October influences

Fair and bright dawned the first of October! The fierce chilling blast has sung a fit requiem to the infernal September; with its cloudy wings it has taken its eternal flight — may such another never revisit poor people so helplessly exposed to its dreary influences!  December 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

This has been a true October day — delightful and magnificent October! — and with but little of the high wind, which here so generally prevails.  --January 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Photo Credit: Quincy Koetz - The Pursuit of Life

Although the month was November, the day was in character an October one—cool, clear, bright, intoxicatingly invigorating; one of those days peculiar to the ripest hours of our American Autumn. This weather must have had much to do with the spontaneous enthusiasm which seized the troops—  --Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

Melville's note on typical October weather is to this line in his Civil War poem, "Chattanooga":

A kindling impulse seized the host

Inspired by heaven's elastic air;

In the January 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, the "true October" weather brings out the "philosopher" in the Captain, as he explains while talking and riding with his Imaginary Friend:

I. F.—" Very interesting, this dry grass and frost! Has the idea of home banished me from your thoughts?"

—"Ah, no! I am a bit of a philosopher; and take this October marching very kindly— particularly, after thawing of a morning and riding ahead, I kill a grouse occasionally with my pistol."

G. P. R. James, again

No need to claim Herman Melville wrote this 1850 review of G. P. R. James's novel The Old Oak Chest. For one thing, the cheap shot at the end (James's latest should have been called "Much Ado about Nothing") sounds forced and a bit meaner than Melville liked to be in print. That "Mr. Shakespeare" there in the last paragraph reminds me more of Evert Duyckinck's usage of "one John Milton"--when in the course of reviewing Moby-Dick, Duyckinck was being mean to Melville. Melville himself chose to call the Bard "Master William Shakespeare" in his review of Hawthorne two months later for the same Literary World.  On the other hand, the very idea of "christening books" seems Melvillean enough, not to mention the clever critique of sentences "dipped in a starch cup, and dried stiff." Whoever the writer, my point here is we're in Melville's literary and social back yard. If he didn't write the 1850 review he knows and parties with the person who did.

In those days the universal joke about G. P. R. James concerned his ever-present "two horsemen." The anonymous reviewer--let's call him Evert--alludes to the old joke, then further acknowledges as distinctive trademarks James's "verbiage," his plodding, monotonous prose, and ho ho! the habit his characters have of repeating "the beginning of each speech." 

"We find the same verbiage, the same measured sentences, seeming to have been dipped in a starch cup, and dried stiff. The same repetition of the beginning of each speech, as if the speaker, having made a baulk at the start, trotted back for a fresh tap of the drum."  --The Literary World No. 179 - July 6, 1850

The metaphor if I have it right is of the author as drum major, and fictional personae as soldiers that muster when called by the military "tap of the drum." As shown in a previous Dragooned post, one of the dialogues on books and authors in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" features an extended criticism of G. P. R. James. In that January 1852 dialogue, the Captain's Imaginary Friend (I. F. for short) makes the same point (though without the drum-tap) as the anonymous Literary World reviewer did in 1850 about the tendency of James's characters to repeat themselves at the start of their speeches.

I. F. — James has an extraordinary habit of making his spokesmen repeat the first sentence of their speeches, thus — "I don't know, sir; I don't know, sir," — "That's a pity — that's a pity !" Since I have noticed it, it always makes me nervous!

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, January 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

In "Israel Potter" (1854) Melville would make James's quirk of repeating speech into a characteristic mannerism of King George III:

Waiting a moment, till the man was out of hearing, the king again turned upon Israel.

"Were you at Bunker Hill?—that bloody Bunker Hill —eh, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Fought like a devil—like a very devil, I suppose?”

"Yes, sir."

"Helped flog—helped flog my soldiers?”

"Yes, sir; but very sorry to do it."

"Eh?—eh?—how's that?"

"I took it to be my sad duty, sir."

"Very much mistaken—very much mistaken, indeed. Why do ye sir me?—eh? I'm your king—your king."

"Sir," said Israel firmly, but with deep respect, "I have no king."

--Melville's "Israel Potter" in Putnam's Monthly Magazine - August 1854

Don't get too deep

via North Dakota Geological Survey

Inviting discussion of Geology on the Isle of Fossils, King Media warns Babbalanja:

 "Philosopher, probe not too deep."  --Melville's Mardi (1849)

On the same subject, in a similarly plain-speaking role as representative realist, the Captain's imaginary friend "Frank" in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" would also steer the talk away from useless profundity:

F. "Bah! your modern geognosy is a humbug! or, too deep at least, for a wandering dragoon. --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army, p359

In the previous installment, July 1852, the Captain self-consciously began to try out different writing styles for different readers--romantics first, then realists--but stopped himself before getting "too deep" in the experiment:

" Whom then shall I address? — the mock sentimentalist? and begin the day: 'Our slumbers this morning were gently and pleasantly dissolved by the cheerful martins, which sang a sweet reveille with the first blush of Aurora, at our uncurtained couches.' Or the statist? 'Not a sign of buffalo to-day; it were melancholy and easy to calculate how soon the Indians, deprived of this natural resource, and ignorant of agriculture' — but I should soon get too deep." 

I[maginary]. F[riend]. — But this soil is devilish shallow.  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, p333

In the 1876 poem Clarel, Melville's easygoing clergyman Derwent tries hard to cheer up Clarel. But the young divinity student can't stop his pained and doubtful line of questioning--which makes Derwent sigh,

"Alas, too deep you dive."   --Clarel 3.21, Mar Saba/In Confidence

It's no good getting ruffled

Image Credit: Country Life - The Drawing Room's history

In Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852) Melville repeatedly addresses the virtue of staying calm and not getting "ruffled," especially in social conversation. Before counting them up, I did not realize the ideal of keeping oneself "unruffled" was such a favorite with Melville in Pierre: ten instances total of "ruffle" (1x) and variants "ruffled" (3x); "unruffled" (3x); "unruffledness" (2x); and the truly delightful "unruffleable" (1x). That's not counting four references to literal ruffles.

"... after directing the unruffled Dates"  --Melville's Pierre, p21

"... it must be hard for man to be an uncompromising hero and a commander among his race, and yet never ruffle any domestic brow."  --Melville's Pierre, p25

"... of the most wonderful unruffledness of temper."  --Melville's Pierre, p38

Allan Melvill / 1810 portrait by John Rubens Smith via Wikimedia Commons

"...and much liked to paint his friends, and hang their faces on his walls; so that when all alone by himself, he yet had plenty of company, who always wore their best expressions to him, and never once ruffled him, by ever getting cross or ill-natured, little Pierre."  --Melville's Pierre, p100

She was a noble creature, but formed chiefly for the gilded prosperities of life, and hitherto mostly used to its unruffled serenities; bred and expanded, in all developments, under the sole influence of hereditary forms and world-usages. --Melville's Pierre, p120

  "... in some other hour of unruffledness or unstimulatedness...."
--Melville's Pierre, p309

"He has translated the unruffled gentleman from the drawing-room into the general levee of letters...."  --Melville's Pierre, 334-5

Not seldom Pierre's social placidity was ruffled by polite entreaties from the young ladies that he would be pleased to grace their Albums with some nice little song. We say that here his social placidity was ruffled; for the true charm of agreeable parlor society is, that there you lose your own sharp individuality and become delightfully merged in that soft social Pantheism, as it were, that rosy melting of all into one, ever prevailing in those drawing-rooms, which pacifically and deliciously belie their own name; inasmuch as there no one draws the sword of his own individuality, but all such ugly weapons are left—as of old—with your hat and cane in the hall. --Melville's Pierre, p341

"And with his unruffleable hilariousness, Millthorpe quitted the room."
--Melville's Pierre, p435

As a matter of vocabulary the theme of staying unruffled is clearly, for Melville, a preoccupation of 1851-2 when he was writing Pierre. After Pierre Melville was done with ruffles in his prose writings, except with reference to fabric or bodies of water. Two instances occur in Typee, none in Omoo, one instance in Mardi, none in Redburn, none in White-Jacket, one in Moby-Dick, and then none that I can find in Israel Potter; The Piazza Tales; The Confidence-Man; and Billy Budd.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852:

F. "Bah! your modern geognosy is a humbug! or, too deep at least, for a wandering dragoon. Now, would you go about determining the age of the formation from your knowledge of the shell? or give it physiological gradation from your profound knowledge of superposition of strata?"

C. "The former, if I only knew it. You will allow me at least, on your own recommendation to note the fact in my journal?"

F. "Of course; but with becoming modesty. It is enough to ruffle one, to have such a long word thrust at him, of a pleasant summer evening, and a thousand miles from a library."

C. "But, good heavens! do not condemn a word for its length. Paleontology is an almost poetical triumph, which throws an attractive grace over the sterility of geognostic investigations and symbols on the human tombs, which throw beams of startling light over the obscurity of fabulous antiquity,—so when we discover the traces or remains of existing, or the extinct life of the old world, their natural tombs—the fossil rocks—are monuments on which Time thus records their relative ages. It is a beautiful chronometry of the earth's surface!"

--Reprinted with significant revisions in Scenes and Adventures in the Army, p360

Related Dragooned posts:

• fossiliferous
• fossiliferous, again
• modern geognosy, prairie talk borrowed from von Humboldt

fossiliferous, again

Image Credit: Nicola Marshall

Introduced already in an earlier post, but this one I think deserves another look.

Writing on "The Language of Moby-Dick," Maurice S. Lee cites the word fossiliferous with other examples of Melville's "extraordinary language that is simultaneously archaic and fresh":

" 'Fossiliferous' is one of many abstruse terms that Melville lifts from specialized fields." --Maurice S. Lee in A Companion to Herman Melville (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006; paperback 2015) edited by Wyn Kelley.

Moby-Dick (1851):

"... it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view."  --Moby-Dick, Chapter 104, The Fossil Whale

 Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852:

"—all by the light of your chronological, fossiliferous, infernal shell!"

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (August 1852)

Significant revisions to the August 1852 dialogue on paleontology between "C." and "F." (shown above) in the 1857 book version (shown below) include: 

1.  removing the self-reflexive allusion to the writer's journal
2. adding the oxymoronic jokes of being "decidedly non-committal" and, later on, of having a "profound smattering" of the subject at hand (paleontology).
3. thoroughly re-working "a thousand miles from a library" to read, "amid all the charm of a complete laisser aller in a glorious wilderness, a thousand miles from all the schools of pedantic, groping, and guessing philosophy." 
4. deleting sentence containing the word "chronometry." 
5. revising F. (which in the magazine version stands for "Frank") to "Friend." Similarly, all references to "I. F." for "Imaginary Friend" have been revised throughout Part II of the 1857 book version to read simply, Friend. 

Scenes and Adventures in the Army, page 360

Related post:

• modern geognosy, prairie talk borrowed from von Humboldt

Cooke's unaffected writing style in From Everglade to Cañon with the Second Dragoons

Besides extant family correspondence, army reports and documents (for example, Letters to the Adjutant General) and official journals, good evidence for the usual writing style of Philip St. George Cooke appears in a section of Rodenbough's From Everglade to Canyon titled "Personal Recollections." In one passage Cooke ventures to describe what he considers a dramatic and even "romantic" episode from the Apache War of 1854. In unaffected prose, Cooke describes the 1854 engagement with Jicarilla Apaches and killing of their leader, Lobo Blanco or "White Wolf." Cooke does not say and may not have known that White Wolf's daughter had been kidnapped and killed before the widely reported massacre of the White family.

Lieutenant David Bell, of our regiment—whose early death was a great loss to the whole service—was very conspicuous in extraordinary marches and in action. He was an accomplished horseman and shot. I have seen him, in a run of a quarter of a mile, kill or stop five buffaloes! In partisan war—all he lived to see—he was admirable, and a rare compound of bravery and prudence.

Of these Apaches a chief named White Wolf had been head man in an atrocious tragedy—that of a Mrs. White and family, whose fates thrilled the public sensibilities.

It was Bell's fortune to avenge them, and in an extraordinary manner. The action might be called dramatic, or perhaps romantic, and I hesitate to attempt its description.
He was on a scout with his company (H) from Fort Union, about seventy miles eastward, near “Red River” (Cimarron), but perhaps thirty miles below the great road-crossing. He had less than thirty men, and met nearly the same number of Indians. At that stage of operations a parley was in order.

Bell had assigned his baggage-mules to the charge of five or six men, and held a mounted interview with White Wolf, who stood in front of twenty-two Indians on foot, well armed and in line. Bell was in front of his troopers, who were about twenty paces from the Indians—exactly equal in number and extent of line. Both parties were prepared to use fire-arms.

The parley was almost tediously long, and this duel had arranged itself as described. White Wolf was very bold, and became defiant. At last—the chief sinking on one knee and aiming his gun, and fell throwing his body forward and reining up his horse—they exchanged shots. Both lines, by command, followed the example, the troopers, however, spurring forward through or over their enemies. The warriors mostly threw themselves on the earth, and several vertical wounds were received by horse and rider. The dragoons turned short about, and again charged through or over their enemies, the fire being continued. Turning for a third charge, the surviving Indians were seen escaping to a steep and deep ravine, which, although only one or two hundred paces off, had not previously been discovered. A number thus escaped, the horsemen having to pull up at the brink, but sending a volley after the descending fugitives.

In less than five minutes, in this strange combat, twenty-one of the forty-six actors were killed or wounded. Bell was not hit, but four or five of his men were killed or wounded. He had shot White Wolf several times, and afterwards others did so; but so tenacious of life was he that, to finish him, a man got a great rock and mashed his head. One of the baggage-guard, against positive orders, left the mules, and charging, sabre in hand, split in two the skull of an Apache, and the next instant was himself shot dead.

It was then discovered that there were more Apaches in the vicinity, and, weakened and embarrassed by the wounded, Bell immediately concluded to send for assistance. About two P.M., accordingly, he sent his first sergeant (Lawless), a famous rider and woodsman, with a pencilled report to me at Fort Union. At ten o'clock in the night he was in my quarters—by any road or trail it was seventy miles! The quarters, the stables, and corral were then scattered over a great prairie space—some were a quarter of a mile apart. It was necessary to arouse nearly everybody; the surgeon to prepare with instruments, etc.; the quartermaster, to get ready an ambulance; a dozen troopers to be equipped and mounted on the best invalid horses. At noon that day this reinforcement, surgeon, and ambulance met Bell at the road-crossing of Red River, forty miles from the fort.  --From Everglade to Canyon

The plain style of narrative description in Cooke's "Personal Recollections" contrasts markedly with the romantic and poetical style of Scenes and Adventures in the Army, especially the second part which is based on the 1851-1853 magazine series, Scenes Beyond the Western Border. One easy way to see the difference is by the absence of figurative language. Unless I'm missing something, I don't find a single metaphor in the passage above. It's all literal and to the point.

By contrast, "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" is notable for its romantic sensibility. Metaphors abound, not to mention numerous dialogues with an imaginary prairie friend:

" Amigo mio, my dreams are — not what they were ! — Well, the night passed quietly enough, though I was disturbed by the coming in of women and children; and right early I got over my other horses and men, and — a breakfast.

" I sallied forth then, ripe for adventures. I 'scoured,' as was right, the three miles of open forest — we have to borrow this word from the scullery, while the French say, euphoniously, eclairer — then emerged upon prairies, and soon reached a lofty hill-top.

"O! how beautiful and fresh was all before me! It was a surprise; not a trace of man blurred the expanded view, where free Nature had tried her genial hand. It was the year's prime; sparkling under the early sun, were meadows and murmuring streamlets; glades, where sported herds of deer; grassy slopes swelling to smooth hillocks; old oaks, here expanded in solitary magnificence, — there, disposed like garlands on the gentle hills; and again, gathered in imposing groves. Strangely beautiful in the midst were two hill-cones, rising like a triumphal gate, from forest bases. Far extended hill and dale and plain, until lost in the blue slopes of a mountain range; and about its airy outline clustered the rosy morning clouds..."

--September 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

"whether of" this or that

July 27th.—We have had the pleasure of marching to-day 22 miles over a baked white clay surface, accompanied under the broiling sun by a breeze which very gently enveloped us, as in a secondary atmosphere—with dust which gave to all a semblance, not strictly defined, whether of millers or hodmen.  --August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Photo Credit: Claudia's Page

...he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem.... --Moby-Dick

 So, through long previous generations, whether of births or thoughts, Fate strikes the present man.  --Pierre

... the lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of individuals or of the world.  --The Confidence-Man

"of the sort called_____"

With an effect of bathos, sort of:

To-day we still followed up Cherry Creek, or its dry sands; but towards noon, it came running to meet us; and there were the patronymic cherries,—or rather the bushes; and of the sort called choke-cherries.  --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

It was one of the first of the chill nights in autumn. There was a fire on the hearth, burning low. The air without was torpid and heavy; the wood, by an oversight, of the sort called soggy.  --I and my Chimney, March 1856

summer mornings, unwanted in revision

Here's something I need to add to the catalog of words or phrases that appear in Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) or Pierre (1852) and the 1851-1853 magazine series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" but were later deleted or somehow revised out of the book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857). Previous Dragooned posts listing similarly deleted items are

• five things deleted in revision

• from enthusiasm to illusion

• of a pleasant evening, and chronometry

Looking harder at revisions to the May 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, I see the expression "summer mornings" does not appear in the 1857 book version.

May 1853:

"But, as in summer mornings when birds sweetly sing, and rosy mists add beauty to the fair prospect, the sun rises to give a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green,—so, always to such happy scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!"  --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border 

No exemplary "summer mornings" appear after revision. Instead of multiple "summer mornings," we get the single representative "summer dawn," now (with the help of "rosy" transplanted from the earlier expression "rosy mists") a "rosy summer dawn":

The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!   --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Revised out of the May 1853 text, the unwanted reference to "summer mornings" occurs in the first sentence of Melville's Pierre, first published in August 1852.

THERE are some strange summer mornings in the country, when he who is but a sojourner from the city shall early walk forth into the fields, and be wonder-smitten with the trance-like aspect of the green and golden world. Not a flower stirs; the trees forget to wave; the grass itself seems to have ceased to grow; and all Nature, as if suddenly become conscious of her own profound mystery, and feeling no refuge from it but silence, sinks into this wonderful and indescribable repose.  --Pierre, or, The Ambiguities

Upon my word

I. F. "Well done! But I can make more of it; did you not hear the sequel?"

C. "Upon my word I have not; it is rather soon [1857/9: "what can you mean?"]."
--April 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army p288

F.—"Hillo! what are you about? Writing in tune with the merry cotton-wood leaves? You will have to frankly confess you have invented a new style."

C.—"Upon my word I was becoming as curious as yourself; a first unfortunate line set the jingle agoing, and I could not stop it...." 
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Image Credit: Leslieville History

Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam.  --Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

"Thou art a man of God, sir, I believe."
"I? I? I? upon my word, Mr. Glendinning!"  --Pierre, or, The Ambiguities

"I think he is a little deranged," said I, sadly. 

"Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel-like, them forgers.

--Bartleby the Scrivener

"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in understanding human nature—as if truth was ever got at by libel. My young friend, if to know human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and go north to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood."

"Upon my word, I—I—"  --The Confidence-Man

But as in...—so,...!

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!  --Moby-Dick, The Lee Shore

"But, as in summer mornings when birds sweetly sing, and rosy mists add beauty to the fair prospect, the sun rises to give a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green,—so, always to such happy scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!"  --May 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

Look at this, will you? The nifty parallelism nearly vanishes in revision:

The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!   --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Although the "so" clause remains in the book version, the distinctive sentence-starter "But as in" has been eliminated. After revision, the formerly dependent first clause is now independent.

Yikes!

Image Credit: ewallpapers-hub.com

prairie wolves, in a circle, watching their leader

First published November 1851:

Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.--Moby-Dick, The Quarter-Deck

First published December 1851:

And did you not know that wolves howl in concert? Did you never see them under the pale moon sit in circle watching their leader as bipeds do? --Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

beamers

François Boucher, Mercury confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs
c. 1732-1734 / Wallace Collection Online

"Here Venus never smiles; nor Bacchus grins; nor beams the intelligence of Mercury. Oh gentle Herald that I could fly with thee!" 
-- June 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

"... a pensive face angelic, downward beaming; and, for one golden moment, gauze-vailed in spangled Berenice’s Locks."  --Mardi: And a Voyage Thither

But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. "Ah, noble ship," the angel seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off—serenest azure is at hand."  --Moby Dick, The Pulpit

Image Credit: Dover Beach

The beaming part is optional. For example, in his Pulpit Portraits John Dix Ross described the painted angel behind Father Taylor (Melville's model) without any reference to its face or countenance:

High over the mast-head are dark storm-clouds, from one of which a remarkably small angel is seen, with outstretched arms, — the celestial individual having just flung down a golden anchor bigger than itself, to aid the ship in her extremity, we presume, although there is attached to the said anchor but a few inches of California cable, which for any practical purpose would not be of the slightest use. --as quoted in the Life of Father Taylor

typing infinity

"There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves." --Moby-Dick (The Mast-Head)

So Ishmael muses from the mast-head, looking down. Arrived at the Continental Divide, the narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons looks down from a "lofty bluff" above the South Pass, likewise with ocean and infinity on his mind: 

"A continent is spread beneath me: a new world in ocean-midst: the great ocean, at whose ever-heaving surge — typing infinity — man trembled and forbore many thousand years ...."  --September 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Not only the conceit, but also the grammar is close to Melville's--as evidenced in the hyphenated modifier "ever-heaving." Compounds with the intensifier "ever" occur dozens of times in Melville's Pierre. Dozens, really? Let's count 'em. More than twenty-four, actually, since we ought to count "ever-interrupting and ever-marring world" as two.

1. ever-shifting Nature
2. ever-encroaching appetite for God.
3. ever-sweet interpreter [Nature, again]
4. ever-sacred being
5. ever-interrupting and ever-marring world
6. ever-growing business
7. ever-adaptive sort of motive
8. ever-present self
9. ever-nameless
10. ever-sacred memory
11. ever-primeval wilderness
12. ever-creative fire
13. ever-recurring intervals
14. ever-hospitable grave
15. ever-creeping and condensing haze of ambiguities
16. ever-abiding shadows
17. ever-flowing
18. ever-shifting shadowy vistas
19. ever-welling mystery
20. ever-shipwrecked character
21. ever-increasing admiration
22. ever-elastic regions of evanescent invention
23. ever-devouring and omnivorous melancholy
24. ever-baffled artist

And "ocean-midst" (another compound) recalls Pico as Melville had just described it a late chapter of his new novel.

Mount Pico
José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa via Wikimedia Commons

"Pierre is a peak inflexible in the heart of Time, as the isle-peak, Piko, stands unassaultable in the midst of waves." Pierre, or The Ambiguities (August 1852)

“More isles! more isles!” cried Babbalanja, erect, and gazing abroad. “And lo! round all is heaving that infinite ocean."  --Mardi, and A Voyage Thither

past all something

"Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts, but I'll—I'll—yes, I'll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden gun—a straight wake with ye!"  --Moby-Dick, Ch 16 The Ship

Photo Credit: A Silent Dreamer

I.F. "Ah! gazing at the stars? The three mortal hours we passed on the verge of the table land, whilst the guide sought a clew to this strange labyrinth of hills, or mountains—"

C. "And found it, much thanks to the buffalo, and the aid of their paths—"

I. F. "Were enough, with an empty stomach, to evaporate an ocean of romance."

C. "Considering, too, how dry it was; we had not drank for thirteen hours."

I.F. "Considering, too, you slipped off alone to the island yesterday, and 'fell asleep;' but as I verily believe, only dreamed; for, in our silent ride to overtake the regiment, you were still rapt, past all observation."  --May 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

Love me she doth, thought Pierre, but how? Loveth she me with the love past all understanding? --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

 Those must have been hard gales, Don Benito."
"Past all speech," cringed the Spaniard. --Benito Cereno

"All I want is a good listener": promiscuous apostrophe at the start of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border"

The beginning of Typee displays another of Melville's techniques, what can be called promiscuous apostrophe. He begins by addressing the reader directly, fades into soliloquy, and in subsequent paragraphs addresses the rooster, another sailor, and the "poor old ship" itself. The impression created is of a voice ready to fix on any imaginable auditor.  --Bryan C. Short on Melville's Self-Discovery in Typee

Oh reader! "gentle" or not,—I care not a whit,—so you are honest—I will tell you a secret. I write not to be read, and I swear never even to transcribe for your benefit, unless I change my mind. All I want is a good listener; I want to converse with you; and if you are absolutely dumb, why I will sometimes answer for you.

(opening lines of the first installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger vol. 17, June 1851, 372; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, Part II.)

But "Oh reader!" only makes one apostrophe—when does it get promiscuous? From the same first chapter:

Oh, wide and flat,—shall I say "stale and unprofitable"—prairies! ...
Oh, gentle Herald [Mercury], that I could fly with thee!
Oh! ye hypocrites,—demagogues....
"Friend," thought I ....
Oh Truth!
Oh Sirius! thou brightest and nearest sun;
"Immortal man, brave General ———."
Oh Steam!

All these occur in quick succession, right at the start of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

Image Credit: Rita's Dog Blog

locomotive bipeds and state-room sailors

Image Credit: Steamboat Times

Point is, they should quit whining:

At the foot of these rapids was a passenger barge in tow of a steam keel-boat, with about twenty passengers, who had already waited some two weeks with Turkish resignation, for fate, or higher water, to forward them on their journey. Genius of railroads! spirit of a travelling age! Think, ye eastern locomotive bipeds, who, spirited over the earth at the rate of 600 miles a day, snarl at the grievous detention of a minute,—think of this, and learn moderation.

--Notes and Reminiscences No. 3 (Army and Navy Chronicle / July 23, 1840); and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (June 1842; 1857)

Deleted from the first page of Typee:

Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen-days’ passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champaign punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but “ those good-for-nothing tars, shouting and tramping over head,”—what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land?

Cut by Melville along with many other expurgations, the passage above does not appear in the Revised American edition of Typee. On the likely reason for this particular deletion, Bryan C. Short observes:

Removal of the “state-room sailors” passage dispels an early belligerence out of tune with Tommo’s narrative personality in the rest of the work. --Bryan C. Short, "The Author at the Time": Tommo and Melville's Self-Discovery in Typee.

About mortgages

Scored with pencil in Herman Melville's copy of David Dudley Field's History of the County of Berkshire:

Mortgage is certain to prove in the general, what the word signifies, a death-gage to the property upon which it is fastened, and to the prosperity of the man who allows it to be fastened upon his estate.  --Melville's Marginalia Online

This book is inscribed in ink on the front flyleaf:  "H Melville. / Pittsfield July 16, 1850" According to the Documentary Note on this volume at Melville's Marginalia Online, Melville

made notes on the verso of the rear flyleaf that indicate he consulted A History throughout the 1850s, using it as a source for Israel Potter and "The Apple-Tree Table."

Prairie near the Mouth of the St. Peters - Buffalo Hunt / Seth Eastman, 1846-8
Image Credit: Minnesota Historical Society

This unerring and deadly shot after so long and pertinacious a pursuit, gave him credit with us all; until at last, we came up; and there surely lay the bull: but, strange to say, no scrutiny could discover a wound!—and soon the marvel was, how he had lived so long; he had only closed a longstanding mortgage to the crows;—the ardent hunter was not there to dispute possession!  --June 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

I'm not claiming Field's History of Berkshire inspired "mortgage to the crows," which phrase gets one (and only one?) other hit via Google Books. But Melville had the burden of mortgage on his mind after privately borrowing $2050 from T. D. Stewart in May 1851, on top of his remaining debt for the Arrowhead farm. In his essay "Damned by Dollars" (first published in the 2nd Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick; revised and condensed in the 2nd Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man) Hershel Parker examines the details of Melville's financial difficulties and their impact on his writing.

Here's a related gem from the second volume of Parker's Melville biography:

What with Maria's daily reproaches for his religious lapses, Hope's and the younger Shaws' carping criticism of his lost reputation, what with his enormous debts and his defaulting on a payment on 1 May [1852], what with the failure of The Whale and Moby-Dick after publication and the humiliating American contract for Pierre and no English contract for it at all, Melville chose to escape as best he could: he went outdoors into the Berkshire spring. --Herman Melville: A Biography, V2.110

That buffalo hunter with his pertinacious pursuit sounds kind of like a prairie Ahab.

Text as river, again

Housatonic River via Engineering News-Record

Zounds! how did I miss this before? I guess the focus on margins and their multiple meanings last time around kept me from seeing a fine instance of text-as-flowing-river in one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne. Writing in reply to a letter from Hawthorne, Melville compared his friend's recent "long" letter to a flowing river, specifically the Housatonic:

"My dear Hawthorne: This is not a letter, or even a note, but merely a passing word said to you over your garden gate. I thank you for your easy-flowing long letter (received yesterday) which flowed through me, and refreshed all my meadows, as the Housatonic—opposite me—does in reality." --Melville's Correspondence, N-N ed. p199

Living then at Arrowhead, Melville identified himself with his natural surroundings. Melville figures himself as the land, the margin, and Hawthorne's writing as a river that runs through him. Hawthorne's river of a letter metaphorically flows through and revives Melville like the Housatonic flows through and nourishes the actual physical "meadows" of Berkshire. Melville wrote that now lost thing to Hawthorne on Tuesday, July 22, 1851. Less than two months before, the first installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" appeared in the Richmond Southern Literary Messenger, including this thoroughly Melvillean comparison of Washington Irving's writings to a river:

They have spared Irving, his writings, flowing through broad margins of letter press; to what can we compare them, but to a crystal streamlet purling through flowery savannahs and sweet shady groves; and anon delving into cave-like clefts,—romantic recesses, where, of old, the fairies sought shelter from the glare of day.  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1851

There's more on the passage from "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" in the earlier Dragooned post on Washington Irving's very fluid text. On the same theme also check out

• Wide margins and pictorial embellishment; and
• More on margins

Dialogue on realities, mangled and grim vs. poetry

In the last episode of the series (August 1853), Frank again proves himself the Mohi of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." A fictional character in Melville's Mardi, Mohi a.k.a. Braid-Beard is the historian who explores strange islands in company with the narrator Taji, King Media, Babbalanja the philosopher and Yoomy the youthful minstrel. The previous Dragooned post on being sung/talked to sleep showed Frank's criticizing the writing-in-progress by the narrator, like Mohi's criticizing the song of Yoomy right after its performance. Mohi says he wants what Frank "luxuriously" gets in being put to sleep by the narrative performance of a traveling companion. All that happened in the September 1852 and March 1853 installments of what is supposed to be the 1845 journal of the actual historical march by U. S. Dragoons to the Rocky Mountains and back. (6:10--Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice.) The final August 1853 installment features an extended dialogue on narrative aesthetics, with a strong claim by the narrator for the deeper aesthetic and spiritual truths of poetry over the merely factual depiction of "grim realities." Aiming to please Frank by writing of "grim realities," the narrator found "a little vein" of poetry anyhow. Frank certainly would have preferred "grim realities" if the narrator could only have managed a plain, "simple narrative" of facts. Likewise Melville's Mohi favors, in the words of Yoomy, "mangled realities" over imaginative fictions.

Upon this presumptuous interference, Mohi looked highly offended; and nervously twitching his beard, uttered something invidious about frippery young poetasters being too full of silly imaginings to tell a plain tale. 

Said Yoomy, in reply, adjusting his turban, “ Old Mohi, let us not clash. I honor your calling; but, with submission, your chronicles are more wild than my cantos. I deal in pure conceits of my own; which have a shapeliness and a unity, however unsubstantial; but you, Braid Beard, deal in mangled realities. In all your chapters, you yourself grope in the dark. Much truth is not in thee, historian. --Mardi; and a voyage thither vol. 1

C.—"Ah! no bantering now—there is a dreamy art of more pretension still;—that would paint the heart;—that would fix the wandering thought;—that would delve for discoveries in the deep mine of man's nature! 

"But I have been writing, Frank, something for your especial approval; I have been setting forth grim realities,—and most philosophically. I did strike at last, but most naturally and truly, a little vein of—" 

F.—"—Poetry, perhaps? by the merest accident in the world." 

C.—"Nature is poetry! For what are sunsets often gorgeously beautiful, or delicately lovely, beyond all representation? For what, the endless variety, the exquisite combination of resplendent colours, of tints and hues of beauty in flowers and birds? Not for utility, Frank, but to soften our hearts—to refine and elevate our thoughts. Poetry is Worship!" 

F.—" Well, let me hear your specimen of 'grim reality.' If you could only realize the charm of simplicity! [1857 version gives the word "simplicity" in italics for added emphasis, thus: "That you could only realize the charm of simplicity!"] For poetry I generally go to Job, David, or Isaiah." 

I read to him my day's experiences. He listened impatiently; and at last broke out— "You are incorrigible! Do you call that abstraction, the real?" 

C.—"Surely it has a mournfully same, and daily reality!" 

F.—" And how easily by a mere turn of expression, you could have given it the interest of a simple narrative!" 

C.—"Well, I'm too indolent; for, if commenced, I might imagine myself bound to keep it up; and I scribble by no rule, and with no object but pastime; and, to compare in some future day the old with the new tone of mind." 

F.—" And a rather singular acquaintance will the old gentleman make! Pray why then did you trouble yourself with the dry abstract of our daily doings?" 

C.—" Thank-ye for solving—in your complimentary way—a question of my own! I will tell you: I am convinced that written descriptions, not only from carelessness or design, but from inherent imperfection, invariably paint very feebly; and from consciousness of this, are dashed with discoloured exaggerations; they deceive more than they enlighten the imaginations of those who are unable to apply the convictions and the tests of some experience; you perceive, then, that I was experimenting?" --August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Not least among the mind-bending contents of this meta-fictional dialogue about how to write is the uncredited source of the "little vein" of poetry struck by the narrator: Thou Lovest Me No More by Mattie Griffith.

On being sung/talked to sleep by a traveling companion

The Lotus Eaters by Thomas Moran, 1895
Image Credit: Letters of Transit

Reading in Mardi about the reception of Yoomy's song THE SONG, I noticed how Yoomy's critic Mohi craves being sung to sleep, a state of existence that Yoomy regards as "luxurious":

“Then, minstrel, you shall sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs of Nora-Bamma.” 

“Mean you, old man, that my lines, setting forth the luxurious repose to be enjoyed hereafter, are composed with such skill, that the description begets the reality; or would you ironically suggest, that the song is a sleepy thing itself?” --Mardi; And a Voyage Thither vol. 2 chapter 103

Interesting parallels to Melville's notion of eternal sleep as a "luxurious" state of repose and the idea of being put to sleep by one's traveling companion may be found in a revision to the original dialogue in the March 1853 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

Original magazine version:

But now, "the morn is up again,"— and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted through a turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped for breakfast under some cotton woods,— and in their shade I am scribbling with a
pencil—

F.—" Yes, and fine work you are making of it! The day should commence with the morning, and the brighter the better; not with the nightmare of a sleeper, who should have watched." --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

1857 revision:

July 7th.—But now, "the morn is up again" [Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage], and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted over the turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped and breakfasted under some cotton-woods; and in their shade my pipe and pencil are struggling for exclusive attention;—but pipe has it!—for here comes my sympathetic companion of the night, looking as discontented as if he had not been luxuriously talked to sleep.

"What's the matter?" 

Friend.—O, confound the bivouac! the dew or frost has got into my joints.

--Scenes and Adventures in the Army 

Although added later in revision of the 1851-3 magazine series, the narrator's sense that his friend ("Frank" in the original magazine version) had been talked to sleep accords perfectly with the end of the previous installment. In the September 1852 number, Frank had asked for a plain tale of military adventure. The narrator obliged with a story of the Florida Seminole wars that put Frank to sleep.

When I reached the wood, I found they had charged through a camp, whence every soul fled to a near swamp: while they were entangled there, I ascertained that these fugitives were Seminoles of an earlier migration; and soon drew out my skirmishers—not without some captures. Our spirits were all up; and returning to the prairie, I made other combinations—managed by signals—armed its hills and groves; we over-run many miles of country, and made numerous prisoners, giving but one sabre wound.
But —

"——I will not tire
With long recital of the rest." [Byron, Mazeppa 20]

It was dark again when we returned to the Illinois. Frank! he was sound asleep!

Currier & Ives c. 1846 via Library of Congress

Critics who say how easily you could have done something else--something better

Final installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 19 (August 1853)

As illustrated in previous Dragooned posts on

• mazes and fancies and fly off
• seraphs fanning air and  
• thou wert and 
• the pursuit of happiness and
• feels like a woman and
• you call that abstraction the real?

the dialogues in Scenes Beyond the Western Border 1851-3 abound in verbal parallels to Mardi (1849), aptly described by John Wenke as "Melville's first book of talk."

Here's another example of parallel phrasing, this time from the first volume of Mardi. The similar constructions ("so/how easily you could have....") occur in very similar dramatic settings, dialogues that record ongoing criticism of literary performance by one of the speakers. In the example from Mardi, Mohi the historian first criticizes Yoomy's poem THE SONG as boring (maybe), then Babbalanja the philosopher criticizes Yoomy's sensitivity to negative criticism:

Yoomy,” said old Mohi with a yawn, “you composed that song, then, did you?” 

“I did,” said Yoomy, placing his turban a little to one side. 

“Then, minstrel, you shall sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs of Nora-Bamma.” 

“Mean you, old man, that my lines, setting forth the luxurious repose to be enjoyed hereafter, are composed with such skill, that the description begets the reality; or would you ironically suggest, that the song is a sleepy thing itself?” 

“An important discrimination,” said Media; “which mean you, Mohi ?” 

“Now, are you not a silly boy,” said Babbalanja, “when from the ambiguity of his speech, you could so easily have derived something flattering, thus to seek to extract unpleasantness from it? Be wise, Yoomy; and hereafter, whenever a remark like that seems equivocal, be sure to wrest commendation from it, though you torture it to the quick.” 

“And most sure am I, that I would ever do so; but often I so incline to a distrust of my powers, that I am far more keenly alive to censure, than to praise; and always deem it the more sincere of the two; and no praise so much elates me, as censure depresses.” --Mardi; And a Voyage Thither vol. 2 chapter 103

In the closing chapter as elsewhere in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," the narrator's prairie friend Frank critiques the narrative so far. Too metaphysical, too abstract. As in Mardi, the criticized writer gets space to explain himself and his motives.

I read to him my day’s experiences. He listened impatiently; and at last broke out—
“You are incorrigible! Do you call that abstraction, the real?”  

C.—Surely it has a mournfully same, and daily reality!”  

F.—“And how easily by a mere turn of expression, you could have given it the interest of a simple narrative!”

C.—“Well, I’m too indolent; for, if I commenced, I might imagine myself bound to keep it up; and I scribble by no rule, and with no object but pastime; and, to compare in some future day the old with the new tone of mind."

--August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures Part II

Stumbling in the dark

"Ay, keep moving is my motto; but speaking of hard students, did my lord ever hear of Midni the ontologist and entomologist?” 

“No.” 

“Then, my lord, you shall hear of him now. Midni was of opinion that day-light was vulgar; good enough for taro-planting and traveling; but wholly unadapted to the sublime ends of study. He toiled by night; from sunset to sunrise poring over the works of the old logicans. Like most philosophers, Midni was an amiable man; but one thing invariably put him out. He read in the woods by glow-worm light; insect in hand, tracing over his pages, line by line. But glow-worms burn not long: and in the midst of some calm intricate thought, at some imminent comma, the insect often expired, and Midni groped for a meaning. Upon such an occasion, ‘Ho, Ho,’ he cried; ‘but for one instant of sun-light to see my way to a period!’ But sun-light there was none; so Midni sprang to his feet, and parchment under arm, raced about among the sloughs and bogs for another glow-worm. Often, making a rapid descent with his turban, he thought he had caged a prize; but nay. Again he tried; yet with no better success. Nevertheless, at last he secured one; but hardly had he read three lines by its light, when out it went. Again and again this occurred. And thus he forever went halting and stumbling through his studies, and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.”  --Melville's Mardi vol. 2 chapter 51

Fruits of "A night-watch in the mountains," the narrator's insight from the March 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

We wander at most in the dark—stumbling on temptations,—walking on the thorns of passions; or in an awful, but obscure light, refracted by the cloudy medium of philosophy.  --also in the later book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army

restates the moral of Babbalanja's story of Midni the midnight philosopher:

And thus he forever went halting and stumbling through his studies, and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.

Likes to write about pleasant, shady talk

Chapter 76 in the second volume of Herman Melville's Mardi (1849) begins:

CHAPTER LXXVI Some Pleasant, Shady Talk In The Groves, Between My Lords Abrazza And Media, Babbalanja, Mohi, And Yoomy

ABRAZZA had a cool retreat—a grove of dates; where we were used to lounge of noons, and mix our converse with the babble of the rills; and mix our punches in goblets chased with grapes. And as ever, King Abrazza was the prince of hosts. 

"Your crown,” he said to Media; and with his own, he hung it on a bough. 

“Be not ceremonious:” and stretched his royal legs upon the turf. 

“Wine!” and his pages poured it out. 

So on the grass we lounged; and King Abrazza, who loved his antique ancestors; and loved old times; and would not talk of moderns;—bade Yoomy sing old songs; bade
Mohi rehearse old histories; bade Babbalanja tell of old ontologies; and commanded all, meanwhile, to drink his old, old wine. 

So, all round we quaffed and quoted.  --Mardi; and a voyage thither v.2

CHAPTER XIII. 

June 27th.

"Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns"—

"How pleasant thus to repose at high noon, of the long hot day, on a bearskin in the deep shadow of our willow; and in full view of the eternal snows, which send this crystal tide with its delightful verdure!"  -- August 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

More of the same:

... If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won't believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert, then, O my dear fellow-mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now so distress us,— --Melville's letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 1851 (Redated by Hershel Parker to early May 1851.)

Published June 1851, so probably written before but not much before the time of Melville's early May 1851 letter to Hawthorne:

We will talk on all subjects, from the shape of a horseshoe to that of the slipper of the last favorite — say the "divine Fanny," from great battles, or Napier's splendid pictures  of such, down to the obscurest point of the squad drill — from buffalo bulls to elfin sprites....

...At that moment I was in a small prairie "island," "reposing from the noontide sultriness," reclining in that choice part of the shadow of a fine oak that the boll casts; had been reading about the hot red rays of the sun not being reflected by the moon; — gazing listlessly through the gently rustling leaves into the sparkling depths of ether, and wondering why the sun himself could not dispense with some of these same red rays in such very hot weather.

" Suffering for country," thus, in the easiest possible attitude, I could not grow angry, and the very idea of talking, then, was heating; so I only thought. --June 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

I. F.  "Allow me to say that you are to-day quite as interesting—as original." 

"Well, shall we 'talk prairie' alone? Shall we discuss whether this beautiful purple flower, the bulbous root of which overflows with balsam, would hear transplanting into a flower garden— a lady's bower! No? --September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures

We will wait here in this shady grove, and let the horses eat the luxuriant wild pea-vine until the wagons come up....

 ... "It may be so; but it is a tempting recreation to recline against the shady side of one's tent, to smoke, and watch the curling cloud ascend with fantastic grace, until lost in the blue ether—to dream dreams too transparent and airy, or too selfish for other's uses."  --September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

In 1852 the Captain's Imaginary Friend begins to sound less like Nathaniel Hawthorne, more like Evert Duyckinck. But the writer's object is the same, intimate talk of literary and philosophical matters in the shade, preferably with drinks and tobacco at hand, in view of "grass and river":

After supper.—The Hunter in the mouth of his tent reclines, with a pipe, upon a glossy bearskin;—before him, a desert expanse of grass and river;—his attention is apparently divided between the moon, suspended over the western hills; the flickering blaze of a small fire, and the curling smoke which he deliberately exhales. His friend stirs a toddy, reading with difficulty a crabbed manuscript....

... I. F. Bravo! I have hopes of you! Kill your meat with a good conscience, and daily labour and excitement over, solid indeed is the hunter's comfort! With grass and bear-skin bed, his toddy, and his soothing pipe—the musical ripple of the river sparkling in the moonbeams— I mean"—  

"Fairly caught! I little thought when I heard you abuse my pathos over the noble beast that had yielded his life to my sport, that mere creature comforts would thus inspire you. Dear critic, and lover of bathos! hast thou found poetry in a full stomach?"

--January 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Bury me by the road, somewhere 
Near spring or brook. Palms plant me there,
And seats with backs to them, all stone:
In peace then go. The years shall run,
And green my grave shall be, and play
The part of host to all that stray
In desert: water, shade, and rest
Their entertainment. So I'll win
Balm to my soul by each poor guest
That solaced leaves the Dead Man's Inn. 

--Clarel 2.15 - The Fountain