by Paul Metcalf
“. . . he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the whale.”
The medical book: “Once within the periphery of the ovum the sperm’s head and neck detach from its tail which may be left wholly outside and in no case plays any part in the events to follow. The head next rotates 180° and proceeds toward the centre of the egg where the egg nucleus, having finished the maturative divisions, awaits it. During this journey the sperm head enlarges, becomes open-structured, and is converted into the male pronucleus.”
The head enlarges, becomes open-structured . . . I tilt forward, the front legs of the chair striking the floor, and then turn to face the far end, the western end of the attic . . . turning, then, completely around, I face the desk again, and become dizzy . . .
MOBY-DICK: “And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.”
(Melville, elsewhere: “. . . in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;—nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”
To Hawthorne: “The Whale is completed.”
THREE
But the waters came pouring in, rushing and filling:
“My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric skepticisms steal into me now, and make me doubtful of my sanity . . .”
and
“. . . let us add Moby Dick to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish;—I have heard of Krakens.”
(a sea-monster, mile and a half in circumference, darkening the ocean with a black liquid, and causing a gigantic whirlpool when it sinks . . .
MOBY-DICK: “Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”
. . . rolled on over Herman Melville, his compatriots and descendants, who breathed and wrote, thenceforth, from within the ocean. But there was that which followed after the closing of the waters: there was the family . . .
Lizzie, wife to Herman, and counterpole to Fayaway . . .
(with Columbus—discoverer, beginner—the order was reversed: wife first, and then mistress . . .
. . . struggling to help by copying MARDI (whose fogs she could not penetrate), and
“My cold is very bad indeed, perhaps worse than it has ever been so early . . .”
There was the bond:
Lizzie, whose mother died in delivering her, and who might have said to herself, “I killed my mother”; and who, having been thus abandoned, would have been strongly averse to abandoning Herman . . .
Lizzie, who, like Hart Crane, suffered from hay fever, and thus, wet-headed, mourned her mother . . .
and Herman, as Jonah, swallowed by a white monster—Herman, who might have said: “My mother killed me” . . .
(and Maria Melville, as Mrs. Glendinning: “I feel now as though I had borne the last of a swiftly to be extinguished race . . .”
In any case—love, prestige, privation—they were established: Lizzie and Herman . . . Mr. & Mrs. Herman Melville . . . Mr. H. Melville, & wife.
And there were the children:
Mackey,
Stanny,
Bessie,
& Fanny,
hovering at the edge of the storm, the vortex, and
killed, crippled, or withered, according to the order of birth, to how near in time (the father’s space) they came
to the eye of it.
Melville—as good a parent as, say, Columbus was an administrator—was more of a prophet:
There was the letter to Mackey, 1860: “Whilst the sailors were aloft on one of the yards, the ship rolled and plunged terribly; and it blew with sleet and hail, and was very cold & biting. Well, all at once, Uncle Tom saw something falling through the air, and then heard a thump, and then,—looking before him, saw a poor sailor lying dead on the deck. He had fallen from the yard, and was killed instantly.”
(Mackey, you shall die violently . . .
And the letter written by Stanny, as a little boy, to his grandmother: “Papa took me to the cattle show grounds to see the soldiers drill, but we did not see them, . . . it was too bad. But papa took me a ride all through the Cemetary.”
(Stanny, you shall die quietly . . .
And the letter Melville wrote to Bessie, 1860: “Many [seabirds] have followed the ship day after day . . . they were all over speckled—and they would sometimes, during a calm, keep behind the ship, fluttering about in the water, with a mighty cackling, and wherever anything was thrown overboard they would hurry to get it. But they would never light on the ship—they kept all the time flying or else resting themselves by floating on the water like ducks in a pond. These birds have no home, unless it is some wild rocks in the middle of the ocean.”
(Bessie, you shall be homeless . . .
And the children responded:
Mackey, age 18, young dog, fond of firearms, who slept with a pistol under his pillow—came home one night at 3 A.M., and failed to rise in the morning.
“Time went on and Herman advised Lizzie to let him sleep, be late at the office & take the consequences as a sort of punishment . . .”
“. . . in the evening, the door of the room was opened, and young Melville was found dead, lying on the bed, with a single-barrelled pistol firmly grasped in his right hand, and a pistol-shot wound in the right temple.”
(Melville: “I wish you could have seen him as he lay in his last attitude, the ease of a gentle nature.”)
And the funeral: “. . . the young Volunteer Company to which Malcolm belonged & who had asked the privilege of being present & carrying the coffin from the house to the cars—filed in at one door from the hall & out at the other—each pausing for an instant to look at the face of their lost comrade. Cousin Helen says they were all so young & it was really a sadly beautiful sight—for the cold limbs of the dead wore the same garments as the strong active ones of the living—Cousin Lizzie—his almost heart broken Mother having dressed her eldest son in the new suit he had taken such pride & pleasure in wearing—Four superb wreaths and crosses of the choicest white flowers were placed on the coffin . . .”
And after, the family pondered whether it was suicide or accident, not thinking that Mackey had held the pistol, and Mackey had pulled the trigger—
the only question being whether he had been conscious of his actions, of his motives.
And there was Stanny:
“My deafness has been a great trouble to me lately . . .”
(What was he trying to drown out—the brother’s gunshot? . . . the family arguments? . . . or:
Stanwix: “I fear it will give you but little pleasure to hear from one, who has been guilty of so many follies, and deaf to the counsel of older heads.”
And: “Stanwix is full of the desire to go to sea, & see something of this great world. He used to talk to me about it, but I always tried to talk him out of it. But now he seems so bent upon it, that Herman & Lizzie have given their consent, thinking that one voyage to China will cure him of the fancy.”
But it took more than one voyage to cure his father . . .
“What have you heard of Stanwix Melville from what point did he run away? & where was his place of destination? Poor Cousin Lizzie She will be almost broken hearted.”
A shadow of his father, even to the running away . . . or perhaps, simply, escaping the disaster . . .
Later: “You know I left New York in April & went to a small town in Kansas, I staid there a few weeks, then I thought I could do better South so I came down through the Indian Nation, & then into Arkansas, I stopped at a number of towns on the Arkansas river till I came to the Mississippi, then down that river to Vicksburgh I staid there a few days, & then took
the train to Jackson, from there by Railroad to New Orleans, I found that a lively city, but no work, so I thought I should like a trip to Central America, I went on a steamer to Havana, Cuba & from there to half a dozen or more ports on the Central America coast till I came to Limon Bay in Costa Rica.”
Columbus, fourth voyage, off Central America: “It was one continual rain, thunder and lightning. The ships lay exposed to the weather, with sails torn, and anchors, rigging, cables, boats and many of the stores lost; the people exhausted . . . Other tempests I have seen, but none that lasted so long or so grim as this. Many old hands whom we looked on as stout fellows lost their courage. . . . I was sick and many times lay at death’s door, but gave orders from a dog-house that the people clapped together for me on the poop deck.”
Rounding Cabo Gracia á Dios, he was able to coast southward to what is now called Limon Bay, in Costa Rica, where he anchored and rested for ten days.
Stanny: “I walked from there on the beach with two other young fellows to Greytown in Nicaragua, one of the boys died on the beach, & we dug a grave in the sand by the sea, & buried him, & travelled on again, each of us not knowing who would have to bury the other before we got there, as we were both sick with the fever & ague.”
Columbus drifted down the coast, searching for a passage, a channel to the Red Sea . . .
(Plato, describing Atlantis: “. . . and drove a canal through the zones of land three hundred feet in width, about a hundred feet deep, and about sixty miles in length. At the landward end of this waterway, which was capable of navigation by the largest vessels, they constructed a harbour. The two zones of land were cut by large canals, by which means a trireme, or three-decked galley, was able to pass from one sea-zone to another.”
Stanny: “I went up the San Juan river to Lake Nicaragua about a hundred miles with a Naval surveying expedition going up to survey for a ship Canal . . .
. . . searching for a canal, a short-cut, to avoid the rigors of the long voyage . . .
(Melville, commenting on Emerson: “To one who has weathered Cape Horn as a common sailor what stuff all this is.”
Stanny: “. . . from Greytown I shipped on a schooner for Aspinwall; after arriving in Aspinwall, I got wrecked there in that heavy gale of wind . . . and I lost all my clothes, & every thing I had, & was taken sick again with the fever, I went into the hospital there, & then came home on the Steamer Henry Chauncey, where I find the cold weather agrees with me much better, than the sun of the tropics.
Now I say New York forever.”
Later: “I am happy to announce to you that this morning I went to work for a dentist, a Dr. Read; I went to his office on Saturday, & told him I wanted a place to work & perfect myself in the profession . . .”
MOBY-DICK: “With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes—some few days after the other work—Queequeg, Dagoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood-lands.”
And in MARDI, the cannibals wore teeth as ornaments, and hoarded them as money—teeth, like money, being the means of eating . . .
(Stanny: “. . . in a few years I will be independent of any man.”
But: “I have encountered a serious obstacle which will prevent me from becoming a number one dentist, & that is I am too near sighted; I found it out as quick as I commenced operating in the mouth . . . I am going to sail Wednesday for San Francisco . . .”
Lizzie: “We have better news from Stanny—He is on a sheep-ranch in California . . .”
And: “I wanted to tell you that we are expecting Stanny home in a short time—A very favorable opening for his going back to his old business, mechanical dentistry offered itself . . .”
“Stanny begs me to thank you very much for all your kind wishes—he is very well now (with the exception of a little bowel trouble) . . .”
1875, departs for San Francisco, and
“There is a party of five or six of us that are going to start for the Black Hills country about the middle or last of January . . . I have made up my mind, this is a chance, & I may be lucky there, at any rate I can get miners wages which is more than I can make here . . . and I am going this winter if I die of starvation or get frozen to death on the road.”
Lizzie: “I have been writing to Stanny . . . he has been sick poor fellow, and had to go in the hospital at Sacramento . . .”
“We hear constantly from Stanny—I wish I could say he is materially better . . .”
“. . . a good deal worried about Stanny’s health—his pulmonary troubles have been worse . . .”
and Melville, now age 66—whose own paternity had been blasted, who had been thrust loose in an earlier world—signs a letter to Stanny:
Good bye, & God bless you
Your affectionate Father
H. Melville.
A death notice:
MELVILLE—At San Francisco, Cal., 23d inst., Stanwix, son of Herman and Elizabeth S. Melville, in the 35th year of his age.
And there was Bessie, third-born, and oldest daughter:
thin, small, weak-voiced, but with a sharp tongue (she liked raw humor),
crippled with arthritis (they never saw such feet on one who could still walk), afraid of strong winds, afraid that she would be blown over . . .
lived with her mother, and then alone, an old maid (she didn’t like little children, couldn’t stand their little smelly drawers),
and when she died, quarts of black liquid—undigested food—were found in her system . . .
And finally, Fanny, last-born, furthest removed from the disaster,
who salvaged life and fertility (she married a man from Philadelphia, and gave birth to four daughters . . .
who nevertheless had her troubles (and blamed them all on her own father . . .
developed arthritis (she could be seen on the porch of her summer home, Edgartown—white-headed, her sweet, gentle face, white, she in a white dress—her leg out stiff, arthritic . . .
and died, finally, incontinent and placid, a baby—1935.
Thus the four children of Herman Melville:
The men:
one, dead by his own hand, and the other, wasted . . .
(Melville, as Pierre: “Lo! I leave corpses wherever I go!”
And the women:
arthritic, motionless, holding against the down-rushing waters . . .
And hovering over all, moving, surviving, through the long term of Melville’s life, and beyond—was Lizzie . . .
Shifting again, I glance, not upward, as at the crossbeam, but downward, between my legs, at the floor . . . and I recall (my arms and legs are tense, a little tired, as though strained) waiting in the basement, alone with Mother, during the tornado . . . the loneliness, the wanting to be with Carl, wanting to be, as he was, up in the rigging, in the storm, with Father—and having to wait, instead, in the darkness, in the grip that I was too young to break . . . lifting my eyes level again, I read
that the bride of Columbus in all probability did not survive five years of the marriage; and
“Not the slightest hint has come down to us of the appearance or disposition of Columbus’s only wife; Dona Felipa is as shadowy a figure as the Discoverer’s mother.”
(About Melville’s wife, and mother, a great deal is known . . .
Whether dead or still living, Dona Felipa was abandoned when Columbus left Portugal.
And on the first voyage, early in the return, Columbus set out to discover the island of Matinino, inhabited, as the Indians told him, only by women; for this might be Marco Polo’s Feminea . . .
. . . but the ships were leaking, and the wind blew strong from the west: he changed his course for Spain.
Third voyage: “. . . at the lengthe an Eastsoutheaste wynd
e arose, and gave a prosperous blaste to his sayles.” . . . the fleet coasted before the trades, through “El Golfo de las Damas,” the Ladies’ Sea . . .
And Mellville, late in life, in a letter: “But you do not know, perhaps, that I have already entered my eighth decade. After twenty years nearly, as an outdoor Customs House officer, I have latterly come into possession of unobstructed leisure, but only just as, in the course of nature, my vigor sensibly declines.”
Columbus, on the third voyage, executed one of the most extraordinary feats of dead-reckoning navigation: Margarita (The Terrestrial Paradise) to Hispaniola . . .
and arriving, troubled with gout, found the colony disorganized, Roldan in rebellion . . . and instead of clean action, fighting and subduing Roldan, he negotiated, submitted to a set of humiliating agreements . . .
(Fanny, describing Melville, his later peacefulness: “He just didn’t have the energy any more . . .”
. . . and later he was put in fetters (darbies, Melville called them) and sent back to Spain, on what proved to be the only eastward voyage, return voyage, accompanied by any sort of good weather . . .
(on shipboard, they offered to take off the fetters, but he refused, declared that he would wear them until he had the opportunity to kneel with them still on, before the Sovereigns. Ever after this, he guarded them jealously, kept them in his room, directed that they be interred with his body . . .
Melville, reading Homer, checks and underscores: “The work that I was born to do is done!”
After the Civil War, when Franco had won, Carl teamed with a Spanish family, four brothers and a sister: Rico, Rafael, Salomón, Diego, and Concha—old Spanish aristocrats (though they had been fighting, so Carl claimed, for the Loyalists). All wanted to get out of Spain (the Spaniards complained that no one spoke Spanish, it was all Russian and German), so they acquired a yacht and set sail for Cuba . . .
. . . where Carl lived for several years, becoming embroiled in one after another of the rebellions. One by one, three of the four brothers (Rico alone escaped) were destroyed, aligning themselves on different sides in the fighting . . . Carl carried with him a photo of Rafael, his shirt torn, his body spattered with blood, lying drenched in sunlight on the pavement, where he had fallen . . . it came out (when Carl was drunk) that they had been fighting on opposite sides, and that perhaps it had been Carl’s own gun that had killed him . . .