Thursday, December 28, 2017

Well, well

From Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852):
"Well, well, well," cried Pierre rapidly and impetuously; "we both knew that before."
"Well, well, well, Pierre," retorted his mother, mockingly.
"It is not well, well, well; but ill, ill, ill, to torture me so, mother; go on, do!"
Dearest Lucy!—well, well;—'twill be a pretty time we'll have this evening; there's the book of Flemish prints—that first we must look over....
"Well, well; go on, go on, aunt; you can't think how interested I am," said little Pierre,
Well, well, I never thought to cast them back into the sordid circulations whence they came. 
"Well, well, wonders is all the go. I thought I had done with wondering when I passed fifty; but I keep wondering still.... Well, well, well, well, well; of all colics, save me from the melloncholics; green melons is the greenest thing!"
"Oh! is that you, sir? well, well, then;" and the man set down the easel.
"Well, well, Isabel," stammeringly replied Pierre; while a mysterious color suffused itself over his whole face, neck, and brow; and involuntarily he started a little back from her self-proffering form.
The locution Well, well occurs 9x in Moby-Dick, for example:
Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all.
From the August 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond The Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army:

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 19 - August 1853
C.—"Well, well,—I wrote what pleased myself; and,—another object I have, which I did not mention: with scarce a book to read, if one did not write, I fancy the beef and pork and beans would in time form a coating round his brain,—turn it all perhaps to thick and solid skull! How is it with you, Frank? Does yours retain a slight softness?"

your everlasting blank

Both instances occur in dialogue about discourse.
“A truce to your everlasting pratings of old Bardianna,” said King Media; “why not speak your own thoughts, Babbalanja: then would your discourse possess more completeness; whereas, its warp and woof are of all sorts, Bardianna, Alla-Malolla, Vavona, and all the writers that ever have written. Speak for yourself, mortal." --Mardi: And a Voyage Thither

"I find you guilty of 'carelessness' certainly; and, by-the-by, you have not a word of our detour over the beautiful plain of Chouteau's Island! Then, indeed, your everlasting 'Memories' seemed strong enough; and what was better, almost tangibly real; I could almost see the five hundred painted and yelling Camanches charging at full speed to surprise your camp. And then an inexperienced youth of twenty years." --August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Thursday, December 21, 2017

pleasantly and gently

via The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Canes, laid on palm trunks, formed the floor. How elastic! In vogue all over Odo, among the chiefs, it imparted such a buoyancy to the person, that to this special cause may be imputed in good part the famous fine spirits of the nobles. 
Hypochondriac! essay the elastic flooring! It shall so pleasantly and gently jolt thee, as to shake up, and pack off the stagnant humors mantling thy pool-like soul. Such was my dwelling.... --Mardi - Taji Retires from the World
In the July 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" the collocation of gently with pleasantly occurs also in the context of a domestic retreat from "the world."


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." 
-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852 ; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, page 332.
Melville's Taji "retires from the world" as announced in heading to chapter 62 in the first volume of Mardi.  The Captain of U. S. Dragoons decides (after self-consciously experimenting with contrastive narrative modes, romantic or "sentimentalist" vs. politician, bureaucrat or "statist") that he would prefer a "friendly" reader in a "poetic mood" over "the shallow or hurried worldling." The sentence expressing this determination also appears without comment as sole epigraph to the 1857 book version:
"I address not then, the shallow or hurried worldling; but the friendly one, who in the calm intervals from worldly cares, grants me the aid of a quiet and thoughtful,—and if it may be,—a poetic mood." --July 1852 - Scenes Beyond the Western Border; epigraph in Scenes and Adventures in the Army.


Also worth a closer look: the narrator's enthusiasm in Mardi for bouncy flooring in the homes of islanders has an interesting parallel in the May 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border. The contexts are similarly domestic, the representations intensely romantic. As Taji extolled the virtues of cane floors, in repeated exclamations, so the dragoon-narrator praises the advantages of Cheyenne lodgings:
How enviable is the Chian! Such is his simple, clean, comfortable house; so cheap, so moveable! When his summer carpet—of green velvet—wears out, how easy to move to another; to select some still pleasanter spring or valley, and enjoy the change of scene and air; free of the curses and the cares entailed by civilization. -- May 1853 - Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army
In Pierre (1852) Melville uses the expression "summer carpet of green" when satirizing romanticized views of poverty:
Go to! God hath deposited cash in the Bank subject to our gentlemanly order; he hath bounteously blessed the world with a summer carpet of green. Begone, Heraclitus! The lamentations of the rain are but to make us our rainbows!  --Pierre; Or, the Ambiguities
And another thing, speaking of similar ways of praising domestic comforts in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" and known writings by Herman Melville. The use of enviable by the dragoon-narrator to describe "the Chian" in his "clean, comfortable," inexpensive and portable home recalls Melville's use of the same adjective in praise of
" those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the lookouts of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas." 
--Moby-Dick, chapter 35 - The Mast-Head
Related post:

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

I have alluded to



Lucy, this note may seem mysterious; but if it shall, I did not mean to make it so; nor do I know that I could have helped it. But the only reason is this, Lucy: the matter which I have alluded to, is of such a nature, that, for the present I stand virtually pledged not to disclose it to any person but those more directly involved in it.
--Herman Melville, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852) .


My tragedy is all true,--and if not quite serious, has, as is proper, its moral;--but rather, as I have alluded to the primitive tragedy....
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border (March 1853); and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Sketches of the Great West in The Washington Union

Newspapers.com now has The Washington Union (October 6, 1845) with "Sketches of the West" by Philip St. George Cooke. Many passages from Cooke's published "Sketches" were later revised and incorporated in the 1851-1853 magazine series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," which in turn became Part II of the 1857 book, Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

Found on Newspapers.com

The text is already transcribed on the Dragooned page for Sketches of the Great West.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

aught save

 

No glimpse of aught, save trees and flowers. -- Mardi: And a Voyage Thither

I was joined, after our frugal supper of dried meat, at the watch-fire of the bivouac, by my friend Frank, who came, I suppose, to while a dull hour; but to give him his due, he brought up some coffee, and we made in tin cups refreshing and strong sleep-dispelling draughts.
"Heaven knows," he said, "why guards should watch in this valley of desolation, with world-forbidding battlements; we might sleep a month, safe from aught save grizzly bears." --September 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 378