Melville in Love Read online

  It wasn’t until June that Melville returned to New York to work closely with the printers as he put the final touches on his book. After his winter and spring in the Berkshires even June seemed too hot in what he called “the babylonish brick-kiln of New York.” So he quickly retreated to Pittsfield “to feel the grass—and end the book reclining on it, if I may.”2

  Sarah was already enjoying her new home in June, thankful that she didn’t have to remain in New York for the summer. In a letter to one of her English in-laws, she echoed Melville’s comments about the contrast between the city heat and the more relaxing weather in the Berkshires. “While the denizens of the city are complaining of the intense heat—we up here amid the hills are rejoicing in cool breezes and balmy days.” As in the previous season, she seemed to thrive in the Berkshires. Rowland had his business in New York to keep him busy, and became so caught up in his work that he rarely visited Broadhall that summer. To the family in England, Sarah wrote, “Rowland is well but looks much thinner than when we landed—he has been very much engaged too of late. I trust when the summer has gone he will regain his fat a little.”3

  More or less on her own for the season, Sarah filled her new house with as many of her relatives and friends as she could find, issuing last-minute invitations for one hastily arranged event after another. The summer became a continuous party. Few went away unhappy. Friends praised her “rare talent . . . of putting her guests at ease.” Fond of champagne, she served it generously at her parties, and Broadhall quickly earned a reputation as a place of “free-hearted hospitality.”4

  In July and August, as he finished his work on Moby-Dick, Melville was able to spend more time with Sarah, and gradually he lost himself in the whirlwind of her social life. When a summer shower disrupted one of her picnics, he led her little party to the shelter of a loft in a neighbor’s barn. The group spread out in the hay and passed a pleasant hour talking among themselves and listening to the patter of the warm raindrops on the roof. At one point Melville entertained the group with an exuberant recitation of a friend’s patriotic poem about the Revolutionary War. He was funny and charming, and not at all like the troubled man who had spent the winter writing all day in isolation. At sea, he had often enjoyed such moments of uninhibited fun, but rarely on land since his last voyage—except with Sarah.

  Two days later, there was a musical evening at Broadhall, with singing and three or four performances on the piano by some of Sarah’s friends. It went on until midnight and Melville stayed until the very end, riding the short distance back to Arrowhead under a bright summer moon. His wife didn’t take part in any of the summer festivities this year. She was having a hard time with her pregnancy. Living with her difficult husband and his large family had never been easy, but now that he seemed determined to spend so much time with Sarah, Lizzie found herself confined to the house and unable to do much of anything. She was almost entirely dependent on her husband’s mother and sisters for company. Writing to her own family in Boston one hot summer day, Lizzie found that her frayed nerves were getting the better of her. “I cannot write any more,” she suddenly admitted in the letter. “It makes me terribly nervous—I dont know as you can read this I have scribbled it so, but I can’t help it.”5

  She couldn’t have been pleased when Melville announced in early August that he was going to make an overnight trip to the top of Mount Greylock with Sarah and a few of her friends. By now Lizzie must have had her suspicions about the amount of time her husband was spending with their pretty neighbor, but Melville could have explained away the trip as an innocent bit of fun. Melville’s brother Allan was going to come along, as well as his sister Augusta. Evert Duyckinck—visiting again from New York—was bringing his younger brother George. There would be ten people in all, but neither Sarah nor Melville would be going with their spouses, and the plan was to spend the night under the stars at the summit.

  In fact, this expedition to Greylock was a scandal, one that would generate so much gossip that Sarah would proudly refer to it in print as “that excursion to Greylock,” as though everyone in Pittsfield knew about it. The most daring thing she ever wrote was a short chapter about it in a little book published by her friend J. E. A. Smith. The book was supposed to be a harmless guide for local tourists, but Sarah turned her contribution into a defiant celebration of a forbidden night of pleasure. Without explanation, Smith eliminated it from the next edition. Using an older spelling for the mountain range that included Greylock, Smith called his book Taghconic: or, Letters and Legends about Our Summer Home. It was published in 1852.

  Sarah didn’t seem to care much about what others thought of the excursion. She wanted to enjoy herself, and in her almost manic urge to make the most of each day, she resented having to abide by conventional morality—or, as she called it, “the iron rule which cramps and confines our best and purest feelings.” The more traditional members of the community were shocked by the outing and were eager to condemn it as—at the very least—a reckless temptation. After venting in Moby-Dick his own frustrations with the “iron rule” of civilized society, Melville was more than ready to see this adventure as a temporary escape from a world that seemed to thwart natural desire. It was a chance to be a castaway once again, a free man at the top of a mountain. He had a word for roaming the Berkshires like a castaway. He called it “vagabondism,” and earlier in the summer he had suggested that Hawthorne try it with him. “You and I,” he wrote, “must hit upon some little bit of vagabondism, before Autumn comes. Graylock—we must go and vagabondize there.”6

  After staring at Greylock all winter long, Melville wanted to set foot on its summit and show that he had overcome obstacles of all kinds. He would conquer Greylock as a prelude to conquering the literary world. Again, however, Hawthorne wasn’t ready to play that game, but Sarah was, and—like her effort to crown him with a laurel wreath later that year—this trip to the mountain was her tribute to Melville. She had never attempted anything like it before, and wouldn’t try again.

  MELVILLE’S FAMILY MAY HAVE HOPED that the trip wouldn’t incite any gossip in the village, but it was inevitable that people would talk about the latest exploits of Sarah and her friends when the biggest landmark in the region was the destination of their overnight adventure. Sarah took the precaution of hiding her own identity in her essay for Smith’s book, calling herself simply a “friend” of the editor. She also didn’t name any of her companions, and left the composition of the group vague, saying only that the individuals were of “kindred mind, taste, and feeling.” But many local people, including Melville’s mother, soon learned that Mrs. Morewood was the author. In the matter of the trip itself, Sarah was unapologetic, presenting it as an exercise in romantic freedom. For her, the beauty of the area was a call to follow the dictates of nature and enjoy life with less restraint. The message of Greylock was clear to her: “Commune with your own heart, and be still.” Evert Duyckinck had the impression that Sarah was managing much of Melville’s time that summer. “The order of the day is a drive & call upon Mrs. Morewood,” he wrote from Arrowhead in early August. “What next depends upon her kind and inventive genius.”7

  To provide at least an appearance of propriety for the overnight trip, Sarah invited one of her sisters to come along, as well as a visiting friend named Miss Henderson, and a local clergyman—George Entler. Rev. Entler was a dubious choice. The same age as Melville, he had already been dismissed from two Congregational churches—one of them on the outskirts of Pittsfield at the village of Windsor. He would eventually abandon his religious calling to teach German. He wasn’t attached to any church when he accompanied Sarah’s party to Greylock, and afterward he would never have another ministry in the Berkshires.

  Allan and Augusta were Herman’s closest siblings, but even they may not have fully realized how the trip would look to the gossips in town. Sarah regarded Augusta as “warm hearted . . . and more romantic than most people suppose her to be.” As such, she was the perfect perso
n to add respectability to the trip without dampening the pleasure of it, but she was under no illusions about Sarah’s power to overwhelm with charm anyone who came into her orbit. “You are one of God’s brightest creatures,” she later told her, “gifted with powers of mind & a fascination that wins love & confidence, that attracts & interests.”8

  Rounding out the party was Allan’s wife, Sophia, and the Duyckinck brothers, all of whom seem to have been swept into the excursion without much choice. They were guests at Arrowhead and must have felt obliged to go along. Like Augusta, George Duyckinck was so above reproach that he added a respectable air to the adventure. A devoutly religious bachelor, he was the most innocent-looking one of the group. Slightly built, with a receding hairline, a pale complexion, and an unimpressive beard that barely covered his jaw, he lived with his brother and his sister-in-law, and would never marry, immersing himself in religious biographies and eventually writing a few of his own. For now the Literary World was his main focus, but he was soon to become treasurer of a high-minded group not known for encouraging secret romantic encounters on mountaintops, the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union and Church Book Society.

  With her party assembled, Sarah threw herself into this adventure wholeheartedly, arranging for ample supplies of food and champagne to be included in the outing, and working out the best routes for the ascent. The group was divided in two, and the parties arranged to meet near the summit after approaching it from different directions, using wagons at first, and then going the rest of the way on horseback and foot. Melville was in Sarah’s party. All in all, it was a climb of more than three thousand feet, and not a minor undertaking for any New England lady of the period.

  It’s possible to re-create their ascent, and though any reasonably fit person would find parts of the climb undemanding, there are steeper places that require more than average strength. Modern climbers may reach the top with little difficulty, but it’s worth keeping in mind that Sarah and the other women in the party did it in Victorian garb and old-fashioned boots. As it was, even some of the men were exhausted by the ordeal. Evert Duyckinck was one who didn’t fare well. Struggling to finish the climb, he was “gasping with open mouth and dripping at every pore” as he came up the trail. “The last mile of that is tough,” he later complained. “I was a blown horse when we reached the summit.”9

  Mountain-climbing ladies were indeed a rarity in the Berkshires of the 1850s, but it was unheard-of for a woman—especially a wife and mother unaccompanied by her husband—to spend a night at the top of one. A few of the more liberal-minded citizens of Pittsfield couldn’t help but admire Sarah for her spirit in undertaking such a challenge. Dr. Holmes was one of those. In his novel inspired by her, Elsie the heroine is distinguished in part for her midsummer rambles to the local mountain. “Elsie was never so much given to roaming over The Mountain as at this season; and as she had grown more absolute and uncontrollable, she was as like to take the night as the day for her rambles.” From the calm safety of his summer house in the meadows below Broadhall, Dr. Holmes knew how scandalous such freedom in a woman could be, but he also couldn’t help feeling that it was sexy beyond measure. Fresh from her summer “rambles,” Elsie never looked so “superb.” She was “never so threatening in her scowling beauty. The barred skirts she always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous muslins; the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her own pleasure rather than to dazzle others.”10

  No one in town was quite sure what happened on “that excursion to Greylock,” but Sarah didn’t waste much time giving them a clue.

  15

  LOT’S WIFE

  As mountaintops go, Greylock’s is rather tame—at least in summer. The summit is broad with lots of room to wander from side to side for different views. Some of the slopes are gentle enough to encourage cautious strolls near the edge of the mountain. What mere photos can’t convey is the sense at the top of standing in a snow globe at rest—a tranquil, watery atmosphere of blue and white where everything around the mountain seems to be floating in and out of the hazy distance. The wide grandeur of the green countryside below also seems in movement, changing with the light. When Henry David Thoreau spent the night here in July 1844, he felt that he was immersed in “an undulating country of clouds. . . . A country as we might see in dreams.”1

  It can be exhilarating to stand at the top in high summer, the air cool and pungent with the smell of balsam. When darkness falls, the light fades slowly as the horizon goes gray and then black. Modern climbers can stay overnight at a lodge with all the comforts of the world below, but in Melville’s day the only shelter was a ramshackle observatory with rough places for sleeping that brought to mind the comfort of a hayloft. It was exactly what Sarah was hoping for. She loved the rustic feel of the structure, and she was in awe of the view, which was all the more impressive to those of her time, who were born long before anyone could admire the landscape from an aircraft window.

  Far from exhausted by the ascent, Sarah reveled in it, stopping frequently to admire the views and the vegetation, and to gather wildflowers. By the time everyone reached the summit, the sun was going down and a summer mist was hanging over the rugged expanse below, adding—said Sarah—“beauty to what was already too beautiful for description.” Their evening meal was taken in the observatory (Sarah called it the Tower), with “brandy cherries” served as a special treat. Melville—by far the strongest in the group—chopped wood for a large fire outside, and everyone gathered around it to warm themselves. Looking up, they watched the summer moon—“full and red”—rise “more majestically than usual.” The whole party stayed up until midnight, talking and drinking champagne, with extra supplies of rum and port wine. Then they gathered in the observatory to sleep under buffalo robes left behind in the winter. A candle made from the oil of a sperm whale was placed in a champagne bottle to provide a little light, but it flickered out long before dawn.

  Soon many in the group were sound asleep, but not Sarah and Melville, who stayed up all night. They were among the few who were “too merry for sleep,” as she put it. Her laughter kept waking up Evert Duyckinck, who muttered wittily, “Sleep no more, Morewood has murdered sleep.” Casting her gaze across the awkward forms of her slumbering friends, Sarah liked the unguarded, casual atmosphere of the night, and later wrote of it, “How absurd it is, when parties go on such wild excursions as this one was, to expect reserve, or any of the etiquette of refined life.”2

  After so much excitement and drinking Sarah and Herman didn’t spend this romantic summer night at the top of a mountain making polite conversation. They did what would have come naturally to two people in love, taking advantage of the late hour and the darkness to enjoy a passionate bond that had been growing for more than a year. This was their reward for all the months they had endured apart, and for the book that Melville had created in her absence with Greylock always in view. Herman was certainly keyed up for this moment. He had been doing his best throughout the trip to show off his virility, as if that were necessary, and Sarah had taken careful note of his various feats of strength, especially when he quickly climbed a tree on the way up to signal to the other half of their group. Describing this scene later in her essay for Smith’s book, she made a point of capturing the sheer joy of Melville’s antics: “Suddenly we are startled by shouts which echo through the wood like the yells of the red men, and one of our party, with the agility of a well trained sailor (as he was) soon ascends the trunk of a tall tree, and from a seat which appears to us dangerously insecure, echoes shout for shout, till the remaining few of our party . . . make their appearance.”3

  All this manly exertion likely filled Sarah with amorous thoughts. After Melville built the fire at the summit, she grew excited as she watched the flames flicker across the faces of her party. The fire reminded her of those moments of reverie that Rev. John Todd had warned would unduly stimulate the mind to impure thoughts, and of the competing author (“Ik Marvel”) whos
e Reveries of a Bachelor advised surrendering to temptation. “So a large fire is lighted under a giant stump,” she recalled in her essay, “and we gather about it, each one indulging, like Ik Marvel, in his own reveries.”4

  At the end of her essay Sarah cleared up any doubts about her state of mind on the mountain that night when she lamented having to leave it the next day. If she had wanted to play it safe, she could have said Greylock was an Eden, and that she had hated to see a perfect adventure come to a close. Her night in Melville’s company brought to mind something more sexually thrilling than an innocent Adam and Eve. What she had in mind was a biblical place so notorious that even the vaguest reference to it was sure to rattle Pittsfield to the core. The wonder is that she talked Smith into allowing her to compare her night on Greylock with a night in Sodom. Confessing that on her morning descent she kept looking back at the mountain, Sarah wrote in Taghconic that she didn’t want to leave because what she had enjoyed on the summit was a kind of freedom forbidden in the world below, with its “iron rule” of morality interfering with “our best and purest feelings.” On her way down the mountain, she wrote, she felt “like Lot’s wife, casting many a lingering look behind.”5

  In a region once dominated by the strict code of Puritan demagogues, this was a stunningly rebellious note of blasphemy to outdo anything close to it in Moby-Dick.