Radical Freelance, Esq.

Philip St. George Cooke

Radical Freelance, Esq.

William Gibson, USN

Augustus Ely Silliman

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The Philosophers of Foufouville (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868)
by Radical Freelance, Esq. ― a.k.a. Herman Melville?

more verbal and thematic parallels to writings by Herman Melville...

The truth seems to be, indeed, that all people should be very careful in selecting their callings and vocations; very careful in seeing to it, that they surround themselves by good-humored, pleasant-looking objects; and agreeable, temper-soothing sounds. Many an angelic disposition has had its even edge turned, and hacked like a saw; and many a sweet draught of piety has soured on the heart, from people's choosing ill-natured employments, and omitting to gather round them good-natured landscapes. Gardeners are almost always pleasant, affable people to converse with; but beware of quarter-gunners, keepers of arsenals, and lonely light-house men. And though you will generally observe, that people living in arsenals and light-houses endeavor to cultivate a few flowers in pots, and perhaps a few cabbages in patches, by way of keeping up, if possible, some gayety of spirits; yet, it will not do; their going among great guns and muskets everlastingly mildews the blossoms of the one; and how can even cabbages thrive in a soil, whereunto the moldering keels of shipwrecked vessels have imparted the loam?

It would be advisable for any man, who from an unlucky choice of a profession, which it is too late to change for another, should find his temper souring, to endeavor to counteract that misfortune, by filling his private chamber with amiable, pleasurable sights and sounds. In summer time, an Æolian harp can be placed in your window at a very trifling expense; a conch-shell might stand on your mantel, to be taken up and held to the ear, that you may be soothed by its continual lulling sound, when you feel the blue fit stealing over you. For sights, a gay-painted punch-bowl, or Dutch tankard—never mind about filling it—might be recommended. It should be placed on a bracket in the pier. Nor is an old-fashioned silver ladle, nor a chased dinner-castor, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor any thing, indeed, that savors of eating and drinking, bad to drive off the spleen. But perhaps the best of all is a shelf of merrily-bound books, containing comedies, farces, songs, and humorous novels. You need never open them; only have the titles in plain sight. For this purpose, Peregrine Pickle is a good book; so is Gil Bias; so is Goldsmith.

But of all chamber furniture in the world, best calculated to cure a bad temper, and breed a pleasant one, is the sight of a lovely wife. If you have children, however, that are teething, the nursery should be a good way up stairs; at sea, it ought to be in the mizzen-top. Indeed, teething children play the very deuce with a husband's temper. I have known three promising young husbands completely spoil on their wives' hands, by reason of a teething child, whose worrisomeness happened to be aggravated at the time by the summer-complaint. With a breaking heart, and my handkerchief to my eyes, I followed those three hapless young husbands, one after the other, to their premature graves.

The last paragraph is aptly called a "cameo of domesticity" by Melville expert Laurie Robertson Laurent ["Melville and the Women in His Life," in Melville and Women, ed. Elizabeth Schultz and Haskell Springer (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006), p. 25.]  As Robertson-Laurent recognizes, the references to "chamber-furniture" and "teething children" contribute to Melville's "implied comparison of domestic life to life aboard a brutal man-of-war" (26).  Melville's idea of surrounding oneself with "pleasurable sights and sounds" was explicitly quoted from White-Jacket by his granddaughter Frances Osborne, who recalled that Melville owned an Æolian harp among "many beautiful things" [Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 and 2002), V2:911.].  My point here is, the digression from White-Jacket quoted above has been widely accepted as autobiographical.  So when Melville wrote it in New York City during the summer of 1849, he probably had some experience of trying (however ineffectually) to grow token "flowers in pots" and "cabbages in patches." 

Near the end of the following summer, Melville moved his family to the Berkshires, where he would try gardening on a grander scale at his Arrowhead farmhouse.  This image of farming in chapter 3 of Israel Potter (1854-5) is similarly suggestive of Melville's personal experience:

Farming weans man from his sorrows.  That tranquil pursuit tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations.  There, too, in mother earth, you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see the planting torn up by the roots.

Along with the glimpse into Melville's mindset as a gentleman farmer at Arrowhead, Melville's reference to "planting torn up by the roots" may have some metaphorical reference to an abortive writing project, as Hershel Parker suggests (V2:225).

Images of cabbages and farming in Melville's known writings thus reflect Melville's domestic interests and experiences.  Part of the comedy in The Philosophers of Foufouville, especially in the early chapters, has to do with the hopelessly inept efforts by the residents of "Harmony Hall" to grow their own food.  Late in the novel, however, Radical Freelance, Esq. offers this glimpse of a real farmer at the plow:

... the sturdy farmer was seen ploughing his weary way through eighteen inches of sand and mud (for he was a sub-soiler, though not a free-soiler), anon scowling and swearing at his raw-boned Rosinante, anon smiling serenely as his mental vision took in future acres of cabbages; while his homely housewife, with bare arms and frock tucked up to her waist, displaying her many-colored balmoral, was busy in the dairy making Dutch cheese.  The shrill voice of chanticleer, crowing defiance to his haughty rivals, was echoed in all directions, while the feathered inmates of his harem cackled joyously over new-laid eggs, feeling as happy as a poet who had just been delivered of a new idea, a lay of love, which might perhaps develop itself into a full-grown volume, and eventually bring him golden eggs―unless killed by the cold hand of criticism.  (The Philosophers of Foufouville, pp. 254-255)

Here we discover Radical Freelance, Jr. in perhaps his most Melvillean moment, writing about farming and cabbages with humorous yet personally revealing effects. The unnamed "sturdy farmer" seemingly presents a wry self-portrait by Herman Melville.  This I take it is Melville's lightly satirical view of himself and his domestic situation at Arrowhead before the Civil War, c. 1858-1859.  As in White-Jacket, the good life is signified in cabbages.  Country acres of them, he now blithely expects, instead of the mere patches available to city dwellers.  The "homely housewife" must be a snapshot (so to speak) of Melville's wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville.  The chanticleer as a symbol of "haughty defiance" brings to mind the narrator's envious regard for the noble self-confidence of the cock Beneventano in Melville's Harper's story, "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!" (December 1853).  In Radical Freelance's portrait of rural living, the hens of chanticleer's "harem" evoke the women in Melville's Arrowhead household who assisted materially in the publication of his literary works as scribes (making legible copies for the printer from Melville's barely readable manuscripts).  Fittingly then, Radical Freelance's portrait of the farmer soon gives way to a portrait of the farmer as artist, or more precisely, the farmer as writer―even more precisely, the farmer's cock and hens as producers of poetry. The punning metaphor of eggs as poetical "lays" closely resembles the conceit in one of Melville's letters early letters from Pittsfield to his New York friend Evert Duyckinck.  In August 1850, while staying at the mansion house formerly owned by his Uncle Thomas ("the Major"), then a vacation resort operated by his cousin Robert, Melville likewise wrote figuratively of eggs as literary productions:

My desk is  an odd one...Upon dragging it out to day light, I found that it was covered with the marks of fowls―quite white with them―eggs had been laid in it ― think of that! ― Is it not typical of those other eggs that authors may be said to lay in their desks―especially those with pigeon holes?

[quoted from Melville's Correspondence, ed. Lynn Horth (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1993), p. 167.]

In light of those literary eggs in Melville's writing desk, the "golden eggs" in the exchange below from Mardi might be understood metaphorically (like the uprooted plants in Israel Potter) to mean profitless literary works, perhaps even writings for which others receive credit and remuneration.  When the philosopher Babbalanja remarks on the unwisdom of killing the proverbial "noddy [goose] that laid the golden eggs," old Mohi the historian answers:

"Beshrew me!  a noddy it must have been," gurgled Mohi through his pipe-stem, "to lay golden eggs for others to hatch." 

(Chapter 121, "They regale themselves with their Pipes.")

Not only the imagery but also the vocabulary of the "cabbages" passage from Foufouville is Melvillean.  For example, Radical Freelance's expression mental vision occurs in chapter 23 of The Confidence-Man (1857).  The expression crowing defiance echoes the "defiant crow" of the chanticleer in "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!"  Crowing defiance also echoes a line from Melville's poem "The Chipmunk," from the late, posthumously published collection of poetry and prose entitled Weeds and Wildings.  In "Chipmunk," the "Baby" who does not survive infancy is pictured "Crowing mirth" on the verge of departing this world.  Radical Freelance's phrase weary way occurs in "The Scout Toward Aldie," one of the Civil War poems in Melville's Battle-Pieces (1866).  The picture in Foufouville of the farmer's housewife occupied in "the dairy" with "Dutch cheese" comically reconstructs the picturesque farm-house where Isabel dwells in Pierre, with its "dairy-shed" and "snow-white Dutch cheeses."

Links to The Philosophers of Foufouville