Charles Cromwell Ingham, "the portrait painter" Herman's sister Helen Melville met in Lenox

Ingham not Inman was "the portrait painter" Helen Melville met in September 1841, socializing with Lemuel Shaw and family in Lenox, Berkshire County MA. Her and Herman's brother Gansevoort was there too. I liked to imagine Herman somewhere Off Tahiti at the time, but in truth he would not really get there until 1842. In September 1841 when his sister Helen and brother Gansevoort were at Lenox enjoying the company of Sedgwicks, Shaws, and Charles Ingham the portrait painter, Herman was whaling away on the Acushnet, near the equator. Still broad upon the waters of the Pacific Ocean, with a month and more to pass before his ship would reach the Galápagos Islands. 

Charles Cromwell Ingham, ca. 1860.
Macbeth Gallery records, 1947-1948. Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution

Herman's sister Helen Melville, writing from Lansingburgh, New York to Augusta Melville (then in Bath, a town in Steuben County, New York) on October 10, 1841:

"... Here is almost the end of my third page, and not a word has been said about my weeks visit to the East, the only thing that has broken in upon the monotony of my existence since the early Spring. We had a delightful time. Miss Sedgwick was staying there too, and then at ... hotel were all the Judges, (it being court week) all of ... most delightful companions. Judge Shaw & his dear lady wife, were most affectionate indeed to me. I could scarcely credit that persons comparatively strangers should take such a warm interest in Gan. & myself. Gan staid at the Hotel, but spent all his evenings with us, and made all together a most delightful coterie, what with the judges, judges ladies, Miss S. & Mr. Ingham the portrait painter, who was on a professional visit there. Mrs Shaw insists upon my making her a long visit this winter in Boston; both herself & husband gave me the most pressing & earnest invitations, & Mama says I may go, if there is any way for me to reach there short of Gan's taking me, which of course should not be thought of."

Citation

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Melville (Griggs), Helen" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1835 - 1863. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5398c3b0-4711-0136-d653-7d8db716e78a

Detail

Helen Melville would have stayed and socialized with Charles Sedgwick and his wife Elizabeth Sedgwick, Helen's former teacher. I suppose "Miss Sedgwick" must be Catharine Maria Sedgwick the famous novelist who definitely was in Lenox at that time, September 1841. Charles Ingham had painted the portrait of C. M. Sedgwick many years before. 

Who then is "Miss S."? Melville biographers have a bit too readily identified her as Miss Elizabeth Knapp Shaw, Helen's future sister-in-law. Other candidates worth considering would be the aforementioned authoress Catharine Maria Sedgwick; or Helen's then-unmarried friend Kate aka "Kitty," Katharine Sedgwick Minot (daughter of Charles Sedgwick and Elizabeth Buckminster Dwight Sedgwick); or another, evidently older "Miss Shaw" in the Shaw household, mentioned twice in Helen's letter to Augusta from Boston dated November 27, 1843. 

Hershel Parker gives the fullest treatment of Helen Melville's 1841 interactions with the Shaw family in Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Parker's excerpt from Helen's letter of October 10, 1841 to Augusta appears on page 301. As can be seen above in the image from Helen's letter in the Augusta Melville papers, now accessible via NYPL Digital Collections, Charles Ingham not Henry Inman was "the portrait painter" then making "a professional visit" to the Sedgwicks in Lenox. Attending closely to Helen's experience of Boston theatricals and tableaux vivants during her extended visits to Boston in 1842-3, John Bryant makes good use of Helen's later letters to Augusta in the second volume of Herman Melville: A Half Known Life (Wiley Blackwell, 2021) at pages 1135-1144. 

Related posts:

• Helen Melville in Boston, November 1843
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/06/helen-melville-in-boston-november-1843.html

• Pantomime with mock pier mirrors seen by Helen Melville at the Boston Museum
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/06/pantomime-with-mock-pier-mirrors-seen.html

Khadija in White-Jacket

In a previous post I guessed one of the erased words in Elizabeth Melville's set of Channing (volume 3, page 123) might be a form of "Khadija." Reading Dorothee Metlitsky Finkelstein on Melville's Orienda, I'm reminded that Melville actually names Khadija in White-Jacket (1850):

And, like that old exquisite, Mohammed, who so much loved to snuff perfumes and essences, and used to lounge out of the conservatories of Khadija, his wife, to give battle to the robust sons of Koriesh; even so this Rio land-breeze comes jaded with sweet-smelling savours, to wrestle with the wild Tartar breezes of the sea.

--Herman Melville, White-Jacket, chapter 65 - A Man-of-War Race

Something like my conjectural reading "Khadija" or "Kadija" could help explain two features of the "enigmatic word" as described by Dawn Coleman in Mahomet's Gospel and Other Revelations (p. 80):

1. Professor Coleman's observation that "the first two letters are strangely muddy, a mishmash of marks" might reflect the annotator's uncertainty about the correct spelling of "Khadija"; and
2. an erased capital letter "K" could account for the appearance of "an initial graph that may have been an 'f' or abortive capital."

Gibbon on Mahomet, as Dorothee Metlitsky showed, was definitely the source for Melville's remark on "the uncommon beauty of his person" with reference to the "upstart prophet" Foni in Mardi (1849). Gibbon, who casts Mahomet as the leader of "an infant congregation of Unitarians," also notes the unavoidably mundane character of his early efforts:

"The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet were those of his wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend; since he presented himself as a prophet to those who were most conversant with his infirmities as a man."  --History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 5

So whatever it really says, the erased annotation in volume 3 of Elizabeth Melville's set of Channing's Works need not be interpreted as a factually mistaken assumption of Mohammed's poverty. What connects Channing's Jesus to Gibbon's Mahomet is the grand ideal of Unitarianism, contrasted with experience of the most familiar, ordinary realities of domestic life.

Considering Melville's reference to Khadija by name in White-Jacket, I'm inclined to stick with my earlier conjecture:

Possibly then Dr. Channing's reference to the humble circumstances of Jesus might have led Melville to recall and somehow note the key role of early converts in Mahomet's own household. According to any number of popular histories in Melville's day Mahomet's grand revelation--his "Gospel" (or is it "Qur'an?") of God's Unity--was first embraced by improbably domestic disciples: Khadija. Zeid, Ali, and Abu Bekr.  --Mad, Zeid, or Khadija?

If you're wondering why it's so hard to say exactly what the annotator wrote, take a look at the digitized image of page 123 in volume 3 of the Works of William E. Channing at NYPL.

For a much better squint at some of the erased writing, check out the enhanced image at Melville's Marginalia Online.

Consulting the online Documentary Note for this set, I'm wondering now how Lemuel Shaw can be excluded from consideration as another possible annotator, in addition to Elizabeth Melville and her husband. Judge Shaw inscribed the set to his daughter--so obviously he owned the volumes first, who knows for how long.

Related post:

• Mad or Zeid, or Khadija?
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/11/mad-or-zeid-or-khadija.html