And in MARDI, the cannibals wore teeth as ornaments, and hoarded them as money — teeth, like money, being the means of eating. .
(Stanny: “. . in a few years I will be independent of any man.”
But: “I have encountered a serious obstacle which will prevent me from becoming a number one dentist, & that is I am too near sighted; I found it out as quick as I commenced operating in the mouth. . I am going to sail Wednesday for San Francisco. .”
Lizzie: “We have better news from Stanny — He is on a sheep-ranch in California. .”
And: “I wanted to tell you that we are expecting Stanny home in a short time — A very favorable opening for his going back to his old business, mechanical dentistry offered itself. .”
“Stanny begs me to thank you very much for all your kind wishes — he is very well now (with the exception of a little bowel trouble). .”
1875, departs for San Francisco, and
“There is a party of five or six of us that are going to start for the Black Hills country about the middle or last of January. . I have made up my mind, this is a chance, & I may be lucky there, at any rate I can get miners wages which is more than I can make here. . and I am going this winter if I die of starvation or get frozen to death on the road.”
Lizzie: “I have been writing to Stanny. . he has been sick poor fellow, and had to go in the hospital at Sacramento. .”
“We hear constantly from Stanny — I wish I could say he is materially better. .”
“. . a good deal worried about Stanny’s health — his pulmonary troubles have been worse. .”
and Melville, now age 66—whose own paternity had been blasted, who had been thrust loose in an earlier world — signs a letter to Stanny:
Good bye, & God bless you
Your affectionate Father
H. Melville.
A death notice:
MELVILLE — At San Francisco, Cal., 23d inst., Stanwix, son of Herman and Elizabeth S. Melville, in the 35th year of his age.
And there was Bessie, third-born, and oldest daughter:
thin, small, weak-voiced, but with a sharp tongue (she liked raw humor),
crippled with arthritis (they never saw such feet on one who could still walk), afraid of strong winds, afraid that she would be blown over. .
lived with her mother, and then alone, an old maid (she didn’t like little children, couldn’t stand their little smelly drawers),
and when she died, quarts of black liquid — undigested food — were found in her system. .
And finally, Fanny, last-born, furthest removed from the disaster,
who salvaged life and fertility (she married a man from Philadelphia, and gave birth to four daughters. .
who nevertheless had her troubles (and blamed them all on her own father. .
developed arthritis (she could be seen on the porch of her summer home, Edgartown — white-headed, her sweet, gentle face, white, she in a white dress — her leg out stiff, arthritic. .
and died, finally, incontinent and placid, a baby—1935.
Thus the four children of Herman Melville:
The men:
one, dead by his own hand, and the other, wasted. .
(Melville, as Pierre: “Lo! I leave corpses wherever I go!”
And the women:
arthritic, motionless, holding against the down-rushing waters. .
And hovering over all, moving, surviving, through the long term of Melville’s life, and beyond — was Lizzie. .
Shifting again, I glance, not upward, as at the crossbeam, but downward, between my legs, at the floor. . and I recall (my arms and legs are tense, a little tired, as though strained) waiting in the basement, alone with Mother, during the tornado. . the loneliness, the wanting to be with Carl, wanting to be, as he was, up in the rigging, in the storm, with Father — and having to wait, instead, in the darkness, in the grip that I was too young to break. . lifting my eyes level again, I read
that the bride of Columbus in all probability did not survive five years of the marriage; and
“Not the slightest hint has come down to us of the appearance or disposition of Columbus’s only wife; Dona Felipa is as shadowy a figure as the Discoverer’s mother.”
(About Melville’s wife, and mother, a great deal is known. .
Whether dead or still living, Dona Felipa was abandoned when Columbus left Portugal.
And on the first voyage, early in the return, Columbus set out to discover the island of Matinino, inhabited, as the Indians told him, only by women; for this might be Marco Polo’s Feminea. .
. . but the ships were leaking, and the wind blew strong from the west: he changed his course for Spain.
Third voyage: “. . at the lengthe an Eastsoutheaste wynde arose, and gave a prosperous blaste to his sayles.”. . the fleet coasted before the trades, through “El Golfo de las Damas,” the Ladies’ Sea. .
And Mellville, late in life, in a letter: “But you do not know, perhaps, that I have already entered my eighth decade. After twenty years nearly, as an outdoor Customs House officer, I have latterly come into possession of unobstructed leisure, but only just as, in the course of nature, my vigor sensibly declines.”
Columbus, on the third voyage, executed one of the most extraordinary feats of dead-reckoning navigation: Margarita (The Terrestrial Paradise) to Hispaniola. .
and arriving, troubled with gout, found the colony disorganized, Roldan in rebellion. . and instead of clean action, fighting and subduing Roldan, he negotiated, submitted to a set of humiliating agreements. .
(Fanny, describing Melville, his later peacefulness: “He just didn’t have the energy any more. .”
. . and later he was put in fetters (darbies, Melville called them) and sent back to Spain, on what proved to be the only eastward voyage, return voyage, accompanied by any sort of good weather. .
(on shipboard, they offered to take off the fetters, but he refused, declared that he would wear them until he had the opportunity to kneel with them still on, before the Sovereigns. Ever after this, he guarded them jealously, kept them in his room, directed that they be interred with his body. .
Melville, reading Homer, checks and underscores: “The work that I was born to do is done!”
After the Civil War, when Franco had won, Carl teamed with a Spanish family, four brothers and a sister: Rico, Rafael, Salomón, Diego, and Concha — old Spanish aristocrats (though they had been fighting, so Carl claimed, for the Loyalists). All wanted to get out of Spain (the Spaniards complained that no one spoke Spanish, it was all Russian and German), so they acquired a yacht and set sail for Cuba. .
. . where Carl lived for several years, becoming embroiled in one after another of the rebellions. One by one, three of the four brothers (Rico alone escaped) were destroyed, aligning themselves on different sides in the fighting. . Carl carried with him a photo of Rafael, his shirt torn, his body spattered with blood, lying drenched in sunlight on the pavement, where he had fallen. . it came out (when Carl was drunk) that they had been fighting on opposite sides, and that perhaps it had been Carl’s own gun that had killed him. .
We heard little of Concha, she was studying medicine, and was quiet, but she fought side by side with the men. . and Carl seemed to be always where she was. .
THE INDES