Progress report... Today I received from the incomparable NYPL images of John C. Hoadley's manuscript poem "Destiny" in the
Gansevoort-Lansing Collection. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation.
Fortunately the handwriting is crystal clear and will be much easier to transcribe than Hoadley's honeymoon letter from Niagara Falls to Augusta Melville. Hoadley failed to get it published, but not for lack of neatness. Length, verse form, and content all match Evert Duyckinck's description of the patriotic poem that Herman Melville read aloud, with gusto, in August 1851.
"stout" in manuscript indicating many hundreds of lines? Check, 648 lines of verse.
composed in heroic measure, meaning "sounding lines" of mostly iambic pentameter? Check. In rhymed couplets, as guessed on Melvilliana.
glorification of the United States with polite slanging at other countries? Check and check!
The early, methodical slanging at England and individually named nations of Europe and Asia really clinches it. Nothing close appears in J. E. A. Smith's 88 lines. It must be Hoadley's "Destiny" that Melville read aloud in a Berkshire barn, and not, as previously thought, Smith's ballad "On Onota's Graceful Shore."
After the last endnote on numbered page 53 there appears a brief, anonymous endorsement.
Hmmm. Only a sentence but I will ask for permission before giving it. Stay tuned!
Destiny: a poem by John C Hoadley 648 lines plus endnotes, transcribed here https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/07/destiny-poem-by-john-c-hoadley.html
Scene at Niagara Falls Getty Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The mentionable episodes of a Niagara Falls honeymoon are described in avowedly sentimental prose by John Chipman Hoadley (1818-1886) in a letter dated September 23, 1853 to his new sister-in-law Augusta Melville. Hoadley had just married Augusta's (and Herman's) younger sister the former Catherine Gansevoort Melville aka "Kate" on September 15, 1853 in Pittsfield, Mass. You might wonder like I did what Mr. Hoadley's new wife thought about his sharing such intimate details as "The Kiss of the whirlpool" and "The Kiss of the staircase." On the last page Mrs. Hoadley finally and audibly intervenes:
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to write such nonsense!”
Kate's playful rebuke did cool down the verbal extravagance of her husband who closes the letter in a more matter-of-fact style. Indeed, if Augusta were at all inclined to find a deeper or more personal message of love in Hoadley's romantic flourishes, she would have been sadly discouraged by his asking that she "let Hatty read this," since otherwise Hoadley would have to write the same things all over again to his sister Harriet.
"If you will be kind enough to let Hatty read this, I will not write her what would be in great measure repetition."
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Hoadley, John C." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1853 - 1863. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/59013100-4711-0136-060e-5dbf2ab19cf0
Transcribed in full below. Mistakes are mine, of course. Reader comments, corrections and improvements are always welcome.
International Hotel. Niagara Falls. Friday Afternoon. Sept. 23, 1853.
My Dear Sister Augusta,
I am proud and happy to “recognize the new relation in which we stand,” with a borrowed grace, in language you have taught me. It is almost four O’clock.
Kate is asleep on the bed: I have been dozing in an arm chair, she to wear away a headache which she has had since morning, and I to recover from the fatigues of dinner. It has been a happy day for us, both; happy and memorable. Happy in spite of Kate’s headache and of my sympathy with it; memorable, although we have seen nothing to-day to charm the senses, or impress the imagination. Though yesterday, and the days before were solemn with the glories and grandeurs of Niagara and to-day has been hushed with the silence of our chamber, yet this day and not the days before, is happy and memorable, for to-day we have our first letters from home! Looked for most anxiously, they have come at last, and have been most eagerly and joyfully perused.
Thanks dear Augusta. I knew you would understand as I meant them those bagatelles that made up my letter. Many things that cannot be said, may be revealed by significant triflings. Deep currents of feeling, may be read by the foam on their surface. Great cataracts of emotion, may be indicated by the tree-like column and cloud of spray which soars into the stillness of heaven. Hidden shoals and quicksands of thought, may be traced in the answering cloud, which as over the banks of Newfoundland mirrors their form in the sky.
We left Buffalo at half past four on monday, and arrived here in about an hour thereafter. It rained hard during the trip, and, after a fine sunset, glowing in all the splendors of sun, and air, and watery vapor, at intervals during the evening; so that we were unable to catch a glimpse of the falls, and had to content ourselves as we could with listening to their evening anthem, & gazing while yet the light remained, upon their soaring spray. On tuesday evening I started early for a hasty reconnoiter, and after breakfast we went to-gether to Goat Island; gazing as we passed upon the busy waters that take no rest as they hasten on to their fate; upon the patient rocks that make no haste as they await their inevitable doom; upon the black and treacherous tree trunk, to which a shuddering victim clung so long, then was swept on to the abyss; upon the sorrowful trees, swirling as they came after the crushing weight of ice that bound them down in winter; upon the vast bridge beneath our feet, with frail timbers, and disjointed stones, spanning the torrent:-- glancing at all; up at the staid torrent that flowed down out of high mountains of cloud, down at the dizzy verge where the waters disappeared into the depths of the earth, around, at the wild, wild, scene where Earth, with its garniture of green, and its beautiful life, seemed nothing, sky nothing; and the mad destroying waters everything:— gazing at all, glancing at all, yet seeing nothing, comprehending nothing, we went onward to the island. You would have thought us two very prosy, commonplace mortals, however, had you seen us as we reached the end of the bridge pause, consult together a moment, while I examined my pockets with a result which seemed far from satisfactory, and then return with hasty steps, and looks preoccupied with humbler cares than cataracts, towards our Hotel.
Indeed, I had discovered before making the toll gate, that I had nothing in my pockets less than $20 notes, and returned to fill them with three cent pieces, half dimes, dimes, quarters, halves, &c to be used as amulets and charms against the spirits that infest the place, to the sore annoyance of the unobservant who neglect to propitiate them by their established rites. (rights, as they call them.)
Being well provided with the prescribed articles of sacrifice, and perfectly orthodox in our worship, we found the tutelary divinity quite propitious, and wandered unmolested where we chose. Turning to the left after passing the gate, we walked around the island, pausing, gazing, sometimes talking afterward gazing and listening in silence; sitting under the shade of a birch tree and looking steadfastly at the ceaselessly rushing water until we seemed standing on a plunging ship, cleaving with lifted prow the foaming tide; listening with closed eyes to the low deep peal, until we were transported to the side of the moaning sea; & straying on through groves which hid the water from our view, until we were buried in the peace of of all-soothing nature;— & so we wandered, loitered on, until we reached the brink of the Canadian or Horseshoe fall, and ascended the tower. Why attempt to describe the indescribable? to write, what one cannot altogether see, even while his eyes are swimming over it? to tell what we do not comprehend, though eloquent nature in solemn tones, utters it, with awful gusto in his ears? The strong rock stood beneath us, as if it would not one day be strowed in sifting sand in the deep bed of Ontario. The strong water leaped, as if it should never be buffetted by raging winds, and sleep on drenched sands, and heave to the secret influence of the moon in the fitful Atlantic.
The spray leapt to heaven, like a martyr’s soul, as if it should never descend in tearful rain. The milky foam ran deep and fair, as if it was never to bear navies on its bosom or lave the reeking shore. And two fond, foolish lovers looked and listened, and turned from all to gaze into each other's eyes as if their life, and love, and joy, were emblemed by the ceaseless stream, and steadfast rock, and ever rising spray, and not by the bubble, glittering an instant on the crest of the fall, by the pebble that yielded just now to the stream, the vapor that dissolved in the sun, just as it reached the sky.— Two fond, foolish lovers — and beside them rushed the stream and beneath them fell the cataract, and before them rose the spray, and around them swelled the song of the waterfall, and over them bent the cloud-hung sky, and upon their heads the sunlight was poured out like a blessing, and at their feet God’s rainbow lay like the promise of a path of joy — significant promise, born of the marriage of the light of heaven and the mists of Earth
Saturday morning. Sept. 24 —
Here my sentimental letter stumbled over the dull necessity of dressing for tea, and last night Kate wouldn’t let me write a word.
— Oh! What a mistake, I wanted him to write & he would not. Kate. —
There! Don’t you think I have imitated Kate’s hand writing admirably? I dare say she will tell you that she wrote it herself.
To resume our explorations of the Falls. It rained wednesday tuesday afternoon and evening, but was fair again on thursday wednesday morning, and taking a pair of ponies and a light waggon, we drove to the suspension bridge and across into Canada, first going down, however, to the whirlpool, and looking from the base of the precipice upon its gloomy waters. Kate corrects my summary. It was on tuesday afternoon that we took this drive, and it did not rain until evening.
After crossing the suspension bridge, 800 ft. long, hanging like a spider’s web 230 ft. above the surface of the stream running with amazing swiftness beneath us, we drove on for a mile through a beautiful country, and only turned homeward when the declining sun warned us, of the approach of night. I felt the sublimity of our position on the suspension bridge more on our return, than when we first crossed, having been then chiefly occupied with my horses. It made one giddy to feel that he was 400 ft. from shore on either hand, suspended by wires which were almost lost to the eye ere they rested on their piers with the height of a tall steeple beneath him to the water, and an equal depth of swirling water still below. Even the wild pidgeon might feel a shudder as he swept over on swift wing. On wednesday the morning was threatening, but the day proved fine, cloudy, cool, with a gentle, bracing breeze. Crossing at the Ferry, after a descent in the cars, we took a carriage on the Canadian shore (No. 45 – James Harris driver, a good, intelligent, obliging negro.) and were driven to “all the points of interest.” To the battle ground at Lundy’s Lane. To the burning spring. But chiefly, and more than all, along the rapids above the falls. Then we first began to feel in all its fullness the majesty of the scene. The steep descent, the breathless haste of the hurrying water, the vast breadth, seeming running upstream at our feet, and the dizzy waters waltzing before us, and the frowning precipices walling us in, and the lowering heaven streamed[?] flat [flap?] over the top like a sail, with every outward thing gloomy, and forbidding, and dark; but all lighted up with the new hope and joy within; and here was “The Kiss of the whirlpool.” —— At two, I had finished cutting K. M. H on the smooth bark of a linden, half way up the acclivity, and here was “The Kiss of the staircase.”
—— Kate says, as she looks over my shoulder, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to write such nonsense!” So I suppose I ought, and you will please consider me becomingly ashamed.
Friday, we went in the omnibus down to the “Maid of the Mist,” with the intention of going up on her to the Falls, but found she was laid up for the season, and returned to the one o’clock dinner, which Kate was too unwell to go down to, having a bad headache. She is much better this morning. We start at 6 ½ this evening for Cleveland where we hope to arrive soon after midnight, via R. R. and where we intend to spend Sunday. On monday we go on to Cincinnati. There we will write you. I think you had better write next to Quebec, as we shall be there almost as soon as your letter can reach us, if you write immediately on receipt of this. If you will be kind enough to let Hatty read this, I will not write her what would be in great measure repetition.
With united love to Mother & to all our brothers & sisters, we are, ever affectionately, Yours, J. C. Hoadley.
[Kate adds:]
I was delighted to receive Fanny’s letter yesterday, it was most welcome. I was so anxious to hear from home. Do answer this immediately. with love to dear Mamma, Fanny, Helen, Lizzie, Herman, & kisses to the children I remain your affectionate sister Kate.
"Poor Pomare! An American scribbler, Herman Melvil, has just told the world that Queen Pomare is a Tartar, a Jezebel, and calls in question her sobriety and her conjugal fidelity...." -- John J. Jesson
In a letter to the editor of The Patriot (London, England) John J. Jesson of Runcorn alluded to disparagement of Tahiti's Queen Pomare in Herman Melville's Omoo: A Narrative of Adventure in the South Seas (1847). Jesson wrote in reply to critical comments by George Charter in a previous letter from Raiatea dated July 10, 1847 and published in the London Patriot on February 14, 1848. Fearing that "Pomare is a stranger to vital godliness," Charter had faulted the bad influences of the French government and "Popery" as encouraged and extended by Catholic missionaries.
Early in his long rebuttal, excerpted below, Jesson invokes Melville (misspelled Melvil) as the "American scribbler" who slandered Pomare as a domineering "Tartar" and promiscuous "Jezebel." From the London Patriot of March 23, 1848; found on The British Newspaper Archive with digitized pages added in July 2021:
POLYNESIAN MISSIONS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PATRIOT.
SIR,— The letter you inserted last month under the above head filled me with surprise and regret. I cannot allow the Rev. G. Charter’s remarks on that noble band of Christian patriots, the Tahitians, and on the much injured and long exiled Queen Pomare, to pass unnoticed. I can give Mr. Charter credit for sincerity, but I cannot acquiesce in his views.
The various charges involve the personal character and regal administration of the Queen. Poor Pomare! An American scribbler, Herman Melvil, has just told the world that Queen Pomare is a Tartar, a Jezebel, and calls in question her sobriety and her conjugal fidelity; and now the Rev. G. Charter charges her with despotism and hypocrisy.
Now, Sir, I unhesitatingly declare before the world and before God, that such charges are unmanly and untrue. For several years I very frequently visited the Queen in company with brother Howe and others, and I never saw or heard anything from her of any of her people that could induce such a conclusion—but just the reverse....
... Friend Charter conceived an early antipathy to Queen Pomare, and in sober truth, I believe no love is lost between them. But, in the name of all that we revere, let not personal pique govern sentiments which are given to the world, and that to the prejudice of a spirit-smitten Christian woman and a deeply injured Queen....
JOHN J JESSON. Runcorn, March 14, 1848
Jesson was then pastor of the Congregational or Independent Chapel in Runcorn. The Biblical Review and Congregational Magazine for January 1847 announced that "The Rev. J. J. Jesson, late of Tahiti, has accepted the invitation of the church at Runcorn, Cheshire, to be its pastor, and enters on his labours the first Sabbath in the year." As narrated in Historical sketches of Nonconformity in the County Palatine of Chester (London and Manchester, 1864) Jesson had been
"driven by French persecution from the island of Tahiti, South Pacific."
In his 1848 letter to the Patriot editor, Jesson has succinctly and fairly paraphrased the satirical treatment of "Pomaree" in Omoo chapter 80 where Melville indeed figures the Tahitian queen as "a Tartar" and "a Jezebel":
The reputation of Pomaree is not what it ought to be. She, and also her mother, were, for a long time, excommunicated members of the Church; and the former, I believe, still is. Among other things, her conjugal fidelity is far from being unquestioned. Indeed, it was upon this ground chiefly that she was excluded from the communion of the Church.
Previous to her misfortunes, she spent the greater portion of her time sailing about from one island to another, attended by a licentious court; and wherever she went all manner of games and festivities celebrated her arrival....
The Tahitian princess leads her husband a hard life. Poor fellow! he not only caught a queen, but a Tartar, when he married her. The style by which he is addressed is rather significant—"Pomaree-Tanee" (Pomaree's man). All things considered, as appropriate a title for a king-consort as could be hit upon.
If ever there were a henpecked husband, that man is the prince. One day, his cara-sposa, giving audience to a deputation from the captains of the vessels lying in Papeetee, he ventured to make a suggestion which was very displeasing to her. She turned round, and, boxing his ears, told him to go over to his beggarly island of Imeeo, if he wanted to give himself airs.
Cuffed and contemned, poor Tanee flies to the bottle, or rather to the calabash, for solace. Like his wife and mistress, he drinks more than he ought....
... Though Pomaree Vahinee I. be something of a Jezebel in private life, in her public rule she is said to have been quite lenient and forbearing.
In the same chapter Melville attributes the "diminution of the regal dignity" over time to "the influence of the English missionaries at Tahiti."
While we wait around for scanned images of John Chipman Hoadley's manuscript poem "Destiny," now ordered from The New York Public Library, let me explain why I expect (before seeing any of it) to find that Hoadley composed the long unpublished work he called his "national poem" in iambic pentameter. What I don't know is if Hoadley developed his patriotic theme using rhymed couplets in the manner of Joel Barlow in The Vision of Columbus and The Columbiad and Richard Emmons in The Fredoniad, Americanizing British models by Dryden and Pope. My best guess is YES. But it would be wonderful to find Melville's future brother-in-law on a more daring and ambitious course, sounding off like Milton or Marlowe in mighty MAGA lines of blank verse.
Rhymed elsewhere in the stanza or not, however arranged in couplets or triplets or quatrains, Hoadley's usual verse line in "Destiny" will contain five metrical feet, mostly iambs. The iamb as English majors recall without any help from Google consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Five iambs or iambuses = iambic pentameter.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Hoadley, John Chipman (1818-1886)" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1851. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/d9236f50-693b-0133-a932-00505686d14e
Cited above and transcribed in the Melvilliana post on Melville's hearty praises, John C. Hoadley's note of September 9, 1851 to Evert Duyckinck offers good evidence for supposing that Hoadley's pro-American "Destiny" (originally titled "The Union" and declaimed by the author on July 4, 1851 according to Jay Leyda in The Melville Log volume 1 page 416) is the versified "glorification of the United States" that Herman Melville read aloud in August 1851--with great gusto, and in the author's presence, according to Duyckinck. Previously unrecorded in Melville scholarship, this letter firmly links Hoadley to Duyckinck, Melville, and one or more of their Berkshire excursions during the previous month. Hoadley was already a prominent resident of Pittsfield, having moved there in 1848. Hoadley addressed Duyckinck formally as "Dear Sir," indicating a recent and not very close acquaintance. Hoadley thanked Duyckinck for sending him a copy of the Literary World with Duyckinck's account of a trip to Mt. Greylock. Hoadley regretted having to miss the Greylock outing, implying he had been invited as one of the group that included Duyckinck and Melville. Gratefully and casually, as something already known to Duyckinck, Hoadley acknowledged "Melville's hearty praises" for his unpublished "national poem." Since Hoadley had just unveiled his poem in Pittsfield, Mass. on the 4th of July 1851, that leaves only a month or two at most during which Herman Melville could have read it and responded so encouragingly.
Here is the relevant passage from Duyckinck's letter to his wife dated August 8, 1851, describing how Melville entertained his audience of Berkshire excursionists with a dramatic reading of stirring patriotic verse. It happened in a barn during a summer shower. First, they had to kick out the chickens:
... The morning had been warm and the afternoon was showery, clouds and shadows being the moving scenery to the permanent stagery of the hills. We went on our way rejoicing till a dragging cloud bore down upon us when we turned to the shelter of a barn. Mr M[elville] spied out the loft and we boarded the rafters, dislodging the hens and were nestled here and there in the warm dry hay, the rain pattering its musical accompaniment on the roof.
Mrs M [Sarah Morewood] had a poet in the company and his poem tooa stout MSS of heroic measure, a glorification of the United States in particularwith a polite slanging of all other nations in general. The English lady in the straw was not particularly complimented as to her native country in sounding lines which H M read with emphasis (interrupting the flattered author who sat thoughtful on a hay tuft--with such phrases as "great glorious" "By Jove that's tremendous" &c)--but perhaps the most noticeable incident was a gathering of the exiled fowls in a corner who cackled a series of noisy resolutions, levelled at the party. "Turn em out!" was the cry. The author impelled by the honor of his poem charged fearlessly, scattered the critics of the pit, clasping the most obstinate bodily and "rushing" her a rapid descent below." --as transcribed in Steven Olsen-Smith, Melville in His Own Time(University of Iowa Press, 2015) page 58.
About the poem that Melville read aloud in August 1851, certain defining features are revealed in the eye and ear-witness account that Evert A. Duyckinck gave his wife. As described by Duyckinck
The poem was a long one, taking up "a stout MSS." The impressive size indicates a poem with hundreds of lines, maybe thousands.
The poem was composed in iambic pentameter, as specified by Duyckinck's term "heroic measure." (More on that below.)
The poem was extremely patriotic in theme, being "a glorification of the United States." The strong America-First argument of the poem involved "a polite slanging of all other nations in general." Despite whatever formal courtesies may be implied in Duyckinck's adjective "polite," the rhetorical "slanging" at Great Britain might well have offended one of Melville's listeners that showery afternoon in a Berkshire barn: Mrs. Pollack the "English lady in the straw" who according to Duyckinck "was not particularly complimented as to her native country."
None of these qualities is shared by On Onota's Graceful Shore, the ballad by J. E. A. Smith that Leyda identified (wrongly) as the poem Melville honored by reading aloud, with dramatic "emphasis" and positive commentary. With only 11 stanzas, 88 lines in all, Smith's poem is too short. The subject is one particular Berkshire farmer-soldier and his heroic sacrifices as the American Revolution dawned--not the glory of these United States and Manifest Destiny.
J. E. A. Smith, Souvenir Verse and Story Springfield, Mass.: Clark W. Bryan Company, 1896
The meter of "Onota's Graceful Shore" is iambic but does not qualify as "heroic measure" since each line contains only four feet. According to standard 19th century textbooks of English grammar, the "heroic line" was understood to mean iambic pentameter, a line of verse "composed of five Iambuses." Iambic pentameter was considered the metrical form best "suited to solemn and sublime subjects" with "far more dignity" than other kinds of meter.
§ 9. The Heroic line.
We now come to the eighth species of Iambic line. This is the heroic line composed of five Iambuses. This line is suited to solemn and sublime subjects, and it has far more dignity than any of the measures before mentioned. In long pieces it is frequently varied by the intermingling of secondary feet, but there are numerous in. stances of a succession of Iambuses through several lines.
It is employed in couplets, as in POPE's Essay on Man, PARNELL's Hermit, and GOLDSMITH's Deserted Village; it is employed in quatrains, as in GRAY's Elegy in a Country Churchyard; it is employed in the Spenserean stanza, as in the Faery Queen and Childe Harold; it is employed in blank verse, as in MILTON's Paradise Lost, THOMSON'S Seasons, ROGERS’ Italy, and COWPER's Task; lastly, it is employed in triplets, with an additional short line to complete the stanza. It is peculiarly suited to all subjects where dignity is required, and should never be employed when the subject is either trivial or gay. A specimen from GRAY's Elegy, showing the fitness of this measure for solemn subjects, will furnish the first example:
The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Numerous editions of Lindley Murray's English Grammar uphold the definition of heroic measure as the conventional term for a line that specifically "consists of five Iambuses."
5 The fifth species of English Iambic, consists of five Iambuses.
How lov'd, how valu'd once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot, A heap of dust alone remains of thee; 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be. [Alexander Pope, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady]
Be wise to-day, 'tis madness to defer: Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life. [Edward Young on procrastination, from Night Thoughts, Night 1]
This is called the Heroic measure. In its simplest form it consists of five Iambuses; but by the admission of other feet, as Trochees, Dactyls, Anapæsts, &c. it is capable of many varieties. Indeed, most of the English common measures may be varied in the same way, as well as by the different position of their pauses.
Heroic Measure(Pentameter) is made up of five iambic feet. In its rhymed form it is the measure of Chaucer and Spenser, of Dryden and Pope, of Cowper, Campbell, and Byron; as,
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.... [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism]
Unlike Smith's ballad, Hoadley's "Destiny" is a genuinely "stout" production taking up 53 manuscript sheets in the bound copy now held in the Gansevoort-Lansing collection of The New York Public Library. Both the original title "The Union" and the revised one, "Destiny," are consistent with a work devoted to glorifying the United States, as is Hoadley's own reference to his "national poem." How well the actual content matches Evert Duyckinck's description, including the "polite slanging" at other nations, remains to be seen. Likewise the number of feet or beats per line. "Onota's graceful shore" has only four. The one that Melville read and loved has five, if Duyckinck got the meter right. Obviously, I'm trusting that the veteran New York editor and literary critic knew heroic measure when he heard it. Confidence! Heroic measure means pentameter. Wherever you hear it, even in the rafters.
Destiny: a poem by John C Hoadley 648 lines plus endnotes, transcribed here https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/07/destiny-poem-by-john-c-hoadley.html
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