Multiplying books by hand

via medievalbooks

By making copies in manuscript, the way publishing used to be done in pre-modern times before the printing press. In a dialogue on writing from Melville's Mardi (1849), the philosopher Babbalanja explains to his host King Abrazza how the great ancient writer Lombardo reluctantly "multiplied" copies of his masterpiece the "Koztanza," compelled to publish by the urgent need to feed himself and his family.

BABBALANJA.—Your Highness, even in his calmer critic moods, Lombardo was far from fancying his work. He confesses, that it ever seemed to him but scrawled copy of something within, which, do what he would, he could not completely transfer. "My canvas was small,” said he; “crowded out were hosts of things that came last. But Fate is in it.” And Fate it was, too, your Highness, which forced Lombardo, ere his work was well done, to take it off his easel, and send it to be multiplied. "Oh, that I was not thus spurred!” cried he; but like many another, in its very childhood, this poor child of mine must go out into Mardi, and get bread for its sire.”  

-- Mardi: and a Voyage Thither Vol. 2, Some Pleasant, Shady Talk in the Groves.

In a dialogue on writing from the first installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border (June 1851), the narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons marvels at the incredibly rapid production and mass circulation of popular novels by means of the modern steam-powered printing press. To illustrate the staggering increase in productive capacity enabled by modern technology, he imagines (by way of contrast) English workers in the industrial cities of Birmingham and Manchester trying to manufacture or "multiply" Last of the Barons, the 1843 novel by Edward Bulwer Lytton. At best, copying by hand, the most industrious English factory workers might reproduce "one week's supply" of books in manuscript.

Could all the private wealth of England,— could all the hands of Birmingham and Manchester multiply the "Last of the Barons," for instance as in the days of the polished and literary Greeks,—in manuscript—to equal one week's supply! Published in London—and in two months a wanderer in the Rocky Mountains will pass the sultry noon, poring over its pages! Oh! Steam! —

June 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; also in Part II of Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia, 1857) page 233.

How Melvillean is the narrator's conceit of factory workers or "hands" (children mostly, in those days) being tasked with publishing literary works by making handwritten copies? Very. 

Detail, 1850 letter from Herman Melville - NYPL Digital Collections

Can you send me about fifty fast-writing youths, with an easy style and not averse to polishing their labors? If you can, I wish you would, because since I have been here I have planned about that number of future works & cant find enough time to think about them separately.  -- Herman Melville, December 1850 letter to Evert Duyckinck.

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "1850-1851" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1850 - 1851. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/af5f4110-1793-0133-6506-58d385a7bbd

Transcribed in The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman (Yale University Press, 1960).  https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.84865/page/n155/mode/2up

Katie McGettigan calls this 1850 conceit "Melville's imagined fiction factory." Introducing her 2017 book on Melville's "aesthetic engagement with the material text," McGettigan points out that "Melville figures himself as a manufacturer" and thus conveys "a sense of dash and daring, a desire for the speed and scope that textual production on an industrial scale would offer, and a reveling in the superfluity of production."  Herman Melville: Modernity and the Material Text (University of New Hampshire Press, 2017) page 17.

Just six months after the "imagined fiction factory" in Melville's correspondence, Scenes Beyond the Western Border premiered in the June 1851 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger with more such "reveling in the superfluity of production":

... Published in London—and in two months a wanderer in the Rocky Mountains will pass the sultry noon, poring over its pages! Oh! Steam! 

Upon my word

I. F. "Well done! But I can make more of it; did you not hear the sequel?"

C. "Upon my word I have not; it is rather soon [1857/9: "what can you mean?"]."
--April 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army p288

F.—"Hillo! what are you about? Writing in tune with the merry cotton-wood leaves? You will have to frankly confess you have invented a new style."

C.—"Upon my word I was becoming as curious as yourself; a first unfortunate line set the jingle agoing, and I could not stop it...." 
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Image Credit: Leslieville History

Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam.  --Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

"Thou art a man of God, sir, I believe."
"I? I? I? upon my word, Mr. Glendinning!"  --Pierre, or, The Ambiguities

"I think he is a little deranged," said I, sadly. 

"Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel-like, them forgers.

--Bartleby the Scrivener

"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in understanding human nature—as if truth was ever got at by libel. My young friend, if to know human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and go north to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood."

"Upon my word, I—I—"  --The Confidence-Man

On being sung/talked to sleep by a traveling companion

The Lotus Eaters by Thomas Moran, 1895
Image Credit: Letters of Transit

Reading in Mardi about the reception of Yoomy's song THE SONG, I noticed how Yoomy's critic Mohi craves being sung to sleep, a state of existence that Yoomy regards as "luxurious":

“Then, minstrel, you shall sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs of Nora-Bamma.” 

“Mean you, old man, that my lines, setting forth the luxurious repose to be enjoyed hereafter, are composed with such skill, that the description begets the reality; or would you ironically suggest, that the song is a sleepy thing itself?” --Mardi; And a Voyage Thither vol. 2 chapter 103

Interesting parallels to Melville's notion of eternal sleep as a "luxurious" state of repose and the idea of being put to sleep by one's traveling companion may be found in a revision to the original dialogue in the March 1853 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

Original magazine version:

But now, "the morn is up again,"— and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted through a turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped for breakfast under some cotton woods,— and in their shade I am scribbling with a
pencil—

F.—" Yes, and fine work you are making of it! The day should commence with the morning, and the brighter the better; not with the nightmare of a sleeper, who should have watched." --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

1857 revision:

July 7th.—But now, "the morn is up again" [Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage], and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted over the turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped and breakfasted under some cotton-woods; and in their shade my pipe and pencil are struggling for exclusive attention;—but pipe has it!—for here comes my sympathetic companion of the night, looking as discontented as if he had not been luxuriously talked to sleep.

"What's the matter?" 

Friend.—O, confound the bivouac! the dew or frost has got into my joints.

--Scenes and Adventures in the Army 

Although added later in revision of the 1851-3 magazine series, the narrator's sense that his friend ("Frank" in the original magazine version) had been talked to sleep accords perfectly with the end of the previous installment. In the September 1852 number, Frank had asked for a plain tale of military adventure. The narrator obliged with a story of the Florida Seminole wars that put Frank to sleep.

When I reached the wood, I found they had charged through a camp, whence every soul fled to a near swamp: while they were entangled there, I ascertained that these fugitives were Seminoles of an earlier migration; and soon drew out my skirmishers—not without some captures. Our spirits were all up; and returning to the prairie, I made other combinations—managed by signals—armed its hills and groves; we over-run many miles of country, and made numerous prisoners, giving but one sabre wound.
But —

"——I will not tire
With long recital of the rest." [Byron, Mazeppa 20]

It was dark again when we returned to the Illinois. Frank! he was sound asleep!

Currier & Ives c. 1846 via Library of Congress

Critics who say how easily you could have done something else--something better

Final installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 19 (August 1853)

As illustrated in previous Dragooned posts on

• mazes and fancies and fly off
• seraphs fanning air and  
• thou wert and 
• the pursuit of happiness and
• feels like a woman and
• you call that abstraction the real?

the dialogues in Scenes Beyond the Western Border 1851-3 abound in verbal parallels to Mardi (1849), aptly described by John Wenke as "Melville's first book of talk."

Here's another example of parallel phrasing, this time from the first volume of Mardi. The similar constructions ("so/how easily you could have....") occur in very similar dramatic settings, dialogues that record ongoing criticism of literary performance by one of the speakers. In the example from Mardi, Mohi the historian first criticizes Yoomy's poem THE SONG as boring (maybe), then Babbalanja the philosopher criticizes Yoomy's sensitivity to negative criticism:

Yoomy,” said old Mohi with a yawn, “you composed that song, then, did you?” 

“I did,” said Yoomy, placing his turban a little to one side. 

“Then, minstrel, you shall sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs of Nora-Bamma.” 

“Mean you, old man, that my lines, setting forth the luxurious repose to be enjoyed hereafter, are composed with such skill, that the description begets the reality; or would you ironically suggest, that the song is a sleepy thing itself?” 

“An important discrimination,” said Media; “which mean you, Mohi ?” 

“Now, are you not a silly boy,” said Babbalanja, “when from the ambiguity of his speech, you could so easily have derived something flattering, thus to seek to extract unpleasantness from it? Be wise, Yoomy; and hereafter, whenever a remark like that seems equivocal, be sure to wrest commendation from it, though you torture it to the quick.” 

“And most sure am I, that I would ever do so; but often I so incline to a distrust of my powers, that I am far more keenly alive to censure, than to praise; and always deem it the more sincere of the two; and no praise so much elates me, as censure depresses.” --Mardi; And a Voyage Thither vol. 2 chapter 103

In the closing chapter as elsewhere in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," the narrator's prairie friend Frank critiques the narrative so far. Too metaphysical, too abstract. As in Mardi, the criticized writer gets space to explain himself and his motives.

I read to him my day’s experiences. He listened impatiently; and at last broke out—
“You are incorrigible! Do you call that abstraction, the real?”  

C.—Surely it has a mournfully same, and daily reality!”  

F.—“And how easily by a mere turn of expression, you could have given it the interest of a simple narrative!”

C.—“Well, I’m too indolent; for, if I commenced, I might imagine myself bound to keep it up; and I scribble by no rule, and with no object but pastime; and, to compare in some future day the old with the new tone of mind."

--August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures Part II

Stumbling in the dark

"Ay, keep moving is my motto; but speaking of hard students, did my lord ever hear of Midni the ontologist and entomologist?” 

“No.” 

“Then, my lord, you shall hear of him now. Midni was of opinion that day-light was vulgar; good enough for taro-planting and traveling; but wholly unadapted to the sublime ends of study. He toiled by night; from sunset to sunrise poring over the works of the old logicans. Like most philosophers, Midni was an amiable man; but one thing invariably put him out. He read in the woods by glow-worm light; insect in hand, tracing over his pages, line by line. But glow-worms burn not long: and in the midst of some calm intricate thought, at some imminent comma, the insect often expired, and Midni groped for a meaning. Upon such an occasion, ‘Ho, Ho,’ he cried; ‘but for one instant of sun-light to see my way to a period!’ But sun-light there was none; so Midni sprang to his feet, and parchment under arm, raced about among the sloughs and bogs for another glow-worm. Often, making a rapid descent with his turban, he thought he had caged a prize; but nay. Again he tried; yet with no better success. Nevertheless, at last he secured one; but hardly had he read three lines by its light, when out it went. Again and again this occurred. And thus he forever went halting and stumbling through his studies, and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.”  --Melville's Mardi vol. 2 chapter 51

Fruits of "A night-watch in the mountains," the narrator's insight from the March 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

We wander at most in the dark—stumbling on temptations,—walking on the thorns of passions; or in an awful, but obscure light, refracted by the cloudy medium of philosophy.  --also in the later book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army

restates the moral of Babbalanja's story of Midni the midnight philosopher:

And thus he forever went halting and stumbling through his studies, and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.

Poetically contracted 'twere, appears in philosophical dialogue then disappears in revision

Southern Literary Messenger Volume 18 - August 1852

This handy little contraction 'twere (= it were) simply illustrates, in one word, the poetical flavor and aims of Scenes Beyond the Western Border. "C." is the Captain of U. S. Dragoons; "F." is Frank, his imaginary friend:

F. " At last you have struck a chord that answers as to the touch of truth! And as for love, I know none better than that of the she-bear for her cub; and that lasts, and is returned, just so long as circumstance and interest bind."

C. "O! my friend! Is there not then a pure soul-love, a deathless friendship, "passing the love of women," which all life's trials and the world's baseness cannot soil or sap? If that be truth, 'twere better never to look into her Medusa face! (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852)

Parallels in known writings by Herman Melville:

—Doth not the world know me for thy wife?—She shall not come! 'Twere a foul blot on thee and me. --Melville's Pierre, 1852

"Oh fettered sons of fettered mothers, conceived and born in manacles," cried Yoomy; "dragging them through life; and falling with them, clanking in the grave:—oh, beings as ourselves, how my stiff arm shivers to avenge you! 'Twere absolution for the matricide, to strike one rivet from your chains. My heart outswells its home!"  --Mardi, They Visit the Extreme South of Vivenza

Melville's Mardi also exhibits the rhetorical construction "If that be . . ." which, as in the example above from Scenes Beyond the Western Border, occurs in the context of a philosophical dialogue:

"Well, Oro is every where. What now?"

"Then, if that be absolutely so, Oro is not merely a universal on-looker, but occupies and fills all space; and no vacancy is left for any being, or any thing but Oro. Hence, Oro is in all things, and himself is all things—the time-old creed.  --Mardi, Babbalanja Discourses in the Dark

The contraction 'twere was deleted in revision of the dialogue for the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army. The change eliminates repetition in the original wording: in the revised version, the subjunctive were in "'twere" replaces be, the present tense subjunctive form that appeared in the original introductory clause "If that be [valid]. . . ."

"If that were truth, better never to look into her Medusa face; better to cherish illusion: blind credulity would be heroism! ay,—and policy,—like that of the great Cortez, who burnt the proofs of a conspiracy, rather than foster damning doubt."

For earlier posts at Dragooned on this earnest and intensely suggestive prairie dialogue from the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, check out

• David and Jonathan on the Prairie 
• Truth as Medusa 
• from enthusiasm to illusion
• More on Cortez and enthusiasm

What I said before, that was all introduction . . .

Chief Coacoochee or Wild Cat
from Joshua R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida (1858).

From the September 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

"Then, of course, we marched back to the river bank; and lay down in our cloaks, supperless. But this is all introduction; I have tired you before the day is begun!" 

F. "'No, it is not very late; I was rather amused at your account of those spoiled Seminoles. . . ."

"F." in the dialogue above stands for Frank, the Captain's imaginary friend. (Altered in the 1857 book version to Friend.) From August 1852 through the end of the series in August 1853, these obviously invented prairie dialogues are typographically represented as conversations between "C." and "F."

The example below is from the start of a new chapter in Melville's The Confidence-Man renewing dialogue between, as we eventually learn, "Frank Goodman" and "Charlie Noble." Uh, that would be F. and C. As in the 1852 example above, the C. character is the one now telling the story, the one who speaks of what came before (here, a whole chapter and more) as merely an elaborate "introduction":

"Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus far said was but the introduction, the judge, who, like you, was a great smoker, would insist upon all the company taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one himself, rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice, say— 'Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John Moredock;'. . . .

The reference by Frank #1 to "spoiled Seminoles" I take to be deeply ironic, the flip-side of Melville's featured charity, the "Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles."

For more on the Seminole wars in The Confidence-Man, check out the Melville chapter "Writing and Silence" in Removals by Lucy Maddox.

To horse!

". . . General COOKE’s experience in campaigning on the frontier fitted him, in conjunction with his studies of the cavalry of Europe, as the most accomplished conductor of a march that the service has ever produced. His interest in the command while marching never relaxed for a moment. . . . No officer or trooper was permitted to mount till “To horse!” was sounded, and woe to the cavalryman who continued mounted when the command was out of the saddle. The modern cavalryman may sneer at this attention to details, but I feel assured that the officer who keeps his command in good condition by careful attention to what may be called trifles, is of more service to his country in time of war than are some men who win battles."

--Wesley Merritt, Life and Services of General Philip St. George Cooke in the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association for June 1895, page 86.

And yet, in this prairie dialogue from the March 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border we find the Captain pointedly ignoring the bugle call "To horse." He delays responding, more interested in Frank's reply to the urgent question, "Is any thing so beautiful as unbounded faith?" Frank used to be called "I. F." which stands for Imaginary Friend.

F.—"Now, listen to the song of that bird; it will soothe your nerves."

C.—"Nerves! It is medicine to the mind!—it comes like a message of love!"

F.—"Nay, there, we have agreed to disagree."

C.—"Thou pitiable exempt from love's misery, thou believest in beauty?"

F.—"Yes, thou unintelligible lover of antithesis, (not to say plagiarism.)"

C.—"Is any thing so beautiful as unbounded faith?"

F.—"Listen! that's 'to horse.'"

C.—"Answer me then!"

F.—"Pshaw !—Of course it's beautiful; or rather, sublime."

C.—"It is the very attribute of human love!"

July 8th.—Those who lack faith that the above was dreamed, spoken and scribbled, as described, lack, too, experience of the human mind, and prairie or desert influences and feelings.

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, March 1853 and (revised)
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

". . . the cavalry captains in Perseus, who cried, “To horse!” when waked by their Last Trump sounding to the charge . . . . " Mardi: And a Voyage Thither

Mardi-style dialogue in Scenes Beyond the Western Border

The astounding prairie dialogues of the Captain and his Imaginary Friend have no counterpart in anything else attributed to Cooke.


April 1852:

C.  "Amigo Mio!  Didn't you desert me on the eve of a snow storm, like many another friend of so honest mouthing!  And is a touch of poetry a bad companion in difficulty and trial?  Never a bit; it was the boon of a God — Wisdom was ever feminine."

I. F.  "Phew!  The fit is on!  Sorry I said a word! I supposed frost and starved horses—the sight of poor women to-day trudging the weary road —the driving poor beef instead of the spirit striving chase, would have tempered you to the philosophy of a very materialist, (male or female.")  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, April 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

January 1852:

 ... "I conceived hopes of you, that the poetic spirit was layed; and when at supper to-night you ate so heartily of the elk-steak, I little thought you had been indulging again in such pathetic" —

"Pshaw! it serves for a gilding to Life's bitter pill! The delicious supper should have mended your humour: for I stake my reputation on it— as 'guide, surgeon and hunter'"—

Imaginary Friend. "And butcher" —

—" That the flesh, cooked, as it was, with a little pork, cannot be distinguished from that of the fattest buffalo cow that ever surrendered tongue and marrow-bones to hungry hunter.

I. F. Bravo! I have hopes of you! Kill your meat with a good conscience, and daily labour and excitement over, solid indeed is the hunter's comfort!...
--January 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

But Mardi abounds in just this kind of talk. In the examples below, see in particular how Melville similarly deployed references to another speaker's "fit"; and the optimistic turn of phrase, "I have hopes..." In Mardi as in Scenes Beyond the Western Border, the "fit" is alleged behavior of the traveling philosopher, while the line "I have hopes" is said by a realist.

... The universe is all of one mind. Though my twin-brother sware to me, by the blazing sun in heaven at noon-day, that Oro is not; yet would he belie the thing he intended to express. And who lives that blasphemes? What jargon of human sounds so puissant as to insult the unutterable majesty divine? Is Oro's honor in the keeping of Mardi? — Oro's conscience in man's hands? Where our warrant, with Oro's sign- manual, to justify the killing, burning, and destroying, or far worse, the social persecutions we institute in his behalf? Ah! how shall these self-assumed attorneys and vicegerents be astounded, when they shall see all heaven peopled with heretics and heathens, and all hell nodding over with miters! Ah! let us Mardians quit this insanity. Let us be content with the theology in the grass and the flower, in seed-time and harvest. Be it enough for us to know that Oro indubitably is. My lord! my lord! sick with the spectacle of the madness of men, and broken with spontaneous doubts, I sometimes see but two things in all Mardi to believe:—that I myself exist, and that I can most happily, or least miserably exist, by the practice of righteousness. All else is in the clouds; and naught else may I learn, till the firmament be split from horizon to horizon. Yet, alas! too often do I swing from these moorings." 

"Alas! his fit is coming upon him again," whispered Yoomy. 

"Why, Babbalanja," said Media, "I almost pity you. You are too warm, too warm. Why fever your soul with these things? .... (Mardi, Babbalanja Discourses in the Dark)

"Profane jester! Would'st thou insult me with thy torn-foolery? Begone—all of ye! tramp! pack! I say: away with ye!" and into the woods Doxodox himself disappeared. 

"Bravely done, Babbalanja!" cried Media. "You turned the corner to admiration." 

"I have hopes of our Philosopher yet," said Mohi. 

"Outrageous impostor! fool, dotard, oaf! Did he think to bejuggle me with his preposterous gibberish? And is this shallow phraseman the renowned Doxodox whom I have been taught so highly to reverence? Alas, alas—Odonphi there is none!" 

"His fit again," sighed Yoomy.  (Mardi, They Visit One Doxodox)

sunsets in poetry and prose, and prose-poetry

Oh my! So much to ponder in the June 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border. After several fascinating exchanges, like this one, the final dialogue ends with a poem.  When our narrator the Captain humorously contrasts his own trial verses with the tedious account of a beautiful sunset by his "prosaic" Imaginary Friend (!!!), he is referring back to this earlier description: 

"I was as much struck by the sunset, or rather with the strangeness of its apparent renewal after almost darkness, which the clouds must have occasioned, when they broke away—but it was at the North—what a startling but calm beauty and splendour of colouring appeared; and how long it lasted!"

Notice the odd insistence on calmness,"startling but calm." Some other time I will have to check and see how often the critical Friend advocates or is associated with "calm." For now, here is the poetic tribute to sunset from Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

My old friend has been patient to-night; but I trembled lest he should discover the verses, at which his coming surprised me! And with all his prosaic affectation, he had nearly forestalled them by his tribute to the close of this day, which indeed might, all together, have inspired a buffalo. And if so afraid of his ridicule, how shall I venture to record them? Well, three verses may be overlooked, as it is a first offence.

The sun set in clouds ;—but this glorious day
Parts not in gloom; the thick veil is riven—
And river and sky in lovely array,
Are radiant now with the light of heaven.

Like an aurora, or the flashing trace
Of an angel's flight, to the utmost north
The glory shines: unwilling to deface
The Beautiful, Night hovers o'er the earth.

Gently the chamelion colors fade,—
Slowly ascending to the zenith's height:—
'Till lingering darkness buries all in shade,
And light and beauty bid the world good night.

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, June 1852; and Scenes and Adventures) 

A few more in the same vein:

West, West! West, West! ... Hive of all sunsets! ...

... From dawn till eve, the bright, bright days sped on, chased by the gloomy nights; and, in glory dying, lent their luster to the starry skies. So, long the radiant dolphins fly before the sable sharks but seized, and torn in flames — die, burning:— their last splendor left, in sparkling scales that float along the sea. (Mardi)

"...a bug like the sparkle of a glorious sunset" (The Apple-Tree Table)

"A glorious, softly glorious, and most gracious evening, which seemed plainly a tongue to all humanity, saying: I go down in beauty to rise in joy; Love reigns throughout all worlds that sunsets visit..." (Pierre, 1852)

down on the philosophy of Human Destiny

Look to the right and you will see links to monthly installments of the magazine series Scenes Beyond the Western Border.  Taken together the series forms part two of the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army.  Many fine previous commentators (Hamilton Gardner, Otis E Young) on the book did not know about earlier printings of the same material in newspapers and magazines including the Southern Literary Messenger.  The late date of the book mostly reflects the difficulties Lt. Colonel Cooke had with getting the thing published.  Seeing the magazine installments month-by-month more precisely and usefully situates the writing, especially the freewheeling prairie dialogues between the narrator and his imaginary friend, in 1851-1853.

Besides all the verbal and thematic correspondences shown relentlessly on this blog, the chronology of publication dates matches up surprisingly well to known milestones and moods of Herman Melville during the same period.

The series begins in June 1851, with the narrator sounding cocky and confident like Melville did, about to wrap up Moby-Dick.  Looking to make a friend of one ideal reader, the "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" even talks like Melville to Hawthorne, promising to do all the work of socializing.  Early on, the chatty survey of books and ideas covers the subjects discussed by Melville and Hawthorne, who named some in his journal entry for August 2, 1851:

“time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters.”  (quoted in Hershel Parker's biography, V2.8)

Or in another view, the early installments of Scenes Beyond the Western Border effectively flesh out "A Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn," the book Melville and Hawthorne reportedly planned after Thoreau, to memorialize their conversations.

The mood shifts in December 1851, as the imaginary friend starts to sound less like idealized Hawthorne and more like Melville's critical friend Evert Duyckinck:

 ... as your old fashioned friend, I feel interested in your surface wanderings; but let your double-refined poetry and romance go 'to the D—.'" (Scenes Beyond the Western Border)

The amazingly self-aware critique of poetry and romance continues for the rest of the series.  References to motherhood and nursing infants occur only after the birth of Melville's son Stanwix in October 1851.  The bizarre and inappropriate if not inexplicable rant on foreign books and international copyright in September 1852 follows Melville's discouraging correspondence in March-April 1852 with Richard Bentley, his London publisher.  Bentley had based his low estimation of Pierre on copyright concerns and lousy sales of previous works.  Copyright provided editorial grist for New York newspapers, as Parker shows in columns that must have caught Melville's attention (Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative 402-7).  The Harpers and New York Times promoted Dickens over American authors while Greeley and the Tribune defended them and promoted international copyright.

In September 1852, the Captain of U. S. Dragoons (ostensibly writing in July 1845) seems oddly, personally immersed in these New York newspaper wars of spring 1852, complaining bitterly about "cockney condescension" abroad and "foreign-fashion loving public taste" at home:

And then the infernal trash—much of it from the stews of Paris and London—utterly undersells us, to the almost total suppression of native labour; and to the robbery too of the best foreign authors, whose works would command a copyright.

So much for the fourth of July,—and a dry one!  (September 1852) 

The March 1853 episode of the grizzly bear cub, presented as a mock tragedy, wittily twists negative reviews of Melville's Pierre.  In August 1853, the concluding number, in dialogue between the narrator and his imaginary friend, (named Frank since August 1852) incorporates key terms deployed by Evert and George Duyckinck in their review of Pierre for the New York Literary World.

OK, I said all that to say this, on the subject of Human Destiny in Scenes Beyond the Western Border.  Now then, the matter of 1843 is concluded in January 1852.  After two months off, the series resumes in April 1852 with a new subject, the matter of the 1845 dragoon expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

Having of necessity dropped the source material in Cooke's 1843 Santa Fe Journal, the writer or ghostwriter confronting new matter of 1845 needed new sources.  He found the first one in
Oregon, Ho!, first printed over the signature of "St George" in the Washington National Intelligencer, July 15, 1845. 

Examining the revisions to Oregon, Ho! in April 1852, we find the writer now cynically regarding the Oregon emigrants as "unconscious workers of National Human Destiny."  Our narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons views westward expansion as a second fall, a comparison that Melville saved for Clarel.

They scorn all royal paper claims to this virgin world of ours! The best diplomatists of us all, they would conquer the land as easily as, — Adam lost Paradise.
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, April 1852; and  Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

 Whatever happen in the end, 
Be sure 'twill yield to one and all
New confirmation of the fall
Of Adam. Sequel may ensue,
Indeed, whose germs one now may view:
Myriads playing pygmy parts-- 
Debased into equality:
In glut of all material arts
A civic barbarism may be:
Man disennobled--brutalized
By popular science--Atheized 
Into a smatterer " (Clarel 4.21)

The fixation with Human Destiny persists into the June 1852 number--possibly indicating a cluster of 1852 installments, April-May-June, apparently composed and submitted together.  In late January and February 1852, Orville Dewey had repeated his Lowell lectures on the Problem of Human Destiny at the Church of the Messiah in New York City.  Melville wrote a dig at Human Destiny lecturers into book 17 of Pierre, then the Captain of U.S. Dragoons railed at "demagogues and infidels" who wowed crowds with "licentious speculations on human destiny":

C.  "But even science is at fault—philosophy at a discount. The public mind is occupied with the theorism of demagogues and infidels, who, abandoning themselves to licentious speculations on human destiny, attract multitudes of fanatical followers, whose minds they bewilder, and whose morals they debase." (June 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

The celebrated Rev. Orville Dewey, a demagogue and infidel?

What's more, a licentious infidel. Debasing the masses with marketable science or "philosophy at a discount."

Who talks like that?  Melville's Ungar the self-exiled soldier, for one, denouncing "popular science" in the lines from Clarel quoted above.  Also Babbalanja in Mardi, musing on the popularity of theorists.  And Ahab, contemplating the whale's head that has voicelessly witnessed enough to "make an infidel of Abraham."

And Melville as Pierre's biographer who disparages "infidel levities" and "infidel-minded" knaves.

Curiously, another bit from one of Dewey's Manhattan lectures on Human Destiny also made its way into the same June 1852 installment with the denunciation of Human Destiny demagogues.  As reported in the New York Daily Tribune for Thursday, February 5, 1852, Dewey's third NYC lecture at the Church of the Messiah considered laughter as a unique feature of "human organization, regarded in its connection with the formation of character and the development of mind":

Another important element in his training to higher ends is the faculty of laughter.  The animals are not endowed with this power, unless the grinning of monkeys is an exception.  This is not merely an expression of the sense of the ludicrous.  Laughter is the symbol of a contented mind, of a genial fellowship, of a comfortable sense of satisfaction, and tends to unite the scattered elements of society in a common feeling of fraternity.  Its influence on health is not to be overlooked.  An explosion of laughter is an excellent aid to digestion.  Superior to old wine, or old cheese, or other celebrated peptic persuaders.

In the June 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, one of the prairie dialogues makes use of Dewey's theme, as follows:

C.   "....Strange, that laughter, man's lowest attribute, is distinctive; while the smile, which seems borrowed from Heaven, and which can confer rapturous joy, if not happiness, is shared, I think, in a slight degree by brutes."   

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger, June 1852); and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Melville took up the same theme in The Confidence-Man, riffing ironically on what Orville Dewey had said in praise of laughter, in those widely beloved Lowell lectures on Human Destiny:

Humor is, in fact, so blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm—nearly all men agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else—and in its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world, that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man capable of a good loud laugh—seem how he may in other things—can hardly be a heartless scamp."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some mason's discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and curled up about the toe like a bassoon. "Look—ha, ha, ha!"

"I see," said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation, but of a kind expressing an eye to the grotesque, without blindness to what in this case accompanied it, "I see; and the way in which it moves you, Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I was speaking of. Indeed, had you intended this effect, it could not have been more so. For who that heard that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a man may smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?"

"Ha, ha, ha!—no no, no no."

trees over flowing waters, dramatized in dialogue

 

Yet unstained, bright and cheerful, gayly pattering  o'er  [1857: splashing 'mong] the rocks,—merry river, knowest thou, surely, where thou rushest in such haste?

Art careless now, in thy morning, of these pleasant green trees' shade?

Well, [1857: Ah!] be happy while thou mayst, round thy mountain parents' feet; smiling thou, and reflecting every hopeful smile of theirs!

Yes, whilst they shelter, dance in sunshine, now thou mayst—

F.—Hillo! what are you about? Writing in tune with the merry cotton-wood leaves? ....
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

Look how these willows over-weep
The waves, and plain: 'Fleet so from us?
And wherefore? whitherward away?
Your best is here where wildings sway
And the light shadow's blown about;
Ah, tarry, for at hand's a sea
Whence ye shall never issue out
Once in.' They sing back: 'So let be!
We mad-caps hymn it as we flow—
Short life and merry! be it so!' "  (Clarel 2.27)

Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women

It really amazed me that you should find any satisfaction in that book [Moby-Dick]. It is true that some men have said they were pleased with it, but you are the only woman — for as a general thing, women have small taste for the sea. But, then, since you, with your spiritualizing nature, see more things than other people, and by the same process, refine all you see, so that they are not the same things that other people see, but things which while you think you but humbly discover them, you do in fact create them for yourself — 

Herman Melville, Letter to Sophia Hawthorne, January 8, 1852

Right around the time of Melville's letter to Sophia Hawthorne, our "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" is similarly keen to explore the refined and spiritual nature of women compared with men. In dialogue with his "Imaginary Friend," the Captain bemoans the systemic mistreatment of women in supposedly civilized nations. Among many injustices, the withholding of educational opportunities from women is cited as one of the most "cruel" and profound. As a remedy, the Captain offers a philosophy of "romantic devotion," a kind of cultural chivalry that would embrace poetry and romance as the best means of justly honoring and appreciating women. This knightly advocacy of poetry and romance for the rightful estimation of women appears in the June 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." It was only a few months before that Melville (in that letter to Sophia Hawthorne, quoted above) was comparing men and women and employing knightly language to recommend his just-finished romance, Pierre:

 "My Dear Lady, I shall not again send you a bowl of salt water. The next chalice I shall commend, will be a rural bowl of milk."  (Letter to Sophia Hawthorne)

In the book version the section on the just appreciation of women is designated in the table of contents as follows:

Dialogue, Women Compared with Men—
Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women 

Below, the whole conversation as it originally appeared in the June 1852 Southern Literary Messenger, 379-81:

I. F.  "Our friends, the Sioux,—of the Oglollah and Brule bands,—came in with the thunderstorm, with a fine, indeed startling effect; but for the women, I should have imagined they were dashing through the river to attack us. I was delighted with their fearless and hearty bearing; but the contrast of the men and women is painful."

C.  "The Sioux are rather my favorites: their freedom and power have imparted to the warriors—the men—some gentlemanly qualities: they are cleanly, dignified, and graceful in manner; brave, proud, and independent in bearing and deed. Their misfortune, their deep stain —the law of barbarism—is their treatment of women; they apply to them the brute law of the stronger!  Woman, the martyr! who rises only, and rises ever, as mind feeding upon knowledge, ascends to the throne of humanity! Oh! how powerful is education with its first impressions; how strong the harness of association and habit—despotic mental habit, which chains the very soul!"

I. F.  "Truly, these squaws bear the mark; bright-eyed as some of them are, a few only seem really to have souls.  But, do I understand you, that you esteem woman equal, or superior to her mate?"

C.  "I have made that ever a question to myself.  We say, Nature has given her an inferior part to play; that is, has assigned to her duties, which we choose to call inferior:  but there, she actively exhibits beautiful and high qualities, which we seldom possess, and underrate; how magnanimous is their patience, their self-denial and devotion! They are different from men. How generally in society, with the audacious but seldom denied claim to civilization, do men (alas! uneducated), like savages look upon them and treat them as drudges,—laborers in their service and ministers to their pleasure.  And what ever saves them from this common treatment, and the real degradation which it inevitably entails?" 

I. F.  "Religion?"

C.  "Religion, truly, elevates mankind; but, compared to women, how very few men indeed are religious. It is a proof of her naturally superior refinement; and doubtless her recompense for many ills; but it exaggerates her virtues to a humble resignation, of which the obtuse and hard hearts of men only take advantage. No! the remedy is the appreciating refinement of mental culture, delicacy of taste, a high sentiment of the Beautiful—in a word, the spirit of Poetry!  How palpably did the Providential romance of an otherwise barbarous age—of chivalry— rescue her from slavery and place her so near her proper level!" 

I. F.  All must observe that the noblest, and in general the most eminent men, evince the highest regard for women; that a profound and deferential respect for them is the first characteristic of a perfect gentleman:  but would you, like the knights of old, convert love into worship?  Do you advocate the blind devotion which led to violence and bloodshed?" 

C.  "No; you mistake a concomitant for a cause; the redeeming virtue of those ages was this romantic devotion, but tinctured, of course, with prevailing rudeness and crime. Love, always powerful, was ennobled and purified by martial romance; and, thus allied, was successful against barbarism. Worn out by change, romance is gone; but poetry, its vital element, is left; and its refined spirit alone can save love from materialism and degradation, and elevate its objects, so that man can bow with respectful devotion. I view woman as born superior; and often nobly sacrificing herself for our sake; the minister to, and our only hope for happiness. Striving always to make us more worthy of ourselves, and of her. How apt is vain man to undervalue those powers and qualities which he possesses not, or cannot understand: —as rude workmen despise the physical weakness, or the untutored hands of the student, who ennobled by science, pities the lowliness of their mental estate. Woman generally lacks that mathematical element, which in man, makes him often a little superior to some admirable machines; but she possesses instead, intuitively, certain delicate and refined perceptions, which to my mind are the 'impress of divinity.' We admit her mind developes more rapidly than ours, and call it precociousness; we choose to forget that this superiority lasts while she is receiving the education, which we cruelly stint. She is our superior in those qualities of our cultivated nature, which are so high, that the mass not only possess them not, but do not recognize them; but this is only the case when our physical advantage is forgotten in the poetical refinement of a just appreciation;—the homage which makes, if it do not find her worthy. 

"Ah! at humble distance, with all my soul, I have sought to study and understand some of these pure and beautiful natures, whose beauty was a subtle essence—a divine revelation through features that charmed not vulgar souls; a beauty that inspired a poetic—a pure and lasting worship at its altar. How earnestly then should woman cultivate and encourage, by every means, this romantic devotion, which is so essential to place and sustain them in their proper sphere. They have to combat in the world the sneers, the vices, the sensuality of fallen natures; but man's loss of their just appreciation, is a sure step towards degradation and crime, which involves poor woman too. All honor, then, to Poetry—the aspiring effort to admire, to develope and to praise, the Beautiful—the Noble,—the Grand." 

I. F.  "There are noble minds, who would pronounce much of that extravagant—too double-refined for any application."

C.  "And there are ingrained conventional prejudices, which warp the views of the highest natures." 

I. F.  "You believe, then, that human happiness is to be found in some reformed and higher state of civilization? Have I not heard you envy the fate of these red sons of nature—some wild chieftain—with two or three slavish wives!"

C.  "I might envy his freedom from factitious laws—the tyranny and fanaticism of society. But as for 'human happiness'—ha! ha!—suffer me to laugh, I pray you (if you will not call that happiness). Happiness would be the infraction of an immutable law; that all sin, is certainly not more inevitable, than that all should be unhappy; those who suffer as little as they enjoy, have a calmness which may deceive. I prefer at times to disturb the philosopher's equilibrium, and to brave his fated reactions for the joy which for a moment sublimes both soul and sense.  Strange! that laughter, man's lowest attribute, is distinctive; while the smile, which seems borrowed from Heaven, and which can confer rapturous joy, if not happiness, is shared, I think, in a slight degree by brutes." 

I. F.  "Heaven help you of your mood! I give it up."

C.  "My mood? I was never in a more sober mood; I feel as cool and practical as any downtrodden woman." 

I. F.   "Then your antitheses are rather overpowering!"

C.  "Yes, he that follows where truth may lead, will ever startle; I am still at my theme. I attack this semi-civilization, which halts when woman is only no longer like these brutish squaws; and, with the help of the faithful drudge herself, builds up a conventional system which defies the powers of human reason; nay, with an infernal perversity, resists the very light of heaven. But it is a law that we ever seek happiness. And it is this free desert air alone, that emboldens me in the search, to question the dogmas which society holds so precious.

'But let me quit man's work, again to read
His Maker's spread around me.'"

I. F.  "Nay, I go; luck to your prairie philosophy. It is the hour of rest. May your dreams be—rational!"