Letters from Herman Melville's cousin Ann Marie Priscilla Melvill to Herman's sister Augusta are in the
Augusta Melville papers, now accessible online courtesy of
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. On May 23, 1853 Priscilla asked "Cousin Gus" to get and send "Herman's autograph" without telling him, "by any artifice." Priscilla got it somehow, and thanked Augusta "for the autograph" near the close of her next letter dated June 12, 1853. As Hershel Parker discovered, these two letters also mention a recently completed work titled "Isle of the Cross."
When will the "Isle of the Cross" make its appearance? I am constantly looking in the journals & magazines that come in my way, for notices of it.
-- Priscilla Melville, writing to Augusta on May 23, 1853.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Melvill, Ann Marie Priscilla "Priscilla"" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1848 - 1854. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8f0890a0-4711-0136-688f-311c2151302e
Hershel Parker on Isle of the Cross
- Parker, Hershel. “Herman Melville’s The Isle of the Cross: A Survey and a Chronology.” American Literature 62, no. 1 (1990): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/2926778.
What happened to Isle of the Cross remains the greatest Mevillean mystery ever. Lost? Burned, or otherwise destroyed? Re-fashioned and/or re-titled?
Wait, what exactly
was this "Isle of the Cross," anyhow? Parker logically regards it as the product of Melville's work on
the Agatha story that Melville pitched to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne and later vowed (in December 1852) to work up himself, after Hawthorne declined. The title is suggestively close to "Isle of Shoals," the working title we know Melville wanted to use with Hawthorne's permission. Before Parker's discovery, there was "no evidence that Melville carried through his intention to write the story of Agatha Robertson," as Eleanor Melville Metcalf emphatically stated in
Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle (Harvard University Press, 1953), page 144. Melville's granddaughter wrote that, well-knowing of (and reprinting!) the letter of April 20, 1853 from Herman's mother to her brother Peter Gansevoort, in which Maria Gansevoort Melville mentions "this new work, now nearly ready for the press," something that had "so completely absorbed" Melville" after the election of Franklin Pierce in November 1852. Mrs. Metcalf apparently did not know that in June 1853, several Massachusetts newspapers reported that Melville had gone to New York "
to superintend the issue of a new work." The earliest of these newspaper announcements appeared in the
Berkshire County Eagle on June 10, 1853; as Warren Broderick reports in the March 2021 issue of
Leviathan. Broderick, Warren F. "The Melville Family in Pittsfield Newspapers, 1848–1891." Leviathan, vol. 23 no. 1, 2021, p. 97-102. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lvn.2021.0007.
Later that same year, in November 1853, Melville in a letter to the Harpers alluded to an unnamed book he had brought to New York in the spring but "was prevented from printing at that time."
Chronology
- December 1852. Melville vows to write up the story of Agatha Hatch Robertson and call it the Isle of Shoals.
- April 20, 1853. In a letter to her brother Peter Gansevoort, Melville's mother Maria mentions "this new work, now nearly ready for the press" that "so completely absorbed" her son all winter, since the November 1852 presidential election.
- May 23, 1853. Herman's cousin Priscilla Melvill believes, evidently based on recent, inside information from Augusta Melville in Pittsfield, that a new work titled "Isle of the Cross" is completed and forthcoming. Priscilla refers again to "Isle of the Cross" in another letter to Augusta dated June 12, 1853. Both letters from Priscilla to Augusta are transcribed below.
- June 1853. From Pittsfield Melville travels to New York City "to superintend the issue of a new work."
- November 24, 1853. Melville offers Harper & Brothers a new book, "pretty well on towards completion," mostly about "Tortoise Hunting Adventure"; this letter opens with reference to another, different "work which I took to New York last Spring, but which I was prevented from printing at that time." [Quoted in Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Pursuing Melville, 1940-1980 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1982) page 224; full text in The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. William H. Gilman and Merrell R. Davis (Yale University Press, 1960) pages 164-5.]
In
The Encantadas and The Isle of the Cross: Melvillean Dubieties, 1853-54,
American Literature
Vol. 63, No. 2 (June 1991) pages 316-323, Basem L. Ra'ad argues for identifying "The Isle of the Cross" with the story of Hunilla in The Encantadas, first published in
Putnam's Monthly Magazine under the title, "Norfolk Isle and the Chola Widow."
Basem L. Ra’ad. “‘The Encantadas’ and ‘The Isle of the Cross’: Melvillean Dubieties, 1853-54.” American Literature 63, no. 2 (1991): 316–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/2927169.
Before and after Ra'ad, dozens of scholars also have noted affinities between the "Agatha story" as conceived by Melville and the tale of Hunilla in The Encantadas.
Ra'ad shows what a great title "Isle of the Cross" makes for the intensely pathetic short fiction Melville published as "Norfolk Isle and the Chola Widow." Literally and figuratively, Melville's "Norfolk Isle" sketch has "Isle" and "Cross" written all over it. But "Norfolk Isle" as published in
Putnam's is only a sketch. That's the main problem with Ra'ad's argument, since Herman's mother regarded the "nearly ready" work as a book-length project that had too intensely "absorbed" her son for many months (December 1852, then January, February, March, and April 1853). Informed to that effect by Augusta while domiciled with the rest of the Arrowheads in Pittsfield, cousin Priscilla in Canandaigua was looking for a new book.
Ra'ad also called out Parker for putting the title "Isle of the Cross" in italics. On this point Ra'ad was indubitably correct, since italicized titles conventionally designate published works. Fact check: whatever it was in May 1853, "Isle of the Cross" was never published as
Isle of the Cross. We're talking about the reported title of a work in manuscript, still, not a printed book. Parker always knew that, of course, and would have to defend his deceptive and unorthodox usage as useful means to a noble end. Ideally, Parker's enthusiastic contravention of standard editorial practice aims to convey the real, historical existence of a once-tangible artifact. In reality, the italicized title finesses a gap in the available evidence and typographically magnifies Parker's already important discovery in the Augusta papers (or in Jay Leyda's Xerox copies of the Augusta papers). More recently, the pseudo-reality of
Isle of the Cross has been photographically enhanced in one of the images accompanying Parker's article "A Mandate Fulfilled" in the
June 2019 Leviathan.
Parker, Hershel. "A Mandate Fulfilled (1965–2017): The Writings of Herman Melville." Leviathan, vol. 21 no. 2, 2019, p. 14-20. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lvn.2019.0021.
In Parker's creative visualization, pictures of fake spines titled "Isle of the Cross" and "Poems" augment those of real volumes in the completed series, The Writings of Herman Melville.
Basem Ra'ad beautifully illuminates the Hunilla connections but glosses over solid evidence for a book-length work. Hershel Parker rightly insists on a book, but avoids confronting the glorious aptness of the title, "Isle of the Cross," to the story of Hunilla that Melville published in the
April 1854 number of
Putnam's magazine, within a year of Priscilla's mentioning "Isle of the Cross."
This is what you call a
Crux.
A knotty point, a difficulty.... It does not refer to the cross, as an instrument of punishment; but to the crossing of two lines, called also a node or knot; hence a trouble or difficulty. --Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
My own solution, still, is largely and admittedly speculative. Although frankly conjectural, my idea about "Isle of the Cross" has the virtue of embracing both main lines of evidence, textual as well as historical. Here it is:
"Isle of the Cross" belongs to the matter of Tortoise Hunting.
What preoccupied Melville so intensely during January-April 1853, at noticeable risk to his health, was TORTOISE HUNTING.
What if the projected, never-completed book of Tortoise Hunting Adventures incorporated the core of what Melville wanted to do with the matter of Agatha, in the story of Hunilla? Remember how
Moby-Dick was supposed to be nearly complete, but then wasn't? Much the same thing had happened before, with Melville's third book
Mardi (1849). After
Moby-Dick, it happened again with
Pierre, too, done in January 1852 but re-done by "cobbling" (as Higgins and Parker have it in
chapter 6 of Reading Pierre) a new manuscript with added passages about the hero as struggling novelist. The Hunilla story might likewise have expanded by essay-length additions into what eventually became "The Encantadas." In November 1853 Melville said he had two books on hand, one finished and one not. The unfinished and never-completed book most likely was the one about Tortoise Hunters, never quite
Tortoise Hunters, centered perhaps around the matter of Hunilla, a reconceived "half-breed" Agatha. In that view, "Isle of the Cross" may be understood as an evolving storyline, not yet a full-length book. Yes, clearly, Augusta and Herman's cousin Priscilla took "Isle of the Cross" to be finished, a done deal. But Herman's sister Augusta and cousin Priscilla in May 1853 could have been wrong, just like Herman's wife Lizzie was wrong about
Mardi in May 1848 when she informed her mother,
"The book is done now, in fact...."
Quoted in Merrell R. Davis, Melville's Mardi: A Chartless Voyage (Yale University Press, 1952), page 79.
Likewise
Moby-Dick was supposedly done in early 1851, but Melville kept adding and tinkering. His next book
Pierre was supposed to be finished in January 1852 until Melville decided to make a novelist of its hero, which delayed publication to the end of July. Over time, perhaps, "Isle of the Cross" was submerged in "Tortoise Hunters" which morphed into the "Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles," a series of sketches published in
Putnam's Monthly Magazine starting in March 1854.
Which would leave us then with a different finished book. Not "Isle of the Cross" = "Tortoise Hunting" but a different work that Melville took to New York in June 1853 but was for some unspecified reason "prevented from printing." What was it?
I think the book that Melville was "prevented from printing" in June 1853 was to be titled
FRAGMENTS OF A MILITARY LIFE.
As Philip St. George Cooke revealed in a
letter to John Pendleton Kennedy dated March 14, 1855, "Fragments of a Military Life" was the working title for a proposed mash-up of two magazine series that previously had been published in the
Southern Literary Messenger, "Scenes and Adventures in the Army" (1842-3) and "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-3). Eventually the book got published as
Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857).
The 1842-3 magazine series had an even earlier incarnation in the
Army and Navy Chronicle. In February 1840 the first of four western sketches entitled
"Leaves from my Note-Book" appeared in the
Army and Navy Chronicle (whose subscribers included the Albany Young Men's Association) over the signature of "Z." These "Leaves" of "Z" were supplanted in the same journal by
"Notes and Reminiscences of an Officer of the Army," signed "F.R.D." for First Regiment Dragoons. Here is how the writer handles the disrupted chronology and troublesome change of pseudonyms at the end of the first installment,
June 18, 1840:
Mr. Editor: Was it not unkind of " Z" to anticipate by several years the regular progress of my story? If I tire not by the way,—exposing, perhaps, your readers to that danger,—I shall prove Z to be neither the alpha nor omega of these veritable recollections. Your friend, F. R. D.
Two years later, in 1842-1843 the combined "Leaves" and "Notes" were published after revision in the
Southern Literary Messenger as
Scenes and Adventures in the Army, Sketches of Indians, and Life Beyond the Border by a Captain of U. States Dragoons:
"Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-3) in the Southern Literary Messenger forms Part II of the book, Scenes and Adventures in the Army. The subtitle of the book version, Romance of Military Life, echoes the original working title for the book project, "Fragments of a Military Life."
My conjecture of Melville's involvement as Cooke's ghost-writer or ghost-editor in 1851-3 would account for the otherwise mystifying prairie dialogues that occur in each of the thirteen installments of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." Also the later deletion of bits in the magazine version that echo material in Moby-Dick and Pierre. The intriguingly Melvillean character of these intensely literary and philosophical dialogues will be explored in future Melvilliana posts on Substack, forthcoming at
melvilliana.substack.com
Meanwhile, I offer below my imperfect transcriptions of the two known letters at NYPL from Priscilla Melvill to Augusta Melville that explicitly mention "Isle of the Cross." Corrections and comments welcome here and now, or later on Substack.
MAY 23, 1853
[- Dear Gus' - Can you by any artifice procure me Herman's autograph - Send it, & say nothing to him]
Ontario Female Seminary
May 23rd '53 —
-- My darling Cousin 'Gus' ---
-- You gave a true seal of affection, by withdrawing from the gay bridal scenes by which you were surrounded, to pen that last sweet letter to your exacting cousin Priss.
I become more & more convinced, that the crust of selfishness is gathering thickly around my heart with the rapid approach of age. I would make every effort to avoid this lamentable & almost inevitable consequence of the single state--indeed--poor solitary woman, after the attractive season of growth is past, is with precious few exceptions, sure to become the victim of its hardening influences--imagining that she is not properly appreciated-- & having her sensitive feelings constantly pain'd by slights where nothing of the kind was intended -- for instance when prompt attention is not accorded to my very deserving epistles.
My dear cousin 'Gus,' I fully believe the sincerity of your professions of attachment to me-- that seemed grounded on the cherish'd memories of our earlier years--a sweet bond--that will be enduring as our existence here-- & destin'd I trust to be resum'd when we regain those whose presence among us made those memories sacred -- in the groves & bowers of Paradise--where our hearts will be no more wrung by sorrow & separation.
Your frequent allusion to those happy times, assures me that they are hallow'd among your most cherish'd recollections & I will think of this sweet kind of sympathy ... harshly no more-- my dear Coz.
As to my cousin Helen, I would not bring my direct accusations against her, for worlds--but only just insinuate that her letters are like heavenly messengers & such a lengthy interval has pass'd since she vouchsaf'd any declaration of herself to her mortal cousin that I am warranted in hoping that one of these celestial visitants will soon again, greet my delighted vision.
You will laugh, & say that Priss' is soaring-- dear 'Gus' would that I could this moment soar far away, above the cares that weigh me down here. --but I have arriv'd at the conclusion, that my burden is becoming too oppressive--& am about decided on resigning my present post--tho' I may [seek a situation?] in the family of … [responsibility?].
Such close confinement & constant attendance upon my duties has entirely un-nerved me & I've scarcely courage to await the close of the term in June. Perhaps I should do a foolish thing in giving up this situation, for any uncertainty. I wish I could be gifted on this occasion with superior wisdom, to see what would be for the best. You see, dear Gus' I pour my plaints into your sympathizing bosom without any scruples.
When will the "Isle of the Cross" make its appearance? I am constantly looking in the journals & magazines that come in my way, for notices of it. Let us note Judge Shaw's visit to Europe as one of the remarkable events of 1853.
I reciev'd a letter from Sister Helen, last week. They are all well. Kiss my Auntie for me. Now may you all enjoy pleasant dreams this night & accept the fond love of your Cousin Priss.
***
JUNE 12, 1853
Ontario Female Seminary
June 12th '53 —
My dear Cousin 'Gus' —
— Just like yourself to answer my letter so promptly & I've allow'd you to think me regardless of that & of my Auntie's affectionate invitation so earnestly seconded from the depths of your warm heart--Coz--to visit "Arrowhead," if possible at an early day--for the reason, that I've been unable, 'till within a day or two, to name the time when I could enjoy that pleasure.
Assure my Auntie that I thank her most sincerely, & Kate's absence from home would leave a nice vacancy for me--but it will be impossible for me to leave before the middle or last of August & perhaps by that time, space will be left for my corporeal frame, by some more fortunate coincidence, than the exile of one of my cousins. but should it be very inconvenient about that time be a frank good girl, & tell her.
-no letter from Helen as yet -
- dear cousin - my arrangements for visiting you are delay'd because I have decided--after a struggle between two necessities ---that in compassion to my health & spirits I must resign these cares & take my chances of providing for my bodily wants in some other way. Nothing suggests itself at present, but to improve that pleasant visit with you in endeavoring to procure board & a room (which I will furnish myself, at the cheapest possible rate, in the village & piece out a living with my needle--you may all think it a forlorn task but I should be much more independent & I would greatly prefer it to going into a family in any capacity. I have had trial of that. -- --& in consequence of my voluntary act I shall soon be a waif on the sea of fate.
I am glad to hear such a favorable report of Lizzie She is really gathering quite a little family around her & Arrowhead mansion will hardly be spacious enough. The "Isle of the Cross" is almost a twin sister of the little one & I think she should be nam'd for the heroine if there is such a personage. The advent of the two are singularly near together.
Many thanks for the autograph. good night my dearest 'gus' Love to all from your affectionate cousin Priscilla.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Melvill, Ann Marie Priscilla "Priscilla"" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 11, 2022. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8f0890a0-4711-0136-688f-311c2151302e
By "the little one" Priscilla meant the Melville's new baby daughter Elizabeth "Bessie" Melville, born May 22, 1853.
Related posts
- DRAGOONED #7: After Supper
https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/after-supper
- DRAGOONED #8: Amigo Mio!
https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/amigo-mio
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