figures, symbolized the invisible presence of Tezcatlipoca, the chief god of the Toltecs or the Aztecs (Séjourné, Burning Water pages 174-6). This was the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, often depicted with one good leg and with the other missing a foot or a leg bitten off above the knee by Cipactli, the Aztec sea monster. 

Cipactli was a crocodile, or according to the American Researches of Alexander von Humboldt, a whale with a horn in his forehead (Volume 1 page 338). Cipactli was tempted to the surface when the god used his foot as bait (Burland and Forman, Feathered Serpent and Smoking Mirror page 55). Tezcatlipoca in place of his torn appendage bore a mirror. Would the medallion-shaped tablet on the upper part of Ahab’s ivory leg be comparable? 

The grandiose work, Antiquities of Mexico (1831-48) by Lord Kingsborough in nine monstrous volumes, each a labor to lift, holds drawings of this one-footed god from the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, shown with an amputated right foot or leg. The Literary World of 7 April 1849 discloses that the Astor Library had acquired all nine volumes. Unfortunately Tezcatlipoca is not so identified in the text of Antiquities, nor do these volumes tell his story.

Today, images of Kingsborough's facsimile Codex Fejérváry-Mayer are accessible via The British Museum

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am1902-0111-1 is accessible 

The manuscript Codex is held by the World Museum Liverpool.

Although the name of the god is certainly not a household word, it was not unfamiliar in Melville’s day, having appeared as early as the sixteenth century in José de Acosta’s writings, later translated by Samuel Purchas. 

Comical wordplay involving the Captain's performance of a "feat" on foot occurs later in The Quarter-Deck when Stubb whispers punningly “that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat.” As overheard by Ishmael, Stubb makes an awfully good pun in reference to Ahab’s pacing on deck. 

In chapter 19 The Prophet, Elijah calls Ahab "Old Thunder." In the "Quarter-Deck" chapter, Ahab “looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up” (Northwestern-Newberry Edition page 161). In chapter 119, “The Candles,” Starbuck, amidst the thunder and lightning of an approaching typhoon and in “profound darkness,” hears a voice by his side and asks “Who’s there?” Ahab replies “Old Thunder” (Northwestern-Newberry Edition page 505). Apparently, Ahab speaks of himself. Then in chapter 124, “The Needle,” Ahab notices that his compasses are misreading: “I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses—that’s all” (N-N page 517). Here when Ahab says “thunder,” he means “lightning.” But this was accepted usage. Both Webster’s 1841 American Dictionary and John Ogilvie’s Comprehensive English Dictionary (London, 1864) in second definitions state: 

“Thunder is used for lightning, or for a thunder-bolt, either originally through ignorance, or by way of metaphor, or because the lightning and thunder are closely united.”

Figuratively speaking, is Ahab thunder or lightning or both? 

Back in chapter 36, with a storm approaching, Ahab warns, “Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck” (N-N page 164). Is Ahab alluding also to himself, as a metaphoric hurricane? Could the image of one sapling metaphorically represent or suggest a leg? 

Tezcatlipoca is a first rate atmospheric god and rules all weather conditions, as the popular writer Lewis Spence observed one hundred years ago in The Gods of Mexico, pages 113 and 115. Others have noted that Tezcatlipoca resembles and may be identical with the Mesoamerican Mayan god, Huracan (Guilhem Olivier, Mockeries and Metamorphoses page 106). In Melville's century lexicographers derived the word hurricane "from the Indian word hurica, which signifies the devil."

As paraphrased by Dennis Tedlock, Eva Hunt on page 242 in The Transformation of the Hummingbird (Cornell University Press, 1977) depicts Hurakan as

"both one-legged and a causer of hurricanes."

According to Hunt and others, the Mayan name Hurakan literally means "one-legged." 

Did Melville fashion the "ungodly, god-like" Ahab with Tezcatlipoca in mind? 

Works Cited

Burland, C. A. and Werner Forman. Feathered Serpent and Smoking Mirror. New York: Putnam, 1975.

Humboldt, Alexander von. Researches Concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America. Trans. Helen Maria Williams. 2 vols. London, 1814.

Kingsborough, Edward King, Viscount. Antiquities of Mexico: comprising fac-similes of ancient Mexican paintings and hieroglyphics. 9 vols. London, 1833-48.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. Edited by Harrison Hayford,  Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Volume 6 of The Writings of Herman Melville. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1988.

Olivier, Guilhem. Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God:Tezcatlipoca, “Lord of the Smoking Mirror.” Trans. Michel Besson. Boulder: U P of Colorado, 2008.

Séjorné, Laurette. Burning Water: Thought and Religion in Mexico. Translated by Irene Nicholson. Berkeley: Shambala, 1976.

Spence, Lewis. The Gods of Mexico. London: Unwin, 1923.

Tedlock, Dennis, translator and commentator. Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. Revised edition. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

H Melville in New York City

 Guest post by John M. J. Gretchko

Although an abbreviated H Melville, found as such in New York City newspapers, can echo the person of Herman Melville, one must be careful drawing an easy conclusion, since a couple of H Melvilles existed in mid-century New York. However, at least two instances of H. Melville point to Herman Melville. 

1846

New York Evening Express - July 11, 1846

On 11 July 1846 in “ARRIVALS AT THE CITY HOTELS” from the New York Evening Express, H. Melville of Lans, so abbreviated from Lansingburgh, was checked into Dunning’s Hotel at 66 Cortlandt Street (Ground Zero on 9/11), diagonally across from the house where Herman had been a child. The proprietor was Smith Dunning. At this time Herman was in town to receive cuts to the expurgated edition of Typee and to make revisions to it and possibly to collect $150 from Wiley and Putnam from his Typee account (Jay Leyda, The Melville Log Volume 1 pages 221-2). This H. Melville is undoubtedly Herman Melville, who may have been staying at Dunning’s for several days.

1862

In chapter 92 of Moby-Dick, “Ambergris,” Melville facetiously speaks of curing the dyspepsia of a whale by administering “three or four boatloads of Brandreth pills.” 

Brandreth's  Pills
National Museum of American History

Nine years later on 10 December 1860, Allan Melville, Herman’s brother, filed a complaint before the Supreme Court of the City and County of New York for plaintiffs Maunsell B. Field and Ward McLean, real estate brokers, against Benjamin Brandreth, famed and wealthy purveyor of purgative pills. (Field, also a lawyer, along with the illustrator Felix O. C. Darley had visited Herman at Arrowhead one summer in the early 1850s). 

via NYPL Digital Collections

Brandreth had employed Field and McLean to negotiate a loan for $155,000 secured by a mortgage for the Brandreth House, a first-class hotel, at 294 Canal Street and the intersection of Broadway, Canal, and Lispenard Streets in New York City. Plaintiffs agreed to accept one percent commission. But the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, at first willing, declined to finance the loan, and Brandreth refused to pay the commission. But on 17 October 1862, Allan won the case for the plaintiffs against Brandreth, and the plaintiffs were paid their one percent and then some (case B-40). Curiously, an H. Melville of Massachusetts had checked into the Brandreth House the month before on 6 September 1862. 

New York Evening Express - September 6, 1862

Barring a weird coincidence, this H. Melville should be Herman. In Albany Peter Gansevoort had written in his diary that after tea on 4 September Herman had taken the boat for New York (Leyda, Melville Log Volume 2 page 654).

Hershel Parker comments in Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 2, 1851-1891 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), page 515: “What his purpose was in going is not known.” Had Allan sent Herman to inspect and assess the state of Brandreth’s collateral? If the hotel had deteriorated, then the failure of the loan was Brandreth’s fault. 

Brandreth House, as described in the 1866 directory, Miller's New York As It Is, or Stranger's Guide-Book on page 69: 

“The rooms are elegantly furnished---many of them in suites of communicating parlors and chambers, suitable for families and parties traveling together. Being kept on the European plan, guests may live in the most economical or luxurious manner. Meals served at all hours at the shortest notice.”  

My Dear Upton

For a finer and prior treatment of the matter herein, please see Richard Colles Johnson, "A New Melville Letter" in Melville Society Extracts 112 (March 1998) at pages 10-11, 

now counted also in the important update by John M. J. Gretchko:

"Twenty-three Melville Letters That Have Appeared Since 1993: An Addendum to the Correspondence Volume." Leviathan, vol. 26 no. 1, 2024, p. 66-82. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2024.a925511.

* * *

In 1996, three years after publication of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Correspondence, this item showed up at Swann Auction Galleries, Lot 526:

- Melville, Herman. Autograph Letter Signed to "My Dear Upton.' 2 pages on single 12mo sheet with integral blank leaf; slight fold marks glue residue on verso of blank leaf. Np, 29 May late 1840s] E7000-10000 'I was very much gratified by your note & its friendly spirit & cordiality. I am much pleased that Omoo has afforded you entertainment - the more so, as with-out flattery I might instance yourself as being in corrected in Melville's hand from 11 as one of those quarters where praise is desirable. I presume that before this you are quite at home in your new residence up town, where I promise myself great pleasure in calling upon you when next in New York. I beg you to, present my compliments to Mrs. Upton and Believe me Very sincerely yours Herman Melville. May 29th.'  --Artfact

Late 1840's?  We can do better than that, let's say

1847

just after publication of Omoo in April and before Herman's marriage to Elizabeth Shaw in August.

My Dear Upton?

Best candidate I can find would be New York attorney and expert in maritime law,
Francis H. Upton (1814-1876).

One 1850 New York City Directory gives Upton's business address as 72 Wall Street.  Trow's New York City Directory for 1856 gives also Upton's home address, "89 W. 36th."  Francis Henry Upton went on to write A Treatise on the Law of Trade Marks (Albany, 1860); and The Law of Nations Affecting Commerce During War (New York, 1861).

Upton is listed as a contributor to volume 16 of Hunt's Merchants' Magazine (1847) where Melville's Omoo recieved a brief but favorable notice in the June 1847 number.  Upton, listed as "Counselloor at Law, late of New Orleans, now of New York" wrote a series for Hunt's on the "Law of Debtor and Creditor in Louisiana."  Very likely Upton's association with Hunt's or another publication informs Melville's allusion to "one of those quarters where praise is desirable."  Melville understandably deemed it desirable as author of a new book to have a friend writing for one of the magazines.

A "Francis H. Upton" is named in some of the Upton Family Papers now held at the Peabody Essex Museum in Upton's birthplace of Salem, Massachusetts.  Well I don't suppose there's another letter from Herman Melville in that one envelope, but maybe somebody should check anyway, just in case. 

Francis Henry Upton was a son of Samuel Upton and Rebecca Allen Pierce. On September 1, 1836 FHU married Sarah Foster Carr. Francis and Sarah had two children, Francis Carr Upton and Sarah Carr Upton. Wheelock Samuel Upton and Charles Horace Upton were brothers of Francis Henry Upton. Sadly, during the Civil War Francis Henry Upton was "stricken with paralysis" while arguing a case in New York.

"He afterward lived in Europe and is now in Washington, paralyzed in both body and mind, having never recovered his faculties, and is supported by his wife and daughter."
--The Upton Memorial