Real and unreal

Here again we find not only the same language but also--and more amazingly--the same context: more writing about writing, a metafictional debate with an imaginary critic of the narrative in progress.

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?”   

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857)

... a reply must in civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics appear, exclaims: "How unreal all this is!"  --The Confidence-Man (1857)

Did I say "metafictional"? Maurice S. Lee's word "metacritical" is good, too--maybe better since we're talking about ongoing criticism and criticism of criticism in supposed non-fiction, a military memoir.

--Maurice S. Lee on Skepticism and The Confidence-Man, from The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville

"... The Confidence-Man with its metacritical asides purposefully punctures verisimilitude."

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

I assure you

I. F.— That's right! pepper them well; a lucky shot! that fellow will pay us for our fright. I assure you I did not breathe! --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

***

I. F. "A forfeit! Mathematics are infernal.'"

"— I assure you (it is a secret of mine) that nothing else known among men can cope with feminine logic; but that is magical; the d—l can as well resist holy water."  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, December 1851; and, revised, in Scenes and Adventures in the Army

* * *

My romance I assure you is no dish water nor its model borrowed from the Circulating Library. It is something new I assure you, & original if nothing more. But I can give you no adequate idea, of it. You must see it for yourself. -- Only forbear to prejudge it. -- It opens like a true narrative -- like Omoo for example, on ship board -- & the romance & poetry of the thing thence grow continually, till it becomes a story wild enough I assure you & with a meaning too. --Letter to John Murray, March 25 1848 - Melville's Correspondence.

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.  -- Moby-Dick

—so one may wake up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in the lurch a ninny. --The Confidence-Man

Surprise! Cooke no romantic: 1878 review of Conquest of New Mexico and California

La Ciudad de Santa  Fe (1846-7)
Report of Lt. J. W. Abert, U.S. Army Signal Corps

Gen P. St George Cooke publishes through the Putnams the first historical narrative of the conquest of New Mexico and California, following the Mexican war, and their incorporation as territories of the United States.  The account is a diary, rather tedious as to style, but having much information valuable for reference, especially as to topographical descriptions.  A map shows the military routes.  A mere handful of regulars and volunteers went through these regions, inspiring the natives with a wholesome respect for the United States by a ceremonious swearing in of officials and a liberal display of howitzers for the recusant.  The soldiers feasted and starved by turns, encountered thermometric extremes, and killed enough Indians and Mexicans to keep their hands in.  Were Gen Cooke of a more romantic turn of mind his book would be more entertaining.

"LITERARY NEWS AND REVIEWS"

Springfield [Massachusetts] Republican, Friday, April 26, 1878
accessible at genealogybank.com

More on the theme of poetry and romance favorable to women

In some ways Herman Melville's pseudo-biographical sketch of the Marquis de Grandvin (wine personified) practically examines and develops the philosophy of cultural chivalry advanced in the long prairie dialogue on social injustices to women in the June 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."  In Melville's poem "At the Hostelry" this same Marquis presides over an imaginary dinner where the ghosts of famous artists debate the meaning and fate of "The Picturesque and Old Romance!"

Kind of hard to find this posthumously published material from Melville's so-called "Burgundy Club" manuscript, but not impossible.  One version of "The Marquis de Grandvin" sketch is published in John Bryant's edition of select Tales, Poems, and Other Writings (410-415).  Another, slightly abridged version appears in Great Short Works of Herman Melville, ed. Warner Berthoff, 396-401.  If you're really far gone you already have Robert Sandberg's dissertation, Melville's Unfinished "Burgundy Club" Book.

Right away, in the first two paragraphs, Melville launches into the Captain's themes of "Women Compared with Men" and "Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women":

… But a person of genial temper is not only very likely to be a popular man’s man, but also, and beyond that, a favourite with the ladies. ...Some musky dew drops from the Garden expelled Eve unwillingly carried away quivering in her hair.  More than man, she partakes of the paradisiac spirit.  Under favourable conditions evincing a quicker aptitude to pleasure than man.  How alert to twine the garland for the holiday!  How instinctively prompt for that faint semblance of Eden, the picnic in the greenwood!

Now there is something in the fine, open, cheery aspect of the Marquis de Grandvin that conveys a thrill to those frames so exquisitely strung to happiness.  Not invariably running the risk of incurring dark clouds from their lords, the dames and sisters of the Benedicks of the clubs, at their balls and parties, cast upon the Marquis that kindled merry glance which, according to the old French epic whose theme is Roncesvalles, the ladies bestowed upon Roland; not alone smitten by the fame and taken with the person of that noble accredited nephew of Charlemagne, but rightly inferring him to be not more of a David against the Saracen than a champion against still more flagitious infidels, impugners of the sex.   Yes, it is by instinct that all superior women recognize in this gentleman a cordial friend.  This is a verity not out of keeping with another, namely, this feminine appreciation of the Marquis, gracious though it be, hardly extends to such of his qualities as partake of the Grand Style, as one may say, the highly elevated style; a style apparently demanding for its due appreciation a robust habit, in short, the masculine habit.  For the most part, it is for his less exalted qualities that the ladies approve de Grandvin. They approve him for the way in which he contributes to those amenities and gaieties in which the sexes upon common ground participate, and wherein, thanks to their gallantry of good-nature, the countrymen of the Marquis de Grandvin have always excelled. 

"The Marquis de Grandvin" in Great Short Works of Herman Melville pages 396-7

Related post:

• Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women
  https://dragooned.blogspot.com/2013/02/poetry-and-romance-favorable-to-women.html

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!"

romance and poetry

"... the romance & poetry of the thing thence grow continually, till it becomes a story wild enough I assure you & with a meaning too." 
(Letter to John Murray, 25 March 1848)

"Romance and poetry were synonymous—they were imaginative, not factual and not commonplace, and they were associated in Melville’s mind with a higher form of literature than factual (and partly fictionalized) travel and adventure narrative." 

(Hershel Parker, "Historical Note" to Published Poems; and
Herman Melville: The Making of the Poet)

OK, notice how the Captain's critical "Imaginary Friend" insists on this same contrast, but from the opposite point of view, much preferring a factual travel narrative of "surface wanderings":

I. F.  "Nay, Friend, I belong to earth—from thy flight descend not lower:  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, December 1851)

Revisions in the 1857 book include the following: 

Friend. — Nay, stick to the surface now; only "to the d — l" with your double-refined poetry and romance.  (Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

Imaginary Friend talks like Evert Duyckinck

E. A. Duyckinck

Historians of the American West understandably have wanted nothing to do with Philip St George Cooke's imaginary prairie friend.  They don't know what to make of him so they mostly ignore him—even when relying on Scenes and Adventures in the Army for primary source material.  Well for one thing, the invented "Imaginary Friend" or "I.F.," christened "Frank" in the August 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," is a literary device, serving to advance the aims of philosophical fiction through dialogue.  What John Wenke says of Melville's Mardi (1849) applies also to the ongoing dialogues and their function in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" / Scenes and Adventures in the Army, Part II:

The philosophical dialogue is congenial to Melville's loose episodic structure, with the questers wrangling indefatigably over such issues as the soul's immortality, art, inspiration, Oro (God), right reason, preexistence, atavism, and practical ethics.  A dialogue often generates from a contrived incident or setting that offers a quickly displaced point of departure. (Melville's Muse, 48-49)

For another thing, the device of the Imaginary Friend allows the writer to present and respond to criticism of the narrative itself, seemingly as it is being written.  Criticism of the narrative by the Captain's Imaginary Friend sounds like Evert Duyckinck, then editor of the New York Literary World, criticizing

the "painful contradictions" of Ishmael in Moby-Dick:  in subsequently deleted lines the imaginary friend claims to have the Captain "fairly pinned in contradiction" (August 1852)

and

Melville's aesthetic disregard in Pierre for "truth and nature":  when the Captain defensively explains that to please his imaginary friend (Frank), he added some poetry "most naturally and truly" (August 1853)

In May 1852 (before "Frank" got his name, when he was still called "I. F") appears the following exchange:

I.F. "Ah! gazing at the stars? The three mortal hours we passed on the verge of the table land, whilst the guide sought a clew to this strange labyrinth of hills, or mountains—"

C. "And found it, much thanks to the buffalo, and the aid of their paths—"

I. F. "Were enough, with an empty stomach, to evaporate an ocean of romance."

C. "Considering, too, how dry it was; we had not drank for thirteen hours."

I.F. "Considering, too, you slipped off alone to the island yesterday, and 'fell asleep;' but as I verily believe, only dreamed; for, in our silent ride to overtake the regiment, you were still rapt, past all observation."

I. F associates the image of diminishing romance, a disappearing "ocean of romance," with the effects of "an empty stomach."  As it happens, Evert Duyckinck is on record talking exactly that way after an 1848 excursion with Herman Melville:

I was out the other day to Fort Lee with Melville—a grand picnicking day.  The first lady & gentleman we came upon were in front of a table cloth spread on a rock and covered with hams, sardines, &c, affectionately mouthing to each other, the Lady of Lyons.  They had just reached the 'magnificent' Tale of Como hostage [passage,surely] "Dont [Do'st] like the picture lady?"  A remark she let fall that champagne didn't inhale on an empty stomach distressed the romance or whatever it was. 
(Evert Duyckinck to William A. Jones, July 28, 1848, quoted here from Jay Leyda's The Melville Log, 279)

"Whatever it was"?  That's E. A. D. for you. And I. F. / Frank, too:

F.  "Come now, no romance; you must tell how that was done."  (September 1852)

 If you ask me, that's a fine passage to read aloud with your lover!  . 

Mel. A palace lifting to eternal summer
     Its marble walls, from out a glossy bower
     Of coolest foliage musical with birds,
     Whose songs should syllable thy name! At noon
     We'd sit beneath the arching vines, and wonder
     Why Earth could be unhappy, while the Heavens
     Still left us youth and love! We'd have no friends
     That were not lovers; no ambition, save
     To excel them all in love; we'd read no books
     That were not tales of love—that we might smile
     To think how poorly eloquence of words
     Translates the poetry of hearts like ours!
     And when night came, amidst the breathless Heavens
     We'd guess what star should be our home when love
     Becomes immortal; while the perfumed light
     Stole through the mists of alabaster lamps,
     And every air was heavy with the sighs
     Of orange-groves and music from sweet lutes,
     And murmurs of low fountains that gush forth
     I' the midst of roses!—Dost thou like the picture?

     Pauline. Oh, as the bee upon the flower, I hang
     Upon the honey of thy eloquent tongue!
     Am I not blest? And if I love too wildly,
     Who would not love thee like Pauline?

value and sources of highest art

Thinking and tinkering about aesthetics, all the while steeped in Byron...

 MAY 1853

Frank said, solemnly: " The present is all we possess: but we should turn from sad experience to the future; there to lay hopeful plans, with good resolves." 

C. —Labour and depravity are our curse: but blessings too are the high faculties of the soul: among which are poetic fancies, — perception of the beautiful, —romantic yearnings, which were given for cultivation; they elevate man's mind, and

'Make his heart a spirit—'

In cherishing these heaven-descended attributes, we can oft forget that we are animals too.  ("Scenes Beyond the Western Border")

1857:

... my Friend said solemnly: "The present only is ours; but we should turn from sad experience to the future, there to lay hopeful plans, with good resolves."

"Labor and care and depravity are our curse: but blessings too are the faculties by which we struggle above the Sensual;—perceptions of the Beautiful, and the Sublime,—all the elements of the Ideal realm, where, Fancy-borne, we draw the materials of highest art; they elevate poor grovelling man, and

'Make his heart a spirit—'

Thus to poetry, and much-abused romance, we owe the cherished oblivion of our animal natures. (Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 411)

From Melville's 1857-1858 Lecture on "Statues in Rome"

They appeal to that portion of our beings which is highest and noblest....These marbles, the works of the dreamers and idealists of old, live on, leading and pointing to good.  They are the works of visionaries and dreamers, but they are realizations of soul, the representations of the ideal....They were formed by those who had yearnings for something better, and strove to attain it by embodiments in cold stone.  How well in the Apollo is expressed he idea of the perfect man.  Who could better it?  Can art, not life, make the ideal?  (Melville as Lecturer, 150)

According to contemporary newspaper reports, Melville ended his lecture on Roman statuary by quoting famous lines from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto 4, 145):

“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
  When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
  And when Rome falls—the world.”

double-refined

I. F. "Nay, Friend, I belong to earth—from thy flight descend not lower:  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, December 1851)

 Revised in the 1857 book as follows:

Friend. — Nay, stick to the surface now; only "to the d — l" with your double-refined poetry and romance.  (Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

  

I. F.  "There are noble minds, who would pronounce much of that extravagant—
too double-refined for any application."  (June 1852)

"Drop Tacitus. His subtlety is falsity, To him, in his double-refined anatomy of human nature, is well applied the Scripture saying--'There is a subtle man, and the same is deceived.' Drop Tacitus. Come, now, let me throw the book overboard."  (The Confidence-Man)

like knights of old

"... 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."

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

"... each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,  (Moby-Dick)

OF THE CRUSADERS

When sighting first the towers afar
Which girt the object of the war
And votive march—the Saviour's Tomb,
What made the red-cross knights so shy?
And wherefore did they doff the plume
And baldrick, kneel in dust, and sigh?

Hardly it serves to quote Voltaire
And say they were freebooters—hence,
Incapable of awe or sense
Pathetic; no, for man is heir
To complex moods; and in that age
Belief devout and bandit rage
Frequent were joined; and e'en to-day
At shrines on the Calabrian steep—
Not insincere while feelings sway—
The brigand halts to adore, to weep.
Grant then the worst—is all romance
Which claims that the crusader's glance
Was blurred by tears?

(Clarel 1.4)

respect for women the test of nobility

I[maginary]. F[riend]. “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.”
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

“… and if the degree of consideration in which the ever-adorable sex is held by the men be—as the philosophers affirm—a just criterion of the degree of refinement among a people, then I may truly pronounce the Typees to be as polished a community as ever the sun shone upon. … Nowhere are the ladies more assiduously courted; nowhere are they better appreciated as the contributors to our highest enjoyments; and nowhere are they more sensible of their power.”  (Typee)

UPDATE:  For the whole prairie dialogue on social injustices to women, see here.  For another instance in Melville's writings of the same theme, check out the pseudo-biographical sketch of the "Marquis de Grandvin" from the so-called "Burgundy Club" manuscript:

Not invariably running the risk of incurring dark clouds from their lords, the dames and sisters of the Benedicks of the clubs, at their balls and parties, cast upon the Marquis that kindled merry glance which, according to the old French epic whose theme is Roncesvalles, the ladies bestowed upon Roland; not alone smitten by the fame and taken with the person of that noble accredited nephew of Charlemagne, but rightly inferring him to be not more of a David against the Saracen than a champion against still more flagitious infidels, impugners of the sex.
(The Marquis de Grandvin)

 * * *

“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."
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

“Far different from their condition among many rude nations, where the women are made to perform all the work while their ungallant lords and masters lie buried in sloth….” (Typee)