They ascended the steps. The large upstairs bedrooms had ceilings nearly as high as the common rooms below and featured unusually wide windows. Herman was especially enamored of the bedroom with the view to the north: a writing desk was positioned below a large window gazing out toward Mount Greylock, and the desk held a copy of Herman’s own last novel, White-Jacket. Herman picked up the book and thumbed through it meditatively, while Maria and Lizzie exchanged incredulous looks. “I sensed that you would like this room,” Dr. Brewster said. “In fact, it’s my own study now and would make a capital library, where you could read and write in peace.” To the left of Brewster’s desk was, to Herman’s mind, the most curious feature of the whole house: a long, wide closet with a round window set in the wall, like a porthole. He remarked that the closet was wide enough to put a bed in, and the round window made it seem almost like a ship’s captain’s quarters.
They descended the stairs and went out into the south yard, an expanse of mown grass bordered by a hedge. Near the hedge was a low, lean-to woodshed, in front of which a rabbit was lazily loping along; when it spied them, it darted into the shrubs and disappeared. Herman strode briskly across the lawn, picked up an axe, and split a log with one mighty swing.
Dr. Brewster pointed at the flat top of a little hill, where half a dozen white ash trees had grown in a circle. “The Mohicans used to bury their chiefs atop that hill. Captain Bush’s son told me so when he sold me the property, and you can’t turn a shovel in this whole area without digging up arrowheads.” Herman’s imagination mounted up and rode out across the estate: The vanquished Mohicans? Burbling streams? Bean fields and blackberry brambles? A two-story house with a Shaker-built barn? Brewster led them around the side of the barn to the pens, where a hog, a sow, and half a dozen piglets snorfed in a muddy cavity enclosed by a slatted fence.
Heavy raindrops began to fall, and the sky belched a thunderous rumble. Dr. Brewster suggested that the ladies adjourn to the parlor for a cup of tea, while he and Herman walked the western edge of the property, down the hill in the direction of Broad Hall.
“And where are your wife and family just now, Dr. Brewster?” asked Lizzie. “Are you alone on the farm?”
“They are visiting my mother in Boston. Mrs. Brewster and I spend more and more time there, you see, as my mother grows older and needs more help.”
In the parlor, Brewster hung a pot of water from a rod above the fire and shook tea from a cloth sack into a teapot. He set out porcelain cups and a glass sugar bowl on a sideboard, and he told them to make themselves at home, while he and Herman “got their britches dirty in the thickets. Please indulge your curiosity about the house. We have no secrets here.” Herman could not tell by the looks on their faces whether his mother and wife would continue their usual bickering while he was gone or establish a new amity inspired by Dr. Brewster’s farm, but he was already beginning to feel at home here; and as he and Brewster walked back outside, he peeped around the corner of the house at the pigs, and he imagined planting corn and wheat and squash in the fields below. Not only would it be a pleasant place to write, but he might also feed his family by the sweat of his brow instead of the toil of his pen. He felt the raindrops plonking refreshingly down onto his head, and he asked Brewster what sort of income he had from the farm.
“None to speak of. We dry the beans for our own use through the winter, and we may slaughter a pig at Christmas, but my practice in Boston keeps me too busy to farm the place the way it deserves. I imagine you might improve it a great deal, if you were living here all the year round.”
Brewster led Herman past the well and several hundred yards down the road to a skinny, white dirt path edged by a tiny rivulet, which they followed through hemlock trees and red oaks, down a little hill and through a thicket of woody undergrowth. The doctor occasionally related some little historical trivia as they glimpsed the meadows through the trees; but Herman was swept up in his own boyhood memories of wandering this land, carefree and inquisitive, and he barely heard a word the doctor said anymore. He remembered the long family vacation he had taken at Broad Hall when his father and older brother, Gansevoort, were both still young and sane, unbowed by the worldly woes that would chase them into their graves: exploring the hollows and bluffs in these very hills; hunting and fishing with his father, the whole world as fresh and new as he had been himself back then. He breathed deep the storm-riven air, fragrant with the sweet, bright smell of pine, and he imagined, as he had in his youth, that Mohicans and Iroquois lurked behind every tree. The heavy raindrops falling now seemed like exclamation points on the happy shouts that he heard from his childhood. He imagined leading Hawthorne on a walk down this very trail, and the woods became spangled with the possibilities of a new life, in which the past and future swirled together into a timeless present filled with the unwearied freshness of love. How impressed Hawthorne would be! His tiny cottage in Lenox would make little more than an outbuilding on this farm. Hawthorne might even have his own room here when he visited, Herman thought: he could stay in the north room upstairs, in the closet with the porthole window just off the study, and they could talk privately there over brandy and cigars, while gazing out at Mount Greylock.
By the time Herman and Dr. Brewster had returned to the house, Herman had agreed to terms for the purchase of the estate; and in his mind, he was already living in the tall, grand, eighteenth-century home into which he now strode confidently to meet his wife and mother. Lizzie and Maria had moved from the kitchen into the parlor and were sitting at a table, staring silently into their teacups.
“Have you had a chance to explore the house any further, ladies?”
“We would have to bring our own hutches, I believe,” said Maria. “Owing to the absolute want of closets and storage space.”
Herman said, “Perhaps we could devote one of the upstairs bedrooms to wardrobes.”
“We cannot simply stuff all of our clothes away out of sight,” Lizzie said. “As if we were aboard a ship. And we could not afford to convert an entire room to storage in any event—the house barely has enough living space for our own family, let alone your sisters, to say nothing of my parents when they retire, to say nothing of everyone’s belongings. It’s completely unacceptable.”
The doctor said that he was sure a solution could be found to the problem of storage. “The barn, for example, is too large for the number of animals we have, and it’s well insulated. It could easily be partitioned.”
“The barn?” Lizzie said, aghast.
Brewster said that he would be willing to leave behind his wife’s chiffoniers for their clothing, to help ease the transition. Then he said that he would ride into town that afternoon to discuss the deed with his lawyer. “After that,” he said, “it will simply be a matter of signing the deed over to you when you deposit the money in my bank.”
“But, Doctor,” Lizzie said, “we have not yet agreed to buy the property. We haven’t even learned your terms.”
“The doctor and I discussed everything on our walk,” said Herman. “I will tell you all about it on the way back to Broad Hall.”
“What on earth do you mean? Have you agreed to buy the farm, then? Without consulting me? Have you completely forgotten our conversation this morning? Have you forgotten that you said that the house we buy would be mine, and it would have room for my father and stepmother, which this house clearly does not?”
Herman looked an apology at the doctor. “Of course I haven’t forgotten, my dear.”
“This is my money, Herman. This is my money, Dr. Brewster!”
Herman cleared his throat and refused to meet Lizzie’s eyes.
Brewster said, “We had not discussed where the money for the purchase would come from, Mrs. Melville. I would not want to sell you this property without a proper discussion and understanding, of course. I am happy to discuss all the terms with everyone involved.”
“Of course, of
course,” said Herman, eager to get his wife and mother away from Dr. Brewster in order to avoid just such a discussion. He took Lizzie’s hand and practically pulled her out of her seat. She banged her knee, toppling her cup and splashing the dregs of her tea across the table. “I will tell you everything, Lizzie, everything, when we can talk by ourselves. Anything we decide must be decided as a family!” Herman pounded his fist on the table, knocking over Maria’s cup, as well.
Lizzie yanked her hand out of Herman’s grasp. She stalked off, flung open the door, and charged out into the rain. Herman shook Dr. Brewster’s hand violently and told him they would talk in the morning; and then he grabbed his mother’s elbow, lifted her to her feet, and marched her as quickly as he could out through the dining room.
“Lizzie,” Herman called. He was dragging his waddling mother by the arm. “Lizzie!”
Lizzie did not turn to face them and would not even slow her enraged pace until she had descended a long hill and rounded a curve, so that Brewster’s farm was well out of sight. The hem of her dress was brown with mud, and she flapped her arms against her sides, as if she were a great flightless bird trying in vain to lift off. Herman continued to call her name.
“Will you let go of me, Herman?” Maria cried. “And stop shouting and making a spectacle of us. We can talk to Lizzie when we are back at Broad Hall.”
Suddenly, Lizzie stopped in the middle of the road and turned to face them. She yelled, “Why would you not discuss this with me, Herman? Have you made him any promises?”
Herman waited until they had caught up to her to say, “Fifteen hundred down and the farm is ours. With the three thousand we have against your inheritance, we can give the down payment, pay off our other debts, and have enough money to live on until my next book is published. We can move into Brewster’s farm three weeks from today and have money in the bank all winter.”
“Fifteen hundred down against how much?”
“He has agreed to take our note.”
“For how much?”
“Six thousand five hundred.”
Lizzie nearly fainted.
“No, I misspoke. The note will be only five thousand, after our down payment.”
“But that is more than Broad Hall! Why would you even think of that, Herman? Why didn’t you heed Robert’s warning?”
“We must remember that Robert has bankrupted his farm,” Herman said. “His judgment is not sound. Truth be told, we have taken advantage of Brewster! His property is far better and worth far more than Broad Hall and has many superior advantages in terms of location and water and arable land, which Robert does not really understand.”
Lizzie staggered to the ditch at the edge of the road and sat down on a large stone, with her shoes in a rivulet of muddy water. She put her elbows on her knees and held her head firmly in both hands. “How will we pay such a mortgage? It isn’t possible. Tell me you haven’t agreed to this.” She looked down at the dirty hem of her dress. Herman said nothing. She struggled to her feet and continued walking, now in a desultory trudge.
Herman and his mother adopted Lizzie’s gloomy pace; and despite Lizzie’s wrath and Maria’s silent but unmistakable censure, Herman’s thoughts became more and more sanguine as they put the dreadful scene in Dr. Brewster’s parlor further and further behind them. Lizzie would come around, he thought, as she always did—when they were all living in the Berkshires, they would not remember or care how it had happened or what it had cost. They would all get something they wanted from their new home. He pictured little Malcolm tottering through a field of clover behind the barn. Lizzie would settle in, happily, he imagined, to manage her own house. His mother would live in a country house again, instead of the cramped apartment that she had always detested. And his books would be successful again. Everything would come out well.
Herman thought how beautiful the Berkshires were in the rain, and how they would all take walks in the forest and have picnics down by the blackberry brambles. He heard birdsong through the splattering raindrops, and finally his thoughts turned once again to their true object: in his imagination, not only Hawthorne’s namesake trees but every flowering and growing thing in view became a natural emblem of Hawthorne the man; every goldenrod flower and pickerel weed by the side of the road, every grouse and cardinal and chickadee they startled from the branches overhead became a sign of the inevitability of his present course, a course that ultimately led down this road to Lenox. Down this very road, he thought—a road that began in the mists of his childhood and ended in a little red cottage with a white picket fence.
“Herman,” his mother said, spoiling his reverie.
“What is it, mother?”
“You should remember that your father-in-law is a judge, and that even our church makes provisions for divorce.”
Herman stopped and met his mother’s disapproving eyes, and then he let her walk down the road ahead of him. He began mentally crafting the letter of explanation that he would write to Judge Shaw the moment they got back to Broad Hall.
Chapter 8
Letters
August 29, 1850
Lenox
My dear Melville,
I have read your works with a progressive appreciation of the quality of your writing and also of the author himself. No writer ever put the reality of poverty and isolation before the reader more unflinchingly than you do in Redburn, and White-Jacket offers an impressively imagined and sympathetic view of the common navy sailor that I’m sure my own father would have approved. Mardi is a rich book, with depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his life—it is so good that I am willing to pardon you for not having brooded over it longer so as to make it a good deal better. Typee and Omoo seem much of a piece—as I mentioned to you previously, I wrote a favorable review of Typee when it first came out, for the Salem Advertiser, so I had vagabonded about these islands with you before, somewhat unwittingly. These books are lightly but charmingly and vigorously written, and I am acquainted with no other works that give freer or more effective pictures of barbarian life, in that unadulterated state of which so few specimens now remain. Your view especially of the Edenic beauty of the island men and women is voluptuously colored yet not more so than the exigencies of the subject appear to require, and you have a freedom of view—in some, it might even be called laxity of principles, my dear man!—which renders you tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own; an attitude that I would welcome exploring with you in more depth. I sense in these books, however, a development toward something which has not yet appeared from your pen, which is hinted at most in Mardi or perhaps in a combination of the approaches of Mardi and Redburn, I don’t know; but I am loath to offer advice where none is asked. How near completion is this whaling romance you are working on now? Duyckinck says you have it almost finished. I would be most interested in having a peek at it, as you prepare it for the printers, since I am currently in thrall of the Melville way with words and I have run through all of his available books.
yours,
Nath. Hawthorne
August 30, 1850
Pittsfield
My dear Hawthorne,
Farmers know that there are goodly harvests which ripen late, especially when the grain is strong; thus, my hope for my own writing. One might say that my corn has tasseled but not yet silked, and I feel that my latest work, which I am calling The Whale, will not bring my full maturity as a novelist any closer to harvest. It is too like my earlier works, too whimsical, too realistic, too . . . too . . . everything that I have said before and yet something that I cannot name. And while I am most appreciative of your flattering portrayal of my earlier work, I do indeed ask for your advice about this new one, which I hope you will give to me freely and frankly—for I, too, feel that I am developing toward something more but must find the mechanism to release it. I have enclosed a fair copy of my whale manuscri
pt, which my publisher tasks me for even now and which I could call done, if I were not so damnably sure that it merely repeats earlier books of mine with less success.
I have bought a grand old house in Pittsfield, Hawthorne! It is formerly a public house, built just after the War for Independence, and I intend to make it something of a public house again, where eminent philosophers such as yourself may come and clink cups and speak the language of the gods! When my new home is rightfully and truly mine, you must inaugurate it—you will be my first guest, a position which, once held, may never be usurped!
your
Melville
September 18, 1850
Lenox
My dear Melville,
I have been inspired by the prodigality of your literary production. I am sitting down this very day to begin work on a new romance, a fanciful story based upon the legend of a curse and some entanglements that go along with it. But since you have asked for my opinion of your own new romance The Whale, I must tell you my recommendation before I wholly lose myself in my own work.
I believe that you have here, in this version, a vision of existence potentially much deeper than your story actually satisfies in execution. Or, let me be more plain: you have the opportunity in this work to swim in very deep, unknown, and dangerous waters but have chosen to navigate instead along the safe and well-known trade routes. Your story of the friendship of Ishmael and Queequeg is pleasant and amusing, but I believe that their story merely fulfills a wish of your own for the society that you have previously found aboard a whaleship; and though their friendship is truly and realistically portrayed, the drama of your romance lies properly not in their relationship (in my opinion) but in the conflict between your monomaniac captain and his vast fishy prey. Ahab as he stands now is a figure used to deliver irreverent barbs against Quakers—but, in my fancy, he might be much more. If you will allow me a vision of allegorical grandeur, I see Ahab in his flashes of anger as potentially a Lear figure (as long as you are going to compare me in public to Shakespeare, my good man, you must indulge me in comparing one of your characters to one of the Bard’s); and this white whale of yours, while menacing, is frankly unconvincing as a figure representing reality—no matter that he may in fact be based upon a real and fearsome fish. He offers every opportunity to become symbolic, and a mighty symbol he could be, as vast metaphorically as a sperm whale is in reality (symbolic of what, precisely? you must decide for yourself, of course). I do not believe the real story here is of the two friends on a grand adventure, which, as you say, you have already written before; I believe the story you have here, if rightly told, would be the confrontation of an heroic personage against a single object which overpowers reason. But I am always inclined to seek the Soul inside the Machinery and the heart in the steel, as it were, so I naturally think in terms of allegory and symbol. However, that is where my insight stops: what this white whale may mean to your captain must come from somewhere inside your own soul, which I know is large and generous enough to provide a true meaning; and what role your two bosom friends Ishmael and Queequeg might play also escapes me; but I do believe that you have something ethereal in your story, beyond all the harpoons and ropes, and that is the thing you must bring out. The jokes are all very well; but it does not seem to me that you are writing a comedy but rather the story of a true quest, which you might rig out in mythic dimensions the way your whaler is rigged out in hawsers and planks. The reality of your whaleship quite amazes me; but I believe that you are capable of rendering the whole enterprise of whaling as something more than “really” real, and that reality is meager compared to the story you want to tell in your heart. I believe that this whale may swim beyond reality if only you should let it.
The Whale Page 8