From the Archives: The Melville Log, Pt. 2

I was already planning a followup to Monday's Melville Log post, with a quotation I alluded to there, but then I had the pleasure of receiving a short comment to the post from Professor Hershel Parker himself (you can't speak without being heard in the age of the Google Alert), who took my comparison of him to the mad whale-hunter with good humor and passed on a link to a history on his blog of the Log and its reception (and expansion) that to me is fascinating and dramatic, both for its further sketching in of the background of Leyda's work and for its thumbnail (but very personal) history of American literary criticism in the past 50 years. For the latter I urge you to turn to the full post--it's a passionate argument for the attention to biography and history that's been lost in that time, which, for someone who spent his graduate-school years in the age of "historicism" without ever really learning how to do history (no doubt my fault as well as the age's), hit home.

And for the former, here's a glimpse of the conditions of the Log's creation, which just adds to the weight of its documentation:

The Log in fact had to be highly selective not only because of the limits of space but simply because Leyda typically did the excerpting in uncomfortable, constraining circumstances. Living below the edge of poverty, staying in YMCAs or cadging rooms from acquaintances or their friends, he worked on the fly, unable to stay long enough in New York City to exhaust the archives in the New York Public Library, for instance.

Somebody needs to do a Leyda Log! Or write a biography of that singular man. I love Parker's story of his own embarkation into the archives, carrying his copies of the Log into the New York Public Library to follow its leads, just as Leyda had hoped. There's a lot more in the post, including Parker's skepticism of Leyda's "silver platter" method of biography (which, as noted last time, has a lot to do with Eisenstein's montage), which allows readers to, as it were, write their own biographies from his material, versus Parker's argument for a stronger biographical hand. (The photo above, also borrowed from Parker's blog, is of Leyda and Parker, and must be quite late in Leyda's life. UPDATE: And the photo to the left, contributed by Parker (see comments below), is of Leyda reading a review of Moby-Dick that Parker had unearthed in the Troy Public Library.)

But in the spirit of the archives, finally, here is the primary material I originally meant to pass along. It's from a letter from John Hoadley to George Boutwell on January 9, 1873, concerning the position by which Melville supported his family as the works of his decade of furious creation were forgotten. Who are Hoadley and Boutwell? The first volume of the Log, which I don't have at hand, has the helpful biographical notes, but Hoadley was Melville's brother-in-law, with whom he apparently was on close terms with, and Boutwell was the Secretary of the Treasury and therefore Melville's ultimate boss (short of President Grant).

There is one person in the employment of the Revenue Service, in whom I take so deep an interest, that I venture a second time to write you about him;--not to solicit promotion, a favor, or indulgence of any sort,--but to ask you, if you can, to do or say anything in the proper quarter of his modest, hard-earned salary, as deputy inspector of the Customs in the City of New York--Herman Melville. --Proud, shy, sensitively honorable,--he had much to overcome, and has much to endure; but he strives earnestly to so perform his duties as to make the slightest censure, reprimand, or even reminder,--impossible from any superior-- Surrounded by low venality, he puts it all quietly aside,--quietly declining offers of money for special services,--quietly returning money which has been thrust into his pockets behind his back, avoiding offence alike to the corrupting merchants and their clerks and runners, who think that all men can be bought, and to the corrupt swarms who shamelessly seek their price;--quietly, steadfastly doing his duty, and happy in retaining his own self-respect--

    By the rules of any conceivable "civil service," he must be secure against removal.--Advancement or promotion he does not seek,--nor would his friends seek it for him.--The pittance he receives ekes out his slender income and that of his wife, (who is a daughter of the late Lemuel Shaw, C.J. of Mass--) and affords him the quiet, simple livelihood he values--The loss of $5000.--by the Boston fire, carrying with it an income of $500.--part of the small property left her by her Father, making Mrs. Melville additionally solicitous that Mr. Melville should retain his place--I most earnestly wish that representations might be made in the proper quarter so that in the event of any general change in the Custom House in New York, Mr. Melville might find a sheltering arm thrown over him.--Pardon me: my sincere feeling must be my excuse...

It's a moving letter, in its picture both of the aging Melville and of his brother-in-law's care for him, that can largely speak for itself, but I just want to note two things: the obvious echoes of Bartleby, who Melville had created 20 years before, although this Melville is not merely a sayer of "No," but one whose "No"s are more active attempts to do good; and the fact that Hoadley sees no necessity to mention Melville's literary work, which in earlier years, when he was better known, was the highlight of his applications for such sinecures. Now it seems of no import; he's just an honorable worker with family responsibilities who should be allowed to go on doing his work.

UPDATE: Professor Parker's Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative, with much more about Jay Leyda and many others, no doubt, is due out in January, as mentioned in the comments below, and the cover, while not the work of Maurice Sendak like the two volumes of his main biography, is indeed striking:

Comments

[hershel Parker]

Tom, now in page proofs from Northwestern is my MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE. Chapter 4 is "Creating THE NEW MELVILLE LOG and Writing the Biography"--p. 75-120, a long chapter. Here is more of the story.

You recognize the source and implications of the sub-title.
Hershel

[hershel Parker]

P.S. Tom, in MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE you might be interested in Ch. 7, "Agenda-Driven Reviewers: Melville in the Insular New York Newspapers and Magazines vs. Global Loomings from 'Ragtag Bloggers' and Litblogs." The most intelligent reviews of my MELVILLE: THE MAKING OF THE POET came from Internet blogs, so I tried to learn something of what is happening in your swift-moving world. And in a later chapter I celebrate a blogger, Nicole Perrin, who scooped Bezanson and me and every other professional Melvillean.

[Tom Nissley]

I really look forward to that "inside narrative," if your post on Leyda and the Log is an indication of its contents. And I'm so glad you're adapting to the swift-moving world that I'm struggling to keep up with myself.

I'm curious if anyone has ever attempted a biography of the fascinating Mr. Leyda--will yours be the nearest? His singular career seems to deserve one itself.

[hershel Parker]

A biographer of Jay Leyda would have to be as much a cosmopolitan as he was and familiar with many languages and art forms. I don't think there can be a satisfactory biography of this uniquely talented man. I give only late glimpses in MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE, as when I mention that in his last long hospitalization TV programs and commercials blared day and night in his two-bed room. This great and sensitive man was tortured hour by hour for more than a year in what was billed as a rehabilitative hospital. I was the only one who ever cut his toenails.

[hershel Parker]

Any chance you or other lit-blog fellows would like to write substantial reviews of MELVILLE BIOGAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE? It's in first-pass page proofs now and I'm in the middle of a few weeks of indexing. Bound proofs might be available in late Summer or early Fall. Rain Taxi did a good job on MELVILLE: THE MAKING OF THE POET. Is Dan Green reviewing? Who are the hottest litblog reviewers right now? My discussion in chapter 7 is going to be somewhat out of date before the book is published, but I allowed for the fast-changing status of litblogs.

In Ch. 7 I am betting on "divine amateurs" and litbloggers to take up the slack from decaying mainstream media and to surpass the literary reviewing we now see in THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS.

[hershel Parker]

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/06/17/2109874/morro-bay-man-is-a-literary-scholar.html
In the San Luis Obispo TRIBUNE 18 June 2012.

[hershel Parker]

I'm trying to post a beautiful picture of Leyda here and failing. I have it in jpg on my desktop and hit copy but I can't move it to here. I can drop it in a Word Document just fine. It's of Jay in the basement of the Troy Public Library reading a review of Moby-Dick I had just discovered in a Troy paper by using his "Leyda's Wand."

[hershel Parker]

The Troy Public Library has moved the newspapers upstairs but in 1986 they were pretty neglected. We were working with foxing bindings on a table covered with blue and white-table cloth material. It was hot and pretty miserable. But Leyda said, as we were reading unknown reviews of Melville, "I'd rather be here than in the Pierpont Morgan Library." You see why I loved him and revered him.

That was his last research trip.

[hershel Parker]

Sir, if you are in a magnanimous mood you might copy from Amazon the cover picture of MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE. I would love to scroll down from Jay Leyda's pictures and see this image!

The Northwestern University Press's Marianne Jankowski created this cover--a dazzlingly intuitive embodiment of the idea of imperfect "inside narrative," in my objective opinion!

[hershel Parker]

Tom, there's a flurry of Internet activity just now. The great Internet critic Daniel Green has put a comment of mine (the ending of Ch. 7 of MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE)up as a stand-alone post, "Ragtag Bloggers." He's got the cover picture up.
http://noggs.typepad.com/thereadingexperience/2012/09/hershel-parker.html
See my June 19 post for background on the excerpt in The Reading Experience.

[Tom Nissley]

Cover image added--thanks for the alert.

[hershel Parker]

Copies have reached Evanston and one may reach me soon.