The Whale

by Mark Beauregard

  They came to the country lane that led out of town, down into the dell, toward Lake Mahkeenac. Herman stopped.

  “I cannot follow you any further tonight,” he said. “I must catch the last train to Pittsfield.”

  Hawthorne stopped, several paces away from Herman, a little down the hill. “Of course. Thank you for the book. And for dedicating it to me. I will read it at once.”

  Herman shivered. Hawthorne took a few more steps down the hill and away. Herman called his name. Hawthorne stopped and faced him again. Herman could not believe that they were parting like this, with so much between them still unsaid and undiscovered. Time had somehow turned backward—Omega before Alpha.

  Herman said, “Will you not say it, even once?”

  “Say what?”

  A sudden gust whipped their hair and fluttered their coattails. Herman’s eyes watered from the cold. Hawthorne waited till the breeze died down to speak, and when he finally did, his words came out in a whisper.

  “I love you, Herman.”

  Melville thought his whole body might unwind like a yarn puppet. “I love you, too, Nathaniel.”

  Hawthorne nodded, turned away, and walked down the path into the dell, into the darkness. He did not look back.

  Chapter 22

  A Pantheistic Feeling

  November 16, 1851

  Lenox

  My dear Melville,

  What a book you have written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than your previous ones, and you should not think that, because I have read it so quickly, I have treated it in any way superficially. Since my belongings have been packed in crates for days, I have had little to do but anticipate your book; so I fell to it immediately and have done nothing but swim in its deep waters ever since.

  Where to begin in responding to a work with so many facets catching so much light? The mystical descriptions of the seas! I felt I could see through the placid waters to the nursing baby whales in the Grand Armada, and feel the wind howling through the hawsers off the Java coast, and feel the commotion of the massacre of the sharks. Truly, I have been on a voyage around the world, peering across the bulwarks of my armchair. And the rhapsodies of Captain Ahab! You capture a madness that argues for the supreme sanity of the author, for what lunatic could deliver such mania so sympathetically and with such clarity? It is a grand feat that we commiserate with Ahab’s outrageous quest and find therein our own search for meaning, because the Captain himself cavorts so recklessly and destroys all around him so ruthlessly—we find in his actions no parallel to our own yet understand him to be a seeker after the same truth. He cooks his brains, and we savor the dish. And you have, withal, invented a new form of writing—not a romance nor an adventure nor a philosophy nor a natural history, but all rolled into one. Your disdain for form quite arrests my imagination—first Ishmael tells the story, then we stand at the elbow of Professor Melville for some research into whales, then we are on a vast stage where the actors perform dialogue that Shakespeare himself might have written, and then we are inside the mind of Ahab himself. I would fain attempt such acrobatics in a novel myself. One wonders that there is no chapter from the point of view of the White Whale itself, but perhaps the entire work might be considered to emanate from the perspective of that one particular creature, since it is his story as much as anyone’s; but I fear that my appreciation may take a chaotic form similar to your book itself, but with less coherence or depth, merely grazing over those qualities of the novel that struck me most forcefully, and so I may miss the deeper profundities where your leviathan swims; so I will begin again.

  I see that, in cataloging the known and concrete facts about whales and placing them alongside Ahab’s impassioned quest, you are trying to give shape and form to the human desire to—well, to what? Comprehend the world as it is? Tame and civilize the wilderness? Find fellow-feeling among men through all the ages by means of learning and philosophy? Yes, all of that. And in the friendship of Ishmael and Queequeg, you show that a fraternal regard and even love may exist in like-minded souls where nothing but differences exist on the surface—yes, that, too. And yet, for all of your classifying and sorting and explaining, for all of the fellow-feeling of Ishmael and Queequeg, for all of Ahab’s raging, for all of the violence and lyricism and breathtaking chases, the most important thing in the novel is something that you have left out, which yet permeates the book, and no sensitive reader could fail to comprehend it—the heart of Captain Ahab.

  It appears at first that Ahab is enraged because Moby Dick has removed his leg—but, not so, as you illustrate clearly when the Pequod of Nantucket meets the Samuel Enderby of London and Captain Ahab speaks with Captain Boomer of that latter ship. Boomer has had his arm removed by Moby Dick, yet he is good-humored and sensible, while Ahab has had his leg removed and is ferocious and fanatical. What, then, is the difference? Will a man lose an arm with equanimity but recoil at the removal of a lower limb? No. Because it is not only the lower limb that Ahab is missing—Moby Dick has taken something infinitely more valuable: his heart. Yes, Ahab is heartless, but he does not see that his heart cannot be recovered by conquering Moby Dick. He does not even see that he has lost his heart, so blinded is he by his more obvious loss; but it is veritably his heart and with it his soul that he has given up to the whale; or, in other words, to the iniquities of the world. His quest were better turned inward to that bottomless sea inside of him, which somewhere hides his missing humanity.

  You say that the secret motto of the book is the one that Ahab gives when he baptizes his harpoon with blood—“I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil”—but I say that this is not the true motto, after all. Your book is steeped in allusions to the Old Testament, but you have not quoted the most important verse: “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee.” Ahab’s pride of heart is the problem that he cannot solve, and so his tragic maiming goes unavenged—because he seeks vengeance for the wrong loss.

  I am deeply moved by the dedication of this book, my dear Melville. It is a work of fury and pain and strength and beauty, and it honors me that my name is attached to it—through no merit of mine own.

  yours,

  Nath. Hawthorne

  November 17, 1851

  Arrowhead, Pittsfield

  My dear Hawthorne,

  People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day’s work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably—why, then I don’t think I deserve any reward for my hard day’s work—for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good? My peace and my supper are my reward, my dear Hawthorne. So your joy-giving and exultation-breeding letter is not my reward for my ditcher’s work with that book, but is the good goddess’s bonus over and above what was stipulated—for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is love appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory—the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity. In my proud, humble way—a shepherd-king—I was lord of a little vale in the solitary Crimea; but you have now given me the crown of India. But on trying it on my head, I found it fell down on my ears, notwithstanding their asinine length—for it’s only such ears that sustain such crowns.

  Your letter was handed to me last night on the road going to Mr. Morewood’s, and I read it there. Had I been at home, I would have sat down at once and answered it. In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous—catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can’t write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of
your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome’s Pantheon. It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

  Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips—lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling. Now, sympathizing with the paper, my angel turns over another page. You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book—and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon—the familiar—and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes.

  My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric skepticisms steal into me now, and make me doubtful of my sanity in writing you thus. But, believe me, I am not mad, most noble Festus! But truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning. Farewell. Don’t write a word about the book in the magazines. That would be robbing me of my miserly delight. I am heartily sorry I ever wrote anything about you there—it was paltry. Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing. So, now, let us add Moby Dick to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish—I have heard of Krakens.

  This is a long letter, but you are not at all bound to answer it. Possibly, if you do answer it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you will missend it—for the very fingers that now guide this pen are not precisely the same that just took it up and put it on this paper. Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it’s a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

  What a pity, that, for your plain, bluff letter, you should get such gibberish! Mention me to Mrs. Hawthorne and to the children, and so, goodbye to you, with my blessing.

  Herman

  P.S. I can’t stop yet. If the world was entirely made up of Magians, I’ll tell you what I should do. I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand—a million—billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is on you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question—they are One.

  P.P.S. Don’t think that by writing me a letter, you shall always be bored with an immediate reply to it—and so keep both of us delving over a writing-desk eternally. No such thing! I shan’t always answer your letters, and you may do just as you please.

  After The Whale

  AN EPILOGUE AND A NOTE ON SOURCES

  After Hawthorne left Lenox, he and Melville corresponded very little, and they saw each other only three more times—once in Concord, Massachusetts, in November 1852; and twice in Liverpool, England, in the winter of 1856–57. During the period between their visits in Concord and Liverpool, Melville’s fortunes went from bad to worse.

  Moby Dick was a critical and commercial failure, selling fewer copies than any of Melville’s five previous books. His next novel, Pierre, or the Ambiguities (1852), was an even bigger disaster, universally condemned by critics. He failed to find a publisher for his subsequent effort, a novel called Isle of the Cross (now lost), and he published only shorter works in magazines for the next few years. The last novel Melville published in his lifetime, The Confidence Man (1857), was yet another commercial failure, after which he stopped writing prose for thirty years.

  The period of Hawthorne’s close association with Melville was the most productive of Hawthorne’s life. During that time, he published a new edition of an older story collection, Twice-Told Tales (1851), and he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Snow Image (a new short story collection, 1852). After 1852, Hawthorne began five more novels but completed only one—The Marble Faun (1860).

  The Blithedale Romance, the novel that Hawthorne wrote immediately after leaving Lenox, prominently features a character named Hollingsworth, a charismatic, handsome, gruff social reformer who has the physical characteristics of Melville. Hollingsworth has a relationship with the book’s narrator, Coverdale, who resembles Hawthorne in his self-restraint and reserve. The correlations between the fictional relationship of Coverdale and Hollingsworth and the actual relationship of Hawthorne and Melville are striking: in each case, the two men develop a close friendship based on an intellectual rapport with strong sexual undercurrents, and in each case, a crisis of intimacy causes them to separate. At the end of chapter XV (titled “A Crisis”), Hollingsworth declares his love for Coverdale and asks Coverdale to run away with him to form a Utopian colony. “Coverdale,” Hollingsworth says, “there is not the man in this wide world whom I can love as I could you. Do not forsake me!” A little later in the same highly charged scene, Hollingsworth says to Coverdale, “Will you devote yourself, and sacrifice all to this great end, and be my friend of friends, forever?” The moment ends when Coverdale rejects Hollingsworth, reporting that, in doing so, his “heart-pang was not merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast.”

  In March 1852, soon after leaving Lenox, Hawthorne purchased a home from Louisa May Alcott’s family in Concord, where he twice invited Melville to visit him. Melville declined the first invitation, in July 1852, but accepted one in November of that year. The visit was cordial, and the two talked about a true story that Melville had heard, which he tried to convince Hawthorne to write as a novel. The story concerned a woman who married a sailor she had found on a beach after a shipwreck, and Melville thought Hawthorne’s approach to fiction would suit the subject matter better than his own; but Hawthorne was not interested. They wrote several letters back and forth about it, making it the most sustained topic of their whole correspondence, but neither ultimately used the material.

  Their final meetings occurred in Liverpool. Hawthorne’s college friend Franklin Pierce had become president of the United States in 1853, and he had appointed Hawthorne the U.S. Consul in Liverpool. Because Melville had fallen on such hard times, Hawthorne attempted to get him a consulship post, as well, but could not; and when Hawthorne left for England to assume his own post, the two fell out of touch. By late 1856, Melville’s family feared so much for his sanity that his father-in-law, Judge Lemuel Shaw, financed a trip for Melville to Jerusalem, and on his way, Melville made a side trip to see Hawthorne. Hawthorne recorded the visit in his notebook, in an entry dated November 20, 1856:

  A week ago last Monday, Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner. . . . We soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; he has been affected with neuralgic complaints in his head and limbs, and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind. . . . I do not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labor and domestic life, following upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was. . . . He is a person of very gentlemanly instincts in every respect, save that he is a little heterodox
in the matter of clean linen. . . . Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had “pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated”; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. . . . He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.

  Melville stopped in Liverpool again on his way back from Jerusalem, in order to retrieve a trunk he had left at the U.S. Consulate, but he saw Hawthorne only in passing.

  After his trip, Melville tried but failed to support himself by lecturing, and he continued to spiral into debt. In 1863, he was forced to sell Arrowhead to his brother Allan, after which he moved his family to Manhattan, ultimately finding work as an inspector at the New York Customs House, where he worked until he retired in 1885. During this long period, he wrote constantly, composing poems that were published in small editions financed by Melville’s father-in-law or paid for with money from Lizzie’s inheritances. When critics bothered to notice his poetry at all, they reviewed it unfavorably. One such poem, an epic called Clarel, is the longest poem in American letters at nearly eighteen thousand lines, and it features a character based on Hawthorne, called Vine. Clarel is a meditation on the interrelationship of erotic and metaphysical longing and contains allusions to Melville’s own yearning for Hawthorne.

  Melville was shocked to hear the news of Hawthorne’s death, in May 1864. After Hawthorne’s funeral, which Melville did not attend, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “I thought there was a tragic element in the event . . . in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it.”