Melville in Love (25 page)

From the earliest stages of this book I have been fortunate to have the wise guidance and support of two remarkable women at the Friedrich Agency in New York, Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson. This book could not have been written without their kind encouragement and advice.

I'm also grateful for invaluable editorial help from a great team of professionals at Ecco Books—Daniel Halpern, Hilary Redmon, and Emma Janaskie. I deeply appreciate their enthusiasm for this book, and their hard work on its behalf. Many thanks as well to Tom Pitoniak, for helpful suggestions when the book was still in typescript.

The marvelous collection of Melville documents and artifacts at the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was essential to my book, and I feel especially fortunate to have worked there with Kathleen M. Reilly, supervisor of the Local History Department. She is a model of efficiency and a great supporter of Melville scholarship. On every visit to the Athenaeum I was encouraged by her warm welcome and generous assistance.

My time at Melville's old home of Arrowhead was memorable and enormously useful, thanks in large part to the helpful staff from the Berkshire County Historical Society—especially Will Garrison,
curator, and Eileen Myers. I want also to thank Wayne Myers, for taking me to see Lake Morewood at what used to be the Broadhall farm. Members of the staff at the Pittsfield Country Club were also kind enough to show me the interior of the old mansion.

For research assistance, I am grateful to Michael Frost, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University; Elizabeth E. Fuller, librarian, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia; and Tal Nadan, reference archivist, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. Decades of scholarly research have been enormously helpful to me, especially the admirable labors of Harrison Hayford, Brian Higgins, Lynn Horth, Jay Leyda, Henry A. Murray, Steven Olsen-Smith, Hershel Parker, and Merton M. Sealts Jr.

I also appreciate the support of Gayle Cook; Professor Thomas Derrick; Mary Ann Duncan; Professor Joseph Fisher and Nancy Fisher; Maria McKinley and Dr. Lee McKinley; Professor Robert Perrin; Lee Pollock; Mary Burch Ratliff and Dr. Wesley Ratliff; June Shelden; Vanessa Shelden; and Sarah Shelden Coplen and Collins Coplen.

The dedication acknowledges imperfectly how much I owe to the love and influence of my wife and my grandparents.

ABBREVIATIONS

BA: Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

BCHS: Berkshire County Historical Society, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

HM: Herman Melville.

HMC
:
Correspondence
. Ed. Lynn Horth. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1989.

HMCR
:
Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews.
Ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

HMJ
:
Journals
. Ed. Howard C. Horsford and Lynn Horth. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1989.

HMP
:
Published Poems
. Ed. Robert C. Ryan, Harrison Hayford, Alma MacDougall Reising, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Historical Note by Hershel Parker. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 2009.

HPBio
: Parker, Hershel.
Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819–1851
and
Herman Melville: A Biography, 1851–1891
. 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, 2002.

ML
: Leyda, Jay. The
Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819
–
1891
. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951; New York: Gordian Press, 1969.

NYPL: Manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library.

Rosenbach: Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

SAM: Sarah Anne Morewood.

Springfield: Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History, Springfield, Massachusetts.

Yale: Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Because the major books Melville published in his lifetime are available in so many different editions, I cite only chapter numbers for these works in my notes and don't abbreviate the titles.

PROLOGUE

   
 
1.
Maria Gansevoort Melville to Augusta Melville, December 29–30, 1851 (NYPL).

   
2.
SAM to George Duyckinck, [December ?, 1851] (NYPL). Sarah Anne Morewood's middle name has occasionally appeared in print without the final
e,
but her gravestone in Pittsfield identifies her as “Sarah Anne,” and she named her only daughter “Anne.” A family record of birth dates lists her as the seventh of nine Huyler children who survived infancy, and gives her date of birth as September 15, 1823 (BCHS). The date is sometimes mistakenly given as 1824, which is the one on her gravestone.

   
3.
See the November 1851 reviews reprinted in
HMCR
(386, 382, 378, 385, 380).

   
4.
Maria Gansevoort Melville to Augusta Melville, December 29–30, 1851 (NYPL); G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Sales of Melville's Books,”
Harvard Library Bulletin,
April 1969, 199.

   
5.
The account of the Christmas dinner is taken from Maria Gansevoort Melville to Augusta Melville, December 29–30, 1851 (NYPL). This letter was first reported in 2002 in
HPBio,
2:49. See chapter 18 here for a correction to the text. As a holy day of celebration, Christmas was gaining in popularity in New England, beginning at least in the early 1830s when Boston newspapers called for a “more marked observance of Christmas Day” (Restad,
Christmas in America,
34). But celebrating the day was a long-established tradition among Episcopalians like John Rowland Morewood. As an example of SAM's floral talents, see her awards in “Report on Fancy Work, Drawings, Etc.,”
Pittsfield Sun,
July 3, 1856.

   
6.
Maria, HM's mother, refers to him as “very angry” in her letter to Augusta Melville of December 29–30, 1851 (NYPL), where she also describes Sarah's effort to crown HM: “She stopt before a plate on which lay a beautiful Laurel wreath, which she gently lifted & quickly placed upon his brow, he as quickly removed it to her head saying he would not be crowned.”

   
7.
See the index to Delbanco's
Melville,
405. A fictional affair between Herman and Sarah is imagined in the middle section of Larry Duberstein's 1998 novel
The Handsome Sailor,
where a diary is invented to tell the
story. (See Jay Parini's review, “Call Me Herman,”
New York Times,
June 28, 1998.) Hershel Parker is the only biographer to take a detailed look at the relationship between HM and SAM, but he dismisses any chance of a romance: “The wonder was that Sarah had not focused her attention on Herman in 1850. Nothing survives to indicate that she had done so” (
HPBio,
2:44). Also, in the scholarly collection
Melville & Women,
Laurie Robertson-Lorant concludes, “As far as we know, Herman's relationship with Sarah Morewood was entirely platonic” (30).

   
8.
Caroline Whitmarsh, “A Representative Woman,”
Berkshire County Eagle,
October 29, 1863.

   
9.
See HM to SAM, [December 20?,] 1853 (
HMC,
252–55); and HM to SAM, September [12 or 19?,] 1851 (
HMC,
205–6). The heavily annotated appearance of these letters in
HMC
may have led some scholarly readers to underestimate their romantic appeal, but seeing the handwritten words at BA left me with little doubt of HM's passionate exuberance. A recently recovered document at BA is a handwritten reply from “The Ladies of Arrowhead” to “Her Grace of Broadhall,” accepting a dinner invitation in April 1852 from SAM. Though, like HM, the Arrowhead women (HM's wife, mother, and sisters) could imagine an aristocratic quality to SAM's reign at Broadhall, their response to “Her Grace” has none of the warmth or elaborate fancy that distinguish HM's letters to SAM.

 
10.
HM to SAM, [August 29, 1856?] (
HMC,
296–97). For SAM's family history see the Huyler files at BA. As an illustration of the courtly tradition of the laurel crown, see Anthony van Dyck's painting of Queen Henrietta Maria presenting a wreath to Charles I of England. Engravings and painted copies of this work were widely known in HM's time.

CHAPTER 1

   
1.
Quoted in the Northwestern/Newberry edition of
Moby-Dick,
611. For HM's memories of his uncle, see Merton M. Sealts Jr., “Thomas Melvill, Jr., in
The History of Pittsfield,
”
Harvard Library Bulletin
35 (1987): 201–17. (In the early 1830s HM, his mother, and siblings adopted the
e
at the end of the family name.)

   
2.
The WPA Guide to Massachusetts
cites Longfellow's term for what is now generally known as Morewood Lake.

   
3.
Sealts, “Thomas Melvill, Jr., in
The History of Pittsfield,
” 213, 214.

   
4.
“Private Boarding House,”
Pittsfield Sun,
August 9, 1849; Longfellow to Charles Sumner, July 23, 1848 (Longfellow,
Letters,
3:177–78); Longfellow,
Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
2:117–22.

   
5.
SAM to her son William (“Willie”) B. Morewood, [n.d.] (BCHS). Details of Sarah Huyler's early life are taken from documents at BCHS, including a handwritten “Family Record” preserved among the Morewood papers listing in order the birth dates of her parents and siblings.

   
6.
SAM to George Duyckinck, [December 1851] (NYPL).

   
7.
SAM to her sister-in-law Ann Morewood, October 24, 1848; and SAM to Susannah Perrin, [n.d.] (BCHS).

   
8.
Seager,
And Tyler Too,
319, 341.

   
9.
Alexander Gardiner to David Gardiner, September 28, 1849 (Yale). See also
HPBio,
2:42–43; and Parker,
Melville Biography,
216. It isn't clear whether the compromising scene took place inside the mansion or elsewhere. Sarah was reportedly staying at another home for at least part of the 1849 visit.

 
10.
SAM to George Duyckinck, July 29, [1856] (NYPL). The clergyman was Robert J. Parvin, who preached his last sermon in Pittsfield on July 20, 1856 (
Pittsfield Sun,
July 31, 1856).

 
11.
Seager,
And Tyler Too,
32.

CHAPTER 2

   
1.
Published in 1851, the song “Fayaway” was written by Maria L. Child (lyrics) and J. F. Duggan (music). The quotation from
Typee
can be found in chapter 18.

   
2.
HMCR,
44, 23; Wineapple,
Hawthorne,
223.

   
3.
HM to William B. Sprague, July 24, 1846 (
HMC,
59).

   
4.
Typee,
chapters 32 and 2.

   
5.
HPBio,
2:44, and
HMC,
796;
HMCR,
38–39.

   
6.
“Our Ambrotypes. Herman Melville, Romanticist,”
New York Daily News,
April 14, 1856, quoted in Steven Olsen-Smith, “Herman Melville's Planned Work on Remorse,”
Nineteenth-Century Literature,
March 1996, 496.

   
7.
HMCR,
157, 137, 130.

   
8.
Quoted in
HMP,
379;
Typee,
chapter 17.

   
9.
Typee,
chapter 18.

 
10.
“Pacific Rovings,”
Blackwood's,
June 1847 (
HMCR,
120).

 
11.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Charles Sumner, July 23, 1848 (Longfellow,
Letters,
3:177).

CHAPTER 3

   
1.
James,
The American Scene,
235.

   
2.
Chase,
Lemuel Shaw,
289, 282.

   
3.
Ibid., 283.

   
4.
Ibid., 294.

   
5.
Fanny Appleton Longfellow,
Mrs. Longfellow,
132.

   
6.
ML,
259.

   
7.
Quoted in Robertson-Lorant,
Melville,
53.

   
8.
ML,
59.

   
9.
HMCR,
57.

  
10.
Quoted in
HPBio,
1:544.

 
11.
Ibid., 1:554.

 
12.
“After the Pleasure Party,”
HMP,
262;
ML,
260; Parker,
Reading Billy Budd,
45.

 
13.
Wineapple,
Hawthorne,
223. In a letter of May 31, 1818, Herman's father reported that his research in Edinburgh had uncovered the family's descent from Sir John Melvill of Carnbee, owner of Granton castle on the Firth of Forth (BA). The rock foundations of that castle are still there and overlook one of the great waterways of the world.

 
14.
HM to Lemuel Shaw, October 6, 1849 (
HMC,
138).

 
15.
HM to R. H. Dana Jr., May 1, 1850 (
HMC,
162).

 
16.
“City Items: The Dog Days,”
New York Tribune,
July 30, 1850.

CHAPTER 4

   
1.
SAM to Susannah Perrin, [n.d.] (BCHS). For a typical description of the Morewood family's business in New York, see the advertisement “Rust Proof Iron,” on the front page of the
New York Evening Post,
October 13, 1849. The Morewood family held valuable patents for galvanizing metal.

   
2.
See Rowland's ad, “For Sale, A Modern Built Light Wagon,”
Pittsfield Sun,
August 29, 1850.

   
3.
In 1856 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes sold his house and 286 acres near Broadhall for $18,500 (“Farm Sold,”
Pittsfield Sun,
August 21, 1856).

   
4.
Caroline Whitmarsh, “A Representative Woman,”
Berkshire County Eagle,
October 29, 1863.

   
5.
No documents support the claim that Sarah's purchase of the mansion “stirred up in Herman a brew of feelings in which two of the ingredients were envy and jealousy” (
HPBio,
1:735).

   
6.
Elizabeth Shaw Melville to Hope Shaw, December 23, 1847 (quoted in
HMC,
799).

   
7.
“Several Days in Berkshire,”
Literary World,
August 24, 1850; and Evert Duyckinck to Margaret Duyckinck, August 8, 1850 (see Luther Stearns Mansfield, “Glimpses of Herman Melville's Life in Pittsfield,”
American Literature,
March 1937, 33).

   
8.
For his description of Cornelius Mathews, see Lowell,
A Fable for Critics,
36; HM, “Hawthorne and His Mosses.”

   
9.
HM to Evert Duyckinck, December 13, 1850 (
HMC,
173); Parker,
Melville Biography,
327.

 
10.
“The Grand Fancy Dress-Ball,”
Literary World
, September 7, 1850. Mathews's inscribed copy of
Chanticleer: A Thanksgiving Story
(1850) to “Mrs. Morewood” is held at BA.

 
11.
Pierre,
Book VII.

 
12.
Ibid., Book V.

 
13.
The Dryden edition is noted in Sealts,
Melville's Reading,
57. The edition was published by Routledge in London in 1854. Also see the “Historical Note” in the Northwestern/Newberry edition of
Published Poems,
416. The prominent markings in the margins of the Routledge Dryden are on pages 407 and 418. The rest are so faint that they almost escape detection by the naked eye, except for three words underlined on 440 (“mouths without hands”) in “Cymon and Iphigenia.” Next to these words, there is also a faint check mark in the margin. On page 415 in “Sigismonda and Guiscardo” a faintly marked passage includes the lines, “Permitted laurels grace the lawless brow, / The unworthy raised, the worthy cast below.” All the prominent marks are consistent with those in other books owned by HM. (See the indispensable
Melville's Marginalia Online,
edited by Steven Olsen-Smith, Peter Norberg, and Dennis C. Marnon.)