Alice P. Kenney on Herman Melville and the Dutch Tradition

Gansevoort Mansion. Doug Kerr from Albany, Upstate New York, United States
CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

HathiTrust Digital Library has the Bulletin of the New York Public Library 79.4 (Summer 1976) with Alice P. Kenney's article, Herman Melville and the Dutch Tradition at pages 386-399.

Not Pierre but Mardi is "Melville's 'Dutchiest' work"(393) according to Professor Kenney. More recent scholarship has challenged the reliability of Kenney's source Lawrence Gwyn Van Loon. Well, the proposed connection between a Dutch folk tale about "Joekie and the poolmaiden" and the role of Yillah in Mardi never seemed all that strong to begin with. Nonetheless, other Dutch elements and motifs doubtlessly inform Mardi and other prose works by Melville. Kenney points out that Dutch influences abound in Melville's poetry, too:

Life at Gansevoort is probably also described in one of Melville's poems, "A Dutch Christmas Up the Hudson in the Time of the Patroons," which depicts not the elaborate festivities to be expected of Van Rensselaers or Van Cortlandts, but the homely celebration of a farm family who, while decking their rooms with greens and preparing good food, encourage the servants to make merry amid their labors and extend a share in the cheer to farm animals and their less fortunate neighbors. Extra measures of oats and hay for the livestock and wreathing the horns of the cattle with holly suggest the continued practice by Dutch farmers of widespread North European folkways, while Santa Claus's gifts of a mince pie to "the one man in jail" and good things to the poor so proud that "pudding for an alms they would spurn from the door" recall the quiet, practical charities which made Melville's sisters Augusta and Fanny beloved in Gansevoort. Most quintessentially Dutch of all is the last line of the poem, "Happy harvest of the conscience on many Christmas Days." (395)

The case, in summary:

Dutch influences in Melville's works, therefore, clearly include elements from Hudson
Valley folklore, basic attitudes toward language, rhetoric, and literary form, and values
fundamental to the Hudson Valley Dutch tradition as well as explicit references to Dutch subject matter. (399)

Professor Kenney aimed in this 1976 article to spur closer study of Melville's Dutch influences. Forty years later, a fresh look would still be welcome.

Melville called "a tool of jesuitism" for slander of Protestant missions

Transcribed below from the Nottingham Review (Friday, 8 November 1850), a strong endorsement of the recent attack on Melville's Omoo in the Eclectic Review. The article on "Mr. Melville and South-Sea Missions" first appeared in the Eclectic Review for October 1850 and was reprinted in the December 1850 Eclectic Magazine and Littell's Living Age - 16 November 1850.

LITERATURE.

THE ECLECTIC REVIEW... The next article is an interesting sketch of the "Biography of Leigh Hunt.” Like the subject it is serial, discriminative, and quietly humorous. The paper that follows is a review of the "South Sea Narratives" of Herman Melville. A more thoroughly-deserved castigation no author ever received than the gentleman in question gets in this article. This tool of jesuitism thought that he could quietly damage the Protestant missions in Polynesia by mingling with his "sea-yarns” the most slanderous imputations upon the integrity, character, and worth of the missionaries. But into the pit which he has dug, he has fallen himself! The reviewer, who is evidently au fait at sifting evidence, has made Melville himself prove that he has been guilty of "deliberate and elaborate falsehood," and that he is "a prejudiced, incompetent, and truthless witness!" When the October number of the Eclectic meets his eye, and hereafter when he remembers it, we think his ears will tingle. He has got what he well deserved, and we hope it will do him good. --Nottingham Review and General Advertiser for the Midland Counties (Friday, 8 November 1850); found at The British Newspaper Archive

Letter from James Lorimer Graham, Jr. to Evert A. Duyckinck, asking for address of Herman Melville

Image Credit: Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Used by permission.

This undated manuscript note from James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (1835-1876) is held at the New York Public Library in the Duyckinck Family Papers: Papers of Evert A. Duyckinck, General Correspondence, Undated and Unidentified (box 23). Published references to Graham's request for Herman Melville's address include the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Herman Melville's Correspondence, ed. Lynn Horth (766); and the second volume of Hershel Parker's biography: Herman Melville: A Biography - V2.484. (Both sources incorrectly identify the sender as "Sr." Graham's "J" does look like an "S," but the signature is definitely that of James Lorimer Graham, Jr.)

Graham's inherited wealth and fortunate alliance with Josephine Garner (daughter of cotton merchant Thomas Garner, sister of William T. Garner) justify the listing of his occupation in the 1860 U. S. Federal Census as "Gentleman." Later he found employment in business at 108 Broadway, serving as a Director and eventually as 2nd Vice President of the Metropolitan Insurance Company. While he resided in New York City, Graham belonged to the best associations, most notably the Century Club and Geographical Society. In New York and abroad, he befriended numerous authors and artists. Graham was known for "witty and brilliant conversation" in social gatherings and "was often mistaken for a Frenchman." As patron of the arts and convivial "prince of good fellows," James Lorimer Graham, Jr. ("Lorry" or "Lorrie" Graham, among friends) resembles the Marquis de Grandvin, sketched by Melville in manuscript as the charming personification of wine who inspirits conversation and poetry in the fictional "Burgundy Club." From 1869 until his death in 1876, Graham served as U. S. Consul General in Florence, Italy.

Although dated only "Wednesday," the letter to Melville's friend Evert Duyckinck must have been written before Graham and his wife left New York for Europe in December 1866. On Monday, March 26, 1866 (according to a newspaper report the next day) Melville socialized at Graham's home with distinguished members of "The Wanderer's Club."

New York Evening Post, Tuesday, March 27, 1866

Trow's New York City Directory "For the Year Ending May 1, 1866" gives the address for James Lorimer Graham, jr. as "3 E. 17th." That's the address his friend Bayard Taylor remembered as a "treasury of rare articles" from Graham's impressive  "collections of coins, autographs, drawings, and books" (1876 obituary - New York Tribune). Most likely the March 26, 1866 gathering took place at 3 East Seventeenth street. But as indicated in the transcription below, Graham wrote Duyckinck from "21 Washington Sq," The Washington Square mansion was the residence that James Lorimer Graham, Jr. shared with his uncle, James Lorimer Graham, in 1865 and earlier, according to Trow's and other New York City directories. According to the Tribune obituary by Bayard Taylor,  

"The years 1862 and ’63 he spent in Europe, and then returned to New-York until the close of 1866."  --New York Tribune obituary by Bayard Taylor

On January 18, 1862, Graham wrote Taylor a letter from London, the first of 96 letters from Graham now in the Bayard Taylor papers at Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University. On November 29, 1861 Graham wrote to his uncle from Edinburgh, Scotland. In view of Graham's absence from New York in 1862-3 and 1867-76, his note to Evert Duyckinck can reasonably be dated around 1864-1866, probably no later than March 21, 1866--the Wednesday before the party that Melville reportedly attended for "Wanderer's Club" members and invited guests.

Transcription:

21 Washington Sq

Wednesday

Dear Sir 

You will greatly oblige me by giving the bearer the address of Mr Herman Melville, for me.  

I am on my back (and have been for several days) with the diphtheria, or I would have done myself the honor of looking in upon you personally. 

Very truly yours 

Ja[me]s Lorimer Graham Jr.

Related melvilliana posts:

• Obituary by Bayard Taylor in the New York Tribune 
• Melville in March 1866, socializing with the Wanderer's Club
• Identifying the good fellows with Herman Melville at "Lorry" Graham's

Links to biographical resources:

• James Lorimer Graham, Jr. - 1894 Century Club memorial
• Letters to Bayard Taylor at Houghton Library, Harvard
• New York Tribune obituary by Bayard Taylor via Library of Congress-Chronicling America
• United States Insurance Gazette, notice of Graham's 1869 diplomatic appointment

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

Henry Melvill said it

For the record, Google Books has the volume of Henry Melvill's sermons with this globally quoted and misquoted passage:

"Ye live not for yourselves; ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects." -- Golden Lectures, 1855 sermon on "Partaking in Other Men's Sins" by the Rev. Henry Melvill.

The Rev. Henry Melvill on "Partaking in Other Men's Sins"
1855 sermon in The Golden Lectures (London, 1856) page 454
https://books.google.com/books?id=lt8EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA300&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Often ascribed, wrongly, to Herman Melville, as in Hillary Rodham Clinton's book, It Takes a Village:

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes, and return to us as results. 

HERMAN MELVILLE

Besides mistaking the author, Hillary Clinton's influential published version alters the real author's original terms, making them "invisible threads" and "sympathetic fibers." The roots of this interesting switch, and so perhaps the honor of the first (mis)attribution to Herman Melville, may be traceable to worthy volunteer organizations and community activists of the 1970's and early 1980's.

In any case: what a perfect time, now, to restore due credit to the eloquent Anglican preacher, Henry Melvill. I mean, think of the implications for global intellectual property rights!

Related posts on Melvilliana

•  the finest thing Herman Melville never said
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2011/09/finest-thing-herman-melville-never-said.html
  

• Henry Melvill's thousand fibres and sympathetic threads, proved
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2013/02/henry-melvills-thousand-fibres-and.html
  

• Pseudo-Melville and Fake Fanon
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/12/pseudo-melville-and-fake-fanon-prophets.html

Review of Redburn in the Elgin Courier

At the Mouth of the Mersey - Samuel Walters
Frontispiece to Melville's Early Life and Redburn by William H. Gilman

A previous melvilliana post on British notices of Melville's Israel Potter gave the review of the  pirated Routledge edition of Israel Potter (1855) from a Scottish newspaper, the Elgin and Morayshire Courier. Further searching in the online British Newspaper Archive yields another Melville review in the same newspaper. The Courier reviewed Melville's Redburn on 16 November 1849:

REDBURN; HIS FIRST VOYAGE. Being a Sailor Boy’s Confessions, and Reminiscences of the Son of a Gentleman in the Merchant Service. By Herman Melville. London: R. Bentley. Elgin: Geo. Wilson.

THE present work, by Mr Melville, to the majority of his readers who were so fascinated by Typee and Omoo, may not greatly serve to raise the author in their estimation. Typee took the world by surprise; everything in it was so fresh and vigorous—the features of the happy valley, almost a paradise—the remarkable customs of the people—the natural productions of the island—all imparted to the book a tone of adventure and variety, so rich and life-looking, that even critics knew not what to think of it. Redburn is void of all these attractions; yet, as a whole, and with the exception of a few prosy chapters devoted to somewhat wire-drawn descriptions, the book is readable, and deserves to become a favourite. The limits embraced by the story extend only to a voyage from New York to Liverpool and back. The descriptions of the officers and crew, are racy in a high degree, evidencing the acute observation of the writer, and a happy command over his pen in setting forth his characters to best advantage. The picture afforded of sea life is happy, and, we doubt not, quite true. The tyranny of the captain, and other officers; with the sufferings and privations of the crew—the fraudulent tricks practiced upon green hands in the merchant vessels are well brought out, and we fear without any exaggeration. When opportunities offered, the vessel carried passengers as well as goods, and we have some striking but melancholy examples of the cruel usage to which many poor emigrants are subjected, when they are once fairly in the clutches of these petty tyrants of the ocean. The story is well conceived. Redburn is the son of a gentleman; but, his father being dead, and the family in rather reduced circumstances, he was tempted through the glowing descriptions of marine life, to court fortune before the mast. With the enthusiasm, and perhaps excusable ignorance, of youth, he started for New York, with a letter of introduction to a friend, and a fowling-piece gifted him by his brother. This friend gave Redburn a night’s lodgings, and procured a vessel for him next day. Being destitute of friends or clothing, or any thing calculated to make him comfortable in his new sphere, he went aboard after pawning his gun to enrich his kit—and soon found, in a variety of ways, that there are bitter realities upon the sea as well as elsewhere. The adventures are not many nor striking, but they are set forth in that sort of quiet, humorous manner, which never fails to carry fascination with it. The idea of a poor, ignorant youth being thrown friendless upon the sea, and there taken advantage of and trampled upon by a parcel of men who acknowledge no law except the rope’s end, has already been made familiar in “Peter Simple”; but in this book the circumstances connected with the hero’s fortune and position as a sailor are very different from those of Marryat’s favourite; and the incidents, nautical and otherwise, with the characters of the crew are so uncommon in novels, that in almost every particular the book may be considered original. In Redburn there is no straining at adventure, no working up of wonders for the sake of effect or excitement: The story is told with all the apparent ease and calmness of truth; and it is in this excellent feature where its great charm lies.

--Elgin and Morayshire Courier - Friday, 16 November 1849; found at The British Newspaper Archive

The following week, on 23 November 1849, the Elgin Courier published an extract from chapter 44 of Redburn headed "A Case of Spontaneous Combustion." The close of the extract credited "Herman Melville's Redburn."

More British notices of Typee

Here are three items, all found at The British Newspaper Archive.

MURRAY'S COLONIAL AND HOME LIBRARY.

A RESIDENCE IN THE MARQUESAS. PART I.

THIS is an exceedingly interesting narrative. The author, Herman Melville, having left the American service in disgust, took up his residence for four months with a tribe of islanders called the Typees. During this period, he became familiar with their character and customs; and in the work before us, his adventures and observations are graphically related. It forms a valuable addition to this popular library.  --Cheltenham Chronicle - Thursday, 12 March 1846

NARRATIVE OF A FOUR MONTHS' RESIDENCE AMONG THE NATIVES OF A VALLEY OF THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS; or, a peep at Polynesian life. By Herman Melville.— Murray's Home & Colonial Library.

A book of singular interest and beauty. It is a narrative of the adventures of an American seaman, who, in company with a messmate, deserted from his ship, and sought shelter among the natives of the Marquesas. After severe hardships they reached the Typee Valley, and for four months' the Typees were his hospitable entertainers. His physical delights exceeded his strongest desires, but being at length palled, he was glad to obtain his freedom, which he did through the exertions of an English captain. The authenticity of the narrative has been questioned, on the ground that it bears internal evidence of having been written by some one moving in a higher sphere than that of a common sailor. Be this as it may, however, it is one of the most pleasing of Mr Murray's admirable series. The adventures are described with a spirit truly refreshing; and there is a charm about its pictures of Polynesian life which cannot be over-praised. Some of its sketches we may give next week.  --Newcastle Courant - Friday 24 April 1846

MELVILLE'S PEEP AT POLYNESIAN LIFE.

Herman Melville, the author of this book, which has all the interest of Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe,' with the additional merit of being no fiction—was a sailor on board an American whaling vessel. If the captain of the whaler had not been a monster of cruelty, we might never have been delighted with this heart stirring narrative. Melville, and, a ship mate, named Toby, endured with marvelous resignation the brutal treatment to which they were subjected, until one fine day they took advantage of the vessel's visit to Nukuheva (one of the Marquesa islands) for provisions, and resolved to cast their lot among the natives rather than return to Egyptian bondage which their nautical taskmaster had in store for them. The manner in which the ladies of Nukuheva proceeded to welcome the strangers was rather original:— 

"We had approached within a mile and a half perhaps of the foot of the bay, when some of the islanders, who by this time had managed to scramble aboard of us at the risk of swamping their canoes, directed our attention to a singular commotion in the water ahead of the vessel. At first I imagined it to be produced by a shoal of fish sporting on the surface, but our savage friends assured us that it was caused by a shoal of 'whinhenies' (young girls), who in this manner were coming off from the shore to welcome us. As they drew nearer, and I watched the rising and sinking of their forms, and beheld the uplifted right arm bearing above the water the girdle of tappa, and their long dark hair trailing beside them as they swam, I almost fancied they could be nothing else than so many mermaids—and very like mermaids they behaved too.We were still some distance from the beach, and under slow headway, when we sailed right into the midst of these swimming nymphs, and they boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold of the chain-plates and springing into the chains; others, at the peril of being run over by the vessel in her course, catching at the bob stays, and wreathing their slender forms about the ropes, hung suspended in the air. All of them at length succeeded in getting up the ship's side, where they clung dripping with the brine and glowing from the bath, their jet black tresses streaming over their shoulders, and half enveloping their otherwise naked forms. There they hung, sparkling with savage vivacity, laughing gaily at one another, and chattering away with infinite glee. Nor were they idle the while, for each one performed the simple offices of the toilette for the other. Their luxuriant locks, wound up and twisted into the smallest possible compass, were freed from the briny element; the whole person carefully dried, and from a little round shell that passed from hand to hand, anointed with a fragrant oil: their adornments were completed by passing a few loose folds of white tappa, in a modest cincture, around the waist. Thus arrayed they no longer hesitated, but flung themselves lightly over the bulwarks, and were quickly frolicking about the decks. Their appearance perfectly amazed me; their extreme youth, the light clear brown of their complexions, their delicate features, and inexpressibly graceful figures, their softly moulded limbs, and free unstudied action, seemed as strange as beautiful. In the evening after we had come to an anchor the deck was illuminated with lanterns, and this picturesque band of sylphs, tricked out with flowers, and dressed in robes of variegated tappa, got up a ball in great style. These females are passionately fond of dancing, and in the wild grace and spirit of their style excel everything that I have ever seen. The varied dances of the Marquesan girls are beautiful in the extreme, but there is an abandoned voluptuousness in their character which I dare not attempt to describe."  --Tipperary Free Press - Wednesday, 6 May 1846

The excerpt in the Tipperary review omits the bawdiest bits from "Melville's Peep":

 Many of them went forward, perching upon the head-rails or running out upon the bowsprit, while others seated themselves upon the taffrail, or reclined at full length upon the boats. What a sight for us bachelor sailors! how avoid so dire a temptation? For who could think of tumbling these artless creatures overboard, when they had swam miles to welcome us? ... The ‘Dolly’ was fairly captured; and never I will say was vessel carried before by such a dashing and irresistible party of boarders! The ship taken, we could not do otherwise than yield ourselves prisoners, and for the whole period that she remained in the bay, the ‘ Dolly,’ as well as her crew, were completely in the hands of the mermaids.--Typee, London edition published by John Murray

I guess more work will be needed to figure out if the reviewer is independently censoring Melville, or quoting from a text already expurgated.