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Notes
Mentioned in Melville's "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850) and later used as a source for his "The Apple-Tree Table" (1856).
A Summary View of the Millenial Church, or United Society of Believers, Commonly Called Shakers. Comprising the Rise, Progress and Practical Order of the Society. Together with the General Principles of Their Faith and Testimony. Second edition, revised (Albany, Van Benthuysen, 1848). The book bears the following penciled inscription, in Melville's hand: 'H Melville | Shaker Village (Hancock, Mass:) | July 213t 1850. | Bought of Nathan Holland.' Inside the front cover is a cutting from a sale-catalogue—marked "Pierce & Scopes—12/5/25"—which states that the book was "purchased in the house where he lived in Pittsfield. . . ." The volume was formerly part of the library of the late Edward L. Stone, of Roanoke, Virginia. On pp. ii and 358 Melville checked references to two other Shaker tracts: "The Sacred Roll and Book, written by Divine Inspiration" (title underlined by Melville) and an examination of scriptural texts on the resurrection of the body to be found in "Dunlavy's Manifesto, printed at Pleasant Hill, in Kentucky, 1818."
Journal up the Straits, October 11, 1856—May 5, 1857, ed. by Raymond Weaver (New York, 1935), p. 29.
A Summary View, p. 8. Melville marked this passage with a marginal line, indicating by a cross that his annotation refers to the first and second sentences, and also checked the italicized phrase. On p. 78 he checked a reference to a religious awakening in America, "The Kentucky Revival," which "commenced in the western states" about 1800.
Ibid., p. 88. Melville also checked three Biblical quotations on dancing, p. 89 (five check-marks), and placed a cross beside the following sentence on p. 91: "In short, have not thefts, robberies and murders, and indeed every species of villany [sic], been much more excited and encouraged by music than by dancing?" Compare the baleful influence of the mysterious music of Isabel's guitar in Melville's Pierre (1852).
Moby-Dick, II, 40-43. References to Melville's works are to the Standard Edition (London, 1922-24), 16 vols.
Ibid., p. 16. A footnote adds that according to some writers she "styled herself the Elect Lady; but this is a groundless charge: that title was given by her enemies in derision." The italicized words, so printed in both text and note, were also underlined by Melville.
Ibid., p. 14. On p. 18 he also checked a report of how Mother Ann, while imprisoned, was secretly fed by means of a pipe-stem which one of her followers introduced through a key-hole.
A Summary View, p. 20. Insofar as marking of passages reveals, this is the only statement in the book which Melville questioned. He did, however, check a passage on p. 9 concerning false testimony inspired by Satan, and both marked and checked the accompanying footnote: "So it was of old. 'When the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan came also among them.' Job, ii.1." It will be recalled that in Moby-Dick, when the mysterious Fedallah appears among the crew of the Pequod, Stubb takes him to be "the devil in disguise" (11, 55). Melville considers the problem of ambiguous intuitions at length in Pierre (1852), and in The Confidence-Man (1856) that of deliberately deceitful testimony.
Melville checked an account on p. 37 of Mother Ann's visit to the community at Shirley, Massachusetts, where she objected to the practice of giving "foolish toys" to children. The words "Foolish toy" are used by Ahab in Moby-Dick, II, 274, when he breaks his quadrant and spurns the guidance of science.
A Summary View, p. 15 (double-checked). Cf. Melville's use of the phrase "mystery of iniquity" in Mardi, II, 165; Clarel, I, 316; Billy Budd, p. 47.
Ibid., p. 259: allusions to Miriam, Esther, and Deborah as the Lord's instruments, with Biblical citations (checked); p. 263, a passage on the spiritual relation of the Second Eve (Mother Ann) to the Second Adam (Christ), marked with four marginal lines. On p. 68 he had checked and underlined a statement that in large Shaker families the management of temporal concerns is "intrusted to the deacons and deaconesses" (italics denote underlining).
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