“The Harpers don’t care a fig for quality. They will print the most scandalous and indecent books if they think they will sell.”
Herman was chagrined that Lizzie had called his bluff, but she was right. The Harpers’ first big success, Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures, told the supposedly true story of a nun forced to satisfy the sexual needs of priests at a convent hospital in Montreal. The book featured all the hallmarks of a gothic novel, down to secret tunnels and catacombs beneath the convent where the priests committed their unspeakable crimes, and it had sold more copies every year since it had appeared in 1836. Maria Monk had been exposed as a fraud several years after the book had been published—even her pen name was nothing more than a punning satire—and she had recently died in prison in New York City, where she had been jailed for thievery and prostitution; but the Harpers continued to print and sell the book exactly as it had originally been written, with no retractions or explanations. It was just one of many such salacious, wildly popular books in the Harpers’ warehouse, and Herman could not imagine that an all-male whaling voyage would inspire Fletcher Harper’s confidence of similar success.
In fact, Herman had no clear idea where the money for his household’s survival would come from. As Lizzie had said, Judge Shaw would not lend him more. Perhaps Richard Bentley—with whom, after all, Melville had an agreement for the publication of The Whale in London and who was the only person in the world really waiting for it—perhaps Bentley might advance him a few hundred pounds, especially if Herman granted him the international copyright he was always agitating for; but then, if word got out that Bentley held the copyright, the American publishers would just steal it and print their own editions, and Herman would never see another penny. He searched his mental archive for friends of his father in New York who might still think fondly of him, and he wondered for the hundredth time if any of his relatives in Lansingburgh might have the funds to see him through to the end of this novel—but soon he would have to stop wondering and actually ask. What will happen, he thought, if there is no money at all? With a horrified shudder, he imagined losing Arrowhead and having to beg Allan to accept his family into Allan’s new apartment in Manhattan, after Melville had moved out so ignominiously last summer. Or could they possibly beg the Morewoods for a room at Broad Hall? He wondered momentarily how much Ticknor and Fields had paid Hawthorne for The House of the Seven Gables. But to ask for a loan from Hawthorne? It would be worse than death.
“I will find the money,” he said. He had spent the day writing and the evening planting beets and radishes in the garden behind the barn, and now he could stave off sleep no longer. “Please, can we talk about this in the morning? And rest assured that I love you. And we can name our child Hope, if it’s a girl. Good night.”
“Good night,” Lizzie said. “Hope is the best name in the world, because it is the best quality of the human mind.”
“Is it?”
“For me, it is. It’s all I have.”
• • •
One morning, two magnolia warblers suddenly began singing from the elm tree near Herman’s study window; and he noticed that, overnight, tiny buds of green had sprouted from every branch. Melting snow dripped from the buds in great prismatic drops that splintered the pale sunlight into warm rainbows falling to the earth. As Herman stared out his study window, a pair of white loons winged above his fields, looking for the lake they would call their summer home. He put his fingers to the windowpane, which remained frightfully cold; but the world outside had all at once returned to life. For a brief moment, he forgot the seemingly endless battle that was still raging on the pages of his manuscript, and he descended the stairs and walked out the front door to the road. Without even stopping to retrieve his jacket or hat from inside, he wandered, as if in a daze, all the way into town, enjoying the cheerful verdure of leafing shrubs and green grass pushing up through melting snow. Trilling birds filled every budding grove, and his heart sang with them.
Herman cut a bizarre figure on the streets of Pittsfield, disheveled and underdressed, next to the ladies in fox stoles and the gentlemen in light new overcoats, strolling the snow-melted streets in defiance of the lingering chill. Spring! Herman ambled half insensibly into Farley’s Dry Goods and was in the process of buying a cigar when he noticed the latest Harper’s magazine, with a review of Hawthorne’s new novel. He snatched it up immediately and walked back along the road to Arrowhead, smoking and reading, not noticing that he was shivering with cold.
The review glowed with admiration, calling Hawthorne a “first-rate romancer” and the novel “as good a book as any produced in this country in the last ten years, including this self-same author’s own last novel, The Scarlet Letter.” It said that The House of the Seven Gables was a product of a mind that was “American through and through,” though the reviewer went on to claim that some of Hawthorne’s characters were “peculiar and marked by puzzling idiosyncrasies” but that “the lugubrious tone and subject matter were redeemed by an ending full of invention.”
Herman could not decide whether to be irritated at Hawthorne because he had not even written to let him know that the book was finally available, or to be jealous of such a good review, or to be ever more anxious to finally have his own novel finished so it could trump Hawthorne’s, or to be happy for his friend that his book had been so well received. He thought of Captain Ahab storming back and forth across the deck of the Pequod and could not imagine any reviewer saying such flattering things about The Whale, and he realized that he would have to redouble his efforts in order to outshine Hawthorne’s newest work. He walked faster and faster toward home.
“Melville, what the devil are you doing out half naked in the cold?” It was Dr. Holmes, strolling casually up the road toward Pittsfield. “Have you no blood in your veins?” Holmes was dressed for a polar blizzard, in a full-length beaver coat and matching hat with earflaps.
“Hawthorne has a new novel,” said Herman.
“Why should that inspire you to leave your house without a coat?”
Herman looked at himself and thought that, for once, Holmes was right: he appeared almost as frightful as if he were at sea, with a dirty, askew shirt and grease spots on his pants. He could only imagine the state of his hair and beard. He handed Holmes the magazine, opened to the review, and the doctor glanced through it.
“Who’s this reviewer?” the doctor said. “Never heard of him.” He handed the magazine back to Herman. “I wonder if that gentleman even read the book.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’ve just finished it myself, and this review doesn’t even begin to touch its most interesting points.”
“You have a copy already?”
“Hawthorne gave it to me a couple of days ago. As I said, I’ve just finished it.”
Now Herman began to shiver in earnest, but not from the cold: how easily Hawthorne could still hurt him, and how quickly his jealousy flared to life! Apparently, he kept in better touch with this flinty blowhard than with Herman himself. “Hawthorne gave you a copy of his book?”
“I just said so. Are you ill, Melville? What is the matter?”
“I am quite all right, Doctor. How did you leave Hawthorne?”
“Hawthorne is well, but his wife is doing poorly. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Migraine headaches, sensitivity to light, stabbing pains in her side. Loud noises make her vomit. I suppose it’s just childbearing, but the combination of things worries me.”
“She used to be an invalid, you know.”
“Thank you for mentioning that, Dr. Melville,” said Holmes. “Are you sure you’re quite well?”
“Did Hawthorne send any message for me?”
Holmes looked at Melville as if he had gone mad. “He was rather preoccupied with his wife.” He cleared his throat. “His new book isn’t bad, you know. Not as good as this review makes it, but pleasan
t enough and dark in his usual way. A story about old dead sins laid away in secret drawers of the soul. Very German. Terrible ending. Incidentally, Melville, thank you for breaking off your affair with Jeanie Field.”
“I didn’t break off my affair. I never had an affair with her, as you surely know.”
“Have it your way,” Holmes puffed. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“Who told you it was over? The same person who told you it existed in the first place?”
“Whatever you’re implying, Melville, I don’t care. I’m sorry I got mixed up in it.”
“Then why did you?”
“To prevent Dudley from shooting you in a duel, as I said at the time. I hate being the holder of secrets or the bearer of gossip—thinking that people are hiding something all the time makes one liable to superstitious fancies, which is bad for the digestion.”
“I daresay. Though it would be a man of extraordinary moral fortitude who never had anything to hide.”
“If you never do anything dishonorable, you never have anything to hide,” said Holmes. “Where is the extraordinary moral fortitude in that?”
“Even God has things to hide, Doctor. Or have you forgotten the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?”
“Must you always blaspheme, Melville?”
“God’s secret knowledge and his refusal to share it with mankind are the reasons we’re in this fix.”
“What fix?” Holmes rolled his eyes and flapped his arms. “I don’t have time to stand here debating Milton and Jeremy Bentham and who-knows-what with you in your underclothes. If I’d wanted to talk nonsense, I would have stayed at Harvard.” Holmes set off toward town.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Doctor,” said Herman.
The doctor stopped, turned, and stared for a long moment at Melville, and then said, sincerely, “Likewise.”
Chapter 16
Dollars Damn Me
April 16, 1851
Arrowhead, Pittsfield
My dear Hawthorne,
I have just finished reading a book you may know, “The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance.” The contents of this book do not belie its rich, clustering title. With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour in each abundantly but judiciously furnished gable. There are rich hangings, wherein are braided scenes from tragedies! There is old china with rare devices, set out on the carved buffet; long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; an admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; a smell of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, a dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled “Hawthorne: A Problem.” It has delighted us; it has robbed us of a day, and made us a present of a whole year of thoughtfulness; it has bred great exhilaration and exultation with the remembrance that the architect of the Gables resides only six miles off, and not three thousand miles away, in England, say. We think the book surpasses the other works of the author. The curtains are more drawn; the sun comes in more; genialities peep out. Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the finest, truest spirit. And here we would say that, did circumstances permit, we should like nothing better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full analysis of what so strongly characterizes this author’s writings, namely a certain tragic phase of humanity which, in our opinion, was never more powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne. No mind has recorded the intense feeling of the visible truth more deeply than this man’s. By visible truth, we mean the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst to him; the man who, like Russia or the British Empire, declares himself sovereign amid the powers of heaven, hell, and earth. He may perish; but so long as he exists, he insists upon treating with all Powers upon an equal basis. If any of those other Powers choose to withhold certain secrets, let them; that does not impair my own sovereignty in myself. And perhaps, after all, there is no secret. We incline to think that the Problem of the Universe is like the Freemason’s mighty secret, so terrible to contemplate until it turns out, at last, to consist in a triangle, a mallet, and an apron—nothing more! Even God cannot explain His own secrets, and He would like a little information upon certain points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us. But it is this Being of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say God, you jump off your stool and hang from a beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary, and you would have Him in the street.
The grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne is that he says No! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no—why, they are in the happy condition of unencumbered travelers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag—that is to say, their own Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House. What’s the reason, Mr. Hawthorne, that in the last stages of metaphysics a fellow always falls to swearing so? I could rip an hour.
Walk down one of these mornings and see me. No nonsense; come. Remember me to Mrs. Hawthorne and the children.
H. Melville.
P.S. The marriage of Phoebe with the Daguerreotypist is a fine stroke, because of his turning out to be a Maule. If you pass Hepzibah’s cent-shop, buy me a Jim Crow (fresh) and send it to me by Ned Higgins.
May 11, 1851
Arrowhead, Pittsfield
My dear Hawthorne,
I should have been rumbling down to you in my pine-board chariot a long time ago, were it not that, for some weeks past, I have been more busy than you can well imagine out of doors, building and patching and tinkering away in all directions. I had my crops to get in the ground, corn and potatoes (I hope to show you some famous ones by and by), and many other things to attend to, all accumulating upon this one particular season. I work myself hard; and at night my bodily sensations are akin to those I have so often felt before, when I was a hired man, doing my day’s work from sun to sun. But the true reason I have not been to Lenox is this—the Whale! In a week or so, I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story room, and work and slave on my Whale while it is driving through the press. That is the only way I can finish it now, I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose, that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. A presentiment is on me that I shall at last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by constant attrition. What I feel most moved to write, that is banned—it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches. But I mean to continue visiting you until you tell me that my visits are supererogatory and superfluous.
I’m rather sore, perhaps, in this letter, but see my hand! Four blisters on this palm, made by hoes and hammers within the last few days. If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won’t believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert—then, O my dear fellow-mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now so distress us—when all the earth shall be but a reminiscence, yea, its final dissolution an antiquity. Then shall songs be composed as when wars are over; humorous, comic songs, “Oh, when I lived in that queer little hole called the world,” or, “Oh, when I toiled and sweated below,” or, “Oh, when I knocked and was knocked in the fight.” Yes, let us look forward to such things. Let us swear that, though now we sweat, it is t
hat same dry heat which is indispensable to the nourishment of the vine, the vine that will bear the grapes to give us champagne hereafter.
But I was talking about the Whale. As the fishermen say, he is in his flurry. He feels always to be in his flurry and never dies; I’m going to take him by his jaw, however, before long, and finish him up in some fashion or other. What’s the use of elaborating what, in its very essence, is so short-lived as a modern book? Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.
Don’t trouble yourself about writing; and don’t trouble yourself about visiting; and when you do visit, don’t trouble yourself about talking. I will do all the writing and visiting and talking myself. By the way, in the last Dollar Magazine, I read your story “The Unpardonable Sin.” He was a sad fellow, that Ethan Brand. I have no doubt that you are by this time responsible for many a shake and tremor of the tribe of “general readers.” It is a frightful poetical creed that the cultivation of the brain eats out the heart, but it’s my opinion that in most cases, in those men who have fine brains and work them well, the heart extends down to the hams. And though you smoke them with the fire of tribulation, yet, like veritable hams, the head only gives the richer and the better flavor. I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! I had rather be a fool with a heart, than Jupiter Olympus with his head. The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don’t you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?) Another thing. I was in New York for four-and-twenty hours the other day, and saw a portrait of N.H. And I have seen and heard many flattering allusions to the Seven Gables. So upon the whole, I say to myself, this N.H. is in the ascendant. What reputation H.M. has is horrible. Think of it! To go down to posterity is bad enough, any way; but to go down as a “man who lived among the cannibals!” When I speak of posterity, in reference to myself, I only mean the babies who will probably be born in the moment immediately ensuing upon my giving up the ghost. I shall go down to some of them, in all likelihood. Typee will be given to them, perhaps, with their gingerbread. I have come to regard this matter of Fame as the most transparent of all vanities. I read Solomon more and more, and every time see deeper and deeper and unspeakable meanings in him. I did not think of Fame, a year ago, as I do now.
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