Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 55

  Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

  I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,something like the true form of the whale as he actually appearsto the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whaleis moored alongside the whaleship so that he can be fairly steppedupon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advertto those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down tothe present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman.It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving suchpictures of the whale all wrong.

  It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions willbe found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures.For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marblepanellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales ofchain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's;ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed,not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientificpresentations of him.

  Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anywayspurporting to be the whale's, is to be found in the famouscavern-pagoda of Elephants, in India. The Brahmins maintainthat in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda,all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man,were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being.No wonder then, that in some sort our noble professionof whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoowhale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall,depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan,learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculptureis half man and half whale, so as only to give the tailof the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong.It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda,than the broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes.

  But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christianpainter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no betterthan the antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture ofPerseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale.Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that?Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own"Perseus Descending," make out one whit better. The hugecorpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface,scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah onits back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billowsare rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate leading fromthe Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromuswhales of the old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depictedin the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers.What shall be said of these? As for the book-binder's whalewinding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--as stamped and gilded on the backs and titlepages of manybooks both old and new--that is a very picturesque but purelyfabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figureson antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin,I nevertheless call this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale;because it was so intended when the device was first introduced.It was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhereabout the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning;and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period,dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan.

  In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient booksyou will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale,where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold,Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain.In the title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning"you will find some curious whales.

  But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at thosepictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,by those who know. In old Harris's collection of voyages thereare some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages,A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonasin the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one of thoseplates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lyingamong ice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs.In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representingthe whale with perpendicular flukes.

  Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett,a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage roundCape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extendingthe Spermaceti Whale Fisheries." In this book is an outlinepurporting to be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale,drawn by scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793,and hoisted on deck." I doubt not the captain had this veraciouspicture taken for the benefit of his marines. To mention but onething about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied,according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale,would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long.Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah lookingout of that eye!

  Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural Historyfor the benefit of the young and tender, free from the sameheinousness of mistake. Look at that popular work"Goldsmith's Animated Nature." In the abridged London editionof 1807, there are plates of an alleged "whale" and a "narwhale."I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whalelooks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale,one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenthcentury such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine uponany intelligent public of schoolboys.

  Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede,a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book,wherein are several pictures of the different species ofthe Leviathan. All these are not only incorrect, but the pictureof the Mysticetus or Greenland whale (that is to say the Rightwhale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man as touchingthat species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.

  But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering businesswas reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to thefamous Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales,in which he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale.Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, you had bestprovide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word,Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash.Of course, he never had the benefit of a whaling voyage (such menseldom have), but whence he derived that picture, who can tell?Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor in the same field,Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that is, from aChinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencilthose Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us.

  As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hangingover the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them?They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps,and very savage; breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts,that is whaleboats full of mariners: their deformitiesfloundering in seas of blood and blue paint.

  But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so verysurprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings havebeen taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as adrawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly representthe noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars.Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the livingLeviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait.The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is onlyto be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vastbulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship;and out of that element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortalman to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mightyswells and undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumabledifference of contour between a young suckling whale and a full-grownPlatonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those youngsucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is then the outlandish,eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expressionthe devil himself coul
d not catch.

  But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale,accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all.For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape.Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabrain the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the ideaof a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy'sother leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of thiskind could be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones.In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whalebears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animalas the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it.This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some partof this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiouslydisplayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answerto the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin hasfour regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger.But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering,as the human fingers in an artificial covering. "However recklesslythe whale may sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day,"he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens."

  For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it,you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that onecreature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another,but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness.So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely whatthe whale really looks like. And the only mode in which youcan derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour,is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you runno small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him.Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidiousin your curiosity touching this Leviathan.