Fairy Dance

William Blake
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, c.1786
Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED Photo: Tate

No better installment than May 1853 (written I conjecture here around October 1852) to show the exceptionally high literary style of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," without parallel in narratives of Western travel outside of Washington Irving. You would have to look a long long while to find anything so fantastical and fine as the Dantean fairy dance in this number of the Southern Literary Messenger:

Southern Literary Messenger vol 19 (May 1853) page 313

Among numerous debts to Dante's Paradise, the phrase "grace to loveliness" echoes Canto 8, where in the sphere of Venus, Dante recognizes Beatrice and "the new loveliness / That grac'd my lady" (Cary's translation).  The image of "many white robed fair" is lifted from Paradise, Canto 30, where Dante finds the "fair assemblage" of saints clothed in stoles of snowy white. With similar precision, the charming "smile of one" that lights up the ball and presides over the whole "happy scene" imitates the enchanting smile of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven in Canto 31:

... At their glee
And carol, smiled the Lovely One of heaven,
That joy was in the eyes of all the blest. 
-- Paradise, Cary translation

The writer's close reading of Dante's Paradise is certain.  Besides the debt to Dante, another prompt (hypothetically now) for the Captain's romantic vision might have been the recollection of Melville's Pittsfield neighbor Sarah Morewood as the presiding muse over costume balls and other memorable social events. The just-published book Taghconic by Godfrey Greylock (J. E. A. Smith) had described Sarah M. as the "cunning priestess" behind the music-box incident of September 1851, which—imaginatively transposed to the Rocky Mountains—seems recalled in the Captain's mysterious experience of a "sweet waltz" while lying on a rock.

As related by Hershel Parker in Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) at page 762, Cornelius Mathews called Sarah M. "Fairy Belt."  To the same effect, Smith's original 1852 account of the music-box incident at the "Rolling Rock" or (later) Balanced Rock, Melville's "Memnon Stone", is preceded by this reference to the elfin appearance of Sarah Morewood:

Her gay, fairy-like figure pressed against the rude, grey mass with such mimic might, reminded me of a task assigned, in some elfin tale, to a rebellious hand-maiden of Queen Mab.

... Indeed, indeed there must have been a deal of witchery in the cunning priestess who made that stern old rock breathe such mysterious and enchanting music. I wonder if ever there was anything in that broken champagne bottle which lay at the foot of the rock. When we had clambered with a world of pains on to the top of the rock, we, too, had music—merry and sad — "music at the twilight hour." Then, as the evening shades deepened in the wood, came low spoken words of memory and of longing for those far away.  --Taghconic; Or Letters and Legends about our Summer Home (Boston, 1852) pages 42-43.

 * * *
Minimally revised and corrected, the enchanting vision of the cosmic fairy dance from the May 1853 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" appears in its expected place in the 1857 book version:

O, seductive combination of the graces, the brilliancy, the joys of loveliest life!—that givest grace to loveliness, poetry to motion, and gala gloss to all surroundings—that charmest by music, that expandest all hearts, and exaltest all souls to the power of love—the thronged, the gay, the glittering ball! 

O, soft viol, and tinkling guitar—last echo of old romance!—to this solitude you can bring bright memories! Methinks I see a "high hall," whose lights might shame the day; the many white-robed fair,-the far-reaching couples, floating in that fairy dance,—revolving, like the moon around the sun, in circling circles. 

The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!  

If it be not there,—or if it be clouded, no winter twilight more dismal then, than that glaring ball-room mockery.  -- Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 409-410.

a little rock music

What happened was, Sarah Morewood hid a music box at Balance Rock, astonishing her fellow picnickers--one of whom was Herman Melville. Sarah Morewood, who loved to devise magical entertainments for her friends, is the "cunning priestess" and "wood nymph" of Godfrey Greylock's account in Taghconic; the Romance and Beauty of the Hills, quoted below from the 1879 edition because I like the quote from Comus which the 1852 first edition lacks:

I have since heard the story of the merry hour when " Memnon" was inscribed by a hand which has written many a witty and clever volume. Indeed, indeed there must have been a deal of witchery in the cunning priestess who made that stern old rock breathe such mysterious and enchanting music.

"Can any mortal creature of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment ?" [Milton, Comus lines 244-5]

I should think not. Was it a wood-nymph then with her music box!  Was there ever anything in that broken champagne bottle at the foot of the sphynx ?  And do wood-nymphs drink champagne ?  This grove is very questionable and full of marvels.

When we had clambered with a world of pains on to the top of the rock, we, too, had music — merry and sad — "music at the twilight hour."  Then, as the evening shades deepened in the wood came low spoken words of memory and of longing for those far away.

In Reading Melville's Pierre (LSU Press, 2007) Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker date the episode to the fall of 1851, probably September 26, 1851.

Well OK then.  See what happens to the Captain of U. S. Dragoons, reclining on a rock (with a lake in the background!), in the next-to-last installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 17 (May 1853), 313:

July 25th.—Last night I was moody and sleepless, and so witnessed several sublime and beautiful changes of weather and sky; such as, indeed, many scarcely notice, and few in houses observe,—as in cities and towns they rarely can; and they were accompanied by an incident, as startling as delightful, in my ignorance that there existed in the camp any means to produce it.

The labours of the day, the duties of the evening, all over, sleep had followed, as the labourer's luxury:  lights had gone out; the little fires sunk and paled; sounds gradually died away; the tents gleamed strangely in the moonlit solitude. I would have taken refuge from my thoughts in sleep; but sleep often flies us when most invoked.

At last I wandered forth alone, and ascended the mount.

The moon, not yet full, was high in heaven; the deep shadow of the pines slept on the grassy mountain top; the little lake below brightly mirrored the glittering sky; now and then came deep breaths of air,—like sighs from the gentle heart of Night. Long I reclined motionless upon a rock: I was alone—there was no sight or sound of past or present life—but had no sense of loneliness; for the soul felt not a motive, and the heart seemed dead. Vain were the silent appeals of beauty; —vain even the solemn dirge-notes of the pine forests.

At last I gave a deep, involuntary sigh. Just then, O strange, upon the mountain top! —as if in answer, came, gently stealing on the air, a strain of soft music. This Heaven-bestowed key to all hearts, and to all moods, aroused in me some of that life which silence and solitude so profound had absorbed. It was like an exquisite dream closely following the last weary and oblivious sense.

But soon, the music changed; and, stranger then and there, to a sweet waltz!

Then swiftly awoke Memory, to make it an echo of the Past; and vigilant, prisoned  Hope stole forth trembling, like the moonbeam on the little lake.

Something made the music.  The Captain hints as much in the original magazine version, when he explains his surprise as mainly resulting from his lack of information:

"in my ignorance that there existed in the camp any means to produce it."

Meaning his ignorance that somebody brought a music box?  This important confession of ignorance does not appear in the corresponding passage in the later book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia, 1857).  Wow!  Comparing versions I just realized the significance of another alteration to the text as originally printed in the May 1853 Southern Literary Messenger.  In the original magazine version, the music is "a sweet waltz."  Or rather, the music starts one way then changes "to a sweet waltz."

But why transform the waltz into the vaguer "joyous air" for the book version?  Same reason you cut the reference to some real, tangible "means to produce" the music.  Taken together, both references, to practical "means" of making music, and to the specific type of music produced, "a sweet waltz," evoke the likeliest mechanism for producing waltzes in the wilderness...