Masefield on Melville

John Edward Masefield in 1916
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Part II of "The Sea Writers" offers a fine appreciation of Herman Melville by John Masefield (1878-1967). Transcribed below from the London Daily News - Saturday, 20 August 1904; found at The British Newspaper Archive. Also at Google News, as reprinted (without credit to Masefield) in the Boston Evening Transcript - August 29, 1904.

THE SEA WRITERS.

II.—HERMAN MELVILLE.
(By J. Masefield.)

Herman Melville, one of the two excellent writers that America has produced, was born in New York City on the 1st of August, 1819. The same year gave birth to Walt Whitman, the second of the aforementioned two, and to James Russell Lowell, author of the Biglow Papers. Melville’s father, Allan, was merchant of the Empire City, who passed his evenings with old books, chiefly metaphysical, in the library of his home, now long destroyed, in the suburb of Greenwich village, now a populous, noisy, and rather mean quarter of the city. He was a travelled man, this American merchant, and came of good stock, so that his little son grew among cultured people, and heard strange tales, throughout his childhood, of the sea and ships, and of the seaports far away, and of the sailors, bronzed and earringed, whom he saw by the West-street saloons. Especially did he hear tales of Liverpool, that most magical of seaports, for his father had been thither in a sailing ship, and had brought back one or two books, with engravings in them, representing the docks, or St. Nicholas Church, or Bidston Tower, which the young Herman would pore upon for hours. I do not know whether they determined him to go to sea, for a New York boy has many calls to salt water without looking for them in cheap engravings. But it is certain that they left a strange impression on him, as though, in some other life, he had lived amid those scenes, and known them as man knows his home. When he did go to sea (and that going had some elements of "running away" about it), it was a Liverpool-bound vessel, as "able" seaman (surely his biographers mean "ordinary ”), in the year 1837, when he was eighteen years of age. 

"Hungering for the Sea.”

On his return to America he stayed ashore for while, making precarious living as a school teacher, and subduing refractory pupils with his fists. In 1840 Dana published his "Two Years Before the Mast,” a book which set Melville hungering for the sea (it will seem strange to a landsman, but such was the effect it had), and led to his second voyage a year later. He sailed from "good old Nantucket" in a whale ship called the Acushnet, which name Melville has shortened into Dolly. Life on board a whale ship is at all times horrible, but off the Horn it must be more horrible than elsewhere. Melville was a forecastle hand, the Dolly was leaky old tub, and her captain a "Down-East Johnny-Cake.” They tumbled round the Horn together, in such ice and green water as one may picture, and arrived in time, short handed, ill found, and discontented, in the warm cruising grounds of the South Pacific. Here the Dolly visited the port, or haven, of Nukahiva, in the Marquesas Islands, in order to refit and to ship fruit and natives. Melville had had as much whaling as he needed at the time, and, therefore, took the opportunity of stealing ashore with a friend. With great difficulty they contrived to cross that part of the island in which they might have been discovered. They penetrated to a hidden valley, inhabited by cannibals, where dusky warriors made them captives, and guarded them, though kindly, for several months. Melville’s imprisonment was longer than that of Bob, his shipmate; but escaped at length, after a bloody fight, on board an Australian whaling barque, short-handed as usual, whose captain had heard of white prisoners among the natives, and had hoped to ship them.

A Charming Sea-Gipsy.

Melville did not stay very long with his deliverer, but seems to have "gone among the islands,” a charming sea-gipsy, for rather more than a year. Afterwards shipped as a top-man on board the American frigate United States, then an old ship, which 30 years before had taken H.M.S. Macedonian from the English. He sailed round the Horn in her, touching at Rio de Janeiro, and arrived at Boston in 1844. He spent a year or two ashore, writing “Typee,” the story of his life among the canibals, which was published in New York and London in 1846. It had a wide sale in both countries, so that he felt justified in devoting himself to a life of letters. He married a Miss Shaw, a Massachusetts lady, in 1847, and lived for a while at Boston, afterwards moving to New York, where he obtained employment in the Customs. He went round the Horn in his brother’s ship in 1860, in order to lecture at San Francisco. Being a married man, he took no part in the Civil War, saving the utterance of various poems. He lived to a happy, quiet, old age among his books and etchings and pleasant literary friends, and died at New York in 1891, aged a little over seventy-two.

His Books.

His writings are like nothing else in the language, for they express a nature strangely rare, which lived strangely, and came to strange flower. He has been compared to George Borrow, but it will not do to push the parallel too far, for Borrow’s prose, at its best, is like a picture by Crome—simple, manly, and full of broad light and blowing wind. Melville’s prose, at its best, is something which I cannot estimate, for it takes one from the common world to some rarer place, where strange seas are breaking, strange blossoms growing on the trees, and strange folk talking wisdom in the sun. His books may be divided into two classes—the reminiscent and the imaginative—and both classes have their admirers. In the one class are "Redburn,” the story of his boyish voyage to Liverpool; "Typee,” the story of his life among the cannibals; "Omoo,” the tale of his life in the islands; and "White Jacket,” his life in the American Navy. Of these, "Typee" and "Omoo" are the most charming, and I doubt if anyone has read them without longing to be on blue water, on some reeling fabric of a ship, swaying in, under white strained sails, to some sweet coral island’s haven. Personally, I am very fond of parts of "Redburn,” though one must know New York and the haunted sailor-town of Liverpool to appreciate that gentle story thoroughly. "White Jacket" is an excellent piece of work, telling of a strange kind of life, now extinct, as it was lived on a strange kind of ship, now gone. It is the best book on that old sailor life; and perhaps one should not read Marryat, nor Chamier, nor Lord Dundonald until one has "White Jacket" and a few pages Smollett at one’s fingers’ ends.

The Best Sea Book In English.

In the other class of his writings are his best book, "Moby Dick,” and his worst book, "Mardi,” which latter, I imagine, few have ever read through. It is written in a fantastic, fanciful, tentative manner which aims high, as one can see, but is too boyish and too wayward to be readable. When he wrote it he was playing with his material, trying to learn his art. It is written in exactly the inspired boy style, and has all the folly, but yet a little of the beauty, and much of the eagerness, of youth. "Moby Dick" shows us what the same writer could do when he had developed his instrument, and it is not too much to say that that noble story is the best sea book in the English language. Of its quality as prose I hope to speak elsewhere and greater length, but I cannot close this article without testifying, however briefly, to the lofty beauty of its story. In that wild, beautiful romance Herman Melville seems to have spoken the very secret of the sea, and to have drawn into his tale all the magic, all the sadness, all the wild joy of many waters. It stands quite alone; quite unlike any book known to me. It strikes a note which no other sea writer has ever struck. And when, in one unforgetable chapter, his crew of old sailors gathers on the fo’c’s’le to talk by the light of the moon of life, and man, and the sorrows of man’s making, he rises to a pitch of mournful beauty such as one might find in Webster, in Middleton, or some other Elizabethan, if not in Shakespeare himself. One may say of "Moby Dick" what Melville in that tale says of the ship which bears his characters. One may call it "A noble tale, but a most melancholy; all noble things are touched with that.” --London Daily News - Saturday, 20 August 1904

Examining the high regard for Melville in London, early in the 19th century (before the centennial year 1919), Hershel Parker observes of Masefield that

"Not all his early tributes to Melville have been located." --Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative

This is one of those early tributes. Masefield referred explicitly to his first Melville notices, claiming due credit for early promotion of Melville in England, in a 1921 letter to Florence Lamont:

As to have I read Moby Dick, if you were in range, I'd fling something at you for that.

I read Moby Dick before I was 18 years old. I wrote an article on it before I was 25, & had it printed. I was directly responsible for its (the book's) being reprinted in this country on one occasion, & I have twice or three times written about Melville so as to make him known here....--Masefield, Letters to Florence Lamont

Masefield dates the writing of his earliest tribute to Moby-Dick to some time "before I was 25"; that is, before his 25th birthday on June 1, 1903. The "Sea Writers" article transcribed above was published in the London Daily News on August 20, 1904, a few months after Masefield's 26th birthday. Nonetheless, Masefield writes in this 1904 Daily News article of his "hope to speak elsewhere and greater length" about Moby-Dick--so perhaps the article on Moby-Dick that he mentioned to Florence Lamont in 1921 had not yet been published.

The following notice (by Masefield?) appeared in the "Books and Booksellers" column in the London Daily News on Friday, 8 July 1904:

The "New Pocket Library" of Mr. John Lane is a very pleasant series of little volumes to which yet further additions are soon to be made. Two of the most interesting which have recently appeared are Herman Melville's "Typee" and "Omoo," books which are far too seldom read. It is to be hoped that Mr. Lane will add "Moby Dick" and some more of the sea romances of this great romancer. Four volumes of George Borrow, and several of Captain Marryat, go excellently with these.

 Moby Dick in Masefield's A Mainsail Haul

The Whale warmly reviewed in the London Daily News

There is something grand and poetical in the vow of the terrible old Ahab that seizes upon one by main force; and the power and vigour of the author in his descriptive passages are solemnly conspicuous.

In Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009) Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker give reviews transcribed from the London News for Redburn (259-60) and White-Jacket (305). Nothing in the News however for Moby-Dick.

We still need to look further, to see if anybody found this one between then and now. High time all these Melville reviews and notices got loaded into one main searchable electronic data base, don't you think?

Update: This London Daily News review of The Whale does not appear among George Moneteiro's Fugitve References in Resources for American Literary Study 33. Not among the finds reported in Melville Society Extracts 89, 106, 113. Not included in Richard Winslow finds collected in the March 2011 Leviathan article, Melville Reviews and Notices, Cont., and before that in Extracts 124. Let's see, what about items discovered by Gary Scharnhorst, presented in Extracts 74, 75, 89 and 106? No, no, no, and no.

This could take a while, so in the meantime enjoy the review, transcribed from the London Daily News, January 12, 1852:

LITERATURE.

The Whale. By HERMAN MELVILLE, author of "Typee," "Omoo," &c. 3 vols. Bentley.

“The Whale” is not the least remarkable work of a very remarkable writer. About everything that proceeds from the pen of Mr. Melville there is a freshness, an originality, a fascination, that nothing can resist. We defy the reader to take up one of this writer’s fictions, and put it down only partly read. Impossible. He is an ancient mariner, and we are so many wedding guests. We “cannot choose but hear.” Whether the tale has an albatross or a whale for a hero, the compulsion is equally strong; and if Mr. Melville choose to write about a robin-redbreast or a mackerel, it would be most likely all the same.

In “The Whale” as elsewhere the hero is still the same individual—the same adventurous sea-faring philosopher—still, as we may be well pardoned for believing, the author himself. He introduces himself to us at the beginning with most charming want of ceremony as one Ishmael, and states as his simple reason for travelling that he has little or no money in his purse, and nothing in particular to interest him on shore. In this glorious state of independence he chooses whale fishing as a pursuit, and the little island of Nantucket (the hero, we need scarcely state, is an American) as his starting place.

But before getting afloat let us linger for a night with him at the “Spouter” Inn, where nobody but gentlemen in the whale fishery was ever known to go; that has a coffee-room like a cockpit, and a whale’s jaw-bone forming an archway over the bar. Let us share with him his misery at the notion of an inevitable bedfellow, and enter into his conjectures as to what sort of person this bedfellow will prove. The mysterious person in question, who will not make his appearance all the evening, is described by the landlord simply as “a dark gentleman, who eats nothing but beef steaks, and likes ‘em rare.” The young sailor at length is obliged to retire to rest by himself, and in the middle of the night is disturbed by the entrance of his chum—the “dark gentleman” with the peculiar taste in beef steaks—and who proves to be nothing less than a wild Indian, tattooing and all complete. How this eccentric person, having been persuaded as a preliminary not to murder our hero, next shocks him by the ostentatious worship of a little pocket god, and then proceeds to frighten him by smoking in bed, and sleeping in company with his harpoon; how he makes his toilet in the morning by putting on his hat long before any other article of clothing, and even shaving himself under the shade of that appendage; how, in fine, he is discovered to be a most excellent fellow, and by no means vicious; and how he and the hero become all on a sudden the fastest friends on earth—is all capitally told, and is one of the best written parts of the book, for quiet humourous delineation of character.

Ishmael arrives in due course at Nantucket, and makes his agreement with the owners of the Pequod whaling vessel for the three-hundredth lay—that is to say, the three-hundredth share of the profits of the expedition—in return for his services. One of the owners, a very devout Quaker, wishes to give him the seven-hundredth-and-seventy-seventh lay, on the ground that it is not proper to encourage another to lay up to himself treasures on earth; but the sense of justice of another owner—the infidel and utterly lost Captain Peleg—eventually gains the day, and the Quaker Captain Bildad is worsted. Both of these captains by the way are perfect sketches of character in their way; the scene of their dispute, as to the remuneration of Ishmael, is a splendid piece of satire.

But the author is now fairly on board, and here everything is mysterious—and not the least so the ship herself.

The next subject of wonderment is the mysterious seclusion of the captain, whom nobody has yet seen. He does not come on board until the last moment; and then it is silently and in the dark; and after that he secludes himself for some days in his cabin. For some unknown cause, the hero has the greatest apprehension of him; and “foreboding showers” ran over him, when one day the Captain Ahab at last makes his appearance during the afternoon watch. His appearance is peculiar and impressive, but not terrible after all. “He looked like a man cut away from the stake when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compact aged robustness. His whole high, broad form seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck till it disappeared, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish . . . By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once, Tashtego’s senior, an old gay-head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in some elementary strife at sea.”

Joined to these peculiarities the captain has lost a leg, and has its place supplied by one of polished sea ivory, fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. It is this lost leg that brings him to sea, after forty years of service should have purchased him immunity from its hardships. Not that he comes to seek his lost leg. No. He comes for revenge. He has vowed the death of the monster whale who deprived him of it, and whom he has pursued for years in all seasons and in every sea. This monster white whale, known as “Moby Dick,” is as well known as the Flying Dutchman to all whalers, among whom he bears not a dissimilar reputation. He is believed to bear a charmed life; and to capture him, having long been found to be impossible, is at last believed to be almost impious. “The harpoon is not yet wrought that shall give him his death wound,” say the hardened old whalers, as they shake their heads. So Moby Dick goes on his way as he has probably gone on his way for five hundred years before—the hero of a thousand fights, and the destroyer of perhaps as many boats’ crews. Still there is one stern old man with an artificial leg and a scar upon his face, who, rejecting all professional superstitions with unutterable scorn, has but one object in life, and this object is revenge—revenge against the invincible Moby Dick. His whole mental being is entered in this one idea. His crew capture whale after whale of priceless worth, and gather together in the hold a golden shower in oil and ambergris. The old man takes not the smallest interest in these unimportant matters. His whole counsel to his crew is to look out for the white whale. He even goes so far as to nail up a broad Spanish doubloon to the mast as a reward for the first man who shall “raise” him the white whale. More—he makes the crew in a condition as nearly drunk as may be, and binds them to pledge themselves solemnly to hunt the white whale to the death. The scene in which this pledge is given is most solemn and startling. It is graphic and ghastly to the last degree.

Meantime the vessel speeds on; nearing no land, nor proposing to touch at any. She is in the broad Pacific, and is running in the direction of Japan. Occasionally she speaks a vessel. But no mere civilities are exchanged, at any rate on the part of the Pequod. The sole inquiry, hoarsely bawled from the quarter-deck by the scarred captain, is, “Have you seen the white whale?” No: go your ways then, we have no use for you. Occasionally the answer is “Yes.” Then who shall describe the commotion on board the Pequod, as an ivory leg and a scarred face are lowered into the gig and raised carefully up the side of the strange vessel. Once old Ahab boards an English ship in this manner. The captain, a merry, middle-aged, ease-loving gentleman, has seen the white whale, and adds jocularly, as he points to his empty coat sleeve, that he as reason to remember him. The captain of the Scar is all elate. Here is a point of sympathy. He must know “all about it.” For heaven’s sake satisfy his curiosity. And for the next hour there is nothing but yarn spinning, enough to drive any person with a respectable amount of fastidiousness to despair. But Captain Ahab can gain no sympathy on his one important point—his revenge. The English captain sees no use in hunting after so formidable a foe. These accidents will happen, &c. Will his new acquaintance join him in a bottle of wine? But the new acquaintance, after gaining a clue to the course taken by the enemy, returns sullenly to his ship, and continues his ill-starred pursuit.

Ill-starred, indeed, does the pursuit seem. Each day adds to the discontent of the officers and the gloom of the crew. Mystery upon mystery encompass the captain, whose monomania assumes every new day some new and strange developments. The ship seems to sail under a curse; and the more reflective or superstitious of the officers and crew cannot but attribute it to the unholy object of the captain. Now, the captain causes a new harpoon to be forged—of the nail stubbs of the steel shoes of race horses—“the stubbornest stuffs we blacksmiths ever work” as the ship’s armourer tells him. The barbs he causes to be made from his own razors. This harpoon, taking advantage of a terrible storm, he tempers with lightning, to the infinite peril of the ship and crew. An additional tempering with blood is supposed to complete the virtue of the harpoon; and nothing is wanting to gratify the revenge of the captain but—the white whale.

At length one day the white whale—it can be no other—is descried from the mast-head. The boats are manned. Ahab himself stumps on board, one of them, elate with the coming triumph, his whole soul absorbed in the effort to be made. But Moby Dick, without making any direct attack, flings them contemptuously aside, and swamping every boat with a few calm splashes, proceeds on his way. Ahab is now in a fury, pursues the whale all night, and resumes the attack on the following day. But now even more disastrous results ensue, and the whale seems really invincible. Ahab, however, is not in the habit of yielding in a hurry. The third day—he is still on the track of the enemy, and prepares now for a decisive attack. The crisis has now arrived, and the scene that ensues is terrible indeed. The whale is evidently prepared to take his own revenge. The boats are all smashed, or sunk, or swamped, with their crews clinging to the floating masses.

How the author survives to tell his story is contemptuously left in mystery. That he has contrived to tell his story somehow we, in common with his other readers, must congratulate ourselves. We have not read a book of more absorbing interest for some time. There is something grand and poetical in the vow of the terrible old Ahab that seizes upon one by main force; and the power and vigour of the author in his descriptive passages are solemnly conspicuous. He has great command of character too. We have not had an opportunity of mentioning Starbuck, the first mate—but Starbuck is capital for all that. Stubb, too, is a complete individual; and as for our old friend Queequeg, the Indian harpooner, who accompanies the hero throughout the voyage—he is a triumph. But we have no space to enter into minutiae, for which we must refer the reader to the book itself. We can only once more express our hearty admiration of the performance as a work of interest and art.  --London Daily News (Monday, 12 January 1852); found at The British Newspaper Archive

 

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