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?

holy water and the devil, a bit from Palgave on "Superstition and Knowledge"

In the December 1851 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," the narrating "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" has devils, witchcraft, and magic on his mind.  A riff on the howling of wolves invokes

"the 'witching' midnight hour."

Then, after an exchange between the Captain and his Imaginary Friend (I. F.) in which each one would send something "to the D—," the Captain refers humorously and familiarly to the power of holy water over devils as a kind of "magical" spell: 

 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")

Demonology was much on Herman Melville's mind around the same time, as we know from notes Melville made from Francis Palgrave's unsigned essay on "Superstition and Knowledge."  Just two pages after one key source-page for Melville's verbatim notes, Palgrave explicitly cites the same power of holy water over devils, in the larger context of ritual magic and medieval "spells":

The rites of Christianity were secretly and silently blended with the magical ceremonies of the Eastern tribes, and the spells of the middle ages exhibit a strange confusion of the practices of the church and the Platonic cabala.  The sign of the cross alternates with the pentalpha, and the names of the Evangelists are added to the angels of the stars.  Holy water which chased away the demon, also assisted in consecrating the hallowed Lamen and the Periapt.
("Superstition and Knowledge")

As Geoffrey Sanborn discovered, Palgrave was Melville's source for what he called, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne the "secret" motto of Moby-Dick.  That letter was written June 29, 1851.  In November 1851 Melville was probably still

"thinking of 'Superstition and Knowledge'"

(Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, Vol. 2.15)

 when he described Moby-Dick as "a wicked book."

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.”

joking about a tournure

SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER

The girls must consider as a lively feature of this dull region, (or they are not common girls). For our part, it is reported that one of them has been seen actually—that is, evidently invested with a "tournure"; who would believe the tyrant Fashion held so wide a sway!

-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border - May 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

MELVILLE'S CORRESPONDENCE

They heard that you had begun to take to — drink? — Oh no, but worse — — to sonnet-writing. That off Cape Horn instead of being on deck about your business, you devoted your time to writing a sonnet on your mistress’ eyebrow, & another upon her “tournure”. 

-- Herman Melville, May 25, 1862 letter to his brother Thomas Melville in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth, page 378.

leaves it for the commentators

"Indeed, the settlement of this question must be left to the commentators on Mardi, some four or five hundred centuries hence."  (Mardi)

... and finally, in despair, he "imitated humanity so abominably," as to throw himself headlong, and so drown—or hang himself:  (the author cannot decide which —even after a post-mortem examination;—and so leaves the decision of this important point to the commentators.)
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," March 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

mathematical machines

"And not more infallible the ponderings of the Calculating Machine than the deductions from the decimals of history."  (Mardi)

"Woman generally lacks that mathematical element, which in man, makes him often a little superior to some admirable machines...." 
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," June 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

masses indifferent to biology and botany

And how many millions there are who live from day to day by the incessant operation of subtle processes in them, of which they know nothing, and care less?  Little ween they, of vessels lacteal and lymphatic, of arteries femoral and temporal; of pericranium or pericardium; lymph, chyle, fibrin, albumen, iron in the blood, and pudding in the head.... (Mardi)

F.—With what strange complacency does the mass of even the 'educated,' ignore the charming mysteries of botany!  They may be surprised into admiration of a fine flower; but it is a mere sensation,

                               ' —the smallest part
Exceeds the narrow visions of their minds.'

C.— "And they lose half the beauty, which, such is their perfection, they reveal to minute examination."

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," August 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army