Emily & Herman

by John J. Healey

  He supposed the girl found his friend’s thirst for danger and his equally dangerous religious views compelling in some fashion—the way perfectly well-bred women sometimes profess a weakness for ruffians or condemned criminals. But finding such murky behavior attractive and getting enmeshed in it were two different things. Yes, he would have to arrange a talk with Melville about it that very day.

  The breakfast service finished as the ship passed between Sand’s Point and Great Neck. Melville was nowhere to be seen and Hawthorne, relieved, finished his eggs and trout sitting with the Dickinsons. Emily ate only a sweet roll with a cup of tea and she marveled at the variety and amounts of food the surrounding passengers were stuffing into their mouths. Her brother and Mr. Hawthorne seemed to be similarly ravenous. But just as she prepared in her mind to censure the whole hoggish lot she remembered how Melville too had consumed vast quantities of food the morning before and it caused her to smile.

  He had kissed her. They had kissed. She had been kissed alone at sea by an attractive married man, an author and adventurer—the whole thing ludicrously inappropriate—and thrilling. Of course he had not come to breakfast. She had been dreading seeing him as well. For, now what? Now that the sun was up and the day begun and everyone dressed and talkative about their business once again. She had often noticed how differently one felt things during the night.

  They found Melville, unusually withdrawn, standing by his bag midship as the marshes and farmland of Lesser Minneford Island came into view. He nodded to Hawthorne, shook Austin’s hand, and limited his final salutation to a simple “Miss Dickinson.” As time went by she ceased finding his silences annoying until she began to realize she found them compelling. It was an intimate silence that said many things.

  Then they were off the coast of White Stone, the fat western end of Long Island, navigating south toward Randal’s Island, the last bastion of wilderness before Manhattan came into view. And soon the waterway narrowed as they entered into the East River proper. Off the port side of the steamer was Blackwell Island—a thin arrangement of vegetable gardens raked and hoed at either end of the penitentiary and the insane asylum looming there. When Hawthorne identified these two buildings to Emily she found herself unable to look anywhere else. As Hawthorne droned on, gesturing starboard, showing off his knowledge of Manhattan’s wilder rural tracts, peppering in anecdotes and literary asides, Austin taking it in like a child, Melville still sullen and statuesque, she studied the off-putting brick constructions and their barred windows. It was difficult to distinguish the prison from the asylum until a young woman appeared at one of the upper windows facing the water, close enough to the ship so that Emily could make out the girl’s dark straggly hair. She cried out to the passersby at full volume, “Shit, shit, shit, shit! We’re all made of shit! God is shit! It will soon be raining piss and shit!”

  Emily became aware of people snickering around her. One man, well attired, indignant, and to no avail, yelled back at her to be quiet. From the lower decks she heard many of the passengers laughing at the woman, as if this Bruegelian bit of side show fare had been organized for their benefit. Emily said nothing and remained transfixed, keeping her eyes on the woman even as the steamer left her in its wake. Hawthorne was making an iron-willed effort to ignore the whole unseemly spectacle, persisting with his Manhattan travelogue with such energy and increased volume Austin did not dare look away. But Melville did, watching and listening, and he noted Emily’s distress and it softened him and drew him out of his state of self-absorption. He touched her forearm, covered with a black cotton coat sleeve, distracting her from her anguish. Without turning to look at him she in turn touched his hand and squeezed it with gratitude before letting go. She spoke to him in a low tone.

  “Why are they laughing? It’s horrid.”

  “Fear I expect.”

  “Fear.”

  “The sort that elicits cruelty, as a mask.”

  Then she did turn to him, looking into his eyes once again for the first time since they had held each other that dawn.

  “Fear of what?”

  “Of how little distance separates their so-called sanity from such a state of raving.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I’ve seen men go mad overnight. Tough seamen—an officer once. Seemingly normal one day, ranting the next without any apparent or obvious affliction or explanation, no fever, no medieval draughts or humors wafting over the ship. Are there no lunatics in Amherst?”

  She smiled. “A few. Including a man who had the revolting habit of repeatedly exposing his person in a most vulgar fashion. But his family cares for him.”

  “A much kinder solution than this one, no? We have a boy not right in the head in our household, a nephew of mine.”

  “What were they thinking building a mad house next to a prison?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hawthorne finally had to admit he had lost half his imagined audience. He went quiet. The rapidly approaching end to their journey fixed all of their attention upon the shores. Brooklyn and her church spires to the left, Manhattan a mess of masts and commerce to the right. With each block traveled further south the river became increasingly crowded with other ships and crafts of all description; frigates and ferries, sloops and schooners, scows and canoes. The day was warm and the water level low and congested with garbage and injudiciously pumped bilge. For the rest of her life Emily would associate her arrival to New York with the vile screams of the poor mad woman and the putrid fumes ascending from the waters and the piers mixing together in the July heat.

  In typical fashion, Melville only began to contemplate where he might stay in the city moments before the steamer docked. His brother Allan had moved his wife and two babies up to a house at 31st Street, on the very frontier with Canada as far as he was concerned. His own house on Fourth Avenue at Eleventh Street had finally been sold—at a significant loss—a year earlier. What Melville wished for was privacy and he thus determined to find a hotel close to his old neighborhood and near to the Duyckinck brothers and their wives who lived on Clinton Place. Sarah and Rowland Morewood also lived close by. If he were to keep himself from further courting Miss Dickinson he had best be surrounded by his customary coterie of friends and acquaintances.

  The Empire State moored at Pier 14 at Fulton Street. Emily saw three dead rats floating in the water as she disembarked. The pier was splintery and the air humid and the dock teemed with passengers and street vendors, teamsters and drays loading and unloading goods. Melville hailed a carriage and then had to argue for it with another customer who tried to get there before him. He held the door open for Austin and Emily. Austin shook his hand.

  “You must come with Mr. Hawthorne this afternoon to have tea with our father.”

  “I shall do all I can to be there,” he replied, only glancing briefly at Emily.

  The carriage rattled off upon newly laid cobblestones as Hawthorne and Melville walked west, pushing their way past three scavenging sows before reaching a shady and quieter portion of the street.

  “As luck would have it,” Melville said, “my printer’s shop is right on this street at number 112. I might as well go there directly, do my business, and be done with it. If you don’t mind accompanying me, we can relax together afterward.”

  Robert Craighead’s shop was found on Fulton between William and Nassau Streets. An oyster cart was parked out front, owned and administered by a redheaded freckle-skinned man wearing a soiled blue apron serving his goods from a barrel filled with ice along with pitchers of warm ale. Melville, his mind encumbered with The Whale and his dilemma, hardly noticed the fellow. But Hawthorne, looking on some level to reduce the importance of his friend’s literary project, fixed his gaze on the oyster vendor and had a sudden urge to write about him as Dickens might.

  “How is business sir?”

  “A bit slow a the moment, your grace, but come an hour from now you’ll see a mighty line a-formin’.”

  “
Are you from Ireland?”

  “That I am—from County Clare.”

  “Which is …”

  “On the west coast, the wild coast, poor and rugged and softly green.”

  “And did you sell oysters there as well?”

  “To tell you the truth, I can’t abide them, but here they sell quicker than rosaries in the Vatican. In Ireland, I fished salmon from the Shannon and did just fine till slain by a lass from Dingle.”

  Though impatient to speak with Craighead, Melville, intrigued by the oysterman’s palaver, entered the fray.

  “When I was a boy here …”

  “Were you born here sir?”

  “Right on this island, just a few blocks from here.”

  “Is that a fact? So you are a ‘native’ New Yorker—the very first one I’ve met.”

  “When I was a boy we’d dive for oysters in the Hudson. The water was crystal clear then like it was when the first settlers arrived.”

  “Is that a fact? Tiz an odd bit of victual indeed. So much labor for so little gain.”

  “Tell us about the lass from Dingle,” Hawthorne said, buying a glass of the ale.

  “There I was, slammin a salmon upon a rock, minding my own p’s and q’s when … this was mid-March, mind you … when I seen this vision in skirts up to her ankles in cold Shannon brine, leanin over, presenting mine eyes with the finest roundest callin’ card a man could wish for. Pickin’ daffodils she was to sell at market.”

  “And where is Dingle?”

  “Tiz a testicle hangin’, from the great emerald cock of Ireland—to the south of me—a full day’s travellin’. So as you might suspect I struck up a conversation with her. Katherine was her name, Katherine Hanratty her name now.”

  “You being Mr. Hanratty.”

  “That’s a fact. And when I found out where she was from I said to her, ‘Well, that would explain it.’ ‘Explain what?’ she says. ‘Explains why it is I’ve never seen ye here before, because if I had, I would surely have made it my business to have known you earlier.’ ‘Are you talking dirty to me now?’ she says. ‘I swear I’m not,’ says I. Then she says, ‘Then what’s all this about ‘knowin’? I’ve read the Bible and ‘know’ a thing or two.’ But this she said with a grin on her face, a grin that’d light up the caves of Carthage.”

  The caves of Carthage, thought Hawthorne—now there’s a title. Melville excused himself and went into the shop and found Craighead setting type with two assistants at the very back of the establishment. The three of them wore aprons as well, white once upon a time and now stained with years of ink. Black ink and the smell of metal and oil infused the air.

  “Ahoy there, Ahab,” said the printer as he always did upon seeing his guest so that Melville could answer, “Call me Ishmael.” The men shook hands and the assistants nodded gravely with a look of respect not lost upon the author. Spending most of their time ruining their eyes and fingers setting type for simplistic pamphlets for and against the abolitionists, it was rare for them to be engaged in the creation of actual literature. He smiled at them as Craighead took him by the arm and escorted him up a flight of stairs to his office.

  “I was just making some coffee. Would you care for some?”

  “I would. I’ve just stepped off the steamer from Boston in which I was barely able to sleep. I’ve brought you more copy.”

  “Excellent news. And I’ve more proofs for you to take back with you.”

  “It’s almost finished. One more month’s labor and I’ll have the last of it for you.”

  It was Craighead’s chief assistant, Cyrus Clark, who greeted Hawthorne when he entered the shop some minutes later.

  “Can I help you sir?”

  “I’m here with Herman Melville.”

  “Ah. He’s upstairs with Mr. Craighead at present.”

  “Well then I’ll join them.”

  “Might I announce you first sir—or Mr. Craighead will be at me throat after you’ve all departed.”

  “Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

  Clark looked at him more closely.

  “You wouldn’t be pulling a man’s leg by any chance?”

  “I’ve never been a leg-puller, sir.”

  “No, sir. Well, it is in honor indeed to have you here. I won’t be but a second.”

  The midday meal took place with the Duyckinck brothers—George and Everet—the four men waxing expansive about a round table at the Knickerbocker Pub.

  “I see I am outnumbered,” said Melville toward the meal’s end, sipping at a glass of port. “But I do admire your optimism, the way you speak about American literature, the new American literature, as if this were England.”

  “England’s the past, man,” said George, his superficial nasal capillaries aglow. “England’s a dying, selfish, sclerotic father and we’re his vigorous, rebellious sons.”

  “Here-here!” said Hawthorne, feeling the effects of more alcohol than he was used to imbibing, especially at that hour of the day. He just then realized that Melville, save his thimbleful of fortified wine, had yet to touch a drop that day of anything other than coffee and water. Everet grabbed the baton from his brother.

  “James Fenimore Cooper-Herman. Longfellow, Emerson, Nathaniel here, yourself man. All of you fresh and young and new and strong.”

  “Fresh and new and strong. I’ll grant you that. But this is a still young nation, filled with fur trappers and woodsmen, small businessmen, farmers, and tobacco chewers—slave holders! The world you dream aloud about here is unique to this busy little island. I cannot vouch for Nathaniel, but it says all that needs to be said that a writer like myself, who works the pen day in and out, year after year, remains in terrible debt and receives but a pittance for his labors. I think your dying sclerotic sire across the drink has a lot to be said for him still.”

  Their waiter appeared, presenting the bill. Melville could not have timed the revelation of his monstrous debts any better and he pretended to fish about in his trouser pockets like an expert as the two brothers studied the document and prepared to do their bit for the cause.

  “Put your money away, Herman. You too, Nathaniel. This one is on us and with great pleasure.”

  “Much obliged,” said Hawthorne.

  “I’ll not hear of it,” said Melville.

  “Oh yes, you will,” said Everet, staying Melville’s wrist.

  “Well, I do thank you then, and I propose you and your lovely wives and children come to the Berkshires and visit with us, and I’ll take you on a grand tour of the rural America at who’s altar you both worship.”

  “Capital idea,” said Hawthorne.

  “Come next month,” said Melville, “Before the summer escapes us.”

  “I’ll come too, along with my son Julian. What do you say, gentlemen?”

  “Why, yes, of course.”

  “Absolutely,” said George. “Any opportunity to abandon this soiled urban isle to breathe the pastoral Arcadian air you two gentlemen share would be a tremendous thrill.”

  The four men emerged onto the bright, oppressively warm street. Hawthorne with his country squire look, the brothers suffering in sweat under their black coats. Melville was wearing his customary loose-fitting garb, part shepherd, part Parisian painter.

  “Duyckinck,” said Hawthorne. “What the deuce sort of Dutch name is that?”

  “A most unfortunate one,” said Evert. “You can’t imagine the range of mispronunciations we have to put up with.”

  “All of them most understandable,” said George, “considering how it looks on paper.”

  “My favorite is Dewy-kin-ick! It might be Gaelic or Welsh, meaning ‘Get thee away from me!’”

  “Or how about, ‘Do-you-think’? I rather like that one.”

  “It’s primarily ‘due’ to the sixty guilders paid to the Indians by Peter Minuit back in 1626 that our family ended up here at all. Otherwise we’d still be bankrupt tulip brokers in Leiden.”

  Melville smiled at their banter without paying
it much attention. He was looking up the block from where they stood at a house he had lived in with his parents, brothers, sisters, and servants many years ago. He remembered his father’s gaiety and wit and absurd powers of denial in the face of the debts he so cavalierly racked up year after year and tears came into his eyes and a lump formed in his throat, and as he noticed thunder clouds forming, coming down the Hudson from up north, he remembered holding his own son in his arms just the other day by the lake and holding Emily that morning.

  Upon their arrival at the front desk of the elegant Everett House dominating the northeastern edge of Union Square Park at Seventeenth Street and Broadway, the Dickinson siblings were handed a sealed letter on house stationery.

  My Dearest Austin and Emily,

  I must reiterate my displeasure at this most unfortunate adventure you have undertaken without consulting your parents who, believe it or not, still know far more about these things, and about the world in general, than either of you. It is thus doubly unsettling that, owing to my venerable duties as a representative of our Commonwealth, I find myself compelled to travel this very morning to Washington. It causes me great frustration and worry to have missed your arrival to Manhattan and I shudder at the thought of what your dear mother will think, of you both, and of me (!) upon learning of this latest contretemps.