Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic

“I acknowledge no little personal interest in Mr. Melville, but apart from that, I know, from my early experience, and from a practice of many years in Admiralty & Maritime causes, the great importance of having a consul at the Sandwich Islands who knows the wants of our vast Pacific Marine, and shall stand clear of those inducements of trade consignments which lead so many consuls to neglect seamen and lend their influence indiscriminately in favour of owners and masters.

“Mr. Melville has been all over the Pacific Ocean, in all sorts of maritime service & has the requisite acquaintance & interest to an unusual degree. Beyond this, his reputation, general intelligence & agreeable manners will be sure to make him a popular and useful officer among all our citizens who visit the Islands. I cannot conceive of a more appropriate appointment, & I sincerely hope it will be given him.

“I did not mean that so long a time should elapse, of your absence from home, without my writing you, especially when I have two letters of yours to answer. It is not because I have not thought of you much and often, but really because I can not find the time to seat myself quietly down to write a letter—that is more than for a hasty scrawl to mother occasionally—and inasmuch as my occupations are of the useful and not the frivolous kind I know you will appreciate the apology and accept it. Three little ones to look after and ‘do for’ takes up no little portion of the day, and my baby is as restless a little mortal as ever crowed. She is very well and healthy in every respect, but not very fat, as she sleeps very little comparatively and is very active. A few weeks since Malcolm made his début as a scholar at the white school house of Dr. Holmes’. I was afraid he would lose the little he already knew ‘of letters’ and as I could not find the time to give him regular instruction, I sent him to school rather earlier than I should have done otherwise. The neighbours’ children call for him every morning, and he goes off with his pail of dinner in one hand and his primer in the other, to our no small amusement. The grand feature of the day to him seems to be the ‘eating his dinner under the trees’—as he always gives that as his occupation when asked what he does at school—and as his pail is invariably empty when he returns, he does full justice to the noon-tide meal. Stannie begins to talk a great deal, and seems to be uncommonly forward for his age.

Failing of a consular appointment, Melville was forced to continue writing. He busied himself with the story of the “revolutionary beggar.” Melville based his story upon “a little narrative, forlornly published on sleazy grey paper,” that he had “rescued by the merest chance from the rag-pickers.” Copies of this narrative are not excessively rare. The title page reads: “Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter (a native of Cranston, Rhode Island) who was a soldier in the American Revolution, and took a distinguished part in the Battle of Bunker Hill (in which he received three wounds) after which he was taken Prisoner by the British, conveyed to England, where for thirty years he obtained a livelihood for himself and family, by crying ‘Old Chairs to Mend’ through the Streets of London.—In May last, by the assistance of the American Consul, he succeeded (in the 79th year of his age) in obtaining a passage to his native country, after an absence of 48 years. Providence: Printed by Henry Trumbull—1824 (Price 28 cents).” The result was Israel Potter, published in book form by G. P. Putnam in 1855, after having appeared serially in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. Israel Potter is, in most part, a spirited narrative containing, so Mr. Mather states, “the best account of a sea fight in American fiction.” It was praised, too, by Hawthorne for its delineations of Franklin and John Paul Jones, and doubtless deserves a wider recognition than has ever been given it. Interestingly enough, the book is dedicated to Bunker Hill Monument.

Between 1853 and 1856, Melville published twelve articles, inclusive of Israel Potter, in Putnam’s Magazine and in Harper’s Monthly. Melville made from a selection from these his Piazza Tales (1856), published in New York by Dix and Edwards, in London by Sampson Low. Of these, The Bell Tower, Don Benito Cereno and The Encantadas show the last glow of Melville’s literary glamour, the final momentary brightening of the embers before they sank into blackness and ash. There exists a letter from Putnam’s Monthly, dated May 12, 1854, and signed by Charles T. Briggs—refusing a still unpublished story of Melville’s out of fear of “offending the religious sensibilities of the public and the Congregation of Grace Church.” This letter is less important because of its exquisite sensitiveness, than because of its mention of a letter from Lowell; a letter in which Lowell is reported to have read The Encantadas. According to Briggs’ communication, Lowell was so moved that “the figure of the cross on the ass’ neck brought tears into his eyes, and he thought it the finest touch of genius he had seen in prose.” Swinburne speaks of “the generous pleasure of praising”: this pleasure Lowell indulged frequently, and in his wholesome and whole-hearted way. Of Hawthorne, Lowell said: “The rarest creative imagination of the century, the rarest in some ideal respects since Shakespeare.” The Confidence Man was published in 1857: but it was a posthumous work.

Thereafter, Melville was to try his hand at poetry, and with results little meriting the total oblivion into which his poetry has fallen; and in his old age he was again to turn to prose: but before Melville was half through his mortal life his signal literary achievement was done. The rest, if not silence, was whisper.