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

misanthropic, again

 Found another misanthropic quadruped of Melville's making, this from Pierre (1852): 

"... round and round those still enchanted rocks, hard by their utmost rims, and in among their cunning crevices, the misanthropic hill-scaling goat nibbled his sweetest food...."

The first one, you remember, showed up in Omoo (1847):

"As for the goats, occasionally you come across a black, misanthropic ram, nibbling the scant herbage of some height inaccessible to man, in preference to the sweet grasses of the valley below."  (Omoo)

The explanatory note in the Hendricks House edition of Omoo points out the broader significance of Melville's imagery:

"Here, briefly, in passing, Melville associates the contrast of mountain and valley with the contrasting values of misanthropy and domesticity, independence and conformity, individual and herd, darkness and light, difficulty and ease, etc."  (Hendricks House Omoo, 406)

Got it, independence and conformity, individual and, ha! herd:

"It was the fate of a melancholy buffalo,— whether misused and misanthropic,—shunning the vulgar herd, or exiled, as an old and hardened sinner, to this solitude, to encounter us here...."
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border (June 1852); and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

The theme of misanthropy (like the references to fate, exile, and sin) is unique, not something that any other journalist of the 1845 expedition bothers about exploring or even mentioning.  Engineer William B. Franklin's observation is most succinct:

"One old buffalo bull was killed to-day but he was too old and tough for food."
(March to South Pass, ed. Frank N. Schubert, p9)

Another probable source for the re-write in the June 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" is J. Henry Carleton's entry for June 8, 1845 in a late installment of his "Occidental Reminiscences," first published in the New York Spirit of the Times, March 21, 1846 (pdf file at FultonHistory.com):

As we were marching along to-day, a large buffalo bull happened unexpectedly to find himself between our column and the river.  No sooner had he discovered his situation than he attempted to get by us with a view of escaping to the highlands through the narrow and difficult gorges that here and there led up to them through the bluffs.  One of the officers, who was exceedingly well mounted, gave chase to him, and, when at long distance, gave him a pistol shot as he ran, which dropped him dead upon the sand." 
(Prairie Logbooks, ed. Louis Pelzer, 229)

We are dealing with a writer of a mind to inject the element of misanthropy into an otherwise straightforward tale of encountering and killing a single buffalo bull.

Melville had such a mind, we know for certain by looking at how he re-wrote one of his sources for Israel Potter.  Melville sees this in some biography of John Paul Jones:

"I had yet two enemies to encounter, far more formidable than the Britons, I mean, fire and water."  (Fight between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis)

And writes this, adding the element of misanthropy by generalizing particular "enemies" of John Paul Jones into elemental human-haters:

"But though the Serapis had submitted, there were two misanthropical foes on board the Richard which would not so easily succumb—fire and water."  (Israel Potter)

Frenchman's shrug

OMOO

"At first he [Rartoo] demurred; and shrugging his shoulders like a Frenchman, declared it could not be brought about--was a dangerous matter to attempt, and might bring all concerned into trouble" -- Omoo by Herman Melville

SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER 

Robidoux undertakes to give me the boundaries of the buffalo grass, which extends to the Missouri river, and within eighty miles of the State boundary; he says, "that throughout New Mexico, where the buffalo do not keep it down, it grows a foot high; bis cattle and sheep live on it exclusively, and keep fat in winter; and improve in size on the original breed; the mutton is superior in flavor to ours."

This man prays for the annexation of New Mexico, as necessary to develope its mineral riches: he asserts, "that he knows districts where, for twenty miles, it is impossible to find a handful of dirt without gold."

"Why in the world have you not made your fortune collecting it?"

"I sunk," he replied with a true Frenchman's shrug, "eight thousand dollar."

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border - September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

I am told

Melville habitually borrowed from the writings of others.  In the middle section of White-Jacket (1850), with the frigate Neversink at anchor in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Melville increasingly depended on his source-material, according to Howard P. Vincent:

"More than ever, then, Melville turns to his sources, weaving paragraphs from suggestions in Mercier, Leech, and Nicol."  (The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket, 116)

As I say, this approach for Melville was habitual.  In his first books Typee and Omoo Melville borrowed extensively from published narratives of South Seas travel and adventure by Charles S.Stewart, David Porter, and William Ellis.  Vincent's The Trying Out of Moby-Dick documents Melville's deep debts to whaling narratives by (among others) Beale, Bennett, and Scoresby.  "Benito Cereno" rewrites the eyewitness narrative of Amasa Delano.   Israel Potter, serialized in Putnam's Monthly Magazine before publication in book form, rewrites Trumbull's pamphlet biography, Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter for a start, then appropriates other sources including biographies of  Benjamin Franklin and John Paul Jones.

Examining Melville's borrowings from Leech in White-Jacket, Vincent noticed that the phrase

" 'they told me' is one of Melville's favorite coverings for literary theft."
(The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket, 116)

Variations on this device are "he told me" or "_______ told me" and "I am told" or "I was told."

I find this same device used in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," to introduce otherwise uncredited borrowings from the journals of Henry S. Turner and topographical engineer William B. Franklin.

Turner, for example, reported a sighting of bees, or bee-like insects:

"July 17  A march of 8 miles this morning brought us across 2 more branches of Horse Creek... A strange insect resembling the honey-bee was seen in swarms:  a perpendicular clay bank on the side of the stream had been perforated in innumerable places by them & when discovered were flying about, & running in & out of the holes they had bored in the surface."  (H. S. Turner, 1845 "Journal of an Expedition"; Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1822-1860 at Fold3)

Turner's observation is introduced in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" with a variation on Melville's favored device. 

We passed two bold branches of Horse Creek;  a gentleman told me he saw bees hiving their honey in holes in a clay bank; they are rarely seen so far away from plantations, or from trees.  (May 1853)

 Note too the poetic style employed in the rewrite; instead of "running in and out of the holes" the bees are "hiving their honey in holes."

In similar fashion, two borrowings from William B. Franklin's journal are introduced with the expression,

"I am told."  

Franklin on the Oregon emigrants:

".... those in the rear found the women all crying and the men looking very sad.  Poor people!  they felt that in passing us they broke the last link that bound them to the United States."  (March to South Pass, 22)

The same observation turns up in the September 1852 of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," introduced with the trusty expression "I am told":

"I am told, that by the time our rear passes their companies, toward what they will ever consider their homes, the women generally are seen to weep.  Heaven help them!"  (554)

Here the writer or ghostwriter appears to forget that two pages earlier, the narrator claimed to have witnessed the sight for himself:

I saw a poor woman weeping. The sight of our return! the home! the friends behind! the wilderness before! (552)

Earlier in the series, in the June 1852 installment,  the narrator's "Imaginary Friend" borrows Franklin's comparison of Scott's Bluff to Stirling Castle, which he introduces with "I am told":

"One view of it, I am told, resembles strongly some picture of Sterling Castle."

(379; corrected to Stirling in Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

In his journal of the 1845 March to South Pass, Franklin saw a resemblance between Scott's Bluff and the Scottish fortress, as follows:

"At the point where we left the river the rock bore a great resemblance to the representations of Stirling Castle."  (March to South Pass, ed. Frank N. Schubert, p11)