77. “chief of police”: BB, ch. 8, p. 1372.
78. “To the British empire”: BB, ch. 3, p. 1363.
79. “stand with drawn swords”: BB, ch. 5, p. 1368.
80. “workmen are denied the right of organization”: Ignatius Donnelly, Preamble to the platform of the First National Convention of the People’s Party at Omaha, July 4, 1892, quoted in Walter Rideout’s introduction to Donnelly, Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century (1890; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. xi. For an argument that Billy Budd is Melville’s direct commentary on contemporary events, see Larry J. Reynolds, “Billy Budd and American Labor Unrest,” in Yannella, ed., New Essays on Billy Budd; and for a broader interpretation in the context of Gilded Age capitalism, see Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982), pp. 201–7.
81. “the one way to deal with a mob”: New York Independent, quoted in Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, eds., Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 1036.
82. In March 1886, in a violent strike: See ibid., p. 1095.
83. Eighteen months later, four self-avowed anarchists: Robert K. Wallace suggests that HM had these events in mind; see his “Billy Budd and the Haymarket Hangings,” American Literature 47 (March 1975): 108–13.
84. “a young horse fresh from the pasture”: BB, ch. 15, p. 1390.
85. “divine equality”: MD, ch. 26, p. 117.
86. “free Republic”: Howells to his father, quoted in Frederick Anderson, William M. Gibson, and Henry Nash Smith, eds., Selected Mark Twain–Howells Letters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 275.
87. “the seed is sown”: R, ch. 33, p. 169.
88. “Mammonite freebooters”: Clarel, pt. IV, 9, l. 122.
89. “Past is dead”: WJ, ch. 36, p. 150.
90. “Come, thou who makest such hot haste”: Clarel, pt. II, 4, ll. 67–68.
91. “old imagined America”: Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, p. 206.
92. “bias toward those books”: BB, ch. 7, p. 1371.
93. “like live cinders”: BB, ch. 3, p. 1364.
94. “a dike against those invading waters”: BB, ch. 7, p. 1371.
95. “With mankind”: BB, ch. 27, p. 1430.
96. “tool for laying little traps”: BB, ch. 13, p. 1386.
97. “D—d—damme”: BB, ch. 14, p. 1389.
98. “it never entered [Billy’s] mind”: BB, ch. 15, p. 1391.
99. “deferentially … with the air of a subordinate”: BB, ch. 18, pp. 1397–98.
100. “repellent distaste … Master-at-arms?”: BB, ch. 18, p. 1397.
101. “who had entered … something clandestine”: BB, ch. 18, p. 1398.
102. “William Budd … ruddy-tipped daisies”: BB, ch. 18, p. 1400.
103. “Stay … heed what you speak”: BB, ch. 18, p. 1401.
104. “practically [to] test the accuser”: BB, ch. 18, p. 1402.
105. “exceptional moral quality”: BB, ch. 18, p. 1401.
106. “With the measured step”: BB, ch. 19, pp. 1403–4.
107. “an expression like that … touching Billy’s heart”: BB, ch. 19, p. 1404.
108. “ ‘Fated boy’ … till thence summoned”: BB, ch. 19, p. 1405.
109. “Catching the surgeon’s arm … the angel must hang!”: BB, ch. 19, p. 1406.
110. The answers lie in the crystal clarity: The question of whether Vere acts legally has been much debated. Richard H. Weisberg, The Failure of the Word: The Protagonist as Lawyer in Modern Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 131–76, is a brief against Vere for “gross violations” (p. 155) of British naval procedure. Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 155–65, defends Vere’s actions as consistent with precedent and appropriate under war conditions. In WJ, ch. 71, p. 299, Melville describes the Articles of War as “tyrannical ordinances,” but this comment refers specifically to the practice of flogging. With respect to Vere’s citation of the Articles of War, Hayford and Sealts argue in their edition of Billy Budd (p. 176) that “Melville simply had not familiarized himself with statutes of the period concerning administration of British naval justice,” and did not intend to imply that Vere was conducting an illegitimate judicial action. Sealts modified this conclusion in a later essay on BB in Bryant, Companion, pp. 417–418. The relevant section of the Articles (Article XXII, prescribing execution for striking an officer) is quoted on p. 180 of the Hayford and Sealts edition. A study of judicial morality that links Vere to Judge Shaw is Robert Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
111. “matter should be referred to the admiral”: BB, ch. 20, p. 1407.
112. “In the jugglery of circumstances”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1408.
113. “How can we adjudge”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1414.
114. “the ship’s company … that alone we have to do”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1412.
115. “the monotonous blank”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1413.
116. “critical ocean”: MD, ch. 26, p. 116.
117. “it is Nature”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1414.
118. “But do these buttons”: BB, ch. 21, pp. 1414–15.
119. “Why? they will ruminate”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1416.
120. “Who in the rainbow can draw”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1407.
121. “we carve out groups of stars”: James, Pragmatism, p. 164.
122. “what sometimes happens”: See Hayford and Sealts, eds., Billy Budd: The Genetic Text, p. 8.
123. “strong patriotic impulse”: BB, ch. 29, p. 1433.
124. (from E. M. Forster … and many others): There is a broad consensus among these writers and critics that, as Camus puts it, Captain Vere “submits his heart to the law … so that an order may be maintained, and the ship of men continue to move forward towards an unknown horizon” (Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, p. 292). The critical history of Billy Budd is reviewed in Peter Shaw, “The Fate of a Story,” American Scholar 62 (Autumn 1993): 591–601, and Geraldine Murphy, “The Politics of Reading Billy Budd,” American Literary History 1, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 361–82.
125. “however pitilessly”: BB, ch. 21, p. 1415.
126. “tragedy of Spirit in the world of Necessity”: Lionel Trilling, The Middle of the Journey (1947; New York: New York Review Books, 2002), p. 181.
127. “awesome responsibility”: Posner, Law and Literature, p. 161. For an argument that Vere is the agent of an oppressive legal system that serves the rich, see Thomas, Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature, pp. 201–50. Thomas rejects Weisberg’s “focus on technicalities” in favor of a broader argument that Melville attacks “the entire legal system” (p. 212) as an instrument of class oppression. Thomas is one of several critics who, following Robert Cover (see note to p. 309 above), identifies Vere with Judge Lemuel Shaw. He suggests (p. 226), as does Tom Quirk—in “The Judge Dragged to the Bar: Melville, Shaw, and the Webster Murder Trial,” Melville Society Extracts 84 (February 1991): 1–8—that HM had in mind not only Shaw’s role in the Fugitive Slave cases, but also in the sensational 1850 murder trial of a Harvard professor accused of murdering an eminent Bostonian over a financial dispute.
128. To intrude would be to violate: Melville had likely read Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in which Dryden declares that it would be unseemly to allow “the undecent appearance … on the stage” of “actions which by reason of their cruelty, will cause aversion in us.”
129. “the condemned one … covers all at last”: BB, ch. 23, p. 1419.
130. “shot through with a soft glory”: BB, ch. 26, p. 1427. See Nathalia Wright’s discussion, in Melville’s Use of the Bible, p. 163, of HM’s combination of imagery from Acts 1:9 (the ascension of Christ) and Rev. 7:9 (the lamb on the throne).
131. “God Bless Captain Vere”: BB, ch. 26, p. 14
26.
132. “that strange transition”: P, ch. 15, p. 218.
133. It has become skeletal: Many critics have noted HM’s painterly prose and his special affection for the Dutch masters. See the essays in Christopher Sten, ed., Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1991), especially Dennis Berthold, “Melville and Dutch Genre Painting” (pp. 218–45); and see also Douglas Robillard, Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997), who describes HM’s style as “literary pictorialism” (p. 99).
134. “umbrageous shade”: T, ch. 12, p. 91.
135. “outreaching comprehensiveness”: MD, ch. 104, p. 456.
136. “arbitrary enlistment”: BB, ch. 3, p. 1363.
137. “enforced enlistment”: BB, ch. 1, p. 1359.
138. “sinister dexterity”: BB, ch. 1, p. 1358. It is apparent from the Billy Budd ms. that HM added the word “sinister” after writing “dexterity.” See Hayford and Sealts, eds., Billy Budd: The Genetic Text, p. 291.
139. “holds the action at a remove”: Berthoff, The Example of Melville, p. 174.
140. “Can you tell me … the evanescence”: HM to Maria Gansevoort Melville, May 5, 1870, in Correspondence, p. 412.
141. “seemed to wander”: Henry James, “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903), in Edel, ed., Henry James: Selected Fiction, p. 532.
142. “the old people had mostly gone”: Henry James, “The Jolly Corner” (1909), ibid., p. 549.
143. “no great and enduring volume”: MD, ch. 104, p. 456.
144. “Heart of autumn!”: “The Chipmunk,” in Vincent, ed., Collected Poems, p. 268.
145. In the final line, Melville changed “the hearth”: See Hennig Cohen and Donald Yannella, Herman Melville’s Malcolm Letter: “Man’s Final Lore” (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), pp. 79–85, and John Bryant, “Melville’s Rose Poems: As They Fell,” Arizona Quarterly 53 (Spring 1997): 49–84, for discussion of “The Chipmunk” and its relation to the death of Malcolm.
146. “The preacher took from Solomon’s Song”: “Rose Window,” in Vincent, ed., Collected Poems, p. 299.
147. “rapid stride”: Oscar Wegelin, “Melville as I Recall Him,” The Colophon: A Quarterly for Bookmen, new ser. 1, no. 1 (Summer 1935): 22.
148. “beard … impressive even for those hirsute days”: Ibid., pp. 21, 23.
149. “the party-giving city”: “Jimmy Rose,” in PT, p. 338.
150. “dining salon was filled”: Henry Collins Brown, quoted in William B. Dillingham, Melville and His Circle: The Last Years (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), p. 13.
151. “he had become too much of a hermit”: Charles DeKay, Reminiscences of the Authors Club, in Log, II, 781.
152. “after all his wanderings”: New York Commercial Advertiser, January 14, 1886, quoted in Log, II, 796.
153. “would take long walks”: Wegelin, “Herman Melville as I Recall Him,” p. 23.
154. “found some relief”: P, bk. 25, p. 340.
155. “the one great imaginative writer”: Robert Buchanan, quoted in Sealts, Early Lives, p. 23.
156. “it was difficult to get more than a passing glimpse”: Ernest Rhys, quoted ibid., p. 24.
157. “internal exile”: Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, p. 202.
158. “for an hour or two”: Brander Mathews, quoted in Sealts, Early Lives, p. 25.
159. “never denied himself”: Titus Coan, quoted ibid., p. 27.
160. “produce a discord in Nature”: Cowen, “Melville’s Marginalia,” V, 331.
161. did her best to replicate the furnishings: Puett, “Melville’s Wife,” p. 170.
162. “My ideas of my husband”: Sealts, Melville’s Reading, p. 4.
163. On Herman’s desk she placed: Metcalf, Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle, p. 289.
164. “the most beautiful story in the world”: Thomas Mann, quoted in Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 496.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
During my years of thinking and writing about Melville, my family and friends have shown me more kindness than can possibly be acknowledged here, but I would like to thank a few people and institutions who were directly helpful to this work.
Ginger Barber and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh supported this book enthusiastically all along the way from proposal to final draft. At Knopf, I am very grateful to Gary Fisketjon for his sensitive and rigorous editing, his graciousness, and his unflagging commitment. Ellen Feldman and Liz Van Hoose made the whole process of moving from manuscript to finished book less a trial than a pleasure.
With the support of the American Council of Learned Societies, I spent eight months in 1999–2000 in residence at the Dorothy and Lewis Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. My colleagues there, especially Ada Louise Huxtable, Allen Kurzweil, and Howard Markel, helped me to get my thoughts in focus. Three years later, when I was ready to start writing, I spent nearly a year in North Carolina at the National Humanities Center, where conversations with Charles Capper, Harriet Ritvo, Paul Griffiths, Lloyd Kramer, Kalman Bland, and James Knowlson were particularly helpful. I owe warm thanks to Joel Elliott for keeping my computer running, and to the incomparable library staff of the Humanities Center—Liza Robertson, Betsy Dain, and Jean Houston—for filling the shelves in my study with the books and articles I needed.
In the intervening years, I had the pleasure of teaching Melville to many insightful students at Columbia University. I am grateful to Columbia not only for helping to make possible the periods of leave during which I was able to concentrate on writing, but for giving me the chance to try out ideas in the atmosphere of freedom and challenge that prevails in its classrooms. I also want to thank my former student and current colleague Roosevelt Montás, who gave me indispensable help in the final stages of manuscript preparation.
One of the great good fortunes of my life was to have been mentored in my own student days by the late Alan Heimert, and, when I was a fledgling teacher, by Steven Marcus, each of whom inspired me in different ways to undertake and see this work through. Many years ago, Bernard Malamud took an interest in a young student who imagined someday writing a book about Melville. I wish I could thank him for his interest and encouragement, which have always stayed with me.
I hope that my debt to the community of Melville scholars is at least hinted at in the notes. Like all students of Melville, I am keenly aware of, and especially grateful for, the prodigious scholarship of Hershel Parker, whose discoveries have immeasurably deepened our knowledge of Melville’s life. I must also add particular thanks to Samuel Otter for sharing his unpublished work on the reception history of Moby-Dick, and to Robert K. Wallace for helping me track down some elusive materials. Many other readers of Melville—among them colleagues and friends whom I thank individually in the notes—called my attention over the years to aspects of Melville’s writing or references to him that eventually found their way into this book.
Over time, one becomes increasingly aware of the blessing of friends. In connection with this book, I think especially of Rochelle Gurstein, who, at a moment when I needed a boost, wrote me a generous response to something I had written that sent me in a new direction, and Eric Himmel, who took time from his busy schedule to help me with the illustrations, and whose critical interest in my writing has always challenged me.
I am grateful as well to many other institutions and individuals. Barbara Epstein, Leon Wieseltier, Richard Poirier, and Caroline Herron invited essays or reviews that gave me the chance to formulate initial thoughts about some of the themes that are more fully addressed in this book. For help in locating manuscripts, images, and other relevant items, I am especially grateful to Ruth Carr at the New York Public Library; Michael Stoller at New York University; Dennis Marnon, Leslie Morris, Vicki Denby, an
d Thomas Ford at the Houghton Library; Ann-Marie Harris and Kathleen Reilly at the Berkshire Athenaeum; Sara Holliday at the New York Society Library; Rebecca Akan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Bert Saul at the Boston Social Law Library. I also wish to thank Catherine Reynolds, curator of Arrowhead, who came out on a wintry Saturday morning to show me around Melville’s home.
I am grateful to Ray Bradbury and Don Congdon Associates for permission to reprint a portion of “Ahab at the Helm,” to Maurice Sendak and Michael Di Capua for agreeing to allow reproduction of one of Mr. Sendak’s illustrations for Pierre, to Bruce Grivetti and HBO for permission to print my transcription of season 4, episode 12 of The Sopranos, and to Paul Romano and Natalie Rauch at Relapse Records for permission to reproduce Mr. Romano’s artwork for the Mastodon CD Leviathan.
My children, Ben and Yvonne, have been appropriately eager to see the work completed, and have helped to keep me at it with their wonderful good humor and irreverence. As for my wife, Dawn, only she knows how much she means to my ability to write or do anything at all.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.
Don Congdon Associates, Inc.: Excerpt from Ahab at the Helm by Ray Bradbury. Copyright © 1964 by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
Harcourt, Inc.: Excerpts from The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819–1891, Volume I and II. Copyright 1951 and renewed 1979 by Jay Leyda. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library: Excerpts from The Writings of Herman Melville: Journals by Herman Melville, edited by Howard C. Horsford and Lynn Horth. Excerpts from The Writings of Herman Melville: Correspondence by Herman Melville, edited by Lynn Horth. Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library.
Random House, Inc.: “Herman Melville” copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden, from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
University of New Mexico Press: Excerpt from Genoa: A Telling of Wonders by Paul Metcalf. Reprinted by permission of University of New Mexico Press.
Melville: His World and Work Page 54