Melville: His World and Work Read online

  Acclaim for Andrew Delbanco’s

  MELVILLE

  “A first-rate biography, shrewd and engaging, that ingeniously tacks back and forth from fiction to fact [as Delbanco] concentrates on placing the fiction in historical and political context.”

  —The New York Times

  “Learned but lively, empathetic toward his subject, shrewdly analytical and unfailingly engrossing.… It’s as though your alma mater’s winner of its Outstanding Teacher award were personally escorting you through the Melville maze.… Delbanco succeeds exactly as intended, sending readers eagerly back to the Melville bookshelf.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A superb biography of America’s greatest novelist, the best that has yet been written.”

  —The Independent (London)

  “Inspiring.… Sympathetic literary assessments and deft, clear-headed writing.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “Graceful and masterful.… With his characteristically elegant prose, his astute critical readings, his discerning social criticism and his judicious historical research, Delbanco offers an eloquent introduction to Melville and his work.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Melville: His World and Work is a full and faithful account.… Well written and, more important, strongly engaged.”

  —The Nation

  “Quietly sublime.… Tight and accessible.… [An] acute critical biography [that] offers a richer account of Melville’s relation to his times, opening up period debates on slavery and drawing connections between the New York of the 1840s and the city we know today. [Delbanco] writes throughout with grace and wit [and] his lucid contextual readings synthesize a generation of scholarship.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Deeply learned yet alive to Melville’s particular genius.… Andrew Delbanco joins a distinguished pantheon of critics and scholars who read Melville with heart, with humanity, above all with supreme intelligence.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Edifying and often captivating.”

  —Arkansas Democrat Gazette

  “A remarkable, humane biography of Herman Melville by Andrew Delbanco which places him deftly, vividly and wittily in his times, deals brilliantly with the strange story of his public failure and posthumous reputation, makes sense of some fiendishly obscure texts, and masters a life’s work which is ‘as vast and contradictory as America itself.’ ”

  —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

  “One can hardly imagine a more artful or succinct biography of Herman Melville, one that makes his fiction seem not only relevant but urgent, presenting the familiar facts in a fashion that makes the life and work luminously comprehensible.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  “Delbanco writes about Melville with a sympathy and passion that illuminate both his sad life and the more obscure corners of his writings.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Brilliant and satisfying.… Anyone even remotely interested in American literature should put this fascinating book at the top of their must-read list.”

  —The Tucson Citizen

  “Engaging, comprehensive, and well-written.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Splendid.… In his elegant, evocative and deeply perceptive prose, [Delbanco] prowls through the writer’s soul and consciousness, plumbing psychological depths but also linking him to the wider world of his times.… A rich, brilliant, provocative biography, the best of its kind.”

  —Providence Journal-Bulletin

  “An immensely readable and intelligent overview of the writer’s life.… Not only reveals Melville as a complex and elusive person [but] … throws light on America in the 19th century, discovering in it much that is relevant to our own times.”

  —Santa Fe New Mexican

  “The finest biography ever written of this essential American.… Not all ambitious quests into the heart of darkness end in failure. Herman Melville proved it with Moby-Dick. Andrew Delbanco has proved it with Melville.”

  —The New York Observer

  Andrew Delbanco

  MELVILLE

  Andrew Delbanco is the author of The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil, Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now, and The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, all of which were New York Times Notable Books. The Puritan Ordeal won the Lionel Trilling Award from Columbia University. He has edited Writing New England, The Portable Abraham Lincoln, volume two of The Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson (with Teresa Toulouse), and, with Alan Heimert, The Puritans in America. His essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Raritan, and other journals.

  In 2001 Delbanco was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2003 was named New York State Scholar of the Year by the New York Council for the Humanities. He is a trustee of the National Humanities Center and the Library of America and has served as vice president of PEN American Center. Since 1995 he has been the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

  ALSO BY ANDREW DELBANCO

  William Ellery Channing

  The Puritan Ordeal

  The Death of Satan

  Required Reading

  The Real American Dream

  AS EDITOR

  The Puritans in America (with Alan Heimert)

  The Portable Abraham Lincoln

  The Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, volume 2 (with Teresa Toulouse)

  Writing New England

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2006

  Copyright © 2005 by Andrew Delbanco

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2005.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material may be found at the end of the volume.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Delbanco, Andrew, 1952–

  Melville: his world and work / Andrew Delbanco.

  p. cm.

  1. Melville, Herman, 1819–1891. 2. Novelists, American—19th century—Biography. 3. Literature and society—United States—History—19th century. 4. Social problems in literature. I. Title.

  PS2386.D44 2005

  813′.3—dc22

  [B] 2005040919

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83171-2

  Author photograph © Joyce Ravid

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  FOR DAWN

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  EXTRACTS

  PREFACE

  Epigraph

  PORTRAITS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

  INTRODUCTION:

  MELVILLE: FROM HIS TIME TO OURS

  1. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

  2. GOING NATIVE

  3. BECOMING A WRITER

  4. ESCAPE TO NEW YORK

  5. HUNTING THE WHALE

  6. CAPTAIN AMERICA

  7. “HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY”

  8. SEEING TOO MUCH

  9. THE MAGAZINIST

  10. ADRIFT

  11. SEASON OF DEATH

  12.
THE QUIET END

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  PORTRAITS OF HERMAN MELVILLE

  fm2.1 Oil painting by Asa Twitchell, c. 1846/47. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  fm2.2 1860. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  fm2.3 1861. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  fm2.4 1868. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  fm2.5 Oil painting by Joseph Eaton, 1870. (By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, *612-4)

  fm2.6 Cabinet card by Rockwood, 1885. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  fm1.1 “Future Broadway Musicals Based on Famous Literary Classics: Where’s Moby?” MAD Magazine, January 1966. (MAD #100 copyright 1966 E. C. Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.)

  prf.1 Herman Melville[?]. Photograph by Isaac Almstadt at Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, NY, c. 1877–78. (Mel A. Hardin Collection, Staten Island, NY)

  itr.1 Map of the city of New York. By Thomas H. Poppleton. New York, Prior & Dunning, 1817. (Map Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

  itr.2 Map of the city of New York. Buffalo, NY, Mathews, Northup & Co., 1890. (Map Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

  itr.3 Leviathan, illustration for Mastodon CD, 2004. (Mastodon’s Leviathan [Relapse Records] by Paul A. Romano)

  itr.4 Moby Dick Fun Pub, Belgium. (Photograph by Dawn Delbanco)

  itr.5 Herman Melville Wonders If His Agent Has Oversold Spinoffs from “Moby Dick.” Cartoon by Gahan Wilson, The New Yorker, 1988. (Copyright The New Yorker Collection 1988 Gahan Wilson from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.)

  1.1 General Peter Gansevoort. Oil by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1794. (Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY, 54.88)

  1.2 Thomas Melvill. Engraving from Albany Citizens’ Advertiser, c. 1834. (From East India Tea Company, Tea Leaves: being a collection of letters and documents to the shipment of tea to the American colonies in the year 1773. 1884 edition. New York University Law Library)

  1.3 Allan Melvill. Watercolor by John Rubens Smith, 1810. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Charlotte E. Hoadley, 1946. [46.192.4]. Photograph, all rights reserved. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

  1.4 Maria Gansevoort Melvill. Oil by Ezra Ames, c. 1820. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  1.5 Gansevoort Melville, c. 1836. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  1.6 New York Harbor from the Battery, lithograph by Thomas Thompson, 1829. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954. [54.90.1182 (1, 2, 3)]. Photograph, all rights reserved. The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  2.1 Scrimshaw cane with lady’s leg grip. (Copyright Mystic Seaport, Mystic, CT)

  2.2 Scrimshaw whale tooth. (Copyright Mystic Seaport, Mystic, CT)

  2.3 Marquesan war club. (Courtesy the Library, American Museum of Natural History)

  2.4 Richard Tobias Greene. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  2.1 Judge Lemuel Shaw. Marked “Whipple of Boston.” (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  2.2 Illustration from Typee, 1931 edition, by Guido Boer (Aventine Press)

  4.1 Elizabeth Shaw Melville, c. 1847. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  4.2 Evert A. Duyckinck. (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

  4.3 New York Street Scene. From Harper’s Weekly, 1859. (Picture Collection, The Branch Libraries, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

  4.4 The Democratic Funeral of 1848. Cartoon published by Abel & Durang, Philadelphia, 1848. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-8846])

  4.5 Elizabeth Shaw Melville and infant Malcolm Melville, c. 1850. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  4.6 The Bill-Poster’s Dream (detail). Lithograph by B. Derby, 1862. (Eno Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

  5.1 Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. Etching by A. Schoff. (Photograph courtesy Peabody Essex Museum)

  5.2 Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oil painting by Cephas Thompson, 1850. (The Grolier Club of New York. Gift of Stephen A. Wakeman, 1913)

  5.3 Map of Nantucket. By William Coffin, 1835. (Courtesy the Library, Nantucket Historical Association)

  6.1 John C. Calhoun, c. 1850. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection [LC-DIG-cwpbh-02605])

  6.2 Lemuel Shaw. Photographic reproduction by Arnold Genthe of a daguerreotype by Southworth & Hawes, 1851. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Arnold Genthe Collection: Negatives and Transparencies [LCP007A-10295])

  6.3 Cotton Is King. New York newspaper cartoon, c. 1860. (From Albert Shaw, Abraham Lincoln: The Year of His Election. New York: The Review of Reviews Corporation, 1929)

  7.1 Print from Melville’s collection: The Two Princes, an illustration to King Richard III, 1798. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  7.2 “The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys”: Maurice Sendak’s illustration for Pierre by Herman Melville is reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  7.3 Orville Dewey. (From Mary E. Dewey, ed., Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D. D. Boston, 1883. Butler Library, Columbia University)

  7.4 A bed chamber; Imogen in bed, an illustration to Cymbeline, 1795. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  7.5 The Lovers Punished. Dante’s Inferno, Canto 5. Illustration by John Flaxman. (London, 1807. New York University Library)

  7.6 Sleighing in New York. Lithograph by Thomas Benecke, 1855. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954. [54.90.1061]. Photograph, all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  9.1 Photograph of scene from Robert Lowell’s 1964 stage adaptation of Benito Cereno. (Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

  9.2 The Resurrection of Christ. Alabaster panel, c. 1470. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY; Musée du Moyen Age [Cluny], Paris)

  10.1 Children of Elizabeth and Herman Melville, c. 1860. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  10.2 Melville’s letter to his daughter Bessie, 1860. (By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 188 [177])

  10.3 Melville’s letter to his wife, Elizabeth, 1861. (By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 188 [179])

  11.1 Malcolm Melville. Photograph by Thwaites and Co., New York. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  11.2 Malcolm Melville. Watercolor. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  11.3 Maria Gansevoort Melville, c. 1872. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  12.1 Elizabeth Shaw Melville, 1885. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  12.2 Stanwix Melville. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  12.3 Herman Melville’s obituary notice, Harper’s Magazine, December 1891. (Collection of Andrew Delbanco)

  12.4 Elizabeth Shaw Melville, 1894. (Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

  EXTRACTS

  (supplied by a Sub-Sub-Sub-Librarian)

  He is very backward in speech & somewhat slow in comprehension, but you will find him as far as he understands men & things both solid & profound, & of a docile & amiable disposition

  —ALLAN MELVILL (MELVILLE’S FATHER), ABOUT YOUNG HERMAN, AGE SEVEN, C. 1826

  Years ago I looked into Type
e and Omoo, but as I didn’t find there what I am looking for when I open a book I did go no further. Lately I had in my hand Moby Dick. It struck me as a rather strained rhapsody with whaling for a subject and not a single sincere line in the 3 vols of it.

  —JOSEPH CONRAD TO HUMPHREY MILFORD, JANUARY 15, 1907

  I bought the Origin of Species yesterday for 6d and never read such badly written catlap. I only remember one thing: blue-eyed cats are always deaf (correlation of Variations). I finished Vanity Fair and Cunt Pointercunt [Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point]. A very pains talking work. The only thing I won’t have forgotten by this day week is Spandrell flogging the foxgloves. I bought Moby Dick to-day for 6d. That’s more like the real stuff. White whales & natural piety.

  —SAMUEL BECKETT TO THOMAS MACGREEVY, AUGUST 4, 1932

  Through Melville, Moby Dick has been absolved of mortality. Readers of Moby-Dick know that he swims the world unconquered, that he is ubiquitous in time and place. Yesterday he sank the Pequod; within the past two years he has breached five times; from a New Mexico desert, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and most recently, at Bikini atoll.

  —HOWARD P. VINCENT, THE TRYING-OUT OF MOBY-DICK, 1949

  T. E. Lawrence ranked Moby Dick alongside The Possessed or War and Peace. Without hesitation, one can add to these Billy Budd, Mardi, Benito Cereno, and a few others. These anguished books in which man is overwhelmed, but in which life is exalted on each page, are inexhaustible sources of strength and pity. We find in them revolt and acceptance, unconquerable and endless love, the passion for beauty, language of the highest order—in short, genius.

  —ALBERT CAMUS, 1952 (TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ELLEN CONROY KENNEDY)

  There is a Melville whom one scarcely knows whether to call the discovery or invention of our time, our truest contemporary, who has revealed to us the traditional theme of the deepest American mind, the ambiguity of innocence, “the mystery of iniquity,” which we traded for the progressive melodrama of a good outcast (artist, rebel, whore, proletarian) against an evil bourgeoisie.