The Lady of the Lake in the Hugh Glass narrative and Gansevoort Melville's New York High School

The writer calling himself "Borderer" in late 1830 and early 1831 was soaked in Sir Walter Scott, as John Myers Myers figured out in his book on the Hugh Glass saga. Myers did not look at the other "Borderer" material in Scenes and Adventures in the Army, namely the interpolated tales of Sha-wa-now and Mah-za-pa-mee.  Like the story of Hugh Glass, both were originally published in the St Louis Beacon.  In 1835, both were again published over the signature of P.S.G.C. in the Military and Naval Magazine of the United States.  There, as in the St Louis Beacon, the story of Sha-wah-now is titled A Tale of the Rocky Mountains. Before republication in the Southern Literary Messenger, the Rocky Mountain tale of Sha-wa-now featured this direct quotation from The Lady of the Lake, Canto I:

The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream,
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till echo seem'd an answering blast

Myers did recognize the romanticized duel between the Arikara Indian scout and Hugh Glass (as told by "Borderer," and later the narrator of Scenes and Adventures in the Army) as a dramatic recasting of the combat between Roderick Dhu and Fitz-James in Canto V of The Lady of the Lake.

Four years before the St Louis Beacon printing of the Hugh Glass story by "Borderer," Gansevoort Melville, Herman's older brother, is on record for his association in High School with this same Canto V of Scott's famous poem. Gansevoort was crowned best speaker (See Hershel Parker's biography, V1.36-7) before a packed assembly. For an encore he recited Halleck's Marco Bozzaris. As Parker also recounts in Melville: The Making of the Poet, a popular scene between Roderick Dhu and Fitz-James was subsequently enacted by two older boys--prompted by eleven-year-old Gansevoort. We know about Gansevoort's performance and prize from a December 28, 1826 letter by his naturally proud mother. Below is an excerpt from Maria Gansevoort Melville's letter to her mother Mrs. Peter Gansevoort, as printed in the 1984 article by Henry Murray, "Another Triumph for Maria's Firstborn":

... it was crowded we could with difficulty find a place to stand, after mounting Helen being the shortest of the party on a Desk, we turned to the Forum & saw Master Gansevoort making his Bow, he was the second call'd on to speak, he spoke rather faster than usual being unaccustomed to so large an audience otherwise he spoke well, when he had got through, two young men, tall, & about 20 years of age spoke the humorous piece of Doctor Pangloss & jac Doulass, then succeeded three or four more small boys, when those two tall Gentlemen again appear'd upon the Forum & spoke the Dialogue between Roderick Dhu, & Fitz James.  One thing really had a fine effect, Roderick Dhu Whistles when his clan arise & show themselves on all sides.  The Boys who were seated on a raised platform at the end of the room, at the sound of the Whistle at once arose & the clatter &c. had a fine effect. In the mean while Master Gansevoort was seated on the Forum at the side of Chancellor Kent with the Lady of the Lake in his hand prompting those two tall Gentlemen, one in particular--who could not remember his part, the other spoke well. (Melville Society Extracts No. 58)

‘Have then thy wish!’— He whistled shrill
And he was answered from the hill;
Wild as the scream of the curlew,
From crag to crag the signal flew.
Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets and spears and bended bows
On right, on left, above, below,
Sprung up at once the lurking foe;
From shingles gray their lances start,
The bracken bush sends forth the dart,
The rushes and the willow-wand
Are bristling into axe and brand,
And every tuft of broom gives life
‘To plaided warrior armed for strife.
That whistle garrisoned the glen
At once with full five hundred men,
As if the yawning hill to heaven
A subterranean host had given.

(From The Lady of the Lake, Canto 5, The Combat)

Likely Sources for Part 1 of Scenes and Adventures in the Army held by the library of the Albany Young Men's Association

As listed in the 1837 Catalogue of Books in the Library of the Albany Young Men's Association:

1427 American State Papers, 8 vols.
1266 Buchanan's Sketches of Indians, 2 vols.
1112 British Poets, 12 vols.
1390 British Poets, 11 vols.
1001 CYCLOPAEDIA, Rees' 47 vols.
1584 Dragoon Campaigns
1002 ENCYCLOPAEDIA, Brewster's
115 Flint's Geography
1456 Hall's Travels in America
1152 Indian Wars [possibly Flint's Indian Wars of the West]
IRVING'S WORKS, 12 vols.
130 Sketch Book, 2 vols.
145 Long's Expedition, 2 vols.
1408 Military and Naval Magazine, 3 vols.
1141 Pike's Expedition
1394 Pike's Expedition
1448 Prairie, 2 vols.
1424 Robertson's America, 2 vols.
1559 Subaltern in America
1572 Subaltern's Furlough, 2 vols.
1307 Westward Ho! 2 vols. [James Kirke Paulding]
1389 Young Duke, 2 vols. [Benjamin Disraeli]

"Notes and Reminiscences of an Officer of the Army" by "F. R. D." (for First Regiment Dragoons, and supplanting "Leaves From My Notebook" by "Z.") appeared in the Army and Navy Chronicle, beginning in the June 18, 1840 issue, with most (not all!) of the material later published in 1842-3 as "Scenes and Adventures in the Army, Sketches of Indians, and Life Beyond the Border" in the Southern Literary Messenger.

American State Papers is a major source for this early material which I must investigate further.  Likewise the Military and Naval Magazine. In 1833 the Albany Argus touted "Indian Campaign of 1832," Henry Smith's article on the Black Hawk War.  Smith's article is an important source for the account of the Black Hawk War in Part I of Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

But wait a dang minute.  Can Disraeli's Young Duke really be a source for Scenes and Adventures in the Army?  Uh yeah:

But who shall do justice to the venison, roasted in bits on a stick with alternate pieces of salt pork? First, the pleasing toil of the hunt, and the triumph of success; then the labor-inspired appetite, after the long fast which excitement forgot; then the lively fire at night under majestic forest trees; and oh, climax, the pieces of venison, bitten with nature's weapons—not profaned with cold dull knife—and reeking hot, from the wooden spit! "Oh! let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music." Bah!

See, the line about ortolans was originally in the 1840 narrative of Notes and Reminiscences. But the quote from Disraeli's Young Duke was dropped in the June 1842 Scenes and Adventures, then added back for the 1857 book version (page 33).

Ortolan: The forbidden fruit

Oh I almost forgot:  Herman Melville joined the Albany Young Men's Association at the end of January 1835

"and for two years he enjoyed the use of its reading room and library of a thousand volumes." [Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Melville's Reading: A Supplementary List; and
Pursing Melville, page 39]

Herman's older brother Gansevoort Melville "was already flourishing as a member" of the Albany Young Men's Association, as Hershel Parker observes in Herman Melville: The Making of the Poet.

the natural and moral sublime

UPDATE: Transcribed from the St Louis Beacon, the first known printing of A Tale of the Rocky Mountains.

Below, the beginning of "A Tale of the Rocky Mountains" by "BORDERER," as first printed in the St. Louis Beacon, January 13, 1831. 

Late in the afternoon of a spring day, and many years ago, a solitary Indian might have been seen threading the dangerous intricacies of the ascent of one of the Rocky Mountains.  He followed the deep worn chasm of the mountain brook; for a moment he stood where often the flood of waters bore in awful confusion, rocks, earth, and trees; at the next, with the activity of a chamois hunter, he cleared a dreadful space; a moment's contemplation of the void below bounded by peaks of jutting rock, must have reeled the brain of the most hardy.  That rock has stood the monument of ages and man's passing race; and it threatens his destruction at every step.

But, no!  to the mind that can grasp the comparison of the natural and moral sublime, he appears an object of more grandeur than earth in its most imposing attitudes; that small form containing a soul that soars to comprehend the mechanism of a system of worlds, and places the precipice that threatens his animal life in the low places of its sphere. 

Reprinted, with significant revisions in the
Military and Naval Magazine of the United States 6 (September 1835):

A TALE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

Late in the afternoon of a spring day, and many years ago, a solitary Indian might have been seen toiling at the dangerous ascent of one of the Rocky Mountains.  He followed the deep-worn chasm of the mountain torrent, where often the flood of waters bore in awful confusion, earth, rocks, and trees.  Now, with the nerve of a chamois hunter, he cleared a fearful space: a moment's contemplation of the void below, bounded by the naked jutting rocks, must have reeled the brain of the most hardy.  And now he traces the projecting ledge of the mountain precipice, ('twas never meant for a path;) below him is death; a look must cost his life; above him vertical granite; not a vine or twig to help him to life; his fingers grow to the rocks! his eagle gaze, if a moment averted, were dimmed; that step may save him! it is made! he is safe.

And later interpolated as the romance of "SHA-WAH-NOW" in the magazine series, "Scenes and Adventures in the Army: Sketches of Indians, and Life Beyond the Border" Southern Literary Messenger 8 (July 1842).

Finally incorporated with most of the Southern Literary Messenger material in the military memoir of Philip St George Cooke, Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Linday & Blakiston, 1857).

Notice among other revisions the deletion of any reference to "the natural and moral sublime."  The theme possibly reveals the origins of the tale in a grammar school composition.  Harriet Beecher Stowe recalled writing her first school composition at the age of nine, on the assigned topic, "The Difference between the Natural and Moral Sublime." 

The deleted reference to "the natural and moral sublime" shows that "Borderer" in 1831 was still employing schoolboy (and schoolgirl) themes and modes of expression.

Black Hawk War comes to Melville's Albany

The narrative of the Black Hawk War in all versions of Cooke's "Scenes and Adventures in the Army,"  referenced in our post on "wilderness/wilds then," is a rewrite of primary sources, heavily indebted to the eyewitness account (signed "H.") by Henry Smith, "Indian Campaign of 1832", published in the August 1833 issue of the Military and Naval Magazine of the United States. 

via Monroe Memories and More

As soon as it appeared in print, Smith's first-hand narrative of the Black Hawk War was particularly recommended to readers of the Albany Argus:

"The August number of the Military and Naval Magazine, has just been published, and is for sale by the agent, Mr. Little.  It has reached its sixth number, and of course completed its first volume.  The present No. contains several original articles of interest.  It is an improvement in this respect upon the previous numbers, so far as they have met our observation.  Among these is a narrative of the Indian campaign of 1832, being an account, more or less in detail, of the expedition against the Sauks (as the writer has it) and the Foxes."

Albany Argus, Friday, August 9, 1833

Without knowing the identity of  "H.," Cooke's biographer Otis E. Young nevertheless perceived the essential link between Cooke's telling and Henry Smith's article in the Military and Naval Magazine:

"Although certain statements made in this article are in contradiction to known facts of Cooke's life, the style is very similar to his.  Furthermore, the author witnessed the battle of Bad Axe and reported his experiences with about the same emphases and orientation as Cooke in Scenes and Adventures.  This evidence suggests that "H", if not Cooke himself, either owes or is owed something by Cooke." 

(The West of Philip St. George Cooke, page 58, footnote 16)

The debts in this appropriation all belong to Cooke, or Cooke's ghostwriter:  "is owed" is right.