As
we saw last time around, our extraordinarily literary Captain of U. S. Dragoons digs wide margins. Now let's look at how the same imagery of book production is immediately extended, in the same opening installment (June 1851), to describe the work of one particular writer, Washington Irving. Irving's fine writing is a river of text "flowing through broad margins" like "a crystal streamlet purling through shady groves." Book margins become banks of a river. This text-as-stream metaphor exploits multiple senses of the word
margin that
Wyn Kelley talked about in her 2012 presentation at MIT, margin as space on a page, as "ground immediately adjacent to a river or body of water; a river bank, a shore, etc. (
OED)," and (especially in view of the series title "Beyond the Western Border") as a physical and metaphysical border or boundary. To illustrate the beautiful and natural fluidity of Irving's prose, the Captain quotes from memory a sentence in
Knickerbocker's History of New York. Here is the passage as it appeared in the first installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border":
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. "And the smooth surface of the Bay presented a polished mirror in which Nature saw herself and smiled." Were I an eastern monarch,—who had stuffed the mouths of poets with sugar and gold—how could I have rewarded such a writer? --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1851
The Captain's admiring quotation from Irving is only slightly off. In
Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York, the temporarily peaceful scene is New York Harbor, pictured during the narrator's stroll on
The Battery:
It was one of those rich autumnal days, which heaven particularly bestows upon the beauteous island of Mannahata and its vicinity—not a floating cloud obscured the azure firmament—the sun, rolling in glorious splendour through his ethereal course, seemed to expand his honest Dutch countenance into an unusual expression of benevolence, as he smiled his evening salutation upon a city, which he delights to visit with his most bounteous beams—the very winds seemed to hold in their breaths in mute attention, lest they should ruffle the tranquillity of the hour—and the waveless bosom of the bay presented a polished mirror, in which nature beheld herself and smiled.—The standard of our city, reserved like a choice handkerchief, for days of gala, hung motionless on the flag staff, which forms the handle to a gigantic churn; and even the tremulous leaves of the poplar and the aspen, ceased to vibrate to the breath of heaven. Every thing seemed to acquiesce in the profound repose of nature. --A History of New York
But getting back to the prairie: the 1857 book version of the tribute to Irving further extends the river metaphor. After revision, Irving's "writings" as they were plainly referred to in the June 1851 text, are now "liquid sentences":
They have spared Irving: his liquid sentences flowing through glittering margins of fairest typography,—to what can we compare them, but to a crystal streamlet purling amid flowery savannas 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. "And the smooth surface of the Bay presented a polished mirror in which Nature saw herself and smiled." Were I an Eastern monarch,—who had stuffed the mouths of poets with sugar and gold—how could I have rewarded such a writer? --Scenes and Adventures in the Army
In other revisions to the June 1851 text, "broad margins" have become "glittering margins"; and the mention of "letter press" has been dropped in favor of "fairest typography." That word
glittering, by the way, is a favorite of Melville's and potentially significant as a handy tool of revision. Melville likes the adjective so much he inserts "glittering" into his paraphrase of Trumbull's pamphlet biography
Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel Potter.
Trumbull's original:
"This proved a very profitable trip, as I very soon disposed of every article at an advance of more than two hundred per cent . . . ." --Life and Remarkable Adventures
Melville's rewrite:
"This Canadian trip proved highly successful. Selling his glittering goods at a great advance . . . ." --Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile
In both versions of the prairie tribute to Irving, the controlling metaphor of Irving's writing as a gently winding river or "streamlet" of words closely echoes the passage in
Redburn (1849) where Melville's narrator Wellingborough describes the sweet singing of his London friend and now shipmate Harry Bolton:
His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person
like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through
the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by
pied and pansied margins.
--Melville's Redburn
In
Redburn, Harry treated Wellingborough to
The Banks of the Blue Moselle.
Yow!
John Bryant, who wrote
the book on The Fluid Text, and invented
the Revision Narrative, and somewhere devotes
a whole chapter to The Example of Irving, should love this one.
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