(Mackey, you shall die violently. .
And the letter written by Stanny, as a little boy, to his grandmother: “Papa took me to the cattle show grounds to see the soldiers drill, but we did not see them, . it was too bad. But papa took me a ride all through the Cemetary.”
(Stanny, you shall die quietly. .
And the letter Melville wrote to Bessie, 1860: “Many [seabirds] have followed the ship day after day. . they were all over speckled — and they would sometimes, during a calm, keep behind the ship, fluttering about in the water, with a mighty cackling, and wherever anything was thrown overboard they would hurry to get it. But they would never light on the ship — they kept all the time flying or else resting themselves by floating on the water like ducks in a pond. These birds have no home, unless it is some wild rocks in the middle of the ocean.”
(Bessie, you shall be homeless. .
And the children responded:
Mackey, age 18, young dog, fond of firearms, who slept with a pistol under his pillow — came home one night at 3 A.M., and failed to rise in the morning.
“Time went on and Herman advised Lizzie to let him sleep, be late at the office & take the consequences as a sort of punishment. .”
“. . in the evening, the door of the room was opened, and young Melville was found dead, lying on the bed, with a single-barrelled pistol firmly grasped in his right hand, and a pistol-shot wound in the right temple.”
(Melville: “I wish you could have seen him as he lay in his last attitude, the ease of a gentle nature.”)
And the funeraclass="underline" “. . the young Volunteer Company to which Malcolm belonged & who had asked the privilege of being present & carrying the coffin from the house to the cars — filed in at one door from the hall & out at the other — each pausing for an instant to look at the face of their lost comrade. Cousin Helen says they were all so young & it was really a sadly beautiful sight — for the cold limbs of the dead wore the same garments as the strong active ones of the living — Cousin Lizzie — his almost heart broken Mother having dressed her eldest son in the new suit he had taken such pride & pleasure in wearing — Four superb wreaths and crosses of the choicest white flowers were placed on the coffin. .”
And after, the family pondered whether it was suicide or accident, not thinking that Mackey had held the pistol, and Mackey had pulled the trigger—
the only question being whether he had been conscious of his actions, of his motives.
And there was Stanny:
“My deafness has been a great trouble to me lately. .”
(What was he trying to drown out — the brother’s gunshot?. . the family arguments?. . or:
Stanwix: “I fear it will give you but little pleasure to hear from one, who has been guilty of so many follies, and deaf to the counsel of older heads.”
And: “Stanwix is full of the desire to go to sea, & see something of this great world. He used to talk to me about it, but I always tried to talk him out of it. But now he seems so bent upon it, that Herman & Lizzie have given their consent, thinking that one voyage to China will cure him of the fancy.”
But it took more than one voyage to cure his father. .
“What have you heard of Stanwix Melville from what point did he run away? & where was his place of destination? Poor Cousin Lizzie She will be almost broken hearted.”
A shadow of his father, even to the running away. . or perhaps, simply, escaping the disaster. .
Later: “You know I left New York in April & went to a small town in Kansas, I staid there a few weeks, then I thought I could do better South so I came down through the Indian Nation, & then into Arkansas, I stopped at a number of towns on the Arkansas river till I came to the Mississippi, then down that river to Vicksburgh I staid there a few days, & then took the train to Jackson, from there by Railroad to New Orleans, I found that a lively city, but no work, so I thought I should like a trip to Central America, I went on a steamer to Havana, Cuba & from there to half a dozen or more ports on the Central America coast till I came to Limon Bay in Costa Rica.”
Columbus, fourth voyage, off Central America: “It was one continual rain, thunder and lightning. The ships lay exposed to the weather, with sails torn, and anchors, rigging, cables, boats and many of the stores lost; the people exhausted. . Other tempests I have seen, but none that lasted so long or so grim as this. Many old hands whom we looked on as stout fellows lost their courage. . I was sick and many times lay at death’s door, but gave orders from a dog-house that the people clapped together for me on the poop deck.”
Rounding Cabo Gracia á Dios, he was able to coast southward to what is now called Limon Bay, in Costa Rica, where he anchored and rested for ten days.
Stanny: “I walked from there on the beach with two other young fellows to Greytown in Nicaragua, one of the boys died on the beach, & we dug a grave in the sand by the sea, & buried him, & travelled on again, each of us not knowing who would have to bury the other before we got there, as we were both sick with the fever & ague.”
Columbus drifted down the coast, searching for a passage, a channel to the Red Sea. .
(Plato, describing Atlantis: “. . and drove a canal through the zones of land three hundred feet in width, about a hundred feet deep, and about sixty miles in length. At the landward end of this waterway, which was capable of navigation by the largest vessels, they constructed a harbour. The two zones of land were cut by large canals, by which means a trireme, or three-decked galley, was able to pass from one sea-zone to another.”
Stanny: “I went up the San Juan river to Lake Nicaragua about a hundred miles with a Naval surveying expedition going up to survey for a ship Canal. .
. . searching for a canal, a short-cut, to avoid the rigors of the long voyage. .
(Melville, commenting on Emerson: “To one who has weathered Cape Horn as a common sailor what stuff all this is.”
Stanny: “. . from Greytown I shipped on a schooner for Aspinwall; after arriving in Aspinwall, I got wrecked there in that heavy gale of wind. . and I lost all my clothes, & every thing I had, & was taken sick again with the fever, I went into the hospital there, & then came home on the Steamer Henry Chauncey, where I find the cold weather agrees with me much better, than the sun of the tropics.
Now I say New York forever.”
Later: “I am happy to announce to you that this morning I went to work for a dentist, a Dr. Read; I went to his office on Saturday, & told him I wanted a place to work & perfect myself in the profession. .”
MOBY-DICK: “With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes — some few days after the other work — Queequeg, Dagoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood-lands.”