Billy Budd

Billy Budd

THE WORKS OF

HERMAN MELVILLE

STANDARD EDITION

VOLUME

_This Edition is limited to 750 copies_

BILLY BUDD

AND OTHER PROSE PIECES

BY

HERMAN MELVILLE

EDITED BY

RAYMOND W. WEAVER

CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD

LONDON · BOMBAY · SYDNEY

Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD.

at the University Press, Edinburgh

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

‘Billy Budd,’ the title-piece of this volume, is a novel finished by

Melville five months before his death in 1891, and never before

published. ‘Daniel Orme’ is a sketch ‘omitted from _Billy Budd_.’ The

fourth piece--‘The Two Temples’--was on May 12, 1854, refused by

_Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_ out of a fear of offending the religious

sensibilities of the congregation of Grace Church, New York. This volume

concludes with eight sketches surviving in manuscript, written, in all

probability, after Melville’s retirement in 1886, at the age of

sixty-seven, from his post as Inspector of Customs in New York City.

Except for his letters, journals, and the juvenile ‘Fragments from a

Writing Desk,’ this closes the count of Melville as a writer of prose.

The rest of the volume comprises all Melville’s contributions to

magazines that he acknowledged but never reprinted.

The text of matter hitherto unpublished has, so far as possible, been

printed verbatim from Melville’s manuscript. Here and there, however,

owing to the heavily corrected condition of many of the papers, slight

adjustments in the interests of grammar or of style have been made in

Melville’s wording.

The editor and publishers are indebted to the Princeton University Press

for their courtesy in allowing two of the essays included in this volume

to be reprinted from _The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches_, a volume

of Melville’s prose miscellanea recently issued from Princeton.

HAWTHORNE AND HIS MOSSES, BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING A JULY IN

VERMONT: _Literary World_, August 17, August 24, 1850 123

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! OR THE CROWING OF THE NOBLE COCK BENEVENTANO:

_Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November-December 1853 144

THE TWO TEMPLES 173

POOR MAN’S PUDDING AND RICH MAN’S CRUMBS: _Harper’s New Monthly

Magazine_, June 1854 192

THE HAPPY FAILURE, A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON: _Harper’s New

Monthly Magazine_, July 1854 210

THE FIDDLER: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, September 1854 220

THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS AND THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS: _Harper’s

New Monthly Magazine_, April 1855 228

JIMMY ROSE: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November 1855 255

THE ’GEES: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 268

I AND MY CHIMNEY: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 276

THE APPLE-TREE TABLE, OR ORIGINAL SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS:

_Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, May 1856 312

UNDER THE ROSE 339

THE MARQUIS DE GRANDVIN 346

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN 353

TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB 358

JACK GENTIAN 369

MAYOR GENTIAN AND COLONEL J. BUNKUM 373

THE CINCINNATI 378

FRAGMENT 381

FRAGMENTS FROM A WRITING-DESK 382

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN

WHAT BEFELL HIM IN THE YEAR OF

THE GREAT MUTINY, ETC.

Friday, Nov. 16, 1888--begun.

Revision begun--March 2, 1889.

Finished--April 19, 1891.

DEDICATED

TO

JACK CHASE

ENGLISHMAN

WHEREVER THAT GREAT HEART MAY NOW BE

HERE ON EARTH OR HARBOURED IN PARADISE

CAPTAIN OF THE MAIN-TOP

IN THE YEAR 1843

IN THE U.S. FRIGATE

‘UNITED STATES’

PREFACE

The year 1797, the year of this narrative, belongs to a period which, as

every thinker now feels, involved a crisis for Christendom, not exceeded

in its undetermined momentousness at the time by any other era whereof

there is record. The opening proposition made by the Spirit of that

Age,[1] involved a rectification of the Old World’s hereditary wrongs.

In France, to some extent, this was bloodily effected. But what then?

Straightway the Revolution itself became a wrongdoer, one more

oppressive than the kings. Under Napoleon it enthroned upstart kings,

and initiated that prolonged agony of continual war whose final throe

was Waterloo. During those years not the wisest could have foreseen that

(_An inside Narrative_)

In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a

stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally

have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed marines, man-of-war’s

men or merchant sailors in holiday attire ashore on liberty. In certain

instances they would flank, or, like a bodyguard, quite surround some

superior figure of their own class, moving along with them like

Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation. That signal

object was the ‘Handsome Sailor’ of the less prosaic time alike of the

military and merchant navies. With no perceptible trace of the

vainglorious about him, rather with the off-hand unaffectedness of

natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his

shipmates. A somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me. In Liverpool,

now half a century ago, I saw under the shadow of the great dingy

street-wall of Prince’s Dock (an obstruction long since removed) a

common sailor, so intensely black that he must needs have been a native

African of the unadulterate blood of Ham. A symmetric figure much above

the average height. The two ends of a gay silk handkerchief thrown loose

about the neck danced upon the displayed ebony of his chest; in his ears

were big hoops of gold, and a Scotch Highland bonnet with a tartan band

set off his shapely head.

It was a hot noon in July; and his face, lustrous with perspiration,

beamed with barbaric good-humour. In jovial sallies right and left, his

white teeth flashing into view, he rollicked along, the centre of a

company of his shipmates. These were made up of such an assortment of

tribes and complexions as would have well fitted them to be marched up

by Anacharsis Cloots before the bar of the first French Assembly as

Representatives of the Human Race. At each spontaneous tribute rendered

by the wayfarers to this black pagod of a fellow--the tribute of a pause

and stare, and less frequent an exclamation--the motley retinue showed

that they took that sort of pride in the evoker of it which the Assyrian

priests doubtless showed for their grand sculptured Bull when the

faithful prostrated themselves. To return----

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person

ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of

the dandified Billy-be-Dam, an amusing character all but extinct now,

but occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than

the original, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal

or, more likely, vapouring in the groggeries along the tow-path.

Invariably a proficient in his perilous calling, he was also more or

less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It was strength and beauty. Tales of

his prowess were recited. Ashore he was the champion, afloat the

spokesman; on every suitable occasion always foremost. Close-reefing

topsails in a gale, there he was, astride the weather yard-arm-end, foot

in ‘stirrup,’ both hands tugging at the ‘ear-ring’ as at a bridle, in

very much the attitude of young Alexander curbing the fiery Bucephalus.

A superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of Taurus against the

thunderous sky, cheerily ballooning to the strenuous file along the

spar.

The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the physical make.

Indeed, except as toned by the former, the comeliness and power, always

attractive in masculine conjunction, hardly could have drawn the sort of

homage the Handsome Sailor in some examples received from his less

gifted associates.

Such a cynosure, at least in aspect, and something such too in nature,

though with important variations made apparent as the story proceeds,

was welkin-eyed Billy Budd, or Baby Budd, as more familiarly, under

circumstances hereafter to be given, he at last came to be called, aged

twenty-one, a foretopman of the fleet toward the close of the last