The Whale (26 page)

“You are more constantly in thrall of divine augurs than any religious person I know, my dear Melville. One might mistake you for devout, if one were not paying close attention.”

“The
Ann Alexander
lies at the bottom of the sea, stove by a whale—an event which, in all the annals of seafaring, has happened only three times. The book you now possess was being typeset at the very moment that ship went down. Draw your own conclusions.” He lifted his glass. “To the crew of the
Ann Alexander
.” They drank and poured out more champagne.

“And to whales,” said Hawthorne. “And to
Moby Dick
!”

Their platters of roast beef arrived, and their waiter brought new glasses for their Bordeaux and poured it. Hawthorne asked for a candle, and they soon were dining by candlelight.

“A sperm candle,” Herman noted. “See how cleanly it burns, without dripping. The spermaceti is the only part of the whale not tried out aboard ship.”

Herman launched into a detailed explanation of spermaceti, blubber, whale oil in general, ambergris, the tryworks, and the shipboard processing of materials harvested from butchered whales. He did so mainly because he could not bring himself to ask Hawthorne about his feelings, yet he could also not keep quiet; and something in him still believed that, if he could reduce the world by enumerating and explaining the concrete properties of it, he could still make it real to his own mind—which it was not quite, somehow.

When Herman had finished his disquisition, Hawthorne said, “It seems you have, at least, convinced yourself of the reality of whaling,” and Herman felt completely understood.

“In truth,” Herman said, “I remain unconvinced about reality in general, because the most real thing, the human soul, violates every principle of the known world. What is more real than the soul—the internal experience we have of ourselves—yet what is less substantial and less subject to proofs? Inquiring after the soul leads only to fairy dust and moonshine. It is real only according to our experience of it, and nothing else; but this one unprovable thing is so real that it makes me question the reality of everything else.”

“My dear Melville, the very method of such inquiry destroys its object. One must begin with different questions, as I have said all along. The world itself is the soul of God, and that is the truth so clumsily expressed in the parable of Adam and Eve: it is the alienation wrought by inquiry without heart that causes man to suffer. That is the unpardonable original sin.”

“You mean pride? Pride divorces us from the very nature of reality?”

“Yes. Your inquiry itself is the source of your alienation.”

“And what should I do, instead? Pretend that these questions never occurred to me?”

“No. Just accept the mystery. Explain the whale until there is nothing left to explain and express your soul until there is nothing left to express, and know that both remain mysterious.”

Herman nodded at his book. “But I have already done that.”

“Then be happy.” Hawthorne held up his glass and toasted.

“You are least credible when you speak of happiness, Nathaniel.”

 • • • 

As their dinners disappeared—and, more to the point, their second bottle of wine—their metaphysics became more circular and their toasting more frequent, and their waiters stood in the kitchen doorway laughing at them. A few guests came and went, dining in much more purposeful ways than the two authors, and by the time Hawthorne ordered blackberry cobbler and Herman asked for apple pie, they were alone in the grand dining room. They finished their desserts over a heated but friendly disagreement about Thomas Aquinas and then ordered brandy.

Herman asked if they might smoke cigars in the dining room. The waiter assented, and Herman produced two cigars from his coat. They lit them at the spermaceti candle and smoked in silence until the waiter returned with their brandy and an ashtray.

“It is all very well to talk of whales and Thomas Aquinas,” said Herman, “but I have a rather particular question about our meeting at Catharine Sedgwick's party. What did you mean when you said that you had led me to believe things that were not true or that you did not wish to admit? I have puzzled over these words without coming to the bottom of them.”

“I apologize for that, Melville. I was speaking in haste, and I did not choose my words well.”

“You may take your time now.”

Hawthorne stuck his nose into his brandy snifter and took a long drink. Afterward, he did not quite lower the glass, so that, when he spoke, his words reverberated off the inside of the glass before they found their way to Herman's ears, resounding like a statement and an echo at the same time. This doubling effect—as much as the words themselves—would remain with Herman for the rest of his life, becoming more and more ghostly as the years passed.

“If I told you I loved you, Herman, it would change nothing.”

The words rebounded around Melville's brain like a prayer said in Latin, its meaning almost comprehended but its words foreign and magical. It was a declaration without an assertion, a misdirection without true bearings: had Hawthorne just declared his love? They were alone, yet still he would not speak plainly.

“If you told me you loved me, Nathaniel, it would change everything.”

“No. Nothing would change. I would still be leaving for West Newton with my family. And you would still be staying in Pittsfield with yours.”

“Everything would change
for me
.” Herman leaned in. “Surely, you of all people must know that a change of heart means more than any change of circumstance or anything society holds valuable. Isn't that ultimately the moral of
The Scarlet Letter
? Be true? Love is not a material change—
it is a change of heart
—and feeling love at all, especially the mutual and expressed love of one true heart for another, changes everything forever—for those hearts, even if not for the rest of the world.”

“But it is the feeling itself that changes it. Not the telling of the feeling.”

“No. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' The feeling and its expression are not
separate.” Herman pounded his fist on the table. “Why will you not say what you feel?”

The waiter returned to the table, with a disapproving frown for Melville. “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?”

Hawthorne said, “No, that will be all.” The waiter left the check, and Herman looked at it as if it were written in Aramaic. “Come, let us be on our way,” said Hawthorne.

Herman refused Hawthorne's proffered cash and laid his own money on the table. The waiter came back immediately and watched them gather their things and put on their coats.

Hawthorne led the way through the lobby and into the icy night, Herman unsure quite what to do next, beyond following him. Their breath materialized like spirits wispily fleeing their bodies. Down the steps of the hotel, left on Main Street in the direction of Hawthorne's cottage—they walked slowly, Hawthorne half a step ahead, Herman staring at him in a confusion of alcohol and tobacco and love and exasperation. The street was empty. They were utterly alone now. And still Hawthorne would not speak.

They came to the country lane that led out of town, down into the dell, toward Lake Mahkeenac. Herman stopped.

“I cannot follow you any further tonight,” he said. “I must catch the last train to Pittsfield.”

Hawthorne stopped, several paces away from Herman, a little down the hill. “Of course. Thank you for the book. And for dedicating it to me. I will read it at once.”

Herman shivered. Hawthorne took a few more steps down the hill and away. Herman called his name. Hawthorne stopped and faced him again. Herman could not believe that they were parting like this, with so much between them still unsaid and undiscovered. Time had somehow turned backward—Omega before Alpha.

Herman said, “Will you not say it, even once?”

“Say what?”

A sudden gust whipped their hair and fluttered their coattails. Herman's eyes watered from the cold. Hawthorne waited till the breeze died down to speak, and when he finally did, his words came out in a whisper.

“I love you, Herman.”

Melville thought his whole body might unwind like a yarn puppet. “I love you, too, Nathaniel.”

Hawthorne nodded, turned away, and walked down the path into the dell, into the darkness. He did not look back.

November 16, 1851

Lenox

My dear Melville,

What a book you have written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than your previous ones, and you should not think that, because I have read it so quickly, I have treated it in any way superficially. Since my belongings have been packed in crates for days, I have had little to do but anticipate your book; so I fell to it immediately and have done nothing but swim in its deep waters ever since.

Where to begin in responding to a work with so many facets catching so much light? The mystical descriptions of the seas! I felt I could see through the placid waters to the nursing baby whales in the Grand Armada, and feel the wind howling through the hawsers off the Java coast, and feel the commotion of the massacre of the sharks. Truly, I have been on a voyage around the world, peering across the bulwarks of my armchair. And the rhapsodies of Captain Ahab! You capture a madness that argues for the supreme sanity of the author, for what lunatic could deliver such mania so sympathetically and with such clarity? It is a grand feat that we commiserate with Ahab's outrageous quest and find therein our own search for meaning, because the Captain
himself cavorts so recklessly and destroys all around him so ruthlessly—we find in his actions no parallel to our own yet understand him to be a seeker after the same truth. He cooks his brains, and we savor the dish. And you have, withal, invented a new form of writing—not a romance nor an adventure nor a philosophy nor a natural history, but all rolled into one. Your disdain for form quite arrests my imagination—first Ishmael tells the story, then we stand at the elbow of Professor Melville for some research into whales, then we are on a vast stage where the actors perform dialogue that Shakespeare himself might have written, and then we are inside the mind of Ahab himself. I would fain attempt such acrobatics in a novel myself. One wonders that there is no chapter from the point of view of the White Whale itself, but perhaps the entire work might be considered to emanate from the perspective of that one particular creature, since it is his story as much as anyone's; but I fear that my appreciation may take a chaotic form similar to your book itself, but with less coherence or depth, merely grazing over those qualities of the novel that struck me most forcefully, and so I may miss the deeper profundities where your leviathan swims; so I will begin again.

I see that, in cataloging the known and concrete facts about whales and placing them alongside Ahab's impassioned quest, you are trying to give shape and form to the human desire to—well, to what? Comprehend the world as it is? Tame and civilize the wilderness? Find fellow-feeling among men through all the ages by means of learning and philosophy? Yes, all of that. And in the friendship of Ishmael and Queequeg, you show that a fraternal regard and even love may exist in like-minded souls where nothing but
differences exist on the surface—yes, that, too. And yet, for all of your classifying and sorting and explaining, for all of the fellow-feeling of Ishmael and Queequeg, for all of Ahab's raging, for all of the violence and lyricism and breathtaking chases, the most important thing in the novel is something that you have left out, which yet permeates the book, and no sensitive reader could fail to comprehend it—the heart of Captain Ahab.

It appears at first that Ahab is enraged because Moby Dick has removed his leg—but, not so, as you illustrate clearly when the
Pequod
of Nantucket meets the
Samuel Enderby
of London and Captain Ahab speaks with Captain Boomer of that latter ship. Boomer has had his arm removed by Moby Dick, yet he is good-humored and sensible, while Ahab has had his leg removed and is ferocious and fanatical. What, then, is the difference? Will a man lose an arm with equanimity but recoil at the removal of a lower limb? No. Because it is not only the lower limb that Ahab is missing—Moby Dick has taken something infinitely more valuable: his heart. Yes, Ahab is heartless, but he does not see that his heart cannot be recovered by conquering Moby Dick. He does not even see that he has lost his heart, so blinded is he by his more obvious loss; but it is veritably his heart and with it his soul that he has given up to the whale; or, in other words, to the iniquities of the world. His quest were better turned inward to that bottomless sea inside of him, which somewhere hides his missing humanity.

You say that the secret motto of the book is the one that Ahab gives when he baptizes his harpoon with blood—“I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil”—but I say that this is not the true motto, after all.
Your book is steeped in allusions to the Old Testament, but you have not quoted the most important verse: “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee.” Ahab's pride of heart is the problem that he cannot solve, and so his tragic maiming goes unavenged—because he seeks vengeance for the wrong loss.

I am deeply moved by the dedication of this book, my dear Melville. It is a work of fury and pain and strength and beauty, and it honors me that my name is attached to it—through no merit of mine own.

yours,
Nath. Hawthorne

November 17, 1851

Arrowhead, Pittsfield

My dear Hawthorne,

People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably—why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work—for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good? My peace and my supper are my reward, my dear Hawthorne. So your joy-giving and exultation-breeding letter is not my reward for my ditcher's work with that book, but is the good goddess's bonus over and above what was stipulated—for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is love appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the
meaning of this great allegory—the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity. In my proud, humble way—a shepherd-king—I was lord of a little vale in the solitary Crimea; but you have now given me the crown of India. But on trying it on my head, I found it fell down on my ears, notwithstanding their asinine length—for it's only such ears that sustain such crowns.

Your letter was handed to me last night on the road going to Mr. Morewood's, and I read it there. Had I been at home, I would have sat down at once and answered it. In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous—catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips—lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling. Now, sympathizing with the paper, my angel turns over another page. You did
not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book—and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon—the familiar—and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes.

My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric skepticisms steal into me now, and make me doubtful of my sanity in writing you thus. But, believe me, I am not mad, most noble Festus! But truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning. Farewell. Don't write a word about the book in the magazines. That would be robbing me of my miserly delight. I am heartily sorry I ever wrote anything about you there—it was paltry. Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing. So, now, let us add
Moby Dick
to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish—I have heard of Krakens.

This is a long letter, but you are not at all bound to answer it. Possibly, if you do answer it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you will missend it—for the very fingers that now guide this pen are not precisely the same that just took it up and put it on this paper. Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it's a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

What a pity, that, for your plain, bluff letter, you should get such gibberish! Mention me to Mrs. Hawthorne and to the children, and so, goodbye to you, with my blessing.

Herman

P.S. I can't stop yet. If the world was entirely made up of Magians, I'll tell you what I should do. I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand—a million—billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is on you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question—they are One.

P.P.S. Don't think that by writing me a letter, you shall always be bored with an immediate reply to it—and so keep both of us delving over a writing-desk eternally. No such thing! I shan't always answer your letters, and you may do just as you please.