that extraordinary leg of Mynheer von Clam

Update:
See the famous first chapter of Moby-Dick for a good verbal parallel in the similar use of "a-going":  

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water... 

Melville's narrator Ishmael writes of feet set a-going; our wandering dragoon captain has a jingle set a-going, punning on different senses of "feet."



For the longest time I never got the allusion to "an extraordinary leg" in the May 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border. 

Yet unstained, bright and cheerful, gayly pattering o'er [1857: splashing 'mong] the rocks,—merry river, knowest thou surely where thou rushest in such haste?

Art careless now, in thy morning, of these pleasant green trees' shade?

Well, [1857: Ah!] be happy while thou mayst, round thy mountain parents' feet; smiling thou, and reflecting every hopeful smile of theirs!

Yes, whilst they shelter, dance in sunshine, now thou mayst—

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 a-going, and I could not stop it; my "feet" got into such a measure, that they were running off with me, —and my discretion, (somewhat like an extraordinary leg of which I once heard a clown sing.) Shall it stand?—to be laughed at one of these days?"

F.—"You are wonderfully given to personification; particularly of rivers..."

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

But yesterday I stumbled on the source while reading the London Atlas review of Moby-Dick (First Notice, as transcribed in Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker).  Complaining about Melville's "extravagance," the London reviewer refers to the comic song of Mynheer von Clam:

Mr. Melville is endowed with a fatal facility for the writing of rhapsodies.  Once embarked on a flourishing topic, he knows not when or how to stop. He flies over the pages as Mynheer Von Clam flew over Holland on his steam leg, perfectly powerless to control the impulse which has run away with him, and leaving the dismayed and confounded reader panting far behind. (Contemporary Reviews)

So there we have it.

The context in Scenes Beyond the Western Border is yet another scene of writing.  The narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons presents himself in the act of experimental writing, trying out a "new style" (mimicking Disraeli's claim in Alroy) of metrical prose.  In the act of writing, our narrator is interrupted by his imaginary traveling companion and critic, Frank.  Explaining his lapse into poetry, the narrator claims he could not help himself:  the urge to write verse took control and started "running off," like the "extraordinary leg" of a popular comic song. 

Besides the obvious pun on "feet" as both parts of the body and metrical units, the dialogue here alludes parenthetically to the comic song of the steam-powered "Cork Leg."  Melville's critic in the London Atlas charged that in Moby-Dick, Melville's penchant for rhapsody ran amuck, like Mynheer von Clam "on his steam leg." Now, in reply to criticism of his writing style, the Captain admits his poetic urge took control over his will and ran off "like an extraordinary leg of which I once heard a clown sing."

He walk'd thro' squares and pass'd each shop,
Of speed he went at the very top ;
Each step he took with a bound and a hop,
And he found his leg he could not stop.  (English ballads)  

In March 1834 the Baltimore Gazette advertised a performance at the Baltimore Museum that included the "Cork Leg" routine: "Comic song, Mr. Foster, "The cork leg" (founded upon a celebrated Dutch legend)."

In November 1859, the English comedian Sam Cowell was performing three nights a week at the French Theater in New York,  The NY Herald advertisement promised that, among other routines, Cowell would 

"illustrate the disastrous results obtained by the application of modern machinery to an offending member of the civic fraternity as developed by the adventures of Mynheer Von Clam, while aided by a CORK LEG."

As a child, Cowell had performed in Boston and Philadelphia.  In 1839 Cowell was doing shows in New Orleans.

For the entire ballad of the Cork Leg, check out the 1844 Quaver; or, Songster's Pocket Companion and the online collection of Music Hall Lyrics.

Samuel Houghton Cowell (1820-1864)

example of rewriting H. S. Turner

In Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Cooke's ghostwriter is taking material from multiple eyewitness narratives of the 1845 dragoon expedition to the Rocky Mountains. The previous post observed the evident debt to J. Henry Carleton's journal. 

Looking again at the entry by H. S. Turner, I noticed a bit that would be expropriated in the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border.  Here is the original, from Turner's entry for June 22, 1845:

"Our guide had promised us good grazing at this point, but on arriving at it we found it grazed to the roots by the Buffalo: a large herd moved off as we approached it..."  fold3

Below, the rewrite.  It maintains the pose of an eyewitness report, but really is more of a comment on the original:

"We had to dispute possession with buffalo of the small well-cropped oasis where we encamped..."  (August 1852)

Turner observed the herd of buffalo leaving; the rewrite makes it a contest, a "dispute" between men and beasts for "possession." The term "well-cropped" substitutes for "grazed to the roots" in the original version.  While we're at it, we may as well note, too, how the rewrite takes liberties with the historical facts. While borrowing from primary sources, the ghostwriter on occasion is taking hints without worrying about precisely adhering to the actual chronology or locale of events.  Turner was describing a rest stop for meager grazing, midway along the day's route on June 22nd, 1845.  Turner only reports actually seeing the buffalo herd leaving there, at 11:00 a.m., but the rewrite in Scenes Beyond the Western Border makes the "dispute" happen at the evening camp--of the previous day!

embellished "indomitable hunter" entry for June 22, 1845, compared to plain accounts by fellow officers

To see how extraordinarily elaborate and literary the indomitable hunter passage really is, we probably should compare it to the straightforward reports for the same day by fellow officers and diarists J. Henry Carleton, William B. Franklin, and Henry S. Turner.

Carleton's is the closest to Cooke's.  Indeed, Carleton's narrative, originally published in the New York Spirit of the Times, looks like it might be the main source for Cook's expanded treatment.  Carleton is the only one (besides Cooke) to mention Captain Moore by name, when describing highlights of the previous day:

On the evening of the 21st, a large grizzly bear started up immediately in front of the command.  Captain Moore succeeded in striking it with a charge of buckshot, and chase was immediately given to it by several of the officers.  After an exciting race, the bear gained a small thicket, and finally escaped--though not without making three or four fierce charges from its cover at the horsemen, and scattering them right and left.  The buffalo range was again struck on the 22d., and the flesh of two fine cows was brought into camp by the hunters, after night-fall.
-- J. Henry Carleton, The Prairie Logbooks: Dragoon Campaigns to the Pawnee villages in 1844, and to the Rocky mountains in 1845, ed. Louis Pelzer (The Caxton Club, Chicago, 1943) page 256.

Yes, that's it!

Lieutenant Franklin also wrote about the memorable confrontation with a grizzly bear on the 21st, but gave no information about the buffalo hunt of the following day:

June 22.  To-day we were to leave the Platte and strike for the Sweetwater.  1 1/2 miles from camp we crossed the river and gradually left it.  In about 12 miles we reached the bitter spring where there was some good grass but very bad water.  It was a very hot day and this water almost as nauseous as sea water was delicious to us.  We stopped here a couple of hours, and then went to a spring 13 miles further, where we encamped.

For the first 12 miles the face of the country was comparatively smooth, that is there were no rocks.  But during the last 13 miles I noted limestone of various degrees of hardness, and now and then a granite boulder.  Some of the limestone has numerous impressions of shells in it.  The distance today was 25 miles, and the direction for the first 12 miles, 10 S of W, for the remainder of the distance nearly SW.

We noticed many salt efflorescences during the day's march, accounting well for the bitterness of the water. --William B. Franklin, March to the South Pass, ed. Frank N. Schubert (Office of the Chief of Engineers: Washington, D. C., 1979) page 17.

Like Carleton, Turner described the confrontation with the grizzly bear by the command.  Carleton and Turner agree that the command encountered the grizzly on the 21st of June.  On the next day, buffalo meat was furnished by the designated hunters (not the command that included Cooke's fellow officer, dragoon captain Benjamin D. Moore):
Camp N. 32. June 22. Crossed the river for the last time on the outward march—depth about 3 feet—width about 300 yards. Marched in a N. westerly direction, leaving high & bald ridges on our left; arrived at the “Bitter Spring” about 11 A.M. this spring takes its name from the peculiar saline taste of its water. Our animals however drunk of it freely. Our guide had promised us good grazing at this point, but on arriving at it we found it grazed to the roots by the Buffalo: a large herd moved off as we approached it; having halted an hour to permit our poor animals to feed as they best could, we continued on 13 miles & halted for the night at a spot which promised good & abundant water, but nothing else. The grass usually good is routinely eaten up by Buffalo. So far as our animals are concerned, & our well being just now is very intimately connected with theirs, we have indeed a gloomy prospect just now. Our grazing must improve, or they will scarcely be able to return to Laramie. We hope for much from the valley of the “Sweet-Water,” which we must reach tomorrow. Many Buffalo seen to day. The command has been subsisted for several days by the hunters. Distance 27 miles. Direction N. of W. Weather cool & clear.  "Journal of an Expedition" at fold3
(Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1845 Kearny, SW, K113 page 52) Saw lots of buffalo, hunters come back with buffalo meat--and basically (again) that's it!

Three contemporary accounts of the same day's march, each in its way serious and relatively straightforward.  As you can see, none of the three participants described anything like the fierce pursuit by a "wild huntsman" that is so extravagantly fantasized in the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

Amid the mirage and white dust, and the dizzy glow of reflected light and heat, which nearly turned the brain, I have still in my mind's eye a kind of vision of the indomitable hunter, Capt. M., scudding over far black slopes, which seemed themselves in wavy motion, fiercely pursuing flying buffaloes: it was a rivalry of all the German extravagance of their favorite legend of the wild huntsman. The facts seem simple, but there was an unnatural strangeness, a suffocating, alarming heat in the dazzling plains, and the black hills, that gave a dreamy confusion and doubt to realities. Did then, the strange mirage cheat the senses with apparitions of a desperate hunter, on that wonderful gray horse, pursuing black monsters, far, far and indistinctly into the glowing haze?

After all, we knew it was Ben. Moore,* or the devil! But it had always been said that he would follow a buffalo to the abode—left to that imagination which here seemed realized. 

the indomitable hunter, chasing monsters

In the March 1853 and August 1853 installments of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, we found Philip St George Cooke (more likely, his ghostwriter) preoccupied with language and arguments that had been forcefully employed by critics of Melville's latest book, Pierre (1852).

The year before, the August 1852 featured a similar kind of episode, wherein the writer has oddly and imaginatively expanded the narrative using language employed by critics of Melville's previous book.

Yep, that would be Moby-Dick (1851).

June 22d.—Independence Rock.—Yesterday, we forded and left the Platte, to turn confused masses of mountains with picturesque red-rock precipices, which there begin to wall it in; it is called the Red But[t]es. We passed one spring, with a little grass, about half way of our march of twenty seven miles to another. The last half was the most desolate and wild region we had seen: high plains where there was nothing but clay or sand, and a few stunted, dusty artemisias, interspersed with great rock-hills of dark volcanic appearance. We had to dispute possession with buffalo of the small well-cropped oasis where we encamped, and with another grizzly bear, which we routed out, at dusk, after it had greatly alarmed the horses.

About 5 o'clock, this morning we were in the saddle, anxious—with the famed Sweet Water for our goal—to finish the remaining twenty-five miles of desert. We passed several springs, with a little grass, bog, and some plum bushes; as we neared the river, the country grew more wildly barren; there was a great plain of white sand, and, here and there, of glittering Epsom Salts! Amid the mirage and white dust, and the dizzy glow of reflected light and heat, which nearly turned the brain, I have still in my mind's eye a kind of vision of the indomitable hunter, Capt. M., scudding over far black slopes, which seemed themselves in wavy motion, fiercely pursuing flying buffaloes: it was a rivalry of all the German extravagance of their favorite legend of the wild huntsman. The facts seem simple, but there was an unnatural strangeness, a suffocating, alarming heat in the dazzling plains, and the black hills, that gave a dreamy confusion and doubt to realities. Did then, the strange mirage cheat the senses with apparitions of a desperate hunter, on that wonderful gray horse, pursuing black monsters, far, far and indistinctly into the glowing haze?

After all, we knew it was Ben. Moore,* or the devil! But it had always been said that he would follow a buffalo to the abode—left to that imagination which here seemed realized.

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

Ostensibly Benjamin Moore, the intrepid "Capt. M." is portrayed as an Ahab-like "indomitable hunter."  Weirdly, the writer compares the real buffalo chase to overblown German romance:  "it was a rivalry of all the German extravagance of their favorite legend of the wild huntsman."  Just so did critics complain of Melville's "extravagance" and unduly strong German influences in Moby-Dick.

Harrison Hayford pointed out the critique of German influences most eloquently:

"... Melville's contemporary reviewers right away recognized his German streak.  They recognized it, named it, and deplored its presence in Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre... (Melville's German Streak)

As Hayford notes, Evert Duyckinck likened Ahab to Faust, and parts of Moby-Dick to "Jean Paul's German tales," meaning the romances of Jean-Paul Richter.   On 22 November 1851, the New York Tribune reviewer characterized Ahab's quest as a "wild huntsman's chase" (Contemporary Reviews). 

Literary treatments of the Wild Huntsman legend include Irving's tale of Sleepy Hollow, Scott's poem (from Der wilde Jäger, the ballad by Gottfried August Bürger) and adaptations of the opera Der Freischütz. "The English version of Weber's opera of "Der Freyschutz" was first performed in America in March 1825 (Records of the New York Stage).

"Capt. M." shows off his "extravagance" in the buffalo hunt; likewise the London Atlas explicitly and repeatedly criticized Melville for his "besetting sin of extravagance."

Extravagance is the bane of the book, and the stumbling block of the author.  He allows his fancy not only to run riot, but absolutely to run amuck…. Mr. Melville is endowed with a fatal facility for the writing of rhapsodies.  Once embarked on a flourishing topic, he knows not when or how to stop. He flies over the pages as Mynheer Von Clam flew over Holland on his steam leg, perfectly powerless to control the impulse which has run away with him, and leaving the dismayed and confounded reader panting far behind. 

... And this unbridled extravagance in writing, this listless and profitless dreaming, and maundering with the pen in the hand, is as it were supported and backed by the wildness of conception and semi-supernatural tone of the whole story. (Contemporary Reviews)

Ahab is nothing if not indomitable--as is the White Whale he hunts.  OK then, Ahab is humanly indomitable.  In chapter 33 of Moby-Dick Melville reveals the dramatic aim of Ishmael as the effort "to depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direst swing." 

Capt. M's buffalo chase is described as the pursuit of "black monsters," recalling the frequent characterization in Moby-Dick of whales as monsters:

It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all Sperm Whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted.  (Power Moby-Dick)

Something else about the chase after "flying buffaloes" as a literary quest. The same conceit, writing as the hunting of wild animals, occurs in one of Melville's manuscript poems about the poet Camões:

The world with endless beauty teems,
And thought evokes new worlds of dreams:
Hunt then the flying herds of themes!

looking at flowers, closer

F.— "... Those are beautiful flowers. I would not have believed that the prairie could now furnish such a bunch."

C.—" Their modest beauty is scarcely noticed when seen; but if you are interested enough to assemble them thus, you are rewarded by a charming surprise. And how pleasant a study is each! I have an untiring love for flowers. How perfect and refined a delicacy they possess! Examine these blossoms; how pure and delicate a white! See the different stages of their mysterious vitality: some of the corollas are like fine pearls, and are set in an emerald green; some are just expanding and reveal the beautiful life within; others with full blown petals, which, like fairy shells, still gracefully guard and adorn the stamens now crowned with golden pollen; and their fragrance! what other sense is capable of so refined an enjoyment as it yields!"

F.—" With what strange complacency does the mass of even the 'educated,' ignore the charming mysteries of botany! They may be surprised into admiration of a fine flower; but it is a mere sensation,

— 'the smallest part
Exceeds the narrow visions of their minds.' " [James Thomson, Summer]

C.—" And they lose half the beauty, which, such is their perfection, they reveal to minute examination.

"Did you ever reflect how enthusiastic an admiration for them, is expressed in the language, 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these!' "

F.—" The lily;—the queen of flowers! And yet, all the world admire them! Are they not generally personified?—credited with a language?"

C.—" The language of flowers!—The language of admiration and of love, rather. Charming symbols indeed!—most eloquent offerings!"

F.—" What myriads there are here— 

'born to blush unseen,
And waste their fragrance on the desert air.' " [Thomas Gray]

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 

FIELD ASTERS

Like the stars in commons blue
Peep their namesakes, Asters here,
Wild ones every autumn seen—
Seen of all, arresting few.

Seen indeed.  But who their cheer
Interpret may, or what they mean
When so inscrutably their eyes
Us star-gazers scrutinize.

—Herman Melville
from the posthumously published Weeds and Wildings manuscript

pertinacious pursuit

Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale, continued through day into night, and through night into day, is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery.   

-- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale, Chapter 134 The Chase—Second Day. 

This unerring and deadly shot after so long and pertinacious a pursuit, gave him credit with us all.... 

-- "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" in the Southern Literary Messenger Volume 18 for June 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857 and 1859) page 310