CHAPTER XVI
THE GREAT REFUSAL
“My towers at last! These rovings end,
Their thirst is slacked in larger dearth:
The yearning infinite recoils,
For terrible is earth.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _L’Envoi_.
On a bleak and snowy November day in 1851, the Hawthorne family, with
their trunks, got into a large farm wagon and drove away from the
little red house. And with the departure of Hawthorne, Melville had
dreamed the last of his avenging dreams. There may have been some
association between the two men while Hawthorne was in West Newton,
and later in Concord, but no records survive. In 1856, on his way to
the Holy Land, Melville visited Hawthorne at Southport two days after
arriving in Liverpool. Melville’s account of the meeting is thus
recorded in his journal:
“_Sunday, Nov. 9_: Stayed home till dinner. After dinner took
steamboat for Rock Ferry to find Mr. Hawthorne. On getting to R. F.
learned he had removed thence 18 months previous and was now residing
out of town.
“_Monday, Nov. 10_: Went among the docks to see the Mediterranean
steamers. Saw Mr. Hawthorne at Consulate. Invited me to stay with
him during my sojourn at Liverpool. Dined at Anderson’s, a very nice
place, and charges moderate.
“_Tuesday, Nov. 11_: Hawthorne for Southport, 20 miles distant on the
seashore, a watering place. Found Mrs. Hawthorne & the rest awaiting
tea for us.
“_Wednesday, Nov. 12_: At Southport, an agreeable day. Took a long
walk by the sea. Sand & grass. Wild & desolate. A strong wind. Good
talk. In the evening stout & fox & geese. Julian grown into a fine
lad. Una taller than her brother. Mrs. Hawthorne not in good health.
Mr. Hawthorne stayed home with me.
“_Thursday, Nov. 13_: At Southport till noon. Mr. H. & I took train
then for Liverpool. Spent rest of day putting enquiries among
steamers.
“_Friday, Nov. 14_: Took bus for London Road. Called at Mr.
Hawthorne’s. Met a Mr. Bright. Took me to his club and luncheoned me
there.
“_Sunday, Nov. 16_: Rode in the omnibus. Went out to Foxhill Park,
&c. Grand organ at St. George’s Hall.”
Three days later, Melville was off for Constantinople. In his _English
Note-boo_k, under November 30th, 1856, Hawthorne wrote:
“_November 30_: A week ago last Monday, Herman Melville came to
see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do, and with
his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... We soon found
ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and
confidence.... He is thus far on his way to Constantinople. I do
not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through
the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labour, following
upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was. I invited him to
come and stay with us at Southport, as long as he might remain in
this vicinity, and accordingly he did come the next day.... On
Wednesday we took a pretty long walk together, and sat down in a
hollow among the sand-hills, sheltering ourselves from the high cool
wind. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and
futurity, and of everything else that lies beyond human ken.... He
has a very high and noble nature, and is better worth immortality
than the most of us.... On Saturday we went to Chester together. I
love to take every opportunity of going to Chester; it being the one
only place, within easy reach of Liverpool, which possesses any old
English interest. We went to the Cathedral.”--And then architecture
gives place to personal comment.
Mr. Julian Hawthorne reports of this meeting: “At Southport the chief
event of interest during the winter was a visit from Herman Melville,
who turned up at Liverpool on his way to Constantinople, and whom
Hawthorne brought out to spend a night or two with us. ‘He looked
much the same as he used to do; a little paler, perhaps, and a little
sadder, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner. I
felt rather awkward at first, for this is the first time I have met
him since my ineffectual attempt to get him a consular appointment
from General Pierce. However, I failed only from real lack of power
to serve him; so there was no reason to be ashamed, and we soon
found ourselves on pretty much the former terms of sociability and
confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; he has been affected
with neuralgic complaints, 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. So he left his place in Pittsfield, and has come to the Old
World. He 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 some definite belief.
It is strange how he persists--and has persisted ever since I knew him,
and probably long before--in wandering to and fro over these deserts,
as dismal and monotonous as the sandhills amidst which we were sitting.
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 made the rounds of Liverpool under the guidance of Henry
Bright; and afterwards Hawthorne took him to Chester; and they parted
the same evening, ‘at a street corner, in the rainy evening. I saw him
again on Monday, however. He said that he already felt much better
than in America; but observed that he did not anticipate much pleasure
in his rambles, for that the spirit of adventure is gone out of him.
He certainly is much overshadowed since I saw him last; but I hope
he will brighten as he goes onward. He sailed on Tuesday, leaving
a trunk behind him, and taking only a carpet-bag to hold all his
travelling-gear. This is the next best thing to going naked; and as he
wears his beard and moustache, and so needs no dressing-case,--nothing
but a toothbrush,--I do not know a more independent personage. He
learned his travelling habits by drifting about, all over the South
Seas, with no other clothes or equipage than a red flannel shirt and
a pair of duck trousers. Yet we seldom see men of less criticisable
manners than he.’”
There is no record of these two men ever meeting again.
From the beginning, there had been, between Melville and Hawthorne, a
profound incompatibility. When they met, Melville was within one last
step of absolute disenchantment. One illusion, only, was to him still
unblasted: The belief in the possibility of a Utopian friendship that
might solace all of his earlier defeats. Ravished in solitude by his
alienation from his fellows, Melville discovered that the author of
_The Scarlet Letter_ was his neighbour. He came to know Hawthorne: and
his eager soul rushed to embrace Hawthorne’s as that of a brother in
despair. Exultant was his worship of Hawthorne, absolute his desire for
surrender. He craved of Hawthorne an understanding and sympathy that
neither Hawthorne, nor any other human being, perhaps, could ever have
given. His admiration for Hawthorne was, of course, as he inevitably
discovered, built upon a mistaken identity. Yet, on the evidence of
his letters, he for a time drew from this admiration moments both
of tensest excitement and of miraculous and impregnating peace. It
would be interesting, indeed, to know what _Moby-Dick_ owed to this
inspiration. It is patent fact, however, that with the publication of
_Moby-Dick_, and Hawthorne’s departure from Lenox, Melville’s creative
period was at its close. At the age of thirty-two, so brilliant, so
intense, so crowded had been the range of experience that burned
through him, that at the period of his life when most men are just
beginning to strike their gait, Melville found himself looking forward
into utter night. Nearly forty years before his death, he had come
to be the most completely disenchanted of all considerable American
writers.
From his youth, Melville had felt the flagrant and stubborn discord
between aspiration and fact. He was born with an imagination of
very extraordinary vigour, and with a constitution of corresponding
vitality. In sheer capacity to feel, most American writers look pale
beside him. Fired by his rebellious imagination, and abetted by his
animal courage, he sallied forth in quest of happiness. Few men have
ever compassed such a span of experience as he crowded within the
thirty-two years of his quest; few men have lived with such daring,
with such intensity. And one by one, as he put his illusions to the
test, the bolts of his imagination, discharged against reality, but
blazed out charred avenues to despair. It was Dante, he says in
_Pierre_, who first “opened to his shuddering eyes the infinite cliffs
and gulfs of human mystery and misery;--though still more in the way of
experimental vision, than of sensational presentiment or experience.”
By the age of thirty-two, he had, by first-hand knowledge of life,
learned to feel the justice of Schopenhauer’s statement: “Where did
Dante find the material for his _Inferno_ if not from the world; and
yet is not his picture exhaustively satisfactory? But look at his
Paradise; when he attempted to describe it he had nothing to guide him,
this pleasant world could not offer a single suggestion.” This passage
is marked in Melville’s copy of Schopenhauer. And in _Pierre_ he wrote:
“By vast pains we mine into the pyramid; by horrible gropings we come
to the central room; with joy we espy the sarcophagus; but we lift the
lid--and nobody is there!--appallingly vacant, as vast as the soul of
a man.”
Melville’s disillusionment began at home. The romantic idealisation
of his mother gave place to a recoil into a realisation of the cold,
“scaly, glittering folds of pride” that rebuffed his tormented love;
and he studied the portrait of his father, and found it a defaming
image. In _Pierre_ this portrait thus addresses him: “To their young
children, fathers are not wont to unfold themselves.... Consider this
strange, ambiguous, smile; more narrowly regard this mouth. Behold,
what is this too ardent and, as it were, unchastened light in these
eyes. Consider. Is there no mystery here?” In _Pierre_, he thought that
there was.
In his boyhood, poverty added its goad to launch him forth to find
happiness in distance. He discovered hideousness; and later, escaped
into virgin savagery, he saw by contrast the blatant defaults of
civilisation; and he learned that it was the dubious honour of the
white civilised man of being “the most ferocious animal on the face
of the earth.” In Tahiti he was brought face to face with the bigotry
and stupid self-righteousness of the proselyting Protestant mind; and
there he learned that Christianity--or what passes for it--may under
some circumstances be not a blessing but a blight. In _Typee_ and
_Omoo_ he innocently turned his hand to right matters to a happier
adjustment, soon to reap the reward of such temerity. In the navy he
was made hideously aware of the versatility of the human animal in
evil. There he found not only a rich panorama of human unloveliness,
but “evils which, like the suppressed domestic drama of Horace Walpole,
will neither bear representing, nor reading, and will hardly bear
thinking of.” There, he was also struck by the criminal stupidity of
war. In _White-Jacket_ he asked, “are there no Moravians in the Moon,
that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours,
to civilise civilisation and Christianise Christendom?” He was, as he
calls himself, a “pondering man”: and in his evaluation of individual
human life he soon came to share the judgment of Josiah Royce, another
“pondering man”: “Call it human life. You can not find a comparison
more thoroughly condemning it.” And he marked Schopenhauer’s tribute to
his fellows: “They are just what they seem to be, and that is the worst
that can be said of them.”
As “the man who lived among the cannibals” he was famous by the
age of twenty-eight. But when he attempted to put his earnest
convictions on paper, he was to discover that the value of the paper
deteriorated thereby. When he made this discovery he was married,
and a father: and debtors had to be held at bay by the point of the
pen. On April 30, 1851, Harper and Brothers denied him any further
advance on his royalties: they were making “extensive and expensive
improvements”--and besides, he had already overdrawn nearly seven
hundred dollars.
He had, too, sought personal happiness in the illusion of romantic
love. The romantic lover is in especial peril of finding in marriage
the sobered discovery that all his sublime and heroic effort has
resulted simply in a vulgar satisfaction, and that, taking all things
into consideration, he is no better off than he was before. In his poem
_After the Pleasure Party_ (in _Timoleon_, 1891) Melville tells such
a “sad rosary of belittling pain.” As a rule, Theseus once consoled,
Ariadne is forsaken; and had Petrarch’s passion been requited, his
song would have ceased. Francesca and Paolo, romantic lovers who had
experienced the limits of their desire, were by Dante put in Hell:
and their sufficient punishment was their eternal companionship.
By the very ardour of his idealisation, Melville was foredoomed to
disappointment in marriage. Though both he and his wife were noble
natures--indeed for that very reason--their marriage was for each a
crucifixion. For between them there was deep personal loyalty without
understanding. Bacon once said, “he that hath wife and children
hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great
enterprises, either of virtue or of mischief.” Melville gave such
hostages to fortune: but, such was his temperament, it is difficult
to believe that unencumbered he would have magnified his achievement.
Mrs. Melville is remembered as a gentle, gracious, loyal woman who bore
with him for over forty years, in his disillusion, his loss of health,
his poverty, his obscurity. And his father-in-law, Chief Justice Shaw,
befriended him with forbearance and with more substantial gifts.
With the departure of Hawthorne from Lenox, Melville was left without
companionship and without illusions. And he was aware of the approach
of his Nemesis even before it overtook him. He confessed to Hawthorne
while finishing _Moby-Dick_ his feeling that he was approaching
the limit of his power. And these intimations were prophetic. With
_Moby-Dick_ his creative period closed.
Of the end of this period his wife says: “Wrote _White Whale_ or
_Moby-Dick_ under unfavourable circumstances--would sit at his desk
all day not writing anything till four or five o’clock--then ride
to the village after dark--would be up early and out walking before
breakfast--sometimes splitting wood for exercise. Published _White
Whale_ in 1851.--Wrote _Pierre_: published 1852. We all felt anxious
about the strain on his health in Spring of 1853.”
In _Pierre_, Melville coiled down into the night of his soul, to
write an anatomy of despair. The purpose of the book was to show
the impracticability of virtue: to give specific evidence, freely
plagiarised from his own psychology, that “the heavenly wisdom of
God is an earthly folly to man,” “that although our blessed Saviour
was full of the wisdom of Heaven, yet his gospel seems lacking in
the practical wisdom of the earth; that his nature was not merely
human--was not that of a mere man of the world”; that to try to live in
this world according to the strict letter of Christianity would result
in “the story of the Ephesian matron, allegorised.” The subtlety of
the analysis is extraordinary; and in its probings into unsuspected
determinants from unconsciousness it is prophetic of some of the
most recent findings in psychology. “Deep, deep, and still deep and
deeper must we go,” Melville says, “if we would find out the heart
of a man; descending into which is as descending a spiral stair in a
shaft, without any end, and where that endlessness is only concealed
by the spiralness of the stair, and the blackness of the shaft.” In
the winding ambiguities of _Pierre_ Melville attempts to reveal man’s
fatal facility at self-deception; to show that the human mind is like
a floating iceberg, hiding below the surface of the sea most of its
bulk; that from a great depth of thought and feeling below the level
of awareness, long silent hands are ever reaching out, urging us to
whims of the blood and tensions of the nerves, whose origins we never
suspect. “In reserves men build imposing characters,” Melville says;
“not in revelations.” _Pierre_ is not conspicuous for its reserves.
_Pierre_ aroused the reviewers to such a storm of abuse that legend
has assigned Melville’s swift obscuration to this dispraise. The
explanation is too simple, as Mr. Mather contends. But there is,
doubtless, more than a half truth in this explanation. The abuse
that _Pierre_ reaped, coming when it did in Melville’s career,
and inspired by a book in which Melville with tragic earnestness
attempted an apologia of worldly defeat, must have seemed to him in
its heartlessness and total blindness to his purpose, a definitive
substantiation of the thesis of his book.
_Pierre_ has been very unsympathetically handled, even by Melville’s
most penetrating and sympathetic critics. Mr. Frank Jewett Mather,
Jr., for example, in the second of his two essays on _Herman Melville_
(_The Review_, August 9 and 16, 1919), says of _Pierre_ that “it is
perhaps the only positively ill-done book” of Melville’s. Mr. Mather
grants power to the book, but he finds it “repellent and overwrought.”
He recommends it only as a literary curiosity. And as a literary
curiosity Mr. Arthur Johnson studied its stylistic convolutions in _The
New Republic_ of August 27, 1919. It is certainly true, as Mr. Johnson
has said, that “the plot or theme, were it not so ‘done’ as to be
hardly decipherable, would be to-day considered rather ‘advanced.’” Mr.
Johnson contends that for morbid unhealthy pathology, it has not been
exceeded even by D. H. Lawrence. All this may be very excellent ethics,
but it is not very enlightening criticism.
Melville wrote _Pierre_ with no intent to reform the ways of the
world. But he did write _Pierre_ to put on record the reminder that
the world’s way is a hypocritic way in so far as it pretends to be any
other than the Devil’s way also. In _Pierre_, Melville undertook to
dramatise this conviction. When he sat down to write, what seemed to
him the holiest part of himself--his ardent aspirations--had wrecked
itself against reality. So he undertook to present, in the character
of Pierre, his own character purged of dross; and in the character of
Pierre’s parents, the essential outlines of his own parents. Then he
started his hero forth upon a career of lofty and unselfish impulse,
intent to show that the more transcendent a man’s ideal, the more
certain and devastating his worldly defeat; that the most innocent
in heart are those most in peril of being eventually involved in
“strange, _unique_ follies and sins, unimagined before.” Incidentally,
Melville undertakes to show, in the tortuous ambiguities of _Pierre_,
that even the purest impulses of Pierre were, in reality, tainted of
clay. _Pierre_ is an apologia of Melville’s own defeat, in the sense
that in _Pierre_ Melville attempts to show that in so far as his own
defeat--essentially paralleling Pierre’s--was unblackened by incest,
murder, and suicide, he had escaped these disasters through accident
and inherent defect, rather than because of superior virtue. Pierre had
followed the heavenly way that leads to damnation.
Such a thesis can be met by the worldly wisdom that Melville slanders
in _Pierre_, only with uncompromising repugnance. There can be no
forgiveness in this world for a man who calls the wisdom of this world
a cowardly lie, and probes clinically into the damning imperfections of
the best. His Kingdom is surely not of this world. And if this world
evinces for his gospel neither understanding nor sympathy, he cannot
reasonably complain if he reaps the natural fruits of his profession.
Melville agreed with the Psalmist: “Verily there is a reward for the
righteous.” But he blasphemed when he dared teach that the reward of
virtue and truth in this world must be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Like Dante, Melville set himself up against the world as a party of
one. A majority judgment, though it has the power, has not necessarily
the truth. It is theoretically possible that Melville, not the world,
is right. But one can assent to Melville’s creed only on penalty
of destruction; and the race does not welcome annihilation. Hence
this world must rejoice in its vengeance upon his blasphemy: and the
self-righteous have washed their feet in the blood of the wicked.
After _Pierre_, any further writing from Melville was both an
impertinence and an irrelevancy. No man who really believes that all
is vanity can consistently go on taking elaborate pains to popularise
his indifference. Schopenhauer did that thing, it is true; but
Schopenhauer was an artist, not a moralist; and he was enchanted with
disenchantment. Carlyle, too, through interminable volumes shrieked
out the necessity of silence. But after _Pierre_, Melville was without
internal urgings to write. “All profound things, and emotions of
things,” he wrote in _Pierre_, “are preceded and attended by silence.”
“When a man is really in a profound mood, then all merely verbal or
written profundities are unspeakably repulsive, and seem downright
childish to him.” Infinitely greater souls than Melville’s seem to
have shared this conviction. Neither Buddha nor Socrates left a single
written word; Christ wrote once only, and then in the sand.
As if the gods themselves were abetting Melville in his recoil from
letters and his contempt for his hard-earned fame, the Harper’s fire
of 1853 destroyed the plates of all his novels, and practically all
of the copies of his books then in stock. One hundred and eighty-five
copies of _Typee_ were burned; 276 copies of _Omoo_; 491 copies of
_Mardi_; 296 copies of _Redburn_; 292 copies of _White-Jacket_; 297
copies of _Moby-Dick_; 494 copies of _Pierre_. There survived only 10
copies of _Mardi_, 60 copies of _Moby-Dick_ and 110 copies of _Pierre_.
All of these books except _Pierre_ were reissued, but with no rich
profit either to Harper’s or to Melville. A typical royalty account is
that covering the period between October 6, 1863, and August 1, 1864.
During this period, 54 copies of _Typee_ were sold; 56 of _Omoo_; 42
of _Redburn_; 49 of _Mardi_; 29 of _White-Jacket_; 48 of _Moby-Dick_;
and 27 of _Pierre_. It was a fortunate year, indeed, for Melville that
brought him in $100 royalties. During most of his life, Melville’s
account with Harper’s was overdrawn: a fact that speaks more for the
generosity of his publisher than for the appreciation of his public.
Melville surely never achieved opulence by his pen. Convinced of the
futility of writing and effort, Melville wanted only tranquillity for
thought. But his health was breaking, and his family had to be fed. So
he looked about him for some unliterary employment.
The following letter from Richard Henry Dana explains itself:
“BOSTON, May 10, 1853.
“DEAR SIR:
“I am informed by the Chief Justice that my friend, Mr. Herman
Melville, has been named to the Government as a suitable person for
the American Consulship at the Sandwich Islands.
“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.
“If I knew the President or the Secretary of State, personally, I
would take the liberty to write them. As I do not, I beg you will use
whatever influence I may have in any quarter in his favour.
“Very truly yours,
“RICHARD H. DANA, JR.
“ALLAN MELVILLE, ESQ.”
Melville was not appointed to a consular post in the Pacific: so his
brother Allan busied himself in looking for an appointment elsewhere,
as the following letter, addressed to Hon. Lemuel Shaw, shows:
“NEW YORK, June 11, 1853.
“MY DEAR SIR:
“Yours of the 8th reached me yesterday advising me of the recent
information you have received through a confidential source from
Washington respecting a consulate for Herman.
“There can be no consulship in Italy, not even Rome, where the fees
would amount to sufficient to make it an object for Herman to accept
a position there.
“I have positive information of the value of the Antwerp consulate
and understand it to be worth from $2,500 to $3,000. Should this be
tendered, Herman ought to accept it.
“I don’t know that I can say anything more on this subject.
“Herman is in town and will see you on your arrival.
“Very truly yours,
“ALLAN MELVILLE.
“I may add that Herman has been specially urged for the Antwerp
position & that Mr. Hawthorne spoke to Mr. Cushing of that place.
“A. M.”
Of the domestic happenings at Arrowhead at this time, very little is
known. One letter of Mrs. Melville’s survives:
“ARROWHEAD, Aug. 10th, 1853.
“MY DEAR FATHER:
“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. He has a severe cough, which I think
will prove the whooping-cough as there is a great deal of it about at
present.”
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