calmness, natural and preternatural

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), Portrait of Ida, the Artist's Wife, 1898.
via SMK Statens Museum for Kunst - National Gallery of Denmark

preternatural
adj.

1. Out of or being beyond the normal course of nature; differing from the natural.
2. Surpassing the normal or usual; extraordinary.
3. Transcending the natural or material order; supernatural.

---

In Melville's Pierre (1852), the "preternatural calmness" of Isabel is a mask for inner turmoil:

The girl sits steadily sewing; neither she nor her two companions speak. Her eyes are mostly upon her work; but now and then a very close observer would notice that she furtively lifts them, and moves them sideways and timidly toward Pierre; and then, still more furtively and timidly toward his lady mother, further off. All the while, her preternatural calmness sometimes seems only made to cover the intensest struggle in her bosom.  --Pierre

When Scenes Beyond the Western Border resumes in March 1853 after a five-month hiatus, the "natural calmness" of Frank becomes the subject of debate. The very naturalness (even during sleep!) is disputed by the narrator, who regards the calm exterior of his imaginary friend as uncanny, extraordinary, beyond the normal or usual:

F.—"And what was there remarkable in my natural calmness?"

C.—"It was never so! There was a brooding desolation around that could penetrate a sleeping soul! --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, March 1853

The above exchange about "natural calmness" was eventually deleted in revision. In the 1857 book version, the narrator's imaginary friend wakes up cranky after a night of bad dreams. The nightmare that was originally associated with "C." as narrator gets transferred to the imaginary friend--now called "Friend" instead of "Frank." So after revision, the roles are reversed.  Now it is the narrator who represents natural calmness when he cheerfully insists, "it was a calm and beautiful night."

The line with "natural calmness" was cut. And "F." for Frank, that was cut, too.

Also deleted, C's report of "brooding desolation." Yow!

"... ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. --Moby-Dick (The Chapel)

To the brooding soul of the now desolate Israel, so strange a sight roused a supernatural suspicion.  --Israel Potter

Melville's "Western spirit" in Israel Potter and elsewhere

 
Melville on Ethan Allen:

"He was frank, bluff, companionable as a pagan, convivial, a Roman, hearty as a harvest. His spirit was essentially Western; and herein is his peculiar Americanism; for the Western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be) the true American one." 
Israel Potter; first published 1854-1855 in Putnam's Magazine.  In installments, like "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," 1851-1853.

Joyce Sparer Adler has thoughtfully explained what Melville meant by "the Western spirit":

"In the context of the whole Ethan Allen section this spirit is a combination of love of freedom, courage in the face of adversity, humor, bold exercise of freedom of speech, readiness to try what has not yet been done, willingness to depart from old values and theologies, and practice of just principles."  War in Melville's Imagination, p84

Let's look for signs of Melville's "Western spirit" in the 1851-1853 series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

Whoops, there's one right there in the title: Beyond the Western Border.  If it was a snake....

He was frank...

"Frank as a bear hunter!" (September 1851)

companionable as a Pagan

"... the race of hermits is extinct, and man requires companionship" (June 1851)

 After significant revisions to the May 1853 installment, Frank becomes "my companion." Yow!

 hearty as a harvest

 "I like a man hearty in everything..." (September 1851)

Now guided by Joyce Adler's language, here we find one single sentence combining "love of freedom" and "bold exercise of freedom of speech" and "willingness to depart from old values and theologies":

"And it is this free desert air alone, that emboldens me in the search, to question the dogmas which society holds so precious."  (June 1852) 

Dogmas!

And how many of Adler's terms for Melville's theme of the "Western spirit" are likewise conveniently compressed in the splendid passage below, from August 1852?

Ah! my good friend, let this wild mountain air have fair play; let us with the desert's freedom joyously flout convention and opinion—upstart usurpers—let us make mocking sport of the prosaic solemnity of ignorant prejudice;—let us shoot popguns at least, against the solid bulwarks where folly and selfishness sit enthroned!

readiness to try what has not yet been done?

"Well give me another trial for something new on my subject." (September 1851)

misanthropic, again

 Found another misanthropic quadruped of Melville's making, this from Pierre (1852): 

"... round and round those still enchanted rocks, hard by their utmost rims, and in among their cunning crevices, the misanthropic hill-scaling goat nibbled his sweetest food...."

The first one, you remember, showed up in Omoo (1847):

"As for the goats, occasionally you come across a black, misanthropic ram, nibbling the scant herbage of some height inaccessible to man, in preference to the sweet grasses of the valley below."  (Omoo)

The explanatory note in the Hendricks House edition of Omoo points out the broader significance of Melville's imagery:

"Here, briefly, in passing, Melville associates the contrast of mountain and valley with the contrasting values of misanthropy and domesticity, independence and conformity, individual and herd, darkness and light, difficulty and ease, etc."  (Hendricks House Omoo, 406)

Got it, independence and conformity, individual and, ha! herd:

"It was the fate of a melancholy buffalo,— whether misused and misanthropic,—shunning the vulgar herd, or exiled, as an old and hardened sinner, to this solitude, to encounter us here...."
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border (June 1852); and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

The theme of misanthropy (like the references to fate, exile, and sin) is unique, not something that any other journalist of the 1845 expedition bothers about exploring or even mentioning.  Engineer William B. Franklin's observation is most succinct:

"One old buffalo bull was killed to-day but he was too old and tough for food."
(March to South Pass, ed. Frank N. Schubert, p9)

Another probable source for the re-write in the June 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" is J. Henry Carleton's entry for June 8, 1845 in a late installment of his "Occidental Reminiscences," first published in the New York Spirit of the Times, March 21, 1846 (pdf file at FultonHistory.com):

As we were marching along to-day, a large buffalo bull happened unexpectedly to find himself between our column and the river.  No sooner had he discovered his situation than he attempted to get by us with a view of escaping to the highlands through the narrow and difficult gorges that here and there led up to them through the bluffs.  One of the officers, who was exceedingly well mounted, gave chase to him, and, when at long distance, gave him a pistol shot as he ran, which dropped him dead upon the sand." 
(Prairie Logbooks, ed. Louis Pelzer, 229)

We are dealing with a writer of a mind to inject the element of misanthropy into an otherwise straightforward tale of encountering and killing a single buffalo bull.

Melville had such a mind, we know for certain by looking at how he re-wrote one of his sources for Israel Potter.  Melville sees this in some biography of John Paul Jones:

"I had yet two enemies to encounter, far more formidable than the Britons, I mean, fire and water."  (Fight between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis)

And writes this, adding the element of misanthropy by generalizing particular "enemies" of John Paul Jones into elemental human-haters:

"But though the Serapis had submitted, there were two misanthropical foes on board the Richard which would not so easily succumb—fire and water."  (Israel Potter)

I am told

Melville habitually borrowed from the writings of others.  In the middle section of White-Jacket (1850), with the frigate Neversink at anchor in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Melville increasingly depended on his source-material, according to Howard P. Vincent:

"More than ever, then, Melville turns to his sources, weaving paragraphs from suggestions in Mercier, Leech, and Nicol."  (The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket, 116)

As I say, this approach for Melville was habitual.  In his first books Typee and Omoo Melville borrowed extensively from published narratives of South Seas travel and adventure by Charles S.Stewart, David Porter, and William Ellis.  Vincent's The Trying Out of Moby-Dick documents Melville's deep debts to whaling narratives by (among others) Beale, Bennett, and Scoresby.  "Benito Cereno" rewrites the eyewitness narrative of Amasa Delano.   Israel Potter, serialized in Putnam's Monthly Magazine before publication in book form, rewrites Trumbull's pamphlet biography, Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter for a start, then appropriates other sources including biographies of  Benjamin Franklin and John Paul Jones.

Examining Melville's borrowings from Leech in White-Jacket, Vincent noticed that the phrase

" 'they told me' is one of Melville's favorite coverings for literary theft."
(The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket, 116)

Variations on this device are "he told me" or "_______ told me" and "I am told" or "I was told."

I find this same device used in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," to introduce otherwise uncredited borrowings from the journals of Henry S. Turner and topographical engineer William B. Franklin.

Turner, for example, reported a sighting of bees, or bee-like insects:

"July 17  A march of 8 miles this morning brought us across 2 more branches of Horse Creek... A strange insect resembling the honey-bee was seen in swarms:  a perpendicular clay bank on the side of the stream had been perforated in innumerable places by them & when discovered were flying about, & running in & out of the holes they had bored in the surface."  (H. S. Turner, 1845 "Journal of an Expedition"; Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1822-1860 at Fold3)

Turner's observation is introduced in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" with a variation on Melville's favored device. 

We passed two bold branches of Horse Creek;  a gentleman told me he saw bees hiving their honey in holes in a clay bank; they are rarely seen so far away from plantations, or from trees.  (May 1853)

 Note too the poetic style employed in the rewrite; instead of "running in and out of the holes" the bees are "hiving their honey in holes."

In similar fashion, two borrowings from William B. Franklin's journal are introduced with the expression,

"I am told."  

Franklin on the Oregon emigrants:

".... those in the rear found the women all crying and the men looking very sad.  Poor people!  they felt that in passing us they broke the last link that bound them to the United States."  (March to South Pass, 22)

The same observation turns up in the September 1852 of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," introduced with the trusty expression "I am told":

"I am told, that by the time our rear passes their companies, toward what they will ever consider their homes, the women generally are seen to weep.  Heaven help them!"  (554)

Here the writer or ghostwriter appears to forget that two pages earlier, the narrator claimed to have witnessed the sight for himself:

I saw a poor woman weeping. The sight of our return! the home! the friends behind! the wilderness before! (552)

Earlier in the series, in the June 1852 installment,  the narrator's "Imaginary Friend" borrows Franklin's comparison of Scott's Bluff to Stirling Castle, which he introduces with "I am told":

"One view of it, I am told, resembles strongly some picture of Sterling Castle."

(379; corrected to Stirling in Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

In his journal of the 1845 March to South Pass, Franklin saw a resemblance between Scott's Bluff and the Scottish fortress, as follows:

"At the point where we left the river the rock bore a great resemblance to the representations of Stirling Castle."  (March to South Pass, ed. Frank N. Schubert, p11)

punctilios

"I was riding near the head of the column, over the bare prairie, when suddenly, within twenty yards, up sprang a grizzly bear!  He ran about eighty paces, threw himself about, and stood some moments, gazing at us with his head high raised.  "Grizzly bear!" was shouted down the column, and gave an impulse to the true hunters, which strongly tested the punctilios of discipline: a half dozen of us spurred to instant pursuit: away we galloped, toward the mountain, at greater than buffalo speed."  (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852)

First known letter from Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne (29 January? 1851):

"Another thing, Mr Hawthorne—Do not think you are coming to any prim nonsensical house—that is nonsensical in the ordinary way.  You wont be much bored with punctilios."(Correspondence, 176)

February 1855:

 "True, he stood upon no punctilios with his jailers..."  (Israel Potter)

Another instance in 1855, this from "Benito Cereno":

As during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had once or twice started at the occasional cymballing of the hatchet-polishers, wondering why such an interruption should be allowed, especially in that part of the ship, and in the ears of an invalid; and, moreover, as the hatchets had anything but an attractive look, and the handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation. The more so, since with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat four armorial supporters and sentries, two of the ominous file. Gingerly enough stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the instant of leaving them behind, like one running the gauntlet, he felt an apprehensive twitch in the calves of his legs.  (Benito Cereno)

quirk of repeating speech

Yow! Here we see how a peculiar habit of Britspeak was cleverly identified in a prairie critique of The False Heir by G.P.R. James, then subsequently exploited by Melville in "Israel Potter" (1854) as a characteristic mannerism in the speeches of King George III:

I[maginary]. F[riend].—"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 in the Southern Literary Messenger Volume 18, January 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

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."

-- "Israel Potter" in Putnam's Monthly Magazine for August, 1854.