University of Virginia Library

Melville and The Shakers
by
Merton M. Sealts, Jr.

TO STUDENTS OF HERMAN MELVILLE THE year 1850, when Moby-Dick was taking form, is of especial interest. The book was in progress soon after Melville's return to New York from Europe early in the year, and work on it continued at Pittsfield, where he spent the summer and located on his newly-purchased farm in the autumn. Although he was no stranger to the Berkshires, having lived nearly a year there with his late uncle, Thomas Melvill, and taught school in the neighborhood during his youth, he seems to have made a deliberate effort in 1850 to renew his familiarity with the New England environment through travel and reading. From July 18 to July 20 he accompanied his cousin Robert Melvill on a Berkshire excursion, and in the same month he was reading several books with New England associations— Dwight's Travels in New England,[1] A History of the County of Berkshire, Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, and an anonymous work on the "United Society of Believers, Commonly Called Shakers," acquired on a visit to the Shaker settlement at Hancock, Massachusetts, on July 21. Melville's copy of this book, A Summary View of the Millenial Church, is now in the Stone Collection in the Alderman Library, the University of Virginia.[2]

Although Melville introduced a crazed Shaker sailor into Moby-Dick as the principal character of the interlude entitled "The Jeroboam's Story" (Chapter LXXI), his knowledge of the Shaker sect has so far passed virtually unnoticed by scholars. In contrast to the extended treatments of Shakers in the writings of Hawthorne and Emerson, only one other allusion by Melville is known: in his journal for 1856, during a visit to Constantinople, he observed that the "convent" of the Dancing Dervishes reminded him of his Berkshire neighbors.[3] But from the correspondence of Evert Duyckinck, who visited Melville at Pittsfield early in August of 1850, it is learned that he was interested enough during that summer to return to Hancock with a party of friends on August 7 and also to go to the nearby Shaker settlement at Lebanon, both communities being popular attractions in that day for summer residents and their guests. Another excursion to Lebanon on August 15, as well as one in the following year, is also recorded. It is clear, moreover, that Melville's acquaintance with Shaker beliefs and practices was more than cursory, for in his copy of A Summary View passages on 25 of its 384 pages have been checked, underlined, or marked with marginal lines in Melville's characteristic manner, familiar and unmistakable to those who have studied other volumes which were formerly part of his library; and in addition there is a brief annotation in his hand. Most of the marked passages, probably a fair indication of the direction of his interest, occur in the opening sections (Parts I and II), dealing with the history

of the United Society and its distinctive forms of worship and government. The long exposition of Shaker theology and escha-tology which constitutes most of the book is virtually unmarked; whether Melville read this portion in its entirety or merely dipped into it here and there cannot be determined from the evidence at hand.

It is not surprising that the Dancing Dervishes reminded Melville in later years of the Shakers, for in A Summary View several of the numerous passages on Shaker dancing are marked and one of them is annotated. "Curious," he observed in a penciled note, "that this dancing religion should have originated among the French." His reference is to an account in the text of the "remarkable revival" which occurred about 1689 in "Dauphiny and Vivarais" and "excited great attention."

In Melville, who had been fascinated by the themes of inspiration and prophetic utterance as early as Mardi (1849), this element of the Shaker tradition clearly struck a sympathetic chord. As divine truth and power increased among the early Shakers, it is stated, This passage is marked with a marginal line and is also checked.

Except for the emphasis on music and dancing, this same preoccupation with inspired utterance is characteristic of the Shaker sailor in Moby-Dick. Gabriel's "powerful admonitions and prophetic warnings," an ominous foreshadowing of the catastrophe to come, are "heard and received with reverence and awe" by his impressionable shipmates, but his testimony is presented to the reader as akin to that of the prophetic Elijah and the crazed negro Pip, in whom inspiration is allied with madness. Gabriel himself is characterized as a man in a "deep, settled, fanatic delirium," once a "great prophet" in the "cracked, secret meetings" of the Shakers. At sea he "announced himself as the archangel Gabriel" and commanded his captain to jump overboard. As for his message, he solemnly warned the Jeroboam's master, as he was later to warn Ahab,

Deluded or not, Gabriel's intuition is perfectly sound in prophesying "special doom to the sacrilegious assailants" of Moby-Dick, whether the White Whale is taken as agent or principal, incarnate deity or incarnate devil. For "man's insanity is heaven's sense," as Melville elsewhere remarks of the idiot Pip,[7] and Ahab's monomaniac quest of vengeance is the true madness.

The marked passages just discussed are those with the greatest

relevance to Moby-Dick and its single Shaker character, whose presence there can be fairly attributed to Melville's proximity to the Shaker communities and his study of A Summary View. There are other features of Shakerism, however, which interested him as well and which bear some relation to his thought and writing. In the historical section of A Summary View he marked accounts of various stages in the development of the sect: the formation of a "Society" near Manchester, England, circa 1747, the origin of the name "Shakers," the early persecutions of the Society's adherents.[8] Of particular interest was the story of the celebrated "Mother Ann" Lee, who led a group of Shakers to America in 1774. Melville marked a reference to her as the Society's "spiritual Mother in Christ,"[9] the "second Eve," considered inferior in spiritual eminence only to Christ Himself; he checked accounts of her initial revelation of 1770 and consequent spiritual rebirth.[10] When "born into the spiritual kingdom," Mother Ann declared, Here again is the theme of divine inspiration. Melville made no comment at this point, but one recalls the absolute contrast of his own vision of the spiritual world as reflected in the chapters of Moby-Dick on "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "The Try-Works," in the torment of Pierre, and in the forlorn words of the imprisoned Bartleby: "I know where I am."[12] Perhaps Melville's unwilling vacillation between belief and unbelief, remarked upon by Hawthorne, is a clue to his interest in the theme of spiritual revelation and the spiritual certainty of the inspired Shakeress.

Attracted as he was to the story of Mother Ann, Melville was nevertheless openly skeptical of a miraculous deliverance which purportedly occurred during her voyage to America. The captain of her ship, it is related, became so irritated by the Shaker dancing that he considered throwing the company of believers into the sea. God protected them, however, and for their sakes preserved the ship and all on board when a terrific gale loosened a plank and threatened to swamp their vessel. Mother Ann, informing the captain that their ultimate safety had been assured to her by two angels, led the Shakers to assist the crew in manning the pumps. "Shortly after this, a large wave struck the ship with great violence, and the loose plank was instantly closed to its place." Melville, with a sailor's interest, marked the whole account with marginal lines, but after the mention of the wave that closed the leak he placed a revealing question-mark![13] The remainder of the historical sketch is matter-of-fact, recounting how the members of the Society, after their safe arrival in America, contracted for land "near Niskeyuna," in the state of New York[14]—Melville underlined the name, which in a different spelling is mentioned in Moby-Dick with reference to Gabriel's Shaker background— and settled there. "Mother Ann, and a number of the leading characters," were imprisoned for a time in Albany in 1780,[15] but

were released and permitted to establish additional communities.[16]

Toward the equalitarian principles of the Shaker settlements the democratic Melville was probably not unsympathetic, although one infers from his remarks on the "Apostles" in Pierre that he was dubious about the practicality of social reformers in general. In A Summary View he checked several passages explaining the aims and methods of the Shaker community organization. Among "all the hopeful expectations, labors and desires of mankind, in the present age," one of these declares,

That the Shaker Society at New-Lebanon has existed there "about sixty years" without failure is cited as proof of the efficacy of its organization and government,[18] which is later described as follows: Melville marked both this and another passage in the same vein: The reference is of course to communal organizations, but the passage is reminiscent of the bitterness arising between mother and son, brother and sister, and cousin and cousin in Pierre. Perhaps the fact that Melville himself had been living with relatives, even after his marriage, ever since his return from the South Seas in 1844 helps to account for his interest in the concept of the well-governed family.

In view of his own family situation and the seeming ambivalence of his attitude toward the relation between the sexes—particularly in Pierre—, one wonders with what motives Melville marked various passages on the Shaker rule of continence, the principle underlying the communal organization of the Society. None of the passages called forth specific comment in the form of annotation, but he did underline the key phrase in a passage stating that Mother Ann

Here again one is reminded of the idealistic Pierre, and the "terrible self-revelation" that comes upon him when he suddenly realizes the physical basis of his devotion to Isabel.[22] According to Mother Ann, physical passion is the root of all evil. She had in her visions The "only possible way" is of course renunciation of the flesh for a life of celibacy. Since for Melville the Shaker practices were not an acceptable solution of the human problem—in Pierre it is implied that there is no solution—, he showed little interest in the detailed theological arguments for the celibate life which are contained in many of the later pages of A Summary View. But if he rejected the Shaker "solution," he at the same time agreed with much of the Shaker analysis of the alienation of mankind from God. Within a month after buying A Summary View he was writing, in "Hawthorne and His Mosses," of With his growing belief in a neutral, impassive cosmos he must have agreed with the thought of a marked passage on the world's disorders and miseries: But he did not mark a single passage in the long sections dealing with the Shaker conception of the nature of God and His works, the fall and depravity of man, and the reign of Antichrist (Parts III, IV, V). Only two pages are marked in the discussion of the second manifestation of Christ in the female (Part VI, Chapter IV)[26] and one in "The Faith and Principles of the New Creation" (Part VII)—the passage on obedience in families quoted above.[27]

In summary, Melville's interest in the Shakers as indicated by the pattern of his markings is fairly clear. He checked key incidents in the general story of Shakerism, perhaps in order to qualify himself as a better guide when conducting his visiting New York friends to the Shaker villages, as he did again in the summer of 1851. The character of Mother Ann and the governing principles of the Shaker communities were other topics of interest. But what seemingly attracted him most was the prophetic strain in the Shaker religion, with its association of exalted bodily and mental states. Despite his evident skepticism toward Shaker sanity and the Shaker creed, he apparently agreed with their pessimistic outlook upon this earthly life, and was sympathetic toward their intuitive yearning for a better life to come. In his personal knowledge of the sect and in A Summary View lay the material for his characterization of the Shaker Gabriel in one of the most striking and portentous chapters of Moby-Dick.

Notes