Melvilliana: Fake News from the Mediterranean

Melvilliana: Fake News from the Mediterranean: Some few weeks after the execution, among other matters under the head of News from the Mediterranean , there appeared in a naval chronicl...

Mariah Melville, Lady

Maria Gansevoort Melvill (Mrs. Allan Melvill), c. 1815
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

As old hands know, the Christian name of Herman Melville's mother Maria Gansevoort Melville (1791-1872) was pronounced "Mariah" with a long "i" as in "ice" and "nine." Like Mariah Carey. That's how the U. S. Federal Census for 1860 recorded her name, Mariah Melville.

Occupation:

"Lady."

United States Federal Census, 1860 via Ancestry.com 

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7667/images/4237084_00369

1860 was the first year federal census takers asked about the occupations of women:

At the census of 1860 the inquiry relating to occupations, contained on the schedule for free inhabitants, was made to apply to each person, male or female, over 15 years of age, instead of being confined, as it was in 1850, to males only. --United States Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States

Occupation? How else could the daughter of General Peter Gansevoort answer? Lady. Ditto for her daughters.

Mariah Melville, Lady, had just turned 69 years old in April 1860; her age is given as 68 on the federal census dated June 25, 1860. Maria's brother Herman Gansevoort, age 80, is named "Harman" and listed head of household at the Gansevoort mansion in Saratoga County. Also present at the Mansion House in 1860 were Herman Melville's sisters Augusta and Fanny (each a lady); along with Jane Taylor, eighteen years old and employed as domestic servant. "Serving," so not designated "Lady." Augusta (39 in June 1860) and Fanny (age 33) were both older than the Census for 1860 indicates.

Herman Melville's uncle Herman Gansevoort died in 1862. The 1865 State Census for Saratoga County in New York gives the name of Herman's mother as Maria G. Melville, now listed first as head of household.

New York, State Census, 1865 via Ancestry.com

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7218/images/004238325_00021

Herman Melville's brother Thomas Melville is also there in 1865 with sisters Augusta and "Fannie V" (that is, Fanny P? for Priscilla?). Tom's occupation is "Sea Captain."

In 1860, Herman Melville's mother and daughters held the honorable and aristocratic occupation of "Lady." As far as I can tell, no other person in the town of Northumberland, Saratoga County was so designated in the U. S. Federal Census. By contrast, the 1870 Census assigns to Maria the ordinary and generic occupation of "Keeping house." The stated monetary value of that house was anything but commonplace, however: $50,000 in Real Estate; plus $5000 for the Personal Estate.

1870 United States Federal Census via Ancestry.com

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7163/images/4277081_00740

Augusta and Frances were still "At home." Domestic servants in the household of "Mellville, Maria G." in 1870 were immigrants John Quinn (from Ireland, age 30) and Keziah Stoepal (England, age 17).

Concerning the cover addressed to "Miss Maria G. Melville" as described on WorthPoint:

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/bedford-mass-maria-melville-o-allan-1847212231

No family member would have called the mother of Herman Melville "Miss." The envelope postmarked from New Bedford is addressed to Herman's niece Maria G. Melville, daughter of his brother Allan Melville. Later Maria Gansevoort Morewood (1849-1935).

Author of travel romances

From The World's Progress: a Dictionary of Dates (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861):




NATION.          NAME AND PROFESSION                          BORN.          DIED.
Amer.      Melville, Herman, author of travel-romances . . . . . 1819 ----------

Harper & Brothers publish BATTLE PIECES

This day 154 years ago, Harper & Brothers published Herman Melville's collection of Civil War poems titled Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. From the New York Commercial Advertiser, August 23, 1866 via genealogybank.com:

New York Commercial Advertiser - August 23, 1866

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HARPER & BROTHERS, New York

Publish this Day:

I. BATTLE PIECES
AND
ASPECTS OF THE WAR.

By HERMAN MELVILLE,

Author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "Moby Dick," "Whitejacket," &c.

12mo, CLOTH, BEVELED EDGES, $1 75. 

Old Belsnickle in Baltimore

As indicated by the added subtitle in this 1841 reprinting of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," German immigrants in Baltimore would have recognized the fur-clad elf in Clement C. Moore's classic Christmas poem as an Americanized Pelznickel aka Belsnickle, the furry Nicholas. As explained by Phyllis Siefker in Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men (McFarland, 1997 and 2006):

"Santa's forefather was the very unsaintlike  Furry Nicholas, a major player in winter festivals that have been transplanted from Europe to the rugged backwoods of Pennsylvania."

And Maryland, as shown by the expanded title for the poem as reprinted in the Baltimore Clipper on Christmas Day 1841: "A Visit from Saint Nicholas, or Old Belsnickle."

More recently, Tom A. Jerman in Santa Claus Worldwide (McFarland, 2020) describes Pelznickel as "one of the faux Nicholases created following the Reformation." As furry Nicholas displaced the banned Catholic saint, Pelznickel and similar figures

"assumed the role of a secular gift-giver and disciplinarian whereas the virtuous saint performed only good works and required a satanic assistant to do his dirty work."(Jerman, Santa Claus Worldwide, pages 29-30). 

Baltimore Clipper (Baltimore, Maryland) December 25, 1841
via GenealogyBank

A VISIT FROM SAINT NICHOLAS,

OR

OLD BELSNICKLE.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The STOCKINGS were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. NICHOLAS soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced through their heads;
And Mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap:
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter:
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! Now, Prancer! Now, Vixen!
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Donder and Blixen--
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!"
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys--and St. Nicholas too.
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he look'd like a pedlar just opening his pack.
His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laugh'd, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump; a right jolly old elf:
And I laugh'd, when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill'd all the stockings; then turn'd with a jerk,
And, laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

-- Baltimore Clipper, December 25, 1841 

Three phantom pirates by Peterson

In 1865 Philadelphia publisher T. B. Peterson reprinted Melville's historical romance of Israel Potter (1854-5) under a different title, The Refugee. Melville complained more than once about the unauthorized publication of his work. The author of Israel Potter formally and finally disavowed The Refugee in a letter to the editor of the New York World, published there on January 28, 1876. Zachary Turpin first located Melville's epistolary "Protest," as discussed in Turpin's March 2017 Leviathan article, Melville's Letter to the World.

Turpin cites relevant lists of Peterson titles including The Refugee that appeared in 1876 editions of novels by E.D.E.N. Southworth. Years before, in back of the 1857 edition of Southworth's Vivia; or, The Secret of Power, T. B. Peterson & Brothers advertised a forthcoming edition of Israel Potter with a different title: Fifty Years in Exile.



Similarly converting Melville's original subtitles to main titles, Peterson also promoted cheap editions of The Confidence-Man as "The Masquerade" and The Encantadas (recently collected in The Piazza Tales) as "The Enchanted Isles." All three apparently unauthorized titles were listed among "Works in Press by the Best Authors" in Peterson's edition of Vivia (Philadelphia, 1857) by Emma D. E. N. Southworth. None of these titles was actually published in 1857 or any other year, so far as I can tell.

Fifty years in Exile. 

By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," "Typee," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover, price $1.00; or in one volume, cloth, $1.25. 

The Masquerade. 

By Herman Melville, author "Typee," "Omoo," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25.  

The Enchanted Isles.

By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," “Typee," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25

https://books.google.com/books?id=xK8edm7GYA4C&pg=PT12&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

These phantom editions of works by Herman Melville are NOT listed with advertised titles in the first edition Vivia in the E.D.E.N. Southworth Collection at the University of South Carolina.

Coincidentally, the "author-hero" that Melville's author-hero Pierre writes about in the 1852 novel Pierre or The Ambiguities is also named Vivia.

BATTLE-PIECES in Major Farnsworth's St Louis Dispatch

The battle of Gettysburg, Pa. July 3d. 1863. Lithograph by Currier & Ives via Library of Congress

Transcribed below, this early notice of Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War appeared in the St. Louis, MO Dispatch on August 30, 1866.

Saint Louis Dispatch - August 30, 1866

NEW BOOKS

RECEIVED AT O'FALLON POLYTECHNIC
INSTITUTE.

BATTLE-PIECES AND ASPECTS OF THE WAR. By HERMAN MELVILLE. New York: Harper & Bros.

This is an exceedingly interesting grouping in rhyme of the scenes of the war, memorial and descriptive. Some of the pieces are very interesting; and in years to come will be perused as historic of war scenes. It is a neat, attractive volume, from which some choice literary flowers may be culled. 

The St. Louis Dispatch was then managed by Major Ezra Scollay Farnsworth (1830-1886), a wounded veteran of Gettysburg from Newton, Massachusetts.

Boston Herald - April 3, 1886
via GenealogyBank

 From the obituary of Maj. E. S. Farnsworth in the Boston Herald on April 3, 1886:

"... He was twice wounded. At the battle of Gettysburg he received a bad wound in the side, from which it was feared he never would recover. He managed to pull through, however, and returned to the field before he was fully recovered, and there is no doubt that this wound hastened his death. While in the army he had the reputation of being a cool and plucky soldier.... 

Deceased was always a stanch Democrat, and has been identified with the Democratic party for a long time.... After the close of the war, Maj. Farnsworth went to St. Louis, where he remained for about two years as business manager of the St. Louis Dispatch."