Original research and riffs on Herman Melville, authorship, and nineteenth-century American literature.
Rare Autographs, Manuscripts & BooksThis previously unlocated letter to Prof. T. Apoleon Cheney is listed in Melville's CORRESPONDENCE (Northwestern University Press, 1993) edited by Lynn Horth on pages 402-403. In my first look at the manuscript image online, I read "poems" where the University Archives… https://t.co/LmpixBRmMs
— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) September 18, 2025
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| Prang's aids for object teaching. Printer. ca. 1876. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003663928/. |
Albert W. Whelpley (1831-1900) was head librarian of the Cincinnati Public Library when he commemorated "The Old-Time Printer" in a delightful and highly informative after-dinner speech, delivered January 17, 1898 at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati Typothetæ. Although long forgotten, Whelpley's talk is full of historical interest and value, being rich with details of his personal experience as a printer's devil and compositor in New York City from 1846 to 1856 or so. Melville aficionados will be especially interested in Whelpley's reminiscences about working at "the widely known printing office of Robert Craighead, on the corner of Fulton and Dutch streets." Whelpley quit with most of his coworkers during a labor strike, possibly in early May 1853 when journeymen book-printers went on strike in New York City.
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| New York Weekly Journal of Commerce - May 5, 1853 |
In 1853 or later, Whelpley rejoined his old boss at 24 Beekman Street, where Tinson operated his own printing office, "also a famed one." Working there for W. H. Tinson, Printer and Stereotyper, Whelpley became personally acquainted with George P. Putnam and numerous other literary celebrities. A. W. Whelpley never once name-drops Herman Melville during his 1898 talk before the Cincinnati Typothetae. However, Whelpley somehow managed to acquire one of Melville's letters to Putnam (9 November 1854) concerning the magazine version of "Israel Potter." Submitting the concluding chapters in manuscript, Melville thus explained why he did not number them:
“Having forgotten the number of the last chapter sent you, I leave the numbering of the following ones to the printer.”
By his own account, Whelpley seems to have been employed as a compositor for W. H. Tinson in 1854 through April 1855 when Tinson's printing office set all of Putnam's Monthly Magazine in type, including the magazine version of "Israel Potter" which concluded in the March 1855 issue. If so, Whelpley might have indirectly received Melville's note to Putnam via Tinson. In any case, Whelpley got it somehow or other and eventually gave it to the Cincinnati Historical Society, as helpfully indicated in the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville’s Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth (Northwestern University Press, 1993) at page 273. Whenever and however Whelpley first acquired it, Melville’s autograph letter of November 9, 1854 to George P. Putnam would have held personal significance as a memento of his youthful occupation in New York City, “working for W. H. Tinson, on Beekman Street.”
The complete text of A. W. Whelpley's encomium of "The Old-Time Printer"is transcribed below from The Printer & Bookmaker (July 1898) pages 230-234. Digital versions of the printed speech are accessible via Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=HITnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA230-IA14&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
and courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library, here:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951001904120c?urlappend=%3Bseq=580%3Bownerid=13510798902360098-596.
Enjoy!
*An address delivered at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati Typothetæ.
THE printer of the olden time! It is a theme so glorious that it should have been delegated to be handled by some one more practiced in the art of oratory and after-dinner speaking than he who is to address you. Some one whose well-rounded sentences and resonant voice should stir your natures to their very depths—one who might be able to paint glowing wordpictures of that glorious trinity of men who gave the art its birth! Of Gutenberg, Fust and Schoeffer, whose names have come down through the centuries laden with honors; whose triumphs have been sounded in every land and in every language! Gutenberg, inventing movable types, and constructing a rude printing press to take his impressions from them; Fust, inventing the ink with which to make this possible; and Schoeffer, who, conceiving the plan to make better and more effective types than those used, cut a set of matrices to cast them in, which so delighted his master, Fust, that he gave him his only daughter for a wife!He might take a long leap, and come to the men who, in the early days of this country, gave such renown to the printer's art, William Bradford, who came to America with William Penn, and Benjamin Franklin—both grand types of the old-time printer. And if he was to "the manner born" he could discourse eloquently of three old-time printers whose names are inseparably linked with this "Queen City of the West," Joseph A. James, Ephraim Morgan, and Achilles Pugh.
But I am not equal to anything so lofty in conception, and propose to go back only half a century, to give you a few reminiscences, beginning with the business career of a slightly built, not over-strong, curly-headed youth, who, at the age of about thirteen years, thought the time had come for him to quit school and face the world to earn his own living.
A school-boy friend, who was already at work, secured him a position in the same office where he was employed, and in the autumn months of 1846 this boy, who had never been away from his home except in school hours, trudged gaily to the office in which he was to begin his career, to take the responsible situation of a printer's devil! This service consisted of various important duties, the most responsible of which was rolling a form for ten hours a day—from 7 to 12 A.M., from 1 to 6 P.M. When there was no form on the press, he was to busy himself as best he could. The other duties were to build the fires, make the lye with which to clean the forms, and wash the rollers; gather up the soiled towels to take home to his employer on certain nights of the week, and call for them on certain mornings; in fact, being a "general utility" for everybody about the place.
He can remember as well as if it were yesterday what a formidable undertaking it seemed to get through a day's rolling—and to count the tokens in his mind, as the sheets were "worked off," ten hours a day, ten tokens to be printed, to make a fair day's work. At the office at 6 to build the fire, and rarely getting home to his supper before 7:30 at night. Such was the life, and such were the duties of a boy in the 40's who was fortunate enough to secure a situation as a printer's devil. The pressman under whom he worked was a kind-hearted, phlegmatic Scotchman, named Archie Naughton—and he can call him to mind always—an old-time pressman who is deserving of a grand reward in the future life. He was very considerate of his devil, and always lightened his duties where possible—and never spoke a cross word.
The hours of service required would alarm a printer boy of this day, and would cause an eruption in the labor unions; but the young devil felt them no especial hardship; and he tumbled into bed at an early hour after supper, with his mother's blessing and a good conscience, and slept soundly the "sleep of the just," for, as he had not many temptations, he had few worries, as yet, to trouble his slumbers. He generally got his breakfast by 5:30, and in the dark hours of the winter mornings was well on his way to the office before 6 o'clock.
The boy was happy! and it was not long before he evinced some skill in setting type (which he learned in the noon hour, supposed to be devoted to dinner), and it was but a few months before he bade a not over-affectionate adieu to his rolling duties! It may be interesting to say that he was succeeded by an inking machine, which had just come into use.This introduction to the printing business was in the office of John W. Oliver, on the corner of Ann and Nassau streets, New York, in the same building where the well-known Quaker printer, Daniel Fanshawe, ran his presses. A few months later this office of John W. Oliver was removed to the corner of Fulton and Nassau, in the old Sun building, and by that time the boy, who only a little while before had rolled forms, had now become quite a respectable job hand, and could run a job press very well. He preferred composition, however, and when opportunity offered would "stick type" on a weekly temperance paper called The Organ, published by Mr. Oliver, who was an ardent "Son of Temperance," an order then in its infancy.Printer boys in those times were sturdy young fellows, that disdained to wear such undergarments as shirts and drawers, and some of whom would have discarded stockings, but for the interference of home folks. I can see this young boy, with his shirt sleeves rolled up to the full extent, his shirt front unbuttoned, with a paper cap on his head, to protect the luxuriant locks, that were his pride, from dirt and dust. When these conditions were fulfilled, the printer boy was in full uniform, and ready for business.He soon made a change to an office managed by a literary Irishman, Dennis Hannegan, well known as the author of "The Orange Girl of Venice," a blood-curdling novel. Dennis was a clever and an honest man, and though he could not pay his hands their wages in cash, he gave them the equivalent in paper novels, all of which were read without death ensuing.Dennis did a good thing for the subject of this sketch by kindly giving him a letter of introduction to W. H. Tinson, an excellent printer, at that time the best-known foreman in New York, and manager of the widely known printing office of Robert Craighead, on the corner of Fulton and Dutch streets. He was of a just nature, but a violent temper. Mr. Tinson honored the introduction, and took the boy, stipulating that he should serve his time at two-thirds men's wages, either working by piece or by the week. And it seemed a great piece of good fortune to drop so easily into such a situation.This office literally swarmed with compositors of wonderful intelligence. It was an office in which slack times were seldom known. It had the cream of literature, as it had the pick of workmen. Here was a representative body of old-time printers that could discuss composition, rhetoric, punctuation; who were conscientious in spacing and leading; who would criticise bad work, and were intolerant of inferior workmen; who gave close attention to all the technicalities that go so far to improve the looks of the printed page. Men who would quarrel with the proofreader when they thought him wrong, and oftentimes carry their point. They were a representative set of old-time printers—middle-aged men—and younger dare-devils who could dance all night and work all day. It is doubtful if ever such another office existed, where there was so much wisdom and so much mirth combined, and so much good and conscientious work accomplished, with the pay so sure. All the grand English reviews, Blackwood's Magazine, the Literary World, the Medico-Chirurgical Quarterly, and scores of books from those reputable publishers, Wiley & Putnam, Scribner, Wood, Dodd, Carter Brothers, and others, were constantly in process of composing, stereotyping and printing.Looking back through half a century, it is a gratification to call to mind the well-educated printers of that establishment. Many of them were Englishmen, who had served their apprenticeships in the old country, and were authority on every technical point of the printing business. How well they had studied their grammars, and how true were their ideas of the niceties of punctuation!These printers of the olden time were always in the lead on affairs of the day. They could intelligently criticise the pulpit, the stage and the press. They could quote Scripture without limit, and were up in every current joke, and often very humorously repeated questionable stories—a custom not yet obsolete—which dates back, however, to Boccaccio—and in which art many of them were masters.That office had a coterie of men (of which the boy of whom I am speaking was the youngest member) who by filling responsible positions as editors of prominent newspapers, writers of dramas, important military positions, have given good evidence of the value of the training of the printer of the olden time—one becoming a librarian, and one now bearing the best known name in the annals of printing in America, Theodore L. De Vinne.These printers of the olden time, in this particular office, had prime opportunities to jostle against the men who were giving to America its literature; and the boy whose history I am giving you was particularly favored. He saw many celebrities, and was noticed by not a few. Here came James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Fenno Hoffman, George P. Morris, Nathaniel P. Willis, Rufus Griswold, Horace Greeley, Evert and George Duyckinck, and a host of others who are among the immortals in American literature.One more change, and the boy, now grown to manhood, as far as his reminiscences in this city of his birth go, are completed.There came a strike—we all know what strikes are—and every man and boy, except two, marched out from this home which had done so much for them for so many years. And the young man, true to his fellow workmen, but against his inclination, went with them, and bade adieu to the office of Robert Craighead forever. After forty years or more he pays the tribute to him which is deserved, and will never fail to cherish his name gratefully. The boy's career in New York closed with working for W. H. Tinson, on Beekman street. And this office was also a famed one. Here he made friends with the versatile publisher, George P. Putnam, and met and conversed with Bayard Taylor, Frederick Cozzens, author of the "Sparrowgrass Papers," John Brougham, Edward Stephens, author of "Jonathan Slick in New York," Tuckerman, the essayist, our Western poet, W. W. Fosdick, and Frederick Saunders, author of "Salad for the Solitary;" in this office was printed John Mitchel's Citizen, and here came daily those Irish patriots, John Mitchel, John Savage, Thomas Francis Meagher, and scores of others. These were the days when the author came to the printing office with his proofs, and often explained his corrections and the wherefores to the compositor.These sometimes happy (sometimes otherwise) days came to end, as far as New York experiences are concerned, when this old-time printer came to Cincinnati for a brief visit. That visit has extended to over forty years; and while he oftentimes thinks of what a field he might have had in the city of his birth for growth, he in no wise lacks appreciation of the honors which his fellow citizens of Cincinnati have shown him, and of which he has always endeavored to be deserving! Nor does he in any wise lack appreciation of Cincinnati itself, in which community he feels that his life and his sympathies have so broadened, and in which for so many years he has lived so happily.
But Cincinnati was a new field for the young New Yorker. By force of filial duties he felt obligated to remain, though he was leaving all behind—birthplace, familiar scenes, friends and companions, yet he bravely accepted the new responsibilities, and for the third time was compelled to "seek a job." An introduction from a genial old-time printer of that day, Caleb Clark, sent him to the Franklin Type Foundry, where he received a welcome. There he remained (excepting a month or six weeks, when he was with dear old Mr. Thompson at the Methodist Book Concern), and in time came to have entire charge of the composing room. This business was then superintended by a gentleman who sits here to-night, Mr. Robert Allison, and I look back with pleasure to the period between 1857 and 1864. I think he parted with me with regret, when at the latter date I entered a new field of labor. During all the years that have passed his friendly interest in the young man—above I unconsciously dropped into the first person—has often been shown. He is to be congratulated on his long years of service in the profession, on his position as an employing printer, and on being one of the foremost citizens of Cincinnati.
The printer of the olden time! What memories are awakened—what thoughts will come of by-gone days and men who lived in them—heroes of the composing stick!
The printer of the olden time, and the printers of to-day, and all time, are and will be the greatest factors of our civilization. The preacher may touch our hearts with his glowing words; the actor may dazzle our eyes and charm our ears with the beauty of his scenic effects and the fervor of his declamation; the singer may enchant us with the rhapsody of his melody; the lecturer and statesman may make our minds captive by the force of their eloquent periods—but all their efforts would be as temporary and evanescent as were the lays which of yore the minstrels chanted in kingly courts, were it not for the Art of the Printer—the Art preservative of all the arts. His silent types and inks transfer to the printed sheet the words of the preacher, the lines of the actor, the song of the musician, and the speech of the statesman, and send them forever down the ages to an immortality which otherwise could not be.
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| Writing for "Our Young Folks" An original portrait of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe at Home via NYPL Digital Collections |
Here is something I found the other day in the online archives of HathiTrust Digital Library. The catalog of the American Art Association in which this newly discovered item appeared was only digitized from the volume at the New York Public Library in September 2022.
A signed letter dated October 25, 1864 from Herman Melville to Boston publishers Ticknor and Fields was offered at auction in April 1926 with Melville's copy of Matthew Arnold's Poems (Sealts Number 21). Melville's marked and annotated volume of Arnold's Poems has been held by the Berkshire Athenaeum since 1972, donated by Henry Murray. Images from Melville's copy are available in the digital edition of Arnold's Poems produced by Melville's Marginalia Online. The documentary note there alludes to the uncertain provenance of the Poems volume, before Murray had it, but does not mention any Melville letter in connection with it. The 1864 letter to Ticknor and Fields does not appear in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth; and it is not included in the recent 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 April 1926 Melville's copy of Matthew Arnold's Poems was offered by the American Art Association along with a "splendid set" of the London Constable edition of The Works of Herman Melville, from the private collection of Victor Thrane.
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| American Art Association Catalogues of Sales, chiefly of private collections - April 14-15, 1926 |
Accompanying the above is an Autograph Letter signed by Herman Melville, one page 12mo, New York, October 25, 1864. Addressed to Ticknor and Field[s], the publishers, reading,--Italics in the catalog description are used conventionally to highlight matter that is being quoted and most likely do not represent any extra emphasis by Melville in the original letter.
"I hardly think I have any stories by me which would exactly suit the magazine, otherwise it would give me pleasure to comply with your request."
Titled Our Young Folks the new magazine would be edited by John Townsend Trowbridge and Gail Hamilton, "two of America's most popular authors, a gentleman and lady whose names will be a guaranty of excellence." In the first issue Captain Mayne Reid began a serialized tale of adventure in which the heroes have to navigate a flooded South American rainforest, titled Afloat in the Forest: Or, A Voyage in the Tree-Tops. Reid's piece would seem to be the kind of thing the publishers had hoped to coax out of Melville.
Boston Evening Transcript - October 24, 1864
via genealogybank.com
From the Boston EVENING TRANSCRIPT of Saturday, October 22, 1864:
Boston Evening Transcript - October 22, 1864
via genealogybank.com
ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS. The publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, will issue in a few weeks the first number of a new Magazine for Boys and Girls, which will be a work of sterling worth. The editors are two of America's most popular authors, a gentleman and lady whose names will be a guarantee of excellence. Among the contributors who have been secured for the early numbers, and who will continue to write regularly, are Captain Mayne Reid, who leads off with a new story of adventure; J. T. Trowbridge, who will write in every issue; Mrs. H. B. Stowe; Gail Hamilton; Dio Lewis; Lucy Larcom; "Carleton"; John G. Whittier; the author of " Dream Children"; the author of "Faith Gartney's Girlhood"; the author of the " Lamplighter"; Miss Alcott; "Edmund Kirke"; Aunt Fanny; the author of "Ten Acres Enough"; and Mrs. L. M. Child. The department of Natural History will be ably represented by Mr. and Mrs. Agassiz, who will supply for every number during the year a paper with illustrations. Many of the most prominent contributors to the Atlantic Monthly, in prose and verse, will write regularly for the new Juvenile monthly, the name of which, we understand, is to be "Our Young Folks; an Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls." Under such peculiar auspices the work announced cannot fail to have a welcome reception and a permanent success throughout the country. The enterprise could not be in better hands.
In 1850 George Doolittle (1808-1894) operated Doolittle's Express with service from Lee to Pittsfield, MA via Lenox. This Doolittle I take it was the "Mr. Doolittle" named by Herman Melville in connection with a near collision between Doolittle's sleigh and an oncoming train that… pic.twitter.com/fHQRDc3ppn
— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) April 6, 2024
Somebody said give me the data
Somebody said it must have been about dates.
— Van Morrison, Dangerous
Some
while back I rashly promised to re-examine Hershel Parker's re-dating
of Herman Melville's long, luscious, endlessly anthologized "Dollars
damn me" letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, from June 1? 1851 to early May
of that momentous year in the history of American Literature.
It's also the "All my books are botches" letter; the "ruthless
democracy" letter; the tell the Truth "and go to the Soup Societies"
letter; the champagne-heaven letter; and more. Young Melville (only
almost 32!) you remember was then busy at Arrowhead doing home renovations and farm-work, with his monster of a Whale
book nearly finished but still in manuscript--unpublished, and not yet
called Moby-Dick.
As first transcribed and printed by Julian Hawthorne in 1884, the letter in question is accessible via Google Books, here
https://books.google.com/books?id=2SlAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA402&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
and as collected in The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), here:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.84865/page/n165/mode/2up
Electronic text of the letter under consideration is conveniently accessible, still, at the evergreen Life and Works of Herman Melville website, here:
Whereabouts
unknown. Sad to say, the actual letter is nowhere to be found.
Vanished, alas! it is one of six missing epistles including all of
Melville's other 1851 love letters to Hawthorne,
so called. Although the physical document is lost, we never tire of
quoting it. And truth to tell, non-specialists (which is to say, most
normal people) never cared much about the date either way. Nevertheless,
on general principles I'm inclined to agree with Parker's opinion in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative
(Northwestern University Press, 2012) at pages 239-40 that academic
commentators, especially professed Melville experts, might reasonably be
expected either to accept the verdict of an exceptionally careful and
competent scholar, or explain why they don't.
Samuel Otter in Melville's Anatomies (University of California Press, 1999) and more recently Jennifer Greiman in Melville's Democracy: Radical Figuration and Political Form (Stanford University Press, 2023) offer both dates and leave them for their readers to reconcile, or not. Other Melville experts have embraced Parker's re-dating. For example, both Jonathan A. Cook in Neither Believer nor Infidel (Cornell University Press, 2023) page 19; and editor Mark Niemeyer in The Divine Magnet: Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne (Orison Books, 2016) positively affirm Parker's "early May 1851" as the likeliest time-frame of the letter in question. When the date makes little or no difference (which is almost always, to be honest), Melville critics may be excused from having to choose. As exemplified in A New Companion to Herman Melville edited by Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), it's perfectly fine to cite the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Correspondence and just give the page number on which your quoted passage appears.
Until now, nobody has accepted Parker's dare:
"A critic or biographer is free to challenge my dating but only if he or she will work through the evidence." — Hershel Parker in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Northwestern University Press, 2012) page 240.
For
me the issue of dates resurfaced when I wanted to cite the letter under
consideration in the first part of my Substack essay, All I want is a good listener.
For that open investigation I was and am still keen to learn as much as
possible about the period of late April and early May 1851 in Melville's
life. I needed to quote and footnote Melville's undated letter to
Hawthorne, but how? Checking back just now, I see my compromise in a
couple of places was to favor Parker's revision while tacking on a
question mark. Despite my inclination to trust Parker's judgment, I had
to add the customary sign of uncertainty upon realizing that I did not
very well understand the basis of his re-dating. Grasping that
required that I obtain and transcribe Augusta Melville's letter of May
16, 1851 to her and Herman's brother Allan in New York City. Reason being, Parker repeatedly has
cited Augusta's letter as crucial support for his re-dating of Herman's
letter to Hawthorne from June 1? to early May 1851 in successive Norton Critical Editions of Moby-Dick,
and elsewhere (see 3rd ed. page 566, footnote 2, for example).
After obtaining a copy of the letter and transcribing it in full
I had to admit that I still did not have a very good handle on Parker's case for early May. So I vowed to take a closer look and communicate the results of my investigation.
Specifically in the matter of Parker's re-dating, and the indefiniteness of its acceptance, or non-acceptance, in subsequent Melville studies, where Parker has blamed the laziness and incompetence of "archivophobic" critics, I find understandable puzzlement. In my view, the problem with Parker's re-dating as presented in Volume 1 of his magnificent and commensurately flawed biography is that he skipped a step by thoroughly weaving the "early May" date into the narrative fabric of chapter 39 The Final Dash at The Whale without first providing a clear and persuasive rationale for the change.
Indeed, Melville's best biographer never deigned to define "early May." What can "early May" mean, really? Not May 1st but maybe the 2nd? How about the 7th or 11th? As late as the 15th? Any day before the tail end of the month? On reflection, "early May" seems impractically vague, too loose perhaps to serve for a very useful construction of the evidence. Seems to me, its vagueness and consequent inutility might deter many a commentator from embracing Parker's revision.
Then, too, merely acknowledging Parker's revised time-frame can be a tricky business in traditional academic settings, particularly in light of the wide and deserved esteem for Northwestern-Newberry editions as the gold standard of responsibly edited Melville texts. If you, being a highly trained and conscientious sort of English Major, decide to cite the famous "Dollars damn me" letter in print, then naturally you want to quote from and properly footnote the N-N volume of Melville's Correspondence, superbly edited in 1993 by Lynn Horth. The editorial headnote there begins with a long paragraph of reasons for placing Melville's letter "in late May or early June 1851." For clarity's sake (even if not required by a publisher's house style) you might as well use the tentative date provided in your source, including the editorial question mark that indicates uncertainty about both the month and day:
"[1 June?] 1851"
The
wording of Parker's "early May" time-frame and its application to the
letter formerly assigned to June 1? 1851 are carried over from The Melville Log
(Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), edited by Jay Leyda. As shown
below in the detail from Volume 1, page 410, Leyda confusingly
introduced the first of several quotations from Melville's "June 1 (?)" letter to Hawthorne with the un-italicized label "Early May."
As laid out by Leyda in the documentary record for 1851, it almost looks as if "Early May" could be Melville's own statement of when he wrote the letter. It's not really that at all, of course. Rather, "Early May" here is Leyda's way of indicating approximately when Melville had stopped working on his yet unfinished Whale manuscript "some three weeks" before. Right or wrong, Parker's revised date of "early May" verbally reproduces the potentially misleading and perhaps unduly influential label that Jay Leyda editorially employed to introduce the same letter in The Melville Log.
🚩🚩🚩🚩
To my
mind, Parker's assurance in Volume 1 (page 906) that "Hayford concurs in
this redating" comes off as a red flag, signaling weakness. Are we
hobbits now at the foot of Orthanc? (As the scene unfolds in Tolkien's
book, I mean, not Peter Jackson's movie version.) If the wise ones
agree, then all will be well. Careful, our wizard of a biographer has powers you do not guess. Beware of his voice!
To break the spell, take this alleged agreement of Parker's legendary mentor Harrison Hayford for
interesting hearsay, and keep looking for the evidence and reasoning.
As
Parker has made clear, his "early May" revision hinges on evidence to
be found in Augusta Melville's letter to her and Herman's brother Allan,
written on May 16, 1851 from the "Manor House" in Albany NY. Lately
transcribed in full on Melvilliana, here:
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2023/05/augusta-melville-letter-to-allan.html
The crucial passage appears near the end of Augusta's letter:
So you had a flying visit from Herman? When does he make the longer one? That book of his, will create a great interest, I think. It is very fine. By the way, have you seen Willis' Hurry-Graphs? Mr Sherman, says there is a capital portraiture of Wise in it? He has been visiting him. Next month, he expects a visit from another author, Mr Mitchell of the "Reveries of a Bachelor." Ask Sophia to read them, they are so interesting.
From somebody sometime, Augusta has learned that Herman recently paid "a flying visit" to Allan and Sophia at their home in New York City. Writing on May 16th, Augusta knows about this relatively brief trip and also about plans for "a longer one" in the near future. One or both of these visits could well be connected with Herman's "very fine" new book. Augusta's source of information about both events, the "flying visit" passed and "the longer one" to come, was unspecified. In Volume 1 of Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851 (page 840) Parker takes her source to be "the single letter she had received from Arrowhead." Although Augusta does not say how she knows about the "flying visit," she mentions getting the one letter from Arrowhead and complains of not having received a "promised" letter from Allan. When and how did her brother convey that promise? Possibly Augusta had Allan's and/or Sophia's latest communication (whatever the date) before her as she wrote. On the 16th of May Augusta had not heard from Allan in a fortnight = 2 weeks. Conceivably, Allan or his wife might have reported Herman's "flying visit" (either recent or imminent) in a letter from NYC forwarded to Augusta in Albany and dated, say, on or shortly before the first of May.
Either way it was already the middle of
May when Augusta wrote to Allan from Albany. Writing on the 16th, she
knows all about the extensive renovations underway back at Arrowhead:
To some extent Parker seems to have conflated activities that did take place in early May 1851 with Herman Melville's writing of the letter to Hawthorne, "some three weeks" later. Without a doubt, exciting events in Melville's life were happening early in May. Besides his being occupied with home improvements and seasonal jobs around the farm, we have definite evidence (courtesy of Augusta Melville and the excerpts from her letter transcribed and first published by Hershel Parker) of Herman's "flying visit" to Allan in New York City. We already knew about Melville's acceptance of a huge loan from Tertullus D. Stewart, and his making arrangements for writing the last chapters of Moby-Dick in New York City while the finished ones were being proofed and stereotyped. For that job Melville hired Robert Craighead, a veteran Manhattan printer. At the time, Craighead conducted his printing business on the third story of the large four-story brick building at 112 Fulton street, located on the corner of Fulton and Dutch streets. Previously overlooked in Melville scholarship, the fact of the printer's office being situated ON THE THIRD STORY is the subject of another post on Melvilliana, here:
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2023/10/robert-craigheads-third-story-rooms-on.html
Even accepting all of Parker's terms and calculations as set forth in Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1, 1819-1851 on page 841, "early May" turns out to be the middle of May, at the earliest. Say Melville suspended work on his Whale on April 25th, the same day he wrote the Harpers asking for an advance; adding on the required interval of three weeks after that brings us to May 16--also, coincidentally, the date of Augusta's letter to Allan.
If Melville had stopped writing on May 1st, he might have been writing Hawthorne around the 21st or 22nd, well into the third week of May. If by leaving the Whale Melville meant dropping off some completed portion of the manuscript at Robert Craighead's third-story printing office in Manhattan ("I was in New York for four-and-twenty hours the other day"), the probable date of his letter to Hawthorne could reasonably be advanced another week or two. That is, and still hypothetically, if Melville had made his initial "flying visit" around May 9th (a full week before Augusta mentioned it in her letter of the 16th), then adding three weeks of home repairs and farm chores would bring the date of Melville's writing all the way to May 30th--almost the end of the month, and pleasingly consistent with the time-frame of "late May or early June 1851" assigned in the excellent headnote to this letter in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry edition of Herman Melville's Correspondence.
As shown above, "Early May" was originally Jay Leyda's approximation of when Melville took a break from writing on the work-in-progress that became Moby-Dick. Having examined and transcribed Augusta's letter of May 16th to Allan in NYC, Parker made Leyda's "Early May" the date of Melville's letter to Hawthorne. As constructed in Parker's biographical treatment, two specific events referenced in Augusta's letter match up exactly with two specific statements in Melville's letter to Hawthorne. First, Parker has equated the "flying visit" by Herman in Augusta's letter with the day trip of 24 hours to which Herman alludes in his letter to Hawthorne:
Another thing. I was in New York for four-and-twenty hours the other day, and saw a portrait of N. H. And I have seen and heard many flattering (in a publisher's point of view) allusions to the "Seven Gables." And I have seen "Tales," and "A New Volume" announced, by N. H.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife page 405.
And
second, the future "longer" visit to NYC in Augusta's letter lines up
with Melville's scheme, as he revealed it to Hawthorne, for completing
Moby Dick in Manhattan:
"In a week or so, I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story room, and work and slave on my "Whale" while it is driving through the press. That is the only way I can finish it now, I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances."
In Parker's reading (implied in the telling), Melville's stay of "four-and-twenty hours" in New York has to be the "flying visit" to Allan that Augusta mentioned in her letter of May 16, 1851. Having decided the "flying visit" and 24-hours in New York must reference one and the same event, Parker believed the purpose of that visit to be obvious in light of Melville's stated plan to finish the Whale in New York, and his subsequent letter to Hawthorne on June 29th, where he tells of his return with his new book "only half through the press":
The "Whale" is only half through the press; for, wearied with the long delay of the printers, and disgusted with the heat and dust of the babylonish brick-kiln of New York, I came back to the country to feel the grass -- and end the book reclining on it, if I may.
Melville's longer visit, as documented in Jay Leyda's 1951 Melville Log, had extended into the middle of June, at least, as indicated by the return on June 14th of two works by William Scoresby to the New York Society Library: An Account of the Arctic Regions (Sealts Number 450); and Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale-Fishery (Sealts Number 451). Both of these important sources for Moby-Dick are duly listed in the catalog of books owned and borrowed at Melville's Marginalia Online.
To recap: in Parker's view, Augusta's knowledge before May 16, 1851 that Herman has already made a "flying visit" to Allan and Sophia in NYC; and that Herman already plans on making a longer (and doubtless related) stay, means we need to put Melville in Manhattan, unfinished manuscript of his unpublished Whale book in hand, 3 or 4 weeks earlier than previous biographers did. In the telling, Parker takes the main purpose of both visits to be obviously connected with the job of printing and proofing "The Whale," the not-quite completed book his copyist Augusta regarded as "very fine" in manuscript.
Parker
allows for one and only one visit by
Melville to NYC before "the longer one" that extended at least two weeks
into June, maybe longer. The "flying visit"
by Herman to Allan completed before May 16th = the recent (just "the
other day") visit of 24 hours related to Hawthorne in the letter under
consideration. As dramatized by Parker in the first volume of Herman Melville: A Biography on page 839, Melville's one "flying visit" to New York City becomes THE daytrip that launched Moby-Dick, as the harried but hopeful author
"arrived in Manhattan armed with Stewart's money and more obviously cumbered with a substantial portion of the manuscript."Freshly funded by a $2050 loan from Tertullus D. Stewart on May 1st, Melville arranged with printer Robert Craighead for stereotyping of his new, not-quite completed book in manuscript. Working title: THE WHALE. In Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (page 488) Parker explains that
"in his anger at the Harpers Melville decided to pay for the setting and plating of the book himself in the hope of selling the plates to another publisher for a better deal than the Harpers would give him. In early May, not later, as we had thought, Melville carried the bulk of the manuscript to town, and left it with Richard [Robert] Craighead, the man who had stereotyped Typee for Wiley and Putnam."
No bidding war ensued, however. Melville did sign a contract with Harper & Brothers who formally agreed to publish Moby-Dick or The Whale from "plates in the possession of Robert Craighead."
Assuming that Augusta and Herman must be talking about one and the same trip to NYC, Parker turns Melville's "four-and-twenty hours" into a three-day affair, counting travel time.
"Melville made an urgent trip to New York in early May--one day in the cars down, one day for business, one day in the cars for home... There he tested out Allan's new and inconvenient uptown house on Thirty-first Street for two nights, so as to have his one full day in the city." (V1.839)
Designed
to allow Melville "one full day" in Manhattan, Parker's generous
stipulation of "two nights" at Allan's house extends Herman's visit
beyond the "four-and-twenty hours" mentioned in the letter to Hawthorne.
Strictly regarded, any period of 24 hours should include just one
night, not two or three. Travel by rail from Pittsfield to New York
normally would have taken eight hours. Trains ran twice daily both ways,
according to the expanded schedule "for the Summer of 1851" advertised
in May by the Housatonic Railroad.
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| Pittsfield Sun - May 8, 1851 via Genealogy Bank |
Take the morning train down, arriving in NYC at 4 p.m. Spend the evening and overnight with Allan. Catch up on family news at breakfast. Make your business calls in Manhattan the next morning and early afternoon; then return to Pittsfield by the evening train, departing at 3:55 p.m.
Familiarity with both the morning and evening trains from New York City would seem to inform Melville's advice to Evert A. Duyckinck before his visit later that summer:
"If you will advise me of the day of your starting, I shall have our waggon at the Depot in time for you--as we are three miles from there. Mention whether you take the morning or afternoon train. I recommend, by all means, the morning train." -- Letter of 28 July 1851 in N-N Correspondence, page 201.
Perhaps
Melville did spend the extra night granted in Parker's biography. Who
knows? All we really have to go on are references in two different
letters to "a flying visit" and a 24-hour stay when Melville saw
Hawthorne's portrait somewhere in NYC. My point in bringing up the issue
is mainly to show the narrative pressure exerted in Parker's biography
by his conflation of the two references. Melville had a great deal to
accomplish if he was going to visit Allan and family, call on Evert
Duyckinck, look for a printer who could stereotype his new book, hire
Robert Craighead, all while carrying around the manuscript of Moby-Dick.
No wonder Parker gave him another night in New York! Alternatively, the
"flying visit" and "four-and-twenty hours" could be interpreted as
documentary evidence of different day-trips, one early in May, the other
some weeks later. Seems to me, the business of finding and arranging
with Robert Craighead to get "The Whale" set in type and plated might
well have required more than one "flying visit" to 112 Fulton Street.
Significantly,
perhaps, Parker's construction finesses the problem of where and how
Melville met with his old friend T. D. Stewart in order to borrow a ton
of money. We know when, May 1st, and we know specific terms of the loan,
$2050 for 5 years at 9% interest. But we don't know where exactly
Melville signed for and received the borrowed funds. Parker hints that
Stewart maybe came to Melville in Pittsfield on the basis of an earlier
offer, communicated to Herman's mother (V1.824-5). However, the fact of
Stewart's being at Allan's home in March raises the possiblility of
Stewart's being there again in May, with Herman. Needing cash, Herman
might have wanted to deal with TDS in the company of a good lawyer,
namely his own loyal brother. Allan on more than one occasion served as
intermediary in Herman's communications with New York publishers
including Harper & Brothers. More specifically, as Parker reports,
Allan Melville at some time endorsed and annotated the letter addressed
to Herman in Pittsfield, declining his request for an advance. Late in
April, Melville had been talking with Nathaniel Hawthorne of their going
to New York--together, seemingly at their leisure. Once the Harpers
refused to give him the advance he had requested, Melville had a more
urgent financial reason to confer in person with his lawyer-brother and
sometime literary agent.
However it played out in real life, the
loan from Stewart closely followed the Harper's decision not to advance
Herman any money on "The Whale." Perhaps Herman made a "flying visit"
to NYC on or about the first of May 1851 to get paid, one way or
another. In which case, physical delivery of the "Whale" manuscript
might have required a separate, later visit to Robert Craighead.
In
my alternative construction, admittedly hypothetical, Herman Melville's
"flying" and 24-hour visits reference two different trips to New York
City; one around May 1st (to sign for the loan of $2050 from Tertullus
D. Stewart) and one a week or two or three later (to hire Robert
Craighead).
Even on Parker's own terms (accepting the
presumed unity of Herman's "flying visit" in Augusta's letter with the
24-hour visit related in Herman's letter to Hawthorne) the "early May"
date fails to accommodate the period of three weeks also specified in
the letter under consideration.
Internal evidence in the text
of Melville's letter to Hawthorne points to the merry month of May. For
one thing, May is prime sowing time, and as Melville plainly stated, "I
had my crops to get in,--corn and potatoes." Meaning, he had planted
crops at some time in the past three weeks. And May is strongly
indicated also in Melville's statement to Hawthorne that he had read
about that "sad fellow" Ethan Brand "in the last 'Dollar Magazine.' "
Here Melville refers specifically to the May 1851 issue of Holden's Dollar Magazine where he had read Hawthorne's short story "The Unpardonable Sin." In this context Melville's adjective last
probably means the "latest" or "most recent" issue of the magazine.
Evidently then, at the time of his writing to Hawthorne in the letter
under consideration, Melville has not yet seen or received the June number of the Dollar Magazine.
The relevance of seasonal planting and Melville's reading in Holden's Dollar Magazine was addressed in the previously cited headnote to the letter under consideration in the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Correspondence. One overlooked bit of support for a later rather than earlier date in May is provided by correspondences of tone and content in the next letter Melville wrote to Hawthorne, the one dated June 29th.
Since you have been here, I have been building some shanties of houses (connected with the old one) and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays. I have been ploughing and sowing and raising and printing and praying, and now begin to come out upon a less bristling time, and to enjoy the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza at the north of the old farmhouse here. Not entirely yet, though, am I without something to be urgent with. The "Whale" is only half through the press; for, wearied with the long delays of the printers, and disgusted with the heat and dust of the Babylonish brick-kiln of New York, I came back to the country to feel the grass, and end the book reclining on it, if I may.
— as presented by Julian Hawthorne in Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife Volume 1 (Boston and New York, 1884) page 399.
Melville has been to New York and back, superintending the typesetting of his half-finished Whale-book. In spite of the intervening ordeal at Craighead's third-story printing office, Melville's jumble of news and excuses on June 29th sounds pretty much the same as in the previous letter, only now more poetically compressed into "ploughing and sowing and raising and printing and praying." As in the preceding letter, Melville holds the focus on himself and Hawthorne, exclusively. Neither missive contains any message or even greeting to Nathaniel's wife Sophia Hawthorne and their children. According to Parker, Melville would have heard about the birth of Rose Hawthorne on May 20, 1851 before he left for New York (Herman Melville: A Biography, V1.844), but Melville does not acknowledge this important event in either letter.
By contrast, the letter prior
to the one under consideration expressly acknowledges "Mrs. Hawthorne
and the children." Its actual date might be a week
later than the conjectural date of April 16, 1851 usually assigned--say Wednesday, April 23rd, closer to April 27th when Sophia Hawthorne
mentioned to her sister Elizabeth "an extraordinary letter" they had
received from Melville about Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables; quoted in the Supplement to The Melville Log
(Gordian Press reprint, 1969) on page 926. When viewed in its
chronological place between letters to Hawthorne in late April and late
June, Melville's "Dollars damn me" letter feels appreciably closer in
focus, language, and subject matter to the letter of June 29th, further
from the April letter with its flattering remarks on Hawthorne's latest
book ostensibly copied from the "Pittsfield Secret Review."
On the question of dating Herman Melville's undated "Dollars damn me" letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, it would be a mistake to equate the date of Melville's writing it with the date of events that Melville says happened in the past. More particularly, you have to allow, as Hershel Parker did not sufficiently do, for three weeks of home improvements and farm chores AFTER he quit his Whale-book in progress. Then you have to guess not only when he "left" Moby Dick (April 25th? May 1st? later still?) but what exactly he meant by leaving it (taking a break from writing, or leaving the completed portion of his manuscript at 112 Fulton street in the third-floor printing office of newly hired typesetter Robert Craighead?). Even if, as Parker assumes, the "flying visit" to New York City that Augusta mentioned in her letter to Allan on May 16th was the same visit of 24 hours referenced by Herman as an event of just "the other day," we still don't know for sure how much time really had passed between that particular trip and Herman's undated letter to Hawthorne. Any way you game it out, Parker's "early May" time-frame lands you smack dab in the middle of the month.
For the benefit of anyone wanting to pin a reasonable date on the 1851 letter formerly assigned to "June 1?" and re-dated in Parker's great biography to "early May," here are three evidence-based options:
When you want to be definitely right and don't need to be too precise, just make it
May 1851
Grounds: the "last 'Dollar Magazine' " where HM read about Hawthorne's wretched hero Ethan Brand can only be the May issue, and Melville's last means "most recent."
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In an undated letter written at Arrowhead one rainy day in May 1851, Herman Melville told his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne where and how he intended to finish his "Whale" of a book--then still in manuscript, and not yet titled Moby-Dick:
In a week or so, I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story room, and work and slave on my "Whale" while it is driving through the press. That is the only way I can finish it now, — I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose, that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar.
-- as transcribed and printed by Julian Hawthorne in Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography Volume 1 (Boston, 1884)
Short on time and money, Melville felt he could only get his work-in-progress done in New York City, under pressure. There, added pressure (on top of whatever mental and physical stress he might have been experiencing in Pittsfield) would be externally imposed by the routines and machinery of book production in a busy Manhattan printer's office. Melville's plan was to crank out the final chapters while the completed ones were "driving through the press." Evidently Melville had already made arrangements for stereotyping of the completed portion of his "Whale" manuscript by Robert W. Craighead (employed in the making of Typee by Wiley and Putnam, and The Literary World by Evert A. Duyckinck). However, the end was yet to be written. Soon ("in a week or so") Melville would leave Pittsfield for New York City, there to enter what Hershel Parker describes in the Historical Note for the 1988 Northwestern-Newberry edition of Moby-Dick (page 629) as the "intense final phase of intermingled composition and proofreading."
As he told Hawthorne, Melville expected to "work and slave" at writing and correcting proof pages, right along with the typesetters. In figurative terms, writing under pressure that intense meant being hounded by "the malicious Devil" whom Melville imagined as "forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar." As generally recognized, the insatiable "Devil" of a doorman in the quoted passage is Melville's humorous way of designating the Printer's Devil. In other words, "not Satan but the printer's errand boy, waiting to carry new pages of manuscript to the compositor" (Historical Note, N-N Moby-Dick page 630).
In New York City Herman had somebody he could and usually did stay with, his lawyer-brother Allan Melville. The New York City Directory for 1851 gives Allan Melville's new home address as East 31st street at North Lexington Avenue. As also shown in the 1851 City Directory, Allan's office at 14 Wall street then functioned as Herman Melville's business address in Manhattan. In the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Moby-Dick (Historical Note, pages 629-30) Hershel Parker placed the "third-story room" where Melville intended to "work and slave" away on his Whale-book in the building on E. 31st where Melville presumably stayed, Allan's new and "inconveniently" situated residence uptown:
"In New York, where he planned to finish work, he would be in unfamiliar surroundings, at Allan's new house on Thirty-First Street near Lexington, much farther (and inconveniently) uptown, and in a room which by its location was almost sure to be stiflingly hot."
Melville experts since the late 1980's have followed Parker's lead, for example John Bryant in Melville and Repose: The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1993) page 228:
"To facilitate productivity, he lodged with his brother in New York City, both to escape distractions of Arrowhead and to be closer to his printer."
and Kevin J. Hayes in Herman Melville (Resaktion Books, 2017) page 133:
"Herman settled into Allan's Manhattan home to finish Moby-Dick. When it was nearly complete, he returned to Craighead's print shop in late June, retrieved a bundle of proofs, and left New York for Pittsfield."
In Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) Parker envisions Melville "writing in Allan's third-story room, under the roof, on bad days an ovenlike cell, when he was not making the trip to and from the compositor's plant at the southern tip of the island" (page 844).
Until now, nobody has pointed out the more likely location of the "third-story room" where Melville intended to finish writing Moby-Dick, in the establishment of his hired stereotyper Robert Craighead. As revealed in newspaper accounts of the fire on January 23, 1852 that destroyed the whole building including his printing office, Craighead operated his printing business on the third-stories of adjacent properties, the large four-story brick building at 112 Fulton street, on the southwest corner of Fulton and Dutch, and the adjoining building at 114 Fulton.
"The third stories of the two buildings were occupied by Robert Craighead as a book-printing office, and every thing he had in the two rooms was destroyed." -- New York Times, January 24, 1852
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| NY Literary World - January 31, 1852 |
... The Literary World has been printed since its very commencement, by Robert Craighead, at 112 Fulton street, a large building with openings into the adjoining lofts, supplied with steam power, and filled by a numerous body of pressmen, compositors, and others, through the third floor, while on the fourth was extended the Bindery of E. Walker, one of the most active in the city. The extent of business going on upon these two stories alone of the premises, will be comprehended from a statement of part of the losses of editors, authors, publishers, &c., sustained by the destruction of Mr. Craighead's printing-office.
... Most of our printing-offices are insecure, confused, rickety-looking quarters, with narrow entrances, associated frequently with that huge paper box of combustibles, a Bindery--poorly arranged for light--with steam power on the premises, and badly ventilated, oppressive to health, opposed to the necessary neatness, and utterly insecure for property. -- "Marks and Remarks" in The Literary World No. 261, January 31, 1852, pages 87-88
Although contemporary reports of the fire in the New York Times (January 24, 1852) and The Literary World (January 31, 1852) are cited in the N-N edition of Moby-Dick, no mention is there made of the specific reference in the NY Times article to Craighead's place of business or "rooms" being on "the third-stories" of neighboring edifices.
24 Jan 1852, Sat The New York Times (New York, New York) Newspapers.com
Transcribed below from the New York Times of January 24, 1852:
NEW-YORK CITY.
THE FIRE IN FULTON STREET. — The fire in Fulton street yesterday morning was more destructive of property than any conflagration we have had in this city in a long time. The fire originated in the bindery of E. Walker, in the fourth stories of the buildings Nos. 112 and 114 Fulton-street....
... The third stories of the two buildings were occupied by Robert Craighead as a book-printing office, and every thing he had in the two rooms was destroyed. He was engaged in printing a number of works, two of which were bound. Among them was a portion of Miss Cooper's new work, and of the "Tales and Traditions of Hungary" by Madame Pulszky. He had commenced printing for the Smithsonian Institute, a large Dictionary of the Dacotah language, by Rev. Mr. Riggs. Fortunately the manuscript had not yet been sent in, and hence it has escaped. We understand that the copying of the work for the printer, from the author's notes, occupied about one year, and to print it Mr. C. had to procure a number of letters of a peculiar character. A number of works were being printed in this office and of course the copy was destroyed, among them several manuscript works. Mr. Craighead's loss is about $25,000, and he is insured for but $14,000. Fortunately the plates of a number of standard works were in the vaults and are saved. Mr. Craighead has already made arrangements to continue his business, having hired rooms and procured type and presses.
And below, the account of the "Great Fire in Fulton Street" transcribed from the New York Evening Mirror of January 23, 1852.
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| New York Evening Mirror - January 23, 1852 via Genealogy Bank |
Great Fire in Fulton Street.
About two o'clock this morning a fire broke out in the large five story building, No. 112 Fulton, corner of Dutch streets. This building, with its entire contents, also No. 114 adjoining, was entirely destroyed. The next building, 116, was slightly injured. The buildings, 112 and 114, were occupied by Stilwell and Montrose, clothiers; Robert W. Craighead, the extensive printer; Edward Walker, the book-binder, and some other parties whose names we have not learned. Messrs. Stillwell and Montrose, and Craighead and Walker, were the principal sufferers. The two latter were insured to some extent.
The night being intensely cold, and the materials in the buildings highly inflammable, it was almost in vain, with freezing hose, to battle the fire. It raged with intense fury.
The two buildings were burned into the very cellars, and now present a scene of smoky desolation. The firemen worked bravely on the occasion. On the opposite corner of Dutch street, which leads from Fulton South, the building occupied by Wells & Webb, extensive dealers in printing materials, was considerably damaged by the falling walls of 112. One or two buildings on the opposite side of Fulton street were considerably damaged. The rear of the Home Journal publication office was badly scorched, files of papers, &c., being destroyed.
Building 114, owned by Gale & Son, was fully insured in the Eagle Company. Watkins, bootmaker, who occupied the lower floor, was insured for $5,000 in the North American Company.Building 112, owned by a Mr. Strong, was fully insured. Stillwell & Montrose, clothiers, who occupied a large portion of the building, lost their whole stock, valued at $40,000; insured in various offices $25,000.
The building 116, slightly injured, is owned by Gale & Son, and fully insured in the Bowery Insurance Company. The whole loss must be over $100,000.
In Mr. Craighead's department were destroyed a Dacotah Dictionary, in press for the Smithsonian Institute; a portion of the edition of Garrigue's Iconographic Encyclopaedia; the plates of Madame Pulzky's Tales and Traditions of Hungary, publishing by Redfield; next week's Literary World, which will not, however, prevent its prompt appearance.
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| New York Tribune - January 24, 1852 |
DESTRUCTIVE FIRE.— At 1 3/4 o'clock yesterday morning, a fire broke out in the upper part of the large four-story brick building corner of Fulton and Dutch-sts, occupied by Robert Craighead, book and job printing office, Walker's book bindery, and Stillman & Montrose, clothiers. When first discovered the flames were bursting forth from the windows of the bindery in the fourth-story, from whence it speedily communicated to the printing office in the stories below, and ere the lapse of many minutes the entire building was enveloped in flames, and soon after a mass of ruins. In consequence of the freezing up of the engines the firemen were considerably delayed in their operations, and while they were engaged thawing them out the flames gained considerable headway....
New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]), 24 Jan. 1852. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1852-01-24/ed-1/seq-7/>
The context of Herman Melville's reference to "a third-story room" in his May 1851 letter to Hawthorne is all about the dirty job of getting his Whale-book done. Sure, he might have stayed uptown with his brother Allan and (who knows?) might even have occupied himself with writing there. On June 10th his aunt Mary Ann Chandonette Gansevoort (Guert's mother) died, and Herman was supposed to attend her funeral in Brooklyn. In the earlier letter to Hawthorne, however, his only stated objective for going was to grind, to "work and slave" on his book with a leering printer's apprentice aka "Devil" for an attendant. Not a shred of domestic comfort seems implied in Melville's grim commitment to bury himself in a third-story room. There is no mention here of family connections, no anticipation of even minimal hospitality in NYC. After the fire on Fulton burned down Craighead's workplace, his regular customer Evert A. Duyckinck remembered it as "a large building with openings into adjoining lofts, supplied with steam power, and filled by a numerous body of pressmen, compositors, and others, through the third floor." There's no question Melville went there to work. Since we know which Manhattan printer he must have employed, let's go ahead and give Herman "a third-story room" connected with the printing-office instead of Allan's uptown residence. Herman Melville at least tried to finish writing THE WHALE there, while it was "driving through the press" of Robert Craighead.
* * *
Considering Duyckinck's dismal picture of a typical Manhattan printer's office, it can hardly be surprising that Melville would decide to quit town before his book was done. As Melville explains in his next letter to Hawthorne, this one dated June 29th:
Not entirely yet, though, am I without something to be urgent with. The "Whale" is only half through the press; for, wearied with the long delays of the printers, and disgusted with the heat and dust of the Babylonish brick-kiln of New York, I came back to the country to feel the grass, and end the book reclining on it, if I may. -- The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman (Yale University Press, 1960) page 152It's a wonder the book ever got published that year but it did, by Richard Bentley in London, England as The Whale (October 1851); and by Harper & Brothers in New York as Moby-Dick or The Whale (November 1851). By the by, Evert Duyckinck's casual exposé of sorry working conditions in American printing-offices appeared in the January 31, 1852 issue of the New York Literary World:
Most of our printing-offices are insecure, confused, rickety-looking quarters, with narrow entrances, associated frequently with that huge paper box of combustibles, a Bindery--poorly arranged for light--with steam power on the premises, and badly ventilated, oppressive to health, opposed to the necessary neatness, and utterly insecure for property.
Around the same time, Herman Melville was back home in Pittsfield, belatedly finishing his next book Pierre, or The Ambiguities (1852). A later passage offers this equally depressing picture of Melville's enthusiast hero at work as a writer:
ON the third night following the arrival of the party in the city, Pierre sat at twilight by a lofty window in the rear building of the Apostles’. The chamber was meager even to meanness. No carpet on the floor, no picture on the wall; nothing but a low, long, and very curious-looking single bedstead, that might possibly serve for an indigent bachelor’s pallet, a large, blue, chintz-covered chest, a rickety, rheumatic, and most ancient mahogany chair, and a wide board of the toughest live-oak, about six feet long, laid upon two upright empty flour-barrels, and loaded with a large bottle of ink, an unfastened bundle of quills, a pen-knife, a folder, and a still unbound ream of foolscap paper, significantly stamped, “Ruled; Blue."
For Blues that bad there's only one cure. More Blues!
