Part 1
THE WORKS OF HERMAN MELVILLE
STANDARD EDITION VOLUME XIII
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_This Edition is limited to 750 copies_
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BILLY BUDD AND OTHER PROSE PIECES
BY HERMAN MELVILLE
EDITED BY RAYMOND W. WEAVER
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD LONDON · BOMBAY · SYDNEY 1924
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Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD. at the University Press, Edinburgh
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE
‘Billy Budd,’ the title-piece of this volume, is a novel finished by Melville five months before his death in 1891, and never before published. ‘Daniel Orme’ is a sketch ‘omitted from _Billy Budd_.’ The fourth piece--‘The Two Temples’--was on May 12, 1854, refused by _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_ out of a fear of offending the religious sensibilities of the congregation of Grace Church, New York. This volume concludes with eight sketches surviving in manuscript, written, in all probability, after Melville’s retirement in 1886, at the age of sixty-seven, from his post as Inspector of Customs in New York City. Except for his letters, journals, and the juvenile ‘Fragments from a Writing Desk,’ this closes the count of Melville as a writer of prose. The rest of the volume comprises all Melville’s contributions to magazines that he acknowledged but never reprinted.
The text of matter hitherto unpublished has, so far as possible, been printed verbatim from Melville’s manuscript. Here and there, however, owing to the heavily corrected condition of many of the papers, slight adjustments in the interests of grammar or of style have been made in Melville’s wording.
The editor and publishers are indebted to the Princeton University Press for their courtesy in allowing two of the essays included in this volume to be reprinted from _The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches_, a volume of Melville’s prose miscellanea recently issued from Princeton.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN 1
OTHER PROSE PIECES
DANIEL ORME 117
HAWTHORNE AND HIS MOSSES, BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING A JULY IN VERMONT: _Literary World_, August 17, August 24, 1850 123
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! OR THE CROWING OF THE NOBLE COCK BENEVENTANO: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November-December 1853 144
THE TWO TEMPLES 173
POOR MAN’S PUDDING AND RICH MAN’S CRUMBS: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, June 1854 192
THE HAPPY FAILURE, A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, July 1854 210
THE FIDDLER: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, September 1854 220
THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS AND THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, April 1855 228
JIMMY ROSE: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November 1855 255
THE ’GEES: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 268
I AND MY CHIMNEY: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 276
THE APPLE-TREE TABLE, OR ORIGINAL SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, May 1856 312
UNDER THE ROSE 339
THE MARQUIS DE GRANDVIN 346
PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN 353
TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB 358
JACK GENTIAN 369
MAYOR GENTIAN AND COLONEL J. BUNKUM 373
THE CINCINNATI 378
FRAGMENT 381
FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING-DESK 382
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BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN
WHAT BEFELL HIM IN THE YEAR OF THE GREAT MUTINY, ETC.
Friday, Nov. 16, 1888--begun. Revision begun--March 2, 1889. Finished--April 19, 1891.
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DEDICATED TO JACK CHASE ENGLISHMAN WHEREVER THAT GREAT HEART MAY NOW BE HERE ON EARTH OR HARBOURED IN PARADISE CAPTAIN OF THE MAIN-TOP IN THE YEAR 1843 IN THE U.S. FRIGATE ‘UNITED STATES’
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PREFACE
The year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a period which, as every thinker now feels, involved a crisis for Christendom, not exceeded in its undetermined momentousness at the time by any other era whereof there is record. The opening proposition made by the Spirit of that Age,[1] involved a rectification of the Old World’s hereditary wrongs. In France, to some extent, this was bloodily effected. But what then? Straightway the Revolution itself became a wrongdoer, one more oppressive than the kings. Under Napoleon it enthroned upstart kings, and initiated that prolonged agony of continual war whose final throe was Waterloo. During those years not the wisest could have foreseen that the outcome of all would be what to some thinkers apparently it has since turned out to be, a political advance along nearly the whole line for Europeans.
Now, as elsewhere hinted, it was something caught from the Revolutionary Spirit that at Spithead emboldened the man-of-war’s men to rise against real abuses, long-standing ones, and afterwards at the Nore to make inordinate and aggressive demands, successful resistance to which was confirmed only when the ringleaders were hung for an admonitory spectacle to the anchored fleet. Yet in a way analogous to the operation of the Revolution at large, the Great Mutiny, though by Englishmen naturally deemed monstrous at the time, doubtless gave the first latent prompting to most important reforms in the British Navy.
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Footnote 1:
Crossed out:
Was one hailed by the noblest men of it. Even the dry tinder of Wordsworth took fire.
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BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN
I
(_An inside Narrative_)
In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed marines, man-of-war’s men or merchant sailors in holiday attire ashore on liberty. In certain instances they would flank, or, like a bodyguard, quite surround some superior figure of their own class, moving along with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation. That signal object was the ‘Handsome Sailor’ of the less prosaic time alike of the military and merchant navies. With no perceptible trace of the vainglorious about him, rather with the off-hand unaffectedness of natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his shipmates. A somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me. In Liverpool, now half a century ago, I saw under the shadow of the great dingy street-wall of Prince’s Dock (an obstruction long since removed) a common sailor, so intensely black that he must needs have been a native African of the unadulterate blood of Ham. A symmetric figure much above the average height. The two ends of a gay silk handkerchief thrown loose about the neck danced upon the displayed ebony of his chest; in his ears were big hoops of gold, and a Scotch Highland bonnet with a tartan band set off his shapely head.
It was a hot noon in July; and his face, lustrous with perspiration, beamed with barbaric good-humour. In jovial sallies right and left, his white teeth flashing into view, he rollicked along, the centre of a company of his shipmates. These were made up of such an assortment of tribes and complexions as would have well fitted them to be marched up by Anacharsis Cloots before the bar of the first French Assembly as Representatives of the Human Race. At each spontaneous tribute rendered by the wayfarers to this black pagod of a fellow--the tribute of a pause and stare, and less frequent an exclamation--the motley retinue showed that they took that sort of pride in the evoker of it which the Assyrian priests doubtless showed for their grand sculptured Bull when the faithful prostrated themselves. To return----
If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of the dandified Billy-be-Dam, an amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than the original, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal or, more likely, vapouring in the groggeries along the tow-path. Invariably a proficient in his perilous calling, he was also more or less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It was strength and beauty. Tales of his prowess were recited. Ashore he was the champion, afloat the spokesman; on every suitable occasion always foremost. Close-reefing topsails in a gale, there he was, astride the weather yard-arm-end, foot in ‘stirrup,’ both hands tugging at the ‘ear-ring’ as at a bridle, in very much the attitude of young Alexander curbing the fiery Bucephalus. A superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the thunderous sky, cheerily ballooning to the strenuous file along the spar.
The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the physical make. Indeed, except as toned by the former, the comeliness and power, always attractive in masculine conjunction, hardly could have drawn the sort of homage the Handsome Sailor in some examples received from his less gifted associates.
Such a cynosure, at least in aspect, and something such too in nature, though with important variations made apparent as the story proceeds, was welkin-eyed Billy Budd, or Baby Budd, as more familiarly, under circumstances hereafter to be given, he at last came to be called, aged twenty-one, a foretopman of the fleet toward the close of the last decade of the eighteenth century. It was not very long prior to the time of the narration that follows that he had entered the King’s Service, having been impressed on the Narrow Seas from a homeward-bound English merchantman into a seventy-four outward-bound, H.M.S. _Indomitable_; which ship, as was not unusual in those hurried days, had been obliged to put to sea short of her proper complement of men. Plump upon Billy at first sight in the gangway the boarding-officer, Lieutenant Ratcliffe, pounced, even before the merchantman’s crew formally was mustered on the quarter-deck for his deliberate inspection. And him only he selected. For whether it was because the other men when ranged before him showed to ill advantage after Billy, or whether he had some scruples in view of the merchantman being rather short-handed; however it might be, the officer contented himself with his first spontaneous choice. To the surprise of the ship’s company, though much to the Lieutenant’s satisfaction, Billy made no demur. But indeed any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage.
Noting this uncomplaining acquiescence, all but cheerful one might say, the shipmates turned a surprised glance of silent reproach at the sailor. The shipmaster was one of those worthy mortals found in every vocation, even the humbler ones--the sort of person whom everybody agrees in calling ‘a respectable man.’ And--nor so strange to report as it may appear to be--though a ploughman of the troubled waters, life-long contending with the intractable elements, there was nothing this honest soul at heart loved better than simple peace and quiet. For the rest, he was fifty or thereabouts, a little inclined to corpulence, a prepossessing face, unwhiskered, and of an agreeable colour, a rather full face, humanely intelligent in expression. On a fair day with a fair wind and all going well, a certain musical chime in his voice seemed to be the veritable unobstructed outcome of the innermost man. He had much prudence, much conscientiousness, and there were occasions when these virtues were the cause of overmuch disquietude in him. On a passage, so long as his craft was in any proximity to land, no sleep for Captain Graveling. He took to heart those serious responsibilities not so heavily borne by some shipmasters.
Now while Billy Budd was down in the forecastle getting his kit together, the _Indomitable’s_ lieutenant, burly and bluff, nowise disconcerted by Captain Graveling’s omitting to proffer the customary hospitalities on an occasion so unwelcome to him, an omission simply caused by preoccupation of thought, unceremoniously invited himself into the cabin, and also to a flask from the spirit locker, a receptacle which his experienced eye instantly discovered. In fact, he was one of those sea-dogs in whom all the hardship and peril of naval life in the great prolonged wars of his time never impaired the natural instinct for sensuous enjoyment. His duty he always faithfully did; but duty is sometimes a dry obligation, and he was for irrigating its aridity whensoever possible with a fertilising decoction of strong waters. For the cabin’s proprietor there was nothing left but to play the part of the enforced host with whatever grace and alacrity were practicable. As necessary adjuncts to the flask, he silently placed tumbler and water-jug before the irrepressible guest. But excusing himself from partaking just then, dismally watched the unembarrassed officer deliberately diluting his grog a little, then tossing it off in three swallows, pushing the empty tumbler away, yet not so far as to be beyond easy reach, at the same time settling himself in his seat, and smacking his lips with high satisfaction, looking straight at the host.
These proceedings over, the Master broke the silence; and there lurked a rueful reproach in the tone of his voice: ‘Lieutenant, you are going to take my best man from me, the jewel of ’em.’
‘Yes, I know,’ rejoined the other, immediately drawing back the tumbler, preliminary to a replenishing; ‘yes, I know. Sorry.’
‘Beg pardon, but you don’t understand, Lieutenant. See here now. Before I shipped that young fellow, my forecastle was a rat-pit of quarrels. It was black times, I tell you, aboard the _Rights_ here. I was worried to that degree my pipe had no comfort for me. But Billy came; and it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy. Not that he preached to them or said or did anything in particular; but a virtue went out of him, sugaring the sour ones. They took to him like hornets to treacle; all but the bluffer of the gang, the big, shaggy chap with the fire-red whiskers. He indeed, out of envy, perhaps, of the newcomer, and thinking such a “sweet and pleasant fellow,” as he mockingly designated him to the others, could hardly have the spirit of a game-cock, must needs bestir himself in trying to get up an ugly row with him. Billy forbore with him, and reassured with him in a pleasant way--he is something like myself, Lieutenant, to whom aught like a quarrel is hateful--but nothing served. So, in the second dog-watch one day the Red Whiskers, in presence of the others, under pretence of showing Billy just whence a sirloin steak was cut--for the fellow had once been a butcher--insultingly gave him a dig under the ribs. Quick as lightning Billy let fly his arm. I dare say he never meant to do quite as much as he did, but anyhow he gave the burly fool a terrible drubbing. It took about half a minute, I should think. And, Lord bless you, the lubber was astonished at the celerity. And will you believe it, Lieutenant, the Red Whiskers now really loves Billy--loves him, or is the biggest hypocrite that ever I heard of. But they all love him. Some of ’em do his washing, darn old trowsers for him; the carpenter is at odd times making a pretty little chest of drawers for him. Anybody will do anything for Billy Budd; and it’s the happy family here. Now, Lieutenant, if that young fellow goes, I know how it will be aboard the _Rights_. Not again very soon shall I, coming up from dinner, lean over the capstan smoking a quiet pipe--no, not very soon again, I think. Ay, Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of ’em; you are going to take away my peacemaker.’ And with that the good soul had really some ado in checking a rising sob.
‘Well,’ said the Lieutenant, who had listened with amused interest to all this, and now waxing merry with his tipple, ‘well, blessed are the peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers! And such are the seventy-four beauties, some of which you see poking their noses out of the port-holes of yonder warship lying-to for me,’ pointing through the cabin windows at the _Indomitable_. ‘But courage! don’t look so downhearted, man. Why, I pledge you in advance the royal approbation. Rest assured that His Majesty will be delighted to know that in a time when his hard-tack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as should be; a time also when some shipmasters privily resent the borrowing from them of a tar or two for the service; His Majesty, I say, will be delighted to learn that _one_ shipmaster at least cheerfully surrenders to the King the flower of his flock, a sailor who with equal loyalty makes no dissent. But where’s my Beauty? Ah,’ looking through the cabin’s open door, ‘here he comes; and, by Jove! lugging along his chest--Apollo with his portmanteau! My man,’ stepping out to him, ‘you can’t take that big box aboard a warship. The boxes there are mostly shot-boxes. Put your duds in a bag, lad. Boot and saddle for the cavalryman, bag and hammock for the man-of-war’s man.’
The transfer from chest to bag was made. And, after seeing his man into the cutter, and then following him down, the Lieutenant pushed off from the _Rights-of-Man_. That was the merchant ship’s name; though by her master and crew abbreviated in sailor fashion into the _Rights_. The hard-headed Dundee owner was a staunch admirer of Thomas Paine, whose book in rejoinder to Burke’s arraignment of the French Revolution had then been published for some time, and had gone everywhere. In christening his vessel after the title of Paine’s volume, the man of Dundee was something like his contemporary shipowner, Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose sympathies alike with his native land and its liberal philosophies he evinced by naming his ships after Voltaire, Diderot, and so forth.
But now when the boat swept under the merchantman’s stern, and officer and oarsmen were noting, some bitterly and others with a grin, the name emblazoned there; just then it was that the new recruit jumped up from the bow where the coxswain had directed him to sit, and, waving his hat to his silent shipmates sorrowfully looking over at him from the taffrail, bade the lads a genial good-bye. Then making a salutation as to the ship herself, ‘And good-bye to you too, old _Rights-of-Man_!’
‘Down, sir,’ roared the Lieutenant, instantly assuming all the rigour of his rank, though with difficulty repressing a smile.
To be sure, Billy’s action was a terrible breach of naval decorum. But in that decorum he had never been instructed; in consideration of which the Lieutenant would hardly have been so energetic in reproof but for the concluding farewell to the ship. This he rather took as meant to convey a covert sally on the new recruit’s part, a sly slur at impressment in general, and that of himself in especial. And yet, more likely, if satire it was in effect, it was hardly so by intention, for Billy, though happily endowed with the gaiety of high health, youth, and a free heart, was yet by no means of a satirical turn. The will to it and the sinister dexterity were alike wanting. To deal in double meaning and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature.
As to his enforced enlistment, that he seemed to take pretty much as he was wont to take any vicissitudes of weather. Like the animals, though no philosopher he was, without knowing it, practically a fatalist. And, it may be, that he rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs which promised an opening into novel scenes and martial excitements.
Aboard the _Indomitable_ our merchant-sailor was forthwith rated as an able seaman, and assigned to the starboard watch of the foretop. He was soon at home in the service, not at all disliked for his unpretentious good looks, and a sort of genial happy-go-lucky air. No merrier man in his mess; in marked contrast to certain other individuals included like himself among the impressed portion of the ship’s company; for these when not actively employed were sometimes, and more particularly in the last dog-watch when the drawing near of twilight induced revery, apt to fall into a saddish mood which in some partook of sullenness. But they were not so young as our foretopman, and no few of them must have known a hearth of some sort, others may have had wives and children left, too probably, in uncertain circumstances, and hardly any but must have acknowledged kith and kin; while for Billy, as will shortly be seen, his entire family was practically invested in himself.
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II
Though our new-made foretopman was well received in the top and on the gun-decks, hardly here was he that cynosure he had previously been among those minor ships’ companies of the merchant marine, with which companies only had he hitherto consorted.
He was young; and despite his all but fully developed frame, in aspect looked even younger than he really was. This was owing to a lingering adolescent expression in the as yet smooth face, all but feminine in purity of natural complexion, but where, thanks to his sea-going, the lily was quite suppressed, and the rose had some ado visibly to flush through the tan.
To one essentially such a novice in the complexities of factitious life, the abrupt transition from his former and simpler sphere to the ampler and more knowing world of a great warship--this might well have abashed him had there been any conceit or vanity in his composition. Among her miscellaneous multitude, the _Indomitable_ mustered several individuals who, however inferior in grade, were of no common natural stamp, sailors more signally susceptive of that air which continuous martial discipline and repeated presence in battle can in some degree impart even to the average man. As the _Handsome Sailor_ Billy Budd’s position aboard the seventy-four was something analogous to that of a rustic beauty transplanted from the provinces and brought into competition with the high-born dames of the court. But this change of circumstances he scarce noted. As little did he observe that something about him provoked an ambiguous smile in one or two harder faces among the blue-jackets. Nor less unaware was he of the peculiar favourable effect his person and demeanour had upon the more intelligent gentlemen of the quarter-deck. Nor could this well have been otherwise. Cast in a mould peculiar to the finest physical examples of those Englishmen in whom the Saxon strain would seem not at all to partake of any Norman or other admixture, he showed in face that humane look of reposeful good-nature which the Greek sculptor in some instances gave to his heroic strong man, Hercules. But this again was subtly modified by another and pervasive quality. The ear, small and shapely, the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and nostril, even the indurated hand dyed to the orange-tawny of the toucan’s bill, a hand telling of the halyards and tar-buckets; but, above all, something in the mobile expression, and every chance attitude and movement, something suggestive of a mother eminently favoured by Love and the Graces; all this strangely indicated a lineage in direct contradiction to his lot. The mysteriousness here, became less mysterious through a matter of fact elicited when Billy at the capstan was being formally mustered into the service. Asked by the officer, a small, brisk little gentleman as it chanced, among other questions, his place of birth, he replied, ‘Please, sir, I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know where you were born? Who was your father?’
‘God knows, sir.’
Struck by the straightforward simplicity of these replies, the officer next asked, ‘Do you know anything about your beginning?’
‘No, sir. But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silk-lined basket hanging one morning from the knocker of a good man’s door in Bristol.’
‘_Found_, say you? Well,’ throwing back his head, and looking up and down the new recruit--‘well, it turns out to have been a pretty good find. Hope they’ll find some more like you, my man; the fleet sadly needs them.’
Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.