The Whale (21 page)

Quoth I to Julian, “Are you a good little boy?” “Yes,” said he. “What are you good for?” asked I. “Because I love all people,” answered he. A heavenly infant, powerless to do anything but diffuse the richness of his pure love throughout the moral atmosphere, to make all mankind happier and better. Or perhaps he understood the question to be for what reason he was good—and meant to reply, that good deeds gushed forth from his heart of love as from a fountain. I am raising up a new Fourier, I fear, or a Pangloss. You must not fail to remind me some day to tell you of my sojourn at Brook Farm, which I fear has influenced Julian covertly, nevermind that it happened before he was born—that is, after all, just how such things happen.

Sophia's sister Elizabeth is here now, helping to care for our new little Rose, but at the end of this week, she and Sophia and Una and Rose will all travel to Boston to make the rounds of the family, leaving just Julian and me to our devices in our little cottage. They will be away for three weeks, and if you came during this time, we might have opportunity to speak of eternity and things of this world and the next, and books and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters, at our leisure.

yours,
Nath. Hawthorne

At midday on his thirty-second birthday—August 1, 1851—as he finished baling the last of the season's hay, Herman stood in his field and exhaled the longest breath of his life, as if filtering all the air in the heavens. After a long summer of toil and sweat, he had finally caught up with the farmwork; and, by coincidence, that very morning, the carpenters had finally finished building his northern porch, facing Mount Greylock, so that, from now on, he could take his evening brandy sitting in a rocking chair and gazing in awe at that breaching whale of a mountain, seemingly placed there by Providence for him to look upon. He did not even regret his extravagance in spending money to have it built—not yet, at least—because, unbeknownst to his family (even to Lizzie) and underlying all the other more prosaic reasons for his relief and contentment, he had finally finished writing the narrative of
The Whale
.

In this perfect moment, with all of his work finished—the book, the field work, some renovations to the house—he splashed water in his face from the little rivulet below his hay field and drank deeply of its cool water and then walked, still covered in hay dust and dirt and sweat, to his new porch. He stomped on the pine boards and knocked at the solid posts and took in the panorama of mown fields and deep green groves and glorious mountains. He breathed deeply the sweet honey of switchgrass and hay mixing with the pungent funk of his own body, and he heard the whirring of a grasshopper's
wings, which stopped abruptly with a thump as the little creature landed on the porch—and he felt happy.

His mind raced; he was still taut as a wire from the monumental effort of finishing the book, on top of everything else he had still been required to do around the farm, but it was done, all done, and all the evidence he saw before him favored his own personal definitions and nomenclatures—the universe was exactly as he defined it.
The Whale
was swimming through typesetting machines in New York to become the plates of a book, and he knew that the small drop of new cash in his bank account, courtesy of a secret loan from an old family friend in Albany, would soon turn into a roaring river spilling into an ocean of money from the book's success.

He still had not secured an American publishing contract, but he had no doubt that he could do so, so much confidence did he have in the quality of the writing and the profundity of his themes. He wondered only half whimsically if President Fillmore would invite him to the White House after he had read it, so clearly did it portray such a vital piece of the American economy, and he imagined his lecture tours of the colleges, speaking on everything from whaling to the cultures of the South Seas to American expansionism to slavery to the nature of God Himself, all matters he felt he had explained satisfactorily in his book. In a few weeks, he would return to New York to proof the typeset pages and make final changes to the tumultuous ending, but for now it was out of his hands.

He had completed the concluding chapters in such a fever—of writing and building and mowing and caring for Lizzie with her pregnancy and her hay fevers and traveling back and forth to New York with the pages—that he was no longer quite sure even of the order of events at the very end, except in their broad outline and the fate of Ahab; but he felt he had delivered on the promise of the original idea
and brought out the underlying themes that had drifted so lazily in the undercurrents of his imagination until Hawthorne had fished them out. He believed that he had even out-Hawthorned Hawthorne in the breadth and depth of his central allegory—and he could not wait for the older author to read it! He reveled in a feeling of divinity, that he was as much a part of eternal consciousness at that moment as it was possible for any mortal to be.

Everything suddenly seemed simple. His mind raced across vast cosmic distances in an instant, and he saw the whole long reach of philosophy and history and aesthetics plainly, as if all the ideas that had come before had been laid on a buffet for him to select or reject; and he felt, looking back on the sweep of his novel, that he could write another book better than
The Whale
starting tomorrow and it might take only tomorrow to do it.

His peace on his birthday unfortunately had not rippled into the rest of the Melville household. Lizzie was lying abed with a nose stuffed up so badly that she could hardly breathe, and her whole face had turned the bright rosy red of the stripes of the American flag; and Malcolm was suffering from another of his mysterious snot-filled ailments, which usually accompanied his mother's illnesses. But Herman did not wish to think of Lizzie's pregnancy or Malcolm's illness: he simply wished to be left alone with his feelings of peace and triumph, which he felt he had achieved in spite of his family and not because of them.

Everything was in such perfect order in his mind that he had only one real birthday wish, one final piece of blue sky that would make his puzzle complete—to ramble down to Lenox to see Hawthorne, to take Nathaniel up on his invitation to visit without the ever-watchful presence of Sophia to circumscribe their conversation. He was eager to tell Hawthorne that
The Whale
was finished—it would have been Herman's preference simply to present the book
to him, already published, to give the first copy of the first edition to the man to whom it would be dedicated—but it would be some time yet before the book would come out, and it was finished now. It was done! He had written “The End,” and he wanted Hawthorne to be the first to know.

He bathed himself and changed clothes, donning a floppy green hat that he had won from a Spaniard in a card game on board his first whaling ship. Then he saddled his horse and set off down the road toward Lenox.

The day became stiflingly hot and humid as the afternoon progressed, and he quickly soaked his fresh clothes with sweat; but not even the bottle flies feeding on his horse's neck and the bees that landed on his own skin could bother Herman today. He rode down the white dirt road, through meadows sprinkled with turtlehead blossoms and yellow celandines and loppyheaded bluebells, and he felt like laughing.

He passed a great deal of traffic, and he decided that he would greet everyone he met in Spanish, to match his Spanish hat. He said a hearty “
buenos días
” to the passengers of several farm wagons, two stately carriages, and a barouche, and to a few Shakers on foot he said “
¡Qué hermoso cielo!”
He was rewarded with puzzled looks, which delighted him; but, in one instance, a gentleman returned his greeting and asked a rather long question in Spanish, which Melville did not understand, so he replied, “
E aha ta'oe i pe'au mai?
”—one of the few phrases in Marquesan that he still remembered, which meant, “What did you say?” The gentleman and he stared at one another for a moment and then silently resumed their trips in opposite directions.

About half a mile outside of Lenox, Herman spied a man stretched out in the shade of a tree along the road, reading a newspaper. As he drew close, he discerned that it was none other than
Hawthorne himself! He pulled the brim of his hat down low, rode up near him, and said in a hammy, gruff voice, “
Buenos días, señor
.”

Hawthorne looked up. “Yes. Hello.” He flicked his wrist, waving the horseman on.

“
El cielo está hermoso esta tarde
.”

A little tango of bemusement danced across Hawthorne's features. “
Sí
,” he said, and he flicked his wrist again.

“I am afraid I am at the end of my Spanish, Hawthorne, unless you would like me to name parts of a ship.
Velamen
.
Mástil
.”

“What the devil? Melville!” Hawthorne folded his newspaper and stood up. “I mistook you for a conquistador.”

“
Señor
, it was no mistake.” He dismounted. They shook hands with gusto. Herman indicated the paper, now under Hawthorne's arm. “What news?”

“They are still finding pieces of Fort Des Moines in New Orleans. How swims
The Whale
?”

“He's fin up,” said Herman proudly. “The manuscript is done. Nothing left but to proof it and deliver it to Bentley.”

“Congratulations,” said Hawthorne. “And when shall I have a copy?”

“You know how these things are,” Herman shrugged. “Weeks, I hope, rather than months.”

“I look forward to it. Shall we walk? Julian is in a blackberry patch up the road.” Herman led his horse, and the two authors walked side by side. “I am coming out with a book for children later in the year, only a few hundred pages, but it's mostly done. A simplified retelling of Greek and Roman myths, in an American setting.”

Herman was astonished. “You act like a man of leisure but come out with a book every three months.”

“It was Sophia's confinement that did it this time. We have entertained practically no visitors for months, and my days have been filled
with nothing but reading, writing, and fetching things for Sophia—or, more recently, for the new baby. And, as I have told you before, I knew that you were hard at work over in the next hamlet, and I have been inspired to accelerate my usual dawdling pace as a result. I will write whole Bibles in the Berkshires, at this rate.”

“I suppose I must get back to work immediately, if I am to keep pace. What will this one be called?”

“
A Wonder Book
. Wonder frees your mind from necessity so that you can marvel at possibilities. And yours? Have you settled definitely on
The Whale
?”

“Bentley is convinced that that's the right title for the English edition, but I am inclined to call it
Moby Dick
for the American.”

“
Moby Dick
? After the whale that sank the
Essex
?”

“His name was Mocha Dick, if you'll recall.”

“Do sailors call all whales Dick, then?”

“All whales, and some other things, besides.”

A loud ruckus of snapping twigs and rustling brush signaled Julian's appearance from beneath a berry bramble. He came running across a grassy field toward the road, shouting merrily, his face smeared purple with juice. “Herman Melville, Herman Melville,” he yelled. He collided roughly with Herman's legs and threw his arms around them.

“And how are you for a horseman, Master Julian?”

“Capital!”

“Then up you go.” Herman hoisted Julian up by the armpits, onto his horse. When he was steady in the saddle, Melville let him go and said, “
Salve Rey Julian
.”

Julian was bright with glee. “What's his name?” He rubbed the horse's neck and tugged his mane.

“Anonymous.”

“Animus,” Julian tried. “That's a funny name.”

“Anonymous,” Herman said again.

“Anomalous.” Julian made a sour face and flopped his legs against the saddle. “I'm going to call him Herman.”

Hawthorne said, “The boy is wise beyond his years. Animus Anomalous Herman: he has you pegged in every particular.”

Herman took off his hat and placed it on Julian's head. It swallowed up his entire face. Hawthorne took the hat off his son and put it back on Melville's head with a friendly pat on the crown. Herman thought he would die of happiness.

 • • • 

They walked at a leisurely pace to Hawthorne's cottage, chatting amiably about Lizzie's pregnancy, and about the newest Hawthorne child and Sophia's extraordinary recovery. Once Rose had been born, Sophia's migraines had returned to their normal frequency and intensity, finally falling into the background of her everyday life, and the mysterious stabbing pains in her side had vanished, and so they chalked the whole episode up to a difficult pregnancy rather than a lapse back to the frailty of her youth. In fact, Hawthorne said, Sophia had recently been out for long walks around the lake and had even taken the children berrying just before she had left for Boston, and he was greatly encouraged. Herman told Hawthorne of Lizzie's hay fevers and summer colds, and they discussed how worrisome it was to care for someone who is ill and whose condition was liable, at any moment, to take a turn for the worse.

Having brought each other up to date about their books and their wives, they walked the rest of the way in contented silence, Julian beaming delightedly all the while and occasionally offering up an earnest non sequitur, such as “My mother is one hundred years old,” and “When I am grown up, everyone must mind me.” When they arrived at the cottage, Hawthorne said, “Shall we see if any string beans are ready?” He led the way around the side of his house to the garden.

“How is
Seven Gables
doing?” Herman asked, as he unsaddled his horse and Hawthorne inspected the beans, and asparagus, and heads of lettuce sticking up out of the carefully weeded black loam. Julian began digging for worms.

“I think I have reached that stage where I do not care, essentially, for anybody's opinion.” Hawthorne crouched and handled several heads of lettuce before picking the one he wanted. “I have heard and seen such diversity of judgment that I'd be a bewildered man if I attempted to strike a balance among them—so I take nobody's opinion to heart, unless it happens to agree with my own. I think this book was more characteristic of my mind and more proper and natural for me to write than
The Scarlet Letter
.”

“I was asking about sales.”

“Oh—of course. It has sold better than
The Scarlet Letter
and, I think, is more sure of holding its ground for the long run. I understand that it's popular in England, as well, but I don't have copyright for it there yet, so the pounds flow into someone else's pockets for the moment—you know how tiresome that is, with the rights all in dispute.” He tossed the lettuce to Herman and then picked string beans until both his hands were full. “Would you like to tell me anything about the final shape of
The Whale
, or would you prefer that I simply read it?”