While one waits around doggedly, hoping for more favourable offers, one had better seize the opportunity and make a flying trip to France: one never knows if one is coming this way again; and besides, if one does that story of the revolutionary beggar, Potter, one ought to be able to follow him on his French mission. Very well: by steamer to Boulogne, then by rail to Paris. A lodging-house on the Rue de Bussy, then a room at Mme. Capelie’s on the Left Bank. This is civilization: the Rue de Rivoli: the Place de la Concorde: the Tuileries: the Sorbonne: these things have the imprint of logic and law. Chaos and old time are somehow set at naught. The Louvre makes the National Gallery itself seem a little provincial: Notre Dame, under repair, is still a noble mass: there is a vivacity, an eagerness, an upright peasant homeliness in the housewives in felt shoes, in the rosy-cheeked market-women, that makes one feel a little nearer home. Courtesy takes the place of servility here, innate courtesy; a market-woman may have it as well as a duchess. The Hôtel de Cluny, on the site of the old Roman bath, is just such a house as one would like to live in, venerable, spacious, solid; and the bookstalls by the Palais Royal, with their Latin translations and their Voltaire and their Fénelon, give one a sense of a nation bred to thought and expression, not merely sharp and acquisitive, like the Yankees, although, obviously, they do not let the sous go by. And yet--well, the devilish nonsense of this passport business: the tapeworm of an ancient bureaucracy. What a disappointment to stand on line, once, twice, to get admission to Rachel in Phèdre, and be turned away. Rachel acting at the Palais Royal: Victor Cousin lecturing at the Sorbonne--and somehow, one remains out of it, unable to get sight of, much less to understand, these things. For consolation one has _eau de vie_ and a metaphysical talk with the ubiquitous Dr. Adler.
One is a little downcast: but what did one expect? The truth is, one’s heart is not altogether in it: one wants Lizzie and Barney, now, far more than one wants Rachel, Cousin, and the triumphs of culture generally. Still: one will make one last try: by train to Brussels, that venerable but obviously stodgy place, Paris minor, and then over into Germany for a little trip up the Rhine to Cologne, an antiquated, gable-ended town, with the crane still aloft in the unfinished tower of the Cathedral, full of associations that go back as far as Charlemagne. How concentrated history becomes in Europe: here Rubens was born and Marie de Médicis died: much lore and history to interest a pondering man. Down the Rhine itself at night, between black cliffs and crags, from Cologne to Coblentz. Metternich was born near this great fortress, Ehrenbreitstein, but, more significant symbol than this, the finest Rhenish wine-grapes are grown right under its guns. Does not that stand for life itself? Our rarest triumphs and ecstasies are touched with the shadow of ancient death. At dusk one finds oneself standing in the place where the two rivers meet: opposite towers the fortress: some four thousand miles away are Lizzie and America. Tomorrow, the last lap begins: definitely one is homeward bound.
London itself seems halfway home, when one returns to the old chamber overlooking the Thames. Back in London with a few presents, a pair of gloves and shoes from Paris for Lizzie, a medallion one bought from an old woman near the Arc de Triomphe, and a breast-pin one bought in Cologne from a rascally shopwoman who cheated one, cheated--and by a woman--and not even a pretty woman! If only one could splurge a little on presents. No: one must be sensible: a trencher and breadknife, as used of old at commons in New College: fine thing. One for Mrs. Shaw, too. At last Mr. Bentley has come around to one’s terms; it was worth waiting for. Two hundred pounds sterling on a note of hand for six months, on White-Jacket. If only Lizzie and the Little One were here--thank heaven for good letters from Lizzie--one might settle down to a little enjoyment. The Duke of Rutland has sent one a courteous invitation to visit Belvoir Castle in January. Alas! that is three weeks ahead. Can one put another three weeks between one and home? If one does not go, one will miss a royal opportunity to see the aristocracy under the best possible conditions: not merely an interesting experience in itself, but--a prudent author mustn’t forget it--so much good material to be hoarded up for another book. If one passes this up, Allan, shrewd fellow, will set one down for a ninny.
Ah! if only one could get over the three weeks: if the two images at home would only down for that space of time. Another cigar: one must weigh it over carefully. No: no: the visit to Leicester would be very agreeable--at least very valuable--but the three weeks couldn’t be borne. It is bad enough to have to go back in a thirty-day boat to save money, instead of dashing in on a twelve- or fifteen-day packet steamer. That’s settled: one goes. Yes: one goes. Now one can enjoy a bright day, and an hour at the National Gallery looking at Rembrandt’s Jew and the saints of Taddeo Gaddi and Guido’s Murder of the Innocents. One is going home. Things brighten. Davidson has promised to discount Bentley’s note at the banker’s; one even begins to enjoy old Bentley: he is a fine, frank, off-handed old gentleman, opening up gradually, like all Englishmen, but as solid as oak once he is sure of you and of his own feelings. One begins to like these English: they are not all masked and corseted in iron. There is Alfred Crowquill, for example, Punch’s funny man, whom one meets at Bentley’s--a good fellow, free and easy, and no damned nonsense. The Benchers at the Temple Bar are men after one’s own heart: a Paradise of Bachelors, this! Well, one sails a week hence. Ironically, one leaves for the old home just as one is beginning to feel settled in the new one! One breakfasts for the last time at the old place; one says good-bye to Bentley; one has one’s last dinner at Morley’s; one’s first and last glimpse of the Reform Club, a last good-bye to the somehow pleasantly dingy room in Craven Street. Waterloo Station--Portsmouth--and one steps, with Captain Fletcher, aboard the Independence, a small, ancient-looking wooden ship. In less than twenty-four hours we are past Land’s End.
Nothing happens between December 26, when one sets sail, and January 30, when one gets sight of a pilot boat: nothing can possibly happen outside that would compete with the memories, the stimuli, the anticipations, the impetuous dreams, the regrets at visits forgotten and experiences omitted, the whole inner tumult of this four months away from home. Or rather, what happens most importantly now, comes by way of books: De Quincey, Rousseau’s Confessions, Ben Jonson, Thomas Browne, The Castle of Otranto, Lamb’s Essays, Hudibras, Marlowe, Anastasius, Vathek, Goethe’s autobiography. The vessel is again one’s cloister: but instead of a long, unconscious growth it contains a vivid and conscious development: every day one is aware of new shoots, ideas, emotions, feelings, insights, sprouting out of one: why, before one had reached twenty-five one hardly had any growth one could point to at all. And now.... If one could not write books one would burst. One is big with a book; it kicks at the walls of the womb; it wakes one in the night with its anticipatory motions.
The low-lying hills of Staten Island at last. The clack and clamour of Whitehall, Broadway. Lizzie. Barney no longer says, “Where dat old man?” He has a dozen other things to talk about. Lizzie is busy with the household, her mother, her mother-in-law, Sam, Father, Uncle Peter, Allan, the sisters: she chatters on about all of them, and about what baby did last week. She will never quite realize, perhaps, what one has been through, how deep one’s longing is, how strong one’s need for escape is, too. She loves one, yes, but not with that gnawing intensity; she will never appreciate how lonely one has been. Before a fortnight is over one wonders why one had ever been so feverishly anxious to come back. Lizzie would have waited another three weeks: an invitation from the Duke of Rutland is irretrievable. No matter: spring is coming, and one must get down to work, and be midwife to one’s own progeny. What earthly shape will this embryo take on?
(_Exit Herman Melville, pondering his future._)
TITAN
CHAPTER SIX: RED CLOVER
It was time for Melville to begin work again. In February, 1850, he owed his publisher, Harper’s, more than seven hundred dollars in advances not covered by royalties. He did what he could to reduce the scale of his living. In the spring, he left New York and went up to Broadhall with his family--the old homestead that his Grand-Uncle Thomas had sold when he emigrated to Ohio, had now been converted into an inn: his grandfather’s old desk was still mildewing in the barn, and Melville brought it to light, cleaned it up for his own use, and sat down to it.