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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
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."
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,
The marked passages just discussed are those with the greatest
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
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,
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
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
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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