Troubled Footsteps

By 1856 Herman Melville had, I think, reached the bottom of his woe, and he was on the point of resignation—resigning his career, his hope of livelihood and fame, the high place among his peers that his genius entitled him to. His short stories during this period gave hints of his gathering resolution; for he plays with his possible fate again and again, as in the story of the fiddler, Hautboy, who had been a famous prodigy in his youth, and who now, in obscurity, with genius and without fame, was happier than a king. Jimmy Rose is another story of a man who has fallen in the world and sinks into a genteel pauperism, wherein all his old graces become pathetic dodges for filling a hungry stomach. Contemplating this character, Melville became for the first time downright sentimental: one feels tears of self-pity welling into his eyes as he uttered the refrain: “Poor, poor Jimmy—God guard us all—poor Jimmy Rose!”

Melville, at least, was too proud to lift a pitiful false front. He will seek other consolations than as a defunct literary celebrity: the occasional student, like Mr. Titus Munson Coan, who finds him in the Berkshires, does not get a glimpse of the South Sea Melville he admires: instead, he must listen to Kant and Hegel and Plato and all the contemporary mysteries. But won’t you tell me something about the cannibals: that was so interesting. Doubtless the dim Bartleby look would come into Melville’s eyes: “That reminds me of the eighth book of Plato’s Republic.” Or perhaps, from a deeper chasm, would come Bartleby’s own reply: I would prefer not to.

Melville had begun to feel, with Pierre, “what all mature men, who are Magians, sooner or later know, and more or less assuredly—that not always in our actions are we our own factors.” When Melville reached this point, his youth was over; and his manhood, which had just begun, was over, too. From an experience so heavy and overwhelming as Melville’s, there was no alternative but retreat, and complete submission. The Olympian had adventured, an innocent abroad in the morning; the Titan had struggled, a wise, tormented, valiant man, working and battling in the sweat and dust of noon: twilight had fallen early, and in the gloom, he could neither adventure nor struggle: “The power and dominion of the present world,” as Mr. D. S. MacColl has said in describing these three dominant figures of the spirit, “is a vanity to him; the furious energy of retaliation against suffering a trivial folly, because in his vast contempt and renunciation of this and of all life, things visible or attainable, present or to come, the height and depth of any other creature dwindle to nothingness and the least is equal to the greatest.” This is the mood of the Pilgrim: the mood of humility and indifference to outward things. A product of defeat and frustration, this attitude is a last attempt to circumvent it. Buddhism and Christianity represent this mood in the history of communities, racked by war, pestilence, slavery, and sheer fatigue of living and its symbol is the cloister, walled off from the distraction and struggle of the outer world. Melville sought a cloister for his spirit. Unable to batter down the indifference of his contemporaries, he endeavoured to erect within himself a fortress that would keep them at bay.