Melville's Reflections
A page from The Life and Works of Herman
Melville
Some of Melville's wittier or more interesting remarks as culled
from letters and conversation. Extracts from his novels, short
stories, and poems will not be found here; they are located in
the Excerpts areas of the individual Works pages.
On Writing
-- Can you send me about fifty fast-writing youths, with an easy
style & not averse to polishing their labors? If you can, I wish
you would, because since I have been here I have planned about
that number of future works & cant find enough time to think
about them separately. -- But I don't know but a book in a man's
brain is better off than a book bound in calf -- at any rate it
is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin
to the ticklish and dangerous business of taking an old painting
off a panel -- you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to
get at it with due safety -- & even then, the painting may not be
worth the trouble. --Letter to Evert Duyckinck, December 13
1850
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.
--Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 1851
On Typee
... I could not but feel heartily vexed, that while the
intelligent Editors of a publication like [Chamber's
Edinburgh Journal] should thus endorse the genuineness of
the narrative -- so many numskulls on this side of the water
should heroically avow their determination not to be "gulled" by
it. The fact is, those who do not beleive it are the greatest
"gulls". -- full fledged ones too. --Letter to A. W.
Bradford, May 23 1846
Typee has come out measurably unschathed from the fiery
ordeal of Mr Wiley's criticisms. I trust as it now stands the
book will retain all those essential features which most
commended it to the public favor. --Letter to Evert
Duyckinck, July 15 1846
This new edition will be a Revised one, and I can not but think
that the measure will prove a judicious one. -- The revision will
only extend to the exclusion of those parts not naturally
connected with the narrative, and some slight purifications of
style. I am pursuaded that the intrinsick merit of the
narrative alone -- & that other portions, however
interesting they may be in themselves, only serve to impede the
story. The book is certainly calculated for popular reading, or
for none at all. -- If the first, why then, all passages which
are calculated to offend the tastes, or offer violence to the
feelings of any large class of readers are certainly
objectionable.
-- Proceeding from this principle then, I have
rejected every thing, in revising the book, which refers to the
missionaries. Such passages are altogether foreign to the
adventure, & altho' they may possess a temporary interest
now, to some, yet so far as the wide & permanent
popularity of the work is conserned, their exclusion will
certainly be beneficial, for to that end, the less the book has
to carry along with it the better. --Letter to John Murray,
July 15 1846
-- I had almost forgotten one thing -- the
title of the book. -- From the first I have deeply regretted that
it did not appear in England under the title I always intended
for it -- "Typee" It was published here under that title & it has
made a decided hit. Nor was anything else to be expected -- that
is, if the book was going to succeed at all, for "Typee"
is a title naturally suggested by the narrative itself,
and not farfetched as some strange titles are. Besides, its very
strangeness & novelty, founded as it is upon the character of the
book -- are the very things to make "Typee" a popular title.
--Letter to John Murray, July 15 1846
You ask for "documentary evidences" of my having been at the
Marquesas -- in Typee. -- Dear Sir, how indescibably vexatious,
when one really feels in his very bones that he has been there,
to have a parcel of blockheads question it! -- Not (let me hurry
to tell you) that Mr John Murray comes under that category -- Oh
no -- Mr Murray I am ready to swear stands fast by the faith,
beleiving "Typee" from Preface to Sequel -- He only wants
something to stop the mouths of the senseless sceptics -- men who
go straight from their cradles to their graves & never dream of
the queer things going on at the antipodes. --
I know not how
to set about getting the evidence -- How under Heaven am I to
subpeona the skipper of the Dolly who by this time is the Lord
only knows where, or Kory-Kory who I'll be bound is this blessed
day taking his noon nap somewhere in the flowery vale of Typee,
some leagues too from the Monument.
Seriously on the receipt
of your welcome favor, Dear Sir, I addressed a note to the owners
of the ship, asking if they could procure for me, a copy of that
part of the ship's log which makes mention of two rascals running
away at Nukaheva -- to wit Herman Melville and Richard T. Greene.
As yet I have nothing in reply -- If I think of any other kind of
evidence I will send it, if it can be had & dispatched.
--Letter to John Murray, September 2 1846
On Omoo
I have another work now nearly completed which I am anxious to
submit to you before presenting it to any other publishing house.
It embraces adventures in the South Seas (of a totally different
character from "Typee") and includes an eventful cruise in an
English Colonial Whaleman (A Sydney Ship) and a comical residence
on the island of Tahiti. The time is about four months, but I &
my narrative are both on the move during that short period. This
new book begins exactly where Typee leaves off -- but has no
further connection with my first work. -- Permit me here to
assure Mr Murray that my new M.S.S. will be in a rather better
state for the press than the M.S.S. [of Typee] handed to
him by my brother. A little experience in this art of book-craft
has done wonders. --Letter to John Murray, July 15
1846
On Mardi
... To be blunt: the work I shall next publish will be in
downright earnest a "Romance of Polynisian Adventure" -- But why
this? The truth is, Sir, that the reiterated imputation of being
a romancer in disguise has at last pricked me into a resolution
to show those who may take any interest in the matter, that a
real romance of mine is no Typee or Omoo, & is made of
different stuff altogether. This I confess has been the main
inducement in altering my plans -- but others have operated. I
have long thought that Polynisia furnished a great deal of rich
poetical material that has never been employed hitherto in works
of fancy; and which to bring out suitably, required only that
play of freedom & invention accorded only to the Romancer & poet.
-- However, I thought, that I would postpone trying my hand at
any thing fanciful of this sort, till some future day: tho' at
times when in the mood I threw off occasional sketches applicable
to such a work. -- Well: proceeding in my narrative of
facts I began to feel an incurable distaste for the
same; & a longing to plume my pinions for a flight, & felt irked,
cramped & fettered by plodding along with dull common places, --
So suddenly standing the thing altogether, I went to work heart &
soul at a romance which is now in fair progress, since I had
worked at it under an earnest ardor. -- Shout not, nor exlaim
"Pshaw! Puh!" -- My romance I assure you is no dish water nor its
model borrowed from the Circulating Library. It is something new
I assure you, & original if nothing more. But I can give you no
adequate idea, of it. You must see it for yourself. -- Only
forbear to prejudge it. -- It opens like a true narrative -- like
Omoo for example, on ship board -- & the romance & poetry of the
thing thence grow continually, till it becomes a story wild
enough I assure you & with a meaning too. --Letter to John
Murray, March 25 1848
I see that Mardi has been cut into by the London
Atheneum, and also burnt by the common hangman in the
Boston Post. However the London Examiner &
Literary Gazette; & other papers this side of the water
have done differently. These attacks are matters of course, and
are essential to the building up of any permanent reputation --
if such should ever prove to be mine. -- "There's nothing in it!"
cried the dunce, when he threw down the 47th problem of the 1st
book of Euclid -- "There's nothing in it --" -- Thus with the
posed critic. But Time, which is the solver of all riddles, will
solve Mardi. --Letter to Lemuel Shaw, April 23
1849
You may think, in your own mind that a man is unwise, --
indiscreet, to write a work of that kind, when he might have
written one perhaps, calculated merely to please the general
reader, & not provoke attack, however masqued in an affectation
of indifference or contempt. But some of us scribblers, My dear
Sir, always have a certain something unmanageable in us, that
bids us do this or that, and be done it must -- hit or miss.
--Letter to Richard Bentley, June 5 1849
In a little notice of The Oregon Trail I once said
something "critical" about another man's book -- I shall never do
it again. Hereafter I shall no more stab at a book (in print, I
mean) than I would stab at a man. -- I am but a poor mortal, & I
admit that I learn by experience & not by divine intuitions. Had
I not written & published Mardi, in all likelihood, I
would not be as wise as I am now, or may be. For that thing was
stabbed at (I do not say through) -- &
therefore, I am the wiser for it. --Letter to Evert
Duyckinck, December 14 1849
If Mardi be admitted to your shelves, your
bibliographical Republic of Letters may find some contentment in
the thought, that it has afforded refuge to a work, which almost
everywhere else has been driven forth like a wild, mystic Mormon
into shelterless exile. --To Evert Duyckinck, February 2
1850
On Redburn
I have now in preparation a thing of widely different cast from
"Mardi": -- a plain, straightforward, amusing narrative of
personal experience -- the son of a gentleman on his first voyage
to sea as a sailor -- no metaphysics, no conic-sections, nothing
but cakes & ale. I have shifted my ground from the South Seas to
a different quarter of the globe -- nearer home -- and what I
write I have almost wholly picked up by my own observations under
comical circumstances. --Letter to Richard Bentley, June 5
1849
They [Redburn and White-Jacket] are two
jobs, which I have done for money -- being forced to it,
as other men are to sawing wood. And while I have felt obliged to
refrain from writing the kind of book I would wish to; yet, in
writing these two books, I have not repressed myself much -- so
far as they are concerned; but have spoken pretty much
as I feel. -- Being books, then, written in this way, my only
desire for their "success" (as it is called) springs from my
pocket, and not from my heart. So far as I am individually
concerned, and independent of my pocket, it is my earnest desire
to write those sort of books which are said to "fail"....
--Letter to Lemuel Shaw, October 6 1849
This time tomorrow I shall be on land, & press English earth
after the lapse of ten years -- then a sailor,
now H.M. author of "Peedee" "Hullabaloo" & "Pog-Dog."
--Journal Entry, November 4 1849
[The Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine review of
Redburn is] very comical -- seemed so, at least, as I
had to hurry over it -- in treating the thing as real. But the
wonder is that the old Tory should waste so many pages upon a
thing, which I, the author, know to be trash, & wrote it to buy
some tobacco with. --Journal Entry, November 6
1849
... I hope I shall never write such a book again -- Tho' when a
poor devil writes with duns all round him, & looking over the
back of his chair -- & perching on his pen & diving in his
inkstand -- like the devils about St: Anthony -- what can you
expect of that poor devil? -- What but a beggarly
Redburn! --Letter to Evert Duyckinck, December 14
1849
On White-Jacket
This man-of-war book, My Dear Sir, is in some parts rather
man-of-warish in style -- rather aggressive I fear. --
But you, who like myself, have experienced in person the usages
to which a sailor is subjected, will not wonder, perhaps, at any
thing in the book. Would to God, that every man who shall read
it, had been before the mast in an armed ship, that he might know
something himself of what he shall only read of. --Letter
to Richard Henry Dana, October 6 1849
You ask me about "the jacket." I answer it was a veritable
garment -- which I suppose is now somewhere at the bottom of
Charles river. I was a great fool, or I should have brought such
a remarkable fabric (as it really was, to behold) home with me.
Will you excuse me from telling you -- or rather from putting on
pen-&-ink record over my name, the real names of the individuals
who officered the frigate. I am very loath to do so, because I
have never indulged in any ill-will or disrespect for them,
personally; & shrink from any thing that approaches to a personal
identification of them with characters that were only intended to
furnish samples of a tribe -- characters, also, which possess
some not wholly complimentary traits. If you think it worth
knowing -- I will tell you all, when I next have the pleasure of
seeing you face to face. --Letter to Richard Henry Dana,
May 1 1850
On Moby-Dick
About the "whaling voyage" -- I
am half way in the work, & am very glad that your suggestion so
jumps with mine. It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear;
blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the
poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; -- & to cook
the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from
the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the
whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing,
spite of this. --Letter to Richard Henry Dana, May 1
1850In the latter part of the coming autumn I shall
have ready a new work; and I write you now to propose its
publication in England.
The book is a romance of adventure,
founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale
Fisheries, and illustrated by the author's own personal
experience, of two years & more, as a harpooneer.
Should you
be inclined to undertake the book, I think that it will be worth
to you 200 pounds.. Could you be positively put in possession of
the copyright, it might be worth to you a larger sum --
considering its great novelty; for I do not know that the subject
treated of has ever been worked up by a romancer; or, indeed, by
any writer, in any adequate manner. --Letter to Richard
Bentley, June 27 1850
It ... is of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be
woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through
it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious
people from so much as peeping into the book -- on risk of a
lumbago & sciatics. --Letter to Sarah Morewood, September
[12?] 1851
For some days past being engaged in the woods with axe, wedge, &
beetle, the Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time
(& I was the merrier for it) when Crash! comes Moby Dick himself
(as you justly say) & reminds me of what I have been about for
part of the last year or two. It is really & truly a surprising
coincidence -- to say the least. I make no doubt it is
Moby Dick himself, for there is no account of his capture after
the sad fate of the Pequod about fourteen years ago. -- Ye Gods!
What a commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. What he has to
say is short & pithy & very much to the point. I wonder if my
evil art has raised this monster. --Letter to Evert
Duyckinck, in response to news of the sinking of a whale ship by
a whale, November 7 1851
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. --Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, November [17?]
1851
On Pierre
... [M]y new book possessing unquestionable novelty, as regards
my former ones, -- treating of utterly new scenes &
characters; -- and, as I beleive, very much more calculated for
popularity than anything you have yet published of mine -- being
a regular romance, with a mysterious plot to it, & stirring
passions at work, and withall, representing a new & elevated
aspect of American life -- all these considerations warrant me
strongly in not closing with terms greatly inferior to those upon
which our previous negotiations have proceeded. -- Besides, -- if
you please, Mr Bentley -- let bygones be bygones; let those
previous books, for the present, take care of themselves. For
here now we have a new book, and what shall we say about
this? If nothing has been made on the old books, may not
something be made out of the new? -- At any rate, herewith you
have it. Look at it and see whether it will suit you to purchase
it.... It is a larger book, by 150 pages & more, than I thought
it would be, at the date of my first writing you about it. Other
things being equal, this circumstance, -- in your mode of
publication -- must of course augment its value to you....
...
I have thought that, on several accounts, (one of which is, the
rapid succession in which my works have lately been published) it
might not prove unadvisable to publish this present book
anonymously, or under an assumed name: -- "By a
Vermonter" say. or "By Guy Winthrop."
--Letter to Richard Bentley, April 16 1852
On Israel Potter
I engage that the story shall contain nothing of any sort to
shock the fastidious. There will be very little reflective
writing in it; nothing weighty. It is adventure. As for its
interest, I shall try to sustain that as well as I can
--Letter to George P. Putnam, [June 7?] 1854
Some Memoranda for Publishing Poems
1 -- Don't stand on terms much with the publisher -- half-profits
after expenses are paid will content me -- not that I expect much
"profits" -- but that will be a fair nominal arrangement -- They
should also give me 1 doz. copies of the book --
2 -- Don't have the Harpers. -- I should like the Appletons or
Scribner -- But Duyckinck's advice will be good here.
3 -- The sooner the thing is printed and published, the better --
The "season" will make little or no difference, I fancy, in this
case.
4 -- After printing, don't let the book hang back -- but publish,
& have done.
5 -- For God's sake don't have By the author of "Typee"
"Piddledee" &c on the title-page.
6 -- Let the title-page be simply, Poems by Herman Melville.
7 -- Don't have any clap-trap announcements and "sensation" puffs
-- nor any extracts published previous to publication of book --
Have a decent publisher, in short....
-- Of all human events,
perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verse is the most
insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it
is still of some concern to the author, -- as these Mem.
show -- Pray therefore, don't laugh at my Mem. but give
heed to them, and so oblige Your brother Herman --Letter to
his brother Allan, May 22 1860
On Clarel
... [A] metrical affair, a pilgramage or what not, of several
thousand lines, eminently adapted for unpopularity. -- The
notification to you here is ambidexter, as it were: it may
intimidate or allure. --Letter to James Billson, October 10
1884
On Fame
Being told that you particularly desired my autograph I
cheerfully send it, and the author of "Typee" looks forward with
complacency to his joining that goodly fellowship of names which
the taste and industry of Dr. Sprague have collected. But believe
me, Dear Sir, I take you to be indeed curious in these
autographs, since you desire that of Herman Melville,
Lansingburgh, July 24, '46.
Now that I think of it, I was
charged to write two of them -- you remember someone woke one
morning and found himself famous. And here am I, just come from
hoeing in the garden, writing autographs. --Letter to Dr.
William Sprague, July 24 1846
-- Ah this sovereign virtue of age -- how can we living men
attain unto it. We may spice up our dishes with all the
condiments of the Spice Islands & Moluccas, & our dishes may be
all venison & wild boar -- yet how the deuce can we make them a
century or two old? -- My Dear Sir, the two great things yet to
be discovered are these -- The Art of rejuvenating old age in
men, & oldageifying youth in books. -- Who in the name of the
trunkmakers would think of reading Old [Robert] Burton
were his book published for the first to day? -- All ambitious
authors should have ghosts capable of revisiting the world, to
snuff up the steam of adulation, which begins to rise straightway
as the Sexton throws his last shovelful on him. -- Down goes his
body & up flies his name. --Letter to Evert Duyckinck,
April 5 1849
The fact is, almost everybody is having his "mug" engraved
nowadays; so that this test of distinction is getting to be
reversed; and therefore, to see one's "mug" in a magazine, is
presumptive evidence that he's a nobody. So being as vain a man
as ever lived; & beleiving that my illustrious name is famous
throughout the world -- I respectfully decline being oblivionated
by a Daguerrotype.... --Written response to Evert
Duyckinck's request for a photograph, February
1851
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.... 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"!... I have come to
regard this matter of Fame as the most transparent of all
vanities. --Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 1851
The other day I visited out of curiosity the Gansevoort Hotel,
corner of "Little twelfth Street" and West Street. I bought a
paper of tobacco by way of introducing myself: then I said to the
person who served me: "Can you tell me what this word
'Gansevoort' means? is it the name of a man? and if so, who was
this Gansevoort?" Thereupon a solemn gentleman at a remote table
spoke up: "Sir," said he, putting down his newspaper, "this hotel
and the street of the same name are called after a very rich
family who in old times owned a great deal of property
hereabouts." The dense ignorance of this solemn gentleman, -- his
knowing nothing of the hero of Fort Stanwix, aroused such an
indignation in my breast, that, disdaining to enlighten his
benighted soul, I left the place without further colloquy.
Repairing to the philosophic privacy of the District Office, I
then moralized upon the instability of human glory and the
evanescence of -- many other things. --Letter to his
mother, May 5 1870
As to [James Thomson's] not acheiving
"fame" -- what of that? He is not the less, but so much the more.
And it must have occurred to you as it has to me, that the
further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much
the cheaper sort of thing does "fame" become, especially of the
literary sort. This species of "fame" a waggish acquaintance says
can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured
thro the agency of a certain house that has a correspondent in
every one of the almost innumerable journals that enlighten our
millions from the Lakes to the Gulf & from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. --Letter to James Billson, December 20 1885
On Insanity
Poor [Charles Fenno] Hoffman -- I remember the shock I had when I
first saw the mention of his madness. -- But he was just the man
to go mad -- imaginative, voluptuously inclined, poor,
unemployed, in the race of life distancd by his inferiors,
unmarried, -- without a port or haven in the universe to make.
His present misfortune -- rather blessing -- is but the sequel to
a long experience of unwholesome habits of thought. -- This going
mad of a friend or acquaintance comes straight home to every man
who feels his soul in him, -- which but few men do. For in all of
us lodges the same fuel to light the same fire. And he who has
never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of
brains. What sort of sensation permanent madness is may be very
well imagined -- just as we imagine how we felt when we were
infants, tho' we cannot recall it. In both conditions we are
irresponsible & riot like gods without fear of fate. -- It is the
climax of a mad night of revelry when the blood has been
transmuted into brandy. -- But if we prate much of this thing we
shall be illustrating our own propositions. --Letter to
Evert Duyckinck, April 5 1849
On Life
Would that a man could do something & then say -- It is finished.
-- not that one thing only, but all others -- that he has reached
his uttermost, & can never exceed it. But live & push -- tho' we
put one leg forward ten miles -- its no reason the other leg must
lag behind -- no, that must again distance the other --
& so we go till we get the cramp & die. --Letter to Evert
Duyckinck, April 5 1849This recovery [from a riding
accident] is flattering to my vanity. I begin to indulge in the
pleasing idea that my life must needs be of some value. Probably
I consume a certain amount of oxygen, which unconsumed might
create some subtle disturbance in Nature. Be that as it may, I am
going to try and stick to the conviction named above. For I have
observed that such an idea, once well bedded in a man, is a
wonderful conservator of health and almost a prophecy of long
life. I once, like other spoonies, cherished a loose sort of
notion that I did not care to live very long. But I will frankly
own that I have now no serious, no insuperable objections to a
respectable longevity. I dont like the idea of being left out
night after night in a cold church-yard. --Letter to Samuel
Savage Shaw, December 10 1862
You are young; but I am verging upon three-score, and at times a
certain lassitude steals over one -- in fact, a disinclination
for doing anything except the indispensable. At such moments the
problem of the universe seems a humbug, and epistolary
obligations mere moonshine, and the -- well, nepenthe seems
all-in-all....
You are young (as I said before) but I aint;
and at
my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one
gets to care less and less for everything except downright good
feeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from
a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it,
unless -- well, finish the sentence for yourself.
Thine in
these inexplicable fleshly bonds, H.M. --Letter to John C.
Hoadley, March 31 1877
Whoever is not in the possession
of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk
of the dignity of work. Bosh. True Work is the
necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The
dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundreths of all the
work done in the world is either foolish and
unnecessary, or harmful and wicked. --Letter to Catherine
G. Lansing, September 5 1877
On Metaphysics
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 all children. It turns out, at
last, to consist in a triangle, a mallet, and an apron, --
nothing more! We incline to think that God cannot explain His own
secrets, and that He would like a little more information upon
certain points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us.
--Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
On Life at Arrowhead
I have a sort of sea-feeling here in
the country, now that the ground is all covered with snow. I look
out of my window in the morning when I rise as I would out of a
port-hole of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship's
cabin; & at nights when I wake up & hear the wind shrieking, I
almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, & I had better
go on the roof & rig in the chimney.
Do you want to know how I
pass my time? -- I rise at eight -- thereabouts -- & go to my
barn -- say good-morning to the horse, & give him his breakfast.
(it goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can't be
helped) Then, pay a visit to my cow -- cut up a pumpkin or two
for her, & stand by to see her eat it -- for it's a pleasant
sight to see a cow move her jaws -- she does it so mildly and
with such a sanctity. -- My own breakfast over, I go to my
work-room & light my fire -- then spread my M.S.S.
[Moby-Dick] on the table -- take one business squint at
it, & fall
to with a will. At 2 1/2 P.M. I hear a preconcerted knock at my
door, which (by request) continues till I rise & go to the door,
which serves to wean me effectively from my writing, however
interested I may be. My friends the horse & cow now demand their
dinner -- & I go & give it to them. My own dinner over, I rig my
sleigh & with my mother or sisters start off for the village -- &
if it be a Literary World day, great is the satisfaction thereof.
-- My evenings I spend in a sort of mesmeric state in my room --
not being able to read -- only now & then skimming over some
large-printed book. --Letter to Evert Duyckinck, December
13 1850
On the Mexican War
People here are all in a state of
delirium about the Mexican War. A military ardor pervades all
ranks -- Militia Colonels wax red in their coat facings -- and
'prentice boys are running off to the wars by scores. -- Nothing
is talked of but the "Halls of the Montezumas" And to hear folks
prate about those purely figurative apartments one would suppose
that they were another Versailles where our democratic rabble
meant to "make a night of it" ere long.... But seriously
something great is impending. The Mexican War (tho' our troops
have behaved right well) is nothing of itself -- but "a little
spark kindleth a great fire" as the well known author of the
Proverbs very justly remarks. -- and who knows what all this may
lead to -- Will it breed a rupture with England? Or any other
great powers? -- Prithee, are there any notable battles in store
-- any Yankee Waterloos? -- Or think once of a mighty Yankee
fleet coming to the war shock in the middle of the Atlantic with
an English one. -- Lord, the day is at hand, when we will be able
to talk of our killed & wounded like some of the old Eastern
conquerors reckoning them up by thousands; when the Battle of
Monmouth will be thought child's play -- & canes made out of the
Constitution's timbers be thought no more of than bamboos.
--Letter to his brother Gansevoort, May 29 1846
On the Civil War
Do you want to hear about the war? --
The war goes bravely on. McClellan is now within fifteen miles of
the rebel capital, Richmond. New Orleans is taken &c &c &c....
But when the end -- the wind-up -- the grand
pacification is coming, who knows. We beat the rascals in almost
every feild, & take all their ports &c, but they dont cry
"Enough!" -- It looks like a long lane, with the turning quite
out of sight. --Letter to his brother Thomas, May 25
1862
On James Fenimore Cooper
I never had the honor of
knowing, or even seeing, Mr Cooper personally; so that, through
my past ignorance of his person, the man, though dead, is still
as living to me as ever. And this is very much; for his works are
among the earliest I remember, as in my boyhood producing a
vivid, and awakening power upon my mind.
It has always much
pained me, that for any reason, in his latter years, his fame at
home should have apparently received a slight, temporary
clouding, from some very paltry accidents, incident, more or
less, to the general career of letters. But whatever possible
things in Mr Cooper may have seemed, to have, in some degree,
provoked the occasional treatment he received, it is certain,
that he possessed no slightest weaknesses, but those, which are
only noticeable as the almost infallible indices of pervading
greatness. He was a great, robust-souled man, all whose merits
are not even yet fully appreciated. But a grateful posterity will
take the best of care of Fennimore Cooper. --Letter to
Rufus Wilmot Griswold, December 19 1851
On Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Philosophy
Nay, I do not oscillate in Emerson's rainbow, but prefer rather
to hang myself in mine own halter than swing in any other man's
swing. Yet I think Emerson is more than a brilliant fellow. Be
his stuff begged, borrowed, or stolen, or of his own domestic
manufacture he is an uncommon man. Swear he is a humbug -- then
is he no common humbug. Lay it down that had not Sir Thomas
Browne lived, Emerson would not have mystified -- I will answer,
that had not Old Zack's father begot him, old Zack would never
have been the hero of Palo Alto. The truth is that we are all
sons, grandsons, or nephews or great-nephews of those who go
before us. No one is his own sire. -- I was very agreeably
disappointed in Mr Emerson. I had heard of him as full of
transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish; I had only
glanced at a book of his once in Putnam's store -- that was all I
knew of him, till I heard him lecture. -- To my surprise, I found
him quite intelligible, tho' to say truth, they told me that that
night he was unusually plain. -- Now, there is a something about
every man elevated above mediocrity, which is, for the most part,
instinctuly perceptible. This I see in Mr Emerson. And, frankly,
for the sake of the argument, let us call him a fool; -- then had
I rather be a fool than a wise man. -- I love all men who
dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a
great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; & if he don't
attain the bottom, why, all the lead in Galena can't fashion the
plumet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now -- but of the
whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving & coming up
again with bloodshot eyes since the world began.
I could
readily see in Emerson, notwithstanding his merit, a gaping flaw.
It was, the insinuation, that had he lived in those days when the
world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
These men are all cracked right across the brow. And never will
the pullers-down be able to cope with the builders-up. And this
pulling down is easy enough -- a keg of powder blew up Block's
Monument -- but the man who applied the match, could not, alone,
build such a pile to save his soul from the shark-maw of the
Devil. But enough of this Plato who talks thro' his nose.
--Letter to Evert Duyckinck, March 3 1849God help
the poor fellow who squares his life according to this.
--Marginalia
On Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I have recently read his
"Twice Told Tales" (I hadnt read but a few of them before) I
think they far exceed the "Mosses" -- they are, I fancy, an
earlier vintage from his wine. Some of those sketches are
wonderfully subtle. Their deeper meanings are worthy of a
Brahmin. Still there is something lacking -- a good deal lacking
-- to the plump sphericity of the man. What is that?
-- He
doesn't patronise the butcher -- he needs roast-beef, done rare.
-- Nevertheless, for one, I regard Hawthorne (in his books) as
evincing a quality of genius, immensely loftier, & more profound,
too, than any other American has shown hitherto in the printed
form. Irving is a grasshopper to him -- putting the
souls of the two men together, I mean. --Letter to
Evert Duyckinck, February 12 1851
On Fanny Kemble Butler
She makes a glorious Lady Macbeth, but her Desdemona seems like a
boarding school miss. -- She's so unfemininely masculine that had
she not, on unimpeckable authority, borne children, I should be
curious to learn the result of a surgical examination of her
person in private. The Lord help Butler ... I marvel not he seeks
being amputated off from his matrimonial half. --Letter to
Evert Duyckinck, February 24, 1849
On Abraham Lincoln
The night previous to this I was at
the second levee at the White House. There was a great crowd, & a
brilliant scene. Ladies in full dress by the hundred. A steady
stream of two-&-twos wound thro' the apartments shaking hands
with "Old Abe" and immediately passing on. This continued without
cessation for an hour & a half. Of course I was one of the
shakers. Old Able is much better looking [than] I expected &
younger looking. He shook hands like a good fellow -- working
hard at it like a man sawing wood at so much per cord. Mrs
Lincoln is rather good-looking I thought. The scene was very fine
altogether. Superb furniture -- flood of light -- magnificent
flowers -- full band of music &c. --Letter to his
wife, March 24 & 25 1861
On William Shakespeare
I have been passing my time very pleasurably here, But cheifly in
lounging on a sofa (a la the poet Grey) & reading Shakspeare. It
is an edition in glorious great type, every letter whereof is a
soldier, & the top of every "t" like a musket barrel. Dolt & ass
that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days
ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William. Ah,
he's full of sermons-on-the-mount, and gentle, aye, almost as
Jesus. I take such men to be inspired. I fancy that this moment
Shakspeare in heaven ranks with Gabriel Raphael and Michael. And
if another Messiah ever comes twill be in Shakesper's person. --
I am mad to think how minute a cause has prevented me hitherto
from reading Shakspeare. But until now, every copy that was
come-atable to me, happened to be in a vile small print
unendurable to
my eyes which are tender as young sparrows. But chancing to fall
in with this glorious edition, I now exult in it, page after
page. --Letter to Evert Duyckinck, February 24 1849
And do not think, my boy, that because I, impulsively broke
forth in jubillations over Shakspeare, that, therefore, I am of
the number of the snobs who burn their tuns of rancid
fat at his shrine. No, I would stand afar off & alone, & burn
some pure Palm oil, the product of some overtopping trunk.
--
I would to God Shakspeare had lived later, & promenaded in
Broadway. Not that I might have had the pleasure of leaving my
card for him at the Astor, or made merry with him over a bowl of
the fine Duyckinck punch; but that the muzzle which all men wore
on their soul in the Elizebethan day, might not have intercepted
Shakspers full articulations. For I hold it a verity, that even
Shakspeare, was not a frank man to the uttermost. And, indeed,
who in this intolerant universe is, or can be? But the
Declaration of Independence makes a difference. --Letter to
Evert Duyckinck, March 3 1849
On James Thomson,
Poet
"Sunday up the River," contrasting with the
"City of Dreadful Night," is like a Cuban humming-bird,
beautiful in faery tints, flying against the tropic
thunder-cloud. [Thomson] was a sterling poet, if ever one sang.
As to his pessimism, altho' neither pessimist nor optomist
myself, nevertheless I relish it in the verse if for nothing else
than as a counterpoise to the exorbitant hopefulness, juvenile
and shallow, that makes such a bluster in these days -- at least,
in some quarters. --Letter to James Billson, January 22
1885... [E]ach [of Thomson's poems] is so admirably
honest and original that it would have been wonderful indeed had
they hit the popular taste. They would have to be painstakingly
diluted for that -- diluted with that prudential wordly element,
wherewithall Mr Arnold has conciliated the conventionalists while
at the same time showing the absurdity of Bumble. But for your
admirable friend this would have been too much like
trimming -- if trimming in fact it be. The motions of his mind in
the best of
his Essays are utterly untrameled and independent, and yet
falling naturally into grace and poetry. It is good for me to
think of such a mind -- to know that such a brave intelligence
has been -- and may yet be, for aught anyone can
demonstrate to the contrary. --Letter to James
Billson, December 20 1885
On Himself
It is now quite a time since you first asked
me for my photo: -- Well, here it is at last, the veritable face
(at least, so says the Sun that never lied in his life) of your
now venerable friend -- venerable in years. -- What the deuse
makes him look so serious, I wonder. I thought he was of a gay
and frolicsome nature, judgeing from a little rhyme of his about
a Kitten, which you once showed me. But is this the same man?
Pray, explain the inconsistency, or I shall begin to suspect your
venerable friend of being a two-faced fellow and not to be
trusted. --Letter to Ellen M. Gifford, October 5
1885
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