The Whale
Page 26
Melville’s poem “Monody” commemorates his feelings about Hawthorne’s death. The two stanzas of the poem were written at different times, the first most likely just after Hawthorne died and the second probably after Melville visited Hawthorne’s grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord:
To have known him, to have loved him
After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal—
Ease me, a little ease, my song!
By wintry hills his hermit-mound
The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
That hid the shyest grape.
Sources for The Whale include biographies of Melville and Hawthorne, critical interpretations of their work, and the surviving letters and journals of many of Melville’s family and associates during the time of the writing of Moby Dick, especially Melville’s sister Augusta, the publisher Evert Duyckinck, and Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne. Archivists at the Berkshire Historical Society (headquartered at Melville’s old home of Arrowhead) and the Berkshire Athenaeum (Pittsfield’s public library, which holds a Melville collection) generously provided research assistance. An invaluable resource for tracking the movements of Melville and people associated with him is Jay Leyda’s two-volume Melville Log, a day-by-day account of Melville’s life composed of references to and quotations from primary documentary sources. I have been as faithful to primary sources and historical reality as possible. In referring to Moby Dick, I have followed Melville’s own practice of writing it without the now-familiar hyphen, which was added to the first American edition because Melville’s brother Allan mistakenly hyphenated it in a letter to the Harper brothers, and they unwittingly used the mistake. Hyphens were common in book titles in the nineteenth century—Melville’s own previous novel was called White-Jacket—and subsequent editors adopted Allan’s punctuation, as well. I have also tried my best to represent the opinions of every historical person in this novel as accurately as possible, based on their own surviving writings and the letters and journals of people in their circles.
Jeanie Field’s character is the exception to this commitment to strict verisimilitude, though her character still corresponds in most ways with her historical reality. In real life, as in this novel, Jeanne Lucinda Field was the younger sister of the lawyer Dudley Field and the daughter of David Dudley Field II, a legal reformer and abolitionist. We know that she was at the picnic where Hawthorne and Melville first met because Hawthorne identifies her by name in his journal entry about the event, and we know that she socialized with Melville and Hawthorne and their acquaintances and that she traveled between her family’s homes in Stockbridge and New York City. However, there is no historical evidence to indicate that she played the role of mediator between Hawthorne and Melville.
All of Hawthorne’s actual letters to Melville have been lost or destroyed, save one, a brief note from Hawthorne asking if Melville would check on a package that Hawthorne had been expecting at the Pittsfield station and requesting that Melville buy a clock in a Pittsfield shop for $1.50. In the present novel, I used this real note as the basis for the note of August 21, 1850. All of Hawthorne’s other letters to Melville are inventions, in some cases created as likely responses to surviving Melville letters and in others borrowed from Hawthorne’s private journal entries or adapted from letters Hawthorne actually wrote to other people regarding Melville. In all cases regarding Hawthorne’s invented letters, Hawthorne’s surviving writing was used as a guide.
Melville’s letters to Hawthorne in The Whale are real, with the following exceptions: first, the pair of letters concerning Hawthorne’s recommendations for revision of Moby Dick (beginning here); second, the letter that uses chowder as an allegory (here), the concept for which is borrowed from an early chapter of Moby Dick; and third, the letter describing Melville’s Thanksgiving celebration at Arrowhead (here), which was adapted from a letter from Augusta Melville to her sister Helen describing that same Thanksgiving celebration.
In one case, a mundane matter was edited out of one of Melville’s letters, since it held little significance for the emotional development of Melville’s and Hawthorne’s relationship. Expressions of feeling have not been added to any of Melville’s actual letters, nor have any been edited to heighten their emotional effect: the letters contain Melville’s actual sentiments, and one can read them in whole or part in myriad books and online at melville.org/corresp.htm.
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
Joel Snyder, Rita Porfiris, Mark Votapek, Diana Kerr, and Michael Havens, for reading early drafts and offering invaluable criticism and comments.
Louisa Lebwohl, for the time at Arrowhead.
Stuart Bernstein, for believing in the soundness of this ship when no one else did, launching it into open waters, and guiding it through all kinds of weather.
Carole DeSanti and Christopher Russell, for finding so many ways to deepen and enrich this story.
Jane Cavolina, for your meticulous, insightful copyediting.
Everyone at Viking, for your kindness, imagination, and generosity.
Merci mille fois à la Reine des Bois.
Miguel Espinoza, for your big heart and the space to read and write.
Maha Almannai, for your faith and commitment to beauty.
Cynthia Gin, for reading between the lines.
Margaret O’Neill, for all the stories (and the coat hanger whale).
Raquel Stecher, for your unwavering enthusiasm and friendship.
Rose Todaro, for believing that our life together was a journey worth taking, and taking it.
Jeff Barnet: words cannot express my gratitude. But thanks.
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