The Philosophers of Foufouville
(New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868)
by Radical Freelance, Esq. ― a.k.a. Herman
Melville?
"And brave old chronicles, that made Mohi's
mouth water:—
'The Rise and Setting of the Dynasty of
Foofoo.'" (Mardi,
chapter 123)
The Philosophers of Foufouville (1868) is a love story and
light-hearted satire of America's utopian reformers in the mid-nineteenth
century. The action of the novel takes place in Foufouville, New
Jersey, where transcendentalist dreamer Dr. Jonathan Goodenough and five
disciples undertake a brave but comically impractical experiment in
communal living at "Harmony Hall." One of Goodenough's less
enthusiastic proselytes is his daughter Charity, who dutifully accompanies
her father but against his wishes determines to marry Leander Lovell, her
infatuated suitor. Leander soon joins the Harmonians (derisively
styled "New Utopians" by their critics) for the purpose of secretly
courting Charity. Their mutually desired union is threatened by Goodenough's villainous assistant, Nicholas Malpest, who means to have
Charity for his own bride.
As the main plot develops, all the Harmonians become enmeshed in
various affairs and intrigues. One subplot involves the misfortunes
of a loveable bungler named Joseph Peewit in his unhappy marriage to
Elizabeth Strongitharm, an uncompromising feminist. Another concerns
the trials of Miss Serena Minerva Griffin, a more sentimentally inclined
advocate of women's rights, in her frequently subverted quest for romantic
fulfillment. Although the social experiment fails predictably, true
love prevails in the end with a little help from Leander's friend and
business partner Richard Longshanks and the Doctor's Irish cook, Bridget
O'Brien or "Biddy." After Malpest is exposed as a forger and
embezzler, the main characters marry off, most of them happily:
Charity weds Leander; Minerva Griffin weds Joseph Peewit (whose previous
marriage to Elizabeth Strongitharm was never legal, it turns out); and
Biddy (three months pregnant) weds the father of her unborn child―Malpest!
Besides being a fun romantic comedy, Philosophers of Foufouville is
a vehicle for surprisingly sophisticated dialogues and discourses on
various themes―including, for example, the
usefulness of classical languages and learning (89-113), and the aesthetic
merits of paintings by acknowledged masters―American
as well as European, fakes as well as originals (172-195). The last
two chapters form a kind of appendix to the main narrative. Chapter
13 traces the origins of utopian thinking to ancient China in a satirical
Account of the Philosopher Fou-fou, said to have been rendered into
English by Dr. Goodenough from a Latin version of "the original Chinese of
LY-ING" (274). The concluding chapter 14 links ancient and modern
forms of "Foufouism," understood in the broadest possible terms as a label
describing any kind of phony, deceitful, hypocritical, or ostentatious
person, behavior, or idea. The author, masked by his chosen
pseudonym of "Radical Freelance, Esq.," freely confesses himself a
Foufou-ite:
Hating gammon, nonsense, and
hypocrisy, we, who have written this book, do not hesitate to acknowledge,
openly, that we belong to the fraternity. (294)
BFacsimile of a bogus bill passed by
Joseph Peewit.
Two cops arrest the hapless Peewit as a counterfeiter. The
judge recognizes "it's only a
joke" but Peewit does jail time anyway. After a night in the Tombs,
the meek husband of Elizabeth Strongitharm (E. S., hmmm...) is proved to
have been "the victim of misplaced confidence" and released from prison.
See chapter 7 in The Philosophers of Foufouville,
especially pp. 165-170.
At present The Philosophers of Foufouville remains an obscure
though not utterly forgotten work. Social and cultural histories
sometimes mention it in passing; see, for instance, James Gregory on
"Representing the Vegetarian" in Tamara S. Wagner and Narin Hassan,
eds., Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Plymouth,
U.K.: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 21. So far I have not been able to
locate any contemporary review of Foufouville. The book was
largely ignored―lamentably, considering its
real merits as a skillfully written romance and gentle satire of
nineteenth century idealisms.
The author's sympathy for his would-be
reformers, despite their flaws and ineptness, is suggested in his
pseudonym. Apparently the writer of Foufouville wants to
identify with radicals and radical ideas for social change. The
surname implies that he covets the creative liberties allowed to a
freelance writer, on nobody's payroll.
But who is this Radical Freelance, Esq.?
Well, since you ask so nicely, I will tell you: Herman Melville.
Melville is my best guess, based on general correspondences to
Melville's known interest in the ideas of social reformers,
numerous
parallels of vocabulary and style, certain subversively irreverent touches
such as the book's epigraph from Voltaire,* and especially on two very
close parallels between the text of Foufouville and published works
by Herman Melville. In general, Foufouville could be seen as
Melville's Blithedale. Melville we know was intrigued by the
theme of The Blithedale Romance, published in 1852 by his friend
Nathaniel Hawthorne―who, as Melville well knew,
had fictionalized his own experiences of communal life with zealous social
reformers at Brook Farm. Before Melville finished reading
Hawthorne's novel,
he commented on it in a letter to the author (17 July 1852):
...I have not yet got far into the book but enough to see that you have
most admirably employed materials which are richer than I had fancied
them. Especially at this day, the volume is welcome, as an antidote
to the mooniness of some dreamers―who are merely
dreamers―――
Yet who the devel aint a dreamer?
[Melville's Correspondence, ed. Lynn Horth (Evanston and Chicago:
Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1993), p. 231.]
Melville recognizes a need for correction in the too-transcendental
tendencies of utopian theorists, yet characteristically backpedals with
the implicit suggestion that idealistic dreaming is a noble quality shared by
everyone. Another, earlier letter to Hawthorne shows Melville's interest in social reformers and their
misfortunes as easily belittled truth-tellers. In 1851, Melville wrote:
It can hardly be doubted that all Reformers are bottomed upon the truth,
more or less; and to the world at large are not reformers almost
universally laughing-stocks? Why so? Truth is ridiculous to
men.
(Correspondence, p. 191)
Would-be reformers who appear
and disappear in Melville's Confidence-Man (1857) include such
enigmatic figures as the eternally optimistic herb-doctor, the wildly
philanthropic "man in grey," and the Emersonian Mark Winsome.
Two textual fingerprints of Herman Melville in
The Philosophers of Foufouville
1. Whence and
why fou fou? Another way of spelling fou fou is foo foo,
a curious and distinctive expression that Melville employs in chapter 123
(They go down into the Catacombs) of his third book, Mardi
(1847). The narrator Taji and his cohorts (Media, Babbalanja, Mohi,
Yoomy) are on the island of Padulla visiting a famed antiquary named
Oh-Oh. After seeing his Barnumesque museum of weird artifacts in the
previous chapter, they descend to an underground vault for a look at Oh-Oh's
library of rare manuscripts. Preserved with other
"chronicles" (histories, obviously, the category that most
excites Mohi the historian) is a manuscript history entitled "The Rise and
Setting of the Dynasty of Foofoo." Oh-Oh's ancient book on Foofoo
displays on its title page the lexical root of Radical Freelance's
Foufouville. Moreover, the contexts in Melville's Mardi
and Radical Freelance's Philosophers of Foufouville are
surprisingly similar. Melville's word Dynasty evokes China
and the great dynasties of Chinese history. Melville's Foo,like
Radical Freelance's Fou, plays on Fo, elaborated as follows in one
of Melville's favorite sources, the Penny Cyclopædia:
FO, pronounced by the Chinese Fŭh, is the name
by which Buddha is worshipped in China. ...the religion of Fo was
introduced into China [from India] in the seventh year of the reign of the
Emperor Ming, about A.D. 50. Though the Chinese government has
usually discountenanced, and at some periods persecuted, the followers of
Fo, they have always been very numerous....
In Mardi, the reference to "the Dynasty of Foofoo" occurs in Melville's invented title for an imaginary history that
ostensibly chronicles the empire's "Rise and Setting," an imitative variation on
"Decline and Fall" as in Edward Gibbon's celebrated Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire. I have called The Philosophers of
Foufouville a romantic comedy and satire, but in the
thirteenth chapter, An Account of the Philosopher Fou-Fou, Radical
Freelance places
his work in the genre of history. Chapter 13 begins with a
transitional sentence that retrospectively characterizes the novel as a
"history of the decline and fall of Harmonianism." The vocabulary of
Radical Freelance's "decline and fall" echoes Melville's playful
reference in Mardi to the "Rise and Setting" of Foofoo, which as
noted already is suggestive of China and Fo or Buddha.
Most of
chapter 13 in The Philosophers of Foufouville is taken up with the
alleged translation of "FOU-FOU,― A TALE OF
CHINA," set in China during "the 77th year of the reign of the great
Fi-fo-fum, Khan of the Celestial Flowery Kingdom" (274). Both as a
history of Harmonianism and a biography of Fou-fou, Radical Freelance's
Philosophers of Foufouville actualizes what in chapter 123 of Mardi
is only Melville's germ of an idea for a satirical history entitled "The
Rise and Setting of the Dynasty of Foofoo."
2. According to the spurious biography in chapter 13 of The
Philosophers of Foufouville, Fou-fou is a nickname meaning
"transcendental wisdom" in Chinese. Before getting his nickname, Fou-fou was
formerly known as Peepee, the indulged son of Mr. Bum, a wealthy but
unscrupulous Chinese merchant, and Mrs. Bum, "who was the
finest-looking woman in China, for she weighed nearly three hundred
pounds" (276). (The name Peepee, by the way, recalls "Little
King Peepi," whose royal unpredictability is the focus of chapter 67 in
Mardi.) As a young man, Fou-fou once tried to end his life
after being rejected by the beautiful Ah-me. The episode of
Fou-fou's failed suicide includes references to kneeling on "marrow-bones"
and "Buddh" that surprisingly anticipate Melville's diction in Billy
Budd.
In his quickly aborted suicide attempt, Fou-fou
jumps into a canal but finds the water too cold and decides not to kill
himself, after all. To save himself, Fou-fou grabs the rudder of a
canal boat. The boat is commanded by Jak, another of Ah-Me's
luckless suitors. Jak is a veteran sailor, "master of the
fire-crackers on the revenue junk, Hi-poop" (281). After his
rejection by Ah-me, Jak "was seen cruising around the canals, for many
years, always jolly, and, according to rumor, with a wife in every port
excepting Yangtschankiangkong" (282). With Fou-fou hanging on to the
rudder, the boat-steerer loses control of the helm and fears the craft
has been "bewitched." Jak arrives on the scene to investigate:
"Shiver my timbers!" said he [Jak], "but I'll make her
work."
He then gave
the wheel a jerk; it turned half round and immediately sprang back, for
Fou-fou was holding on to the rudder with one hand, and with the other
grasping the tail of the carved dragon on the stern of the vessel.
Jak made two more attempts to turn the wheel, but with the same result,
and being now convinced that Sheitan was at the bottom of the matter,―that
is to say, of the junk,―he
dropped on his marrow-bones and began to stutter a confused
medley of phrases from all the
prayers to Buddh that he had heard from time to time in his
cruises―it being the first evidence of piety he had given since he
followed the canals. (283)
The image
of Jak (or Jack, the generic first name conventionally applicable to any
common sailor) down "on his marrow-bones" before
Buddha or "Buddh" is oddly suggestive of lines from "Billy in the Darbies,"
the haunting poem with which Melville's short fiction Billy Budd
concludes:
Good of
the chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrowbones
here and pray
For the likes just o' me, Billy
Budd.
[quoted from Billy Budd, Sailor, ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton M.
Sealts, Jr. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p.
132.
The chaplain in Melville's poem prays
for Budd, not to Buddh, but the verbal correspondences are
nonetheless striking, especially in light of the nautical settings in both
texts.
The immediate fate of Fou-fou after his failed suicide attempt is to
become an object of community-wide mockery:
The
next day the adventure of Fou-fou was known all over the town, for his
action had been seen by one of the guardians of darkness [or "Night
watchmen," as a footnote explains]. He became the
laughing-stock of everybody; but, as his thoughts were
wandering in the sublime regions of transcendental metaphysics, he passed
by the scoffers disdainfully, not stooping to reply to their ribaldry.
(284)
In the context of "transcendental metaphysics" and a history of
utopianism, Radical Freelance's word laughing-stock neatly confirms
Melville's assessment (in that letter to Hawthorne, cited above) of
reformers as "almost universally laughing-stocks" in "the world at large."
*In the epigraph to The Philosophers of Foufouville, Radical Freelance gives the French from
Voltaire's essay on "Moses" in A Philosophical Dictionary,
omitting, however, the reference to Moses:
"La
philosophie, dont on a quelquefois passé
les bornes, les recherches de l'antiquité, l'espirit de discussion et de
critique, ont été poussés si loin, qu' enfin plusieurs savans ont douté,
etc." ―VOLTAIRE.
'Philosophy, of which we sometimes pass the
boundaries, researches of antiquity, and the spirit of discussion and
criticism, have been carried so far, that several learned men have finally
doubted [if there ever was a Moses], etc.... '
In July 1858, George Duyckinck visited Arrowhead
and found Herman Melville "busy on a new book" (quoted in Hershel Parker,
Herman Melville: A Biography, V2: 379). Hershel Parker
assumes understandably that this "book" must have been "Poems by Herman
Melville," the volume of poetry that Melville tried and failed to publish
in 1860. But if George Duyckinck saw Melville versifying away (two
years before Poems would be ready for the press!), why did he
say "busy on a new book" and not "busy writing poetry"? The last
chapters of Philosophers of Foufouville were evidently written
after the Civil War, judging from an allegorical reference to war
profiteers in the late "Fou-fou" section. However, the main
story which takes up most of the novel is set in the spring of 1850.
One object of the satire in Foufouville is the North American Phalanx, a
Fourierist commune at Red Bank, New Jersey. The NAP experienced a
disastrous fire in 1854 and finally ceased operations in 1856.
References in Foufouville to alarming and deepening divisions
between North and South ("In the southern section of our country the
politicians are said to be plotting secession..."; p. 146) indicate the
time of writing was most likely around 1858 or 1859, fairly close to but
not before the outbreak of the Civil War. Possibly,
then, the "new book" that George Duyckinck found Melville working on in
1858 was the work that would be published by George W. Carleton a decade later as The
Philosophers of Foufouville.
Links to The Philosophers of
Foufouville
