Dragooned! Ten Traces of
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Riffs William Gibson, USN Augustus Ely Silliman |
2 NUMBER TWO shows how the Captain’s mock tragedy of a doomed grizzly bear cub may be read as Melville’s mostly humorous reply to criticism of his latest book, chiefly (though not exclusively) in the New York Herald. 18 September 1852: The New York Herald reviews PierreA harmless madman in the first chapter, he [Pierre] is a dangerous poet in the last. Let him hang! ...Mere analytical description of sentiment, mere wordy anatomy of the heart is not enough for a novel today. Modern readers wish to exercise some little judgment of their own; deeds they will have, not characters painted in cold colors, to a hairbreadth or a shade. We are past the age when an artist superscribed his chef d’oeuvre with the judicious explanation, “this is a horse.” Mr. Melville longs for the good old times when the chorus filled the gaps between the acts with a well-timed commentary on the past, and a shrewd guess at the future.* *Quoted from Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 438.
March 1853: Cub, a tragedy in three actsIn crossing the Platte this morning, the grizzly bear cub came on the scene in his final act. It will be remembered by the patient and attentive future reader of this dry and methodical narrative, that its first appearance on any stage, was in “high” tragedy—that the first act embraced an unusual amount of sanguinary incident—that an innocent brother (or sister,) being ruthlessly slain, and the baffled lady-mother left (unceremoniously) full of towering and demonstrative rage,—the imprisoned hero himself sank overwhelmed—or in a well-acted counterfeit of death, (and was born off, remember, on a “real” horse.) That in the next act, (and three acts shall do for the tragedy of my bear,—originally they had but one,—but that was at the sacrifice of a goat,) he came to life in a manner that might very well have been criticised as an overdone piece of stage-effect—but that in fact, the spectators were much moved, and gave full credit to the dangerous passion of his howl. To-day, then,—for I scorn anachronism—was performed the final act. The stage (wagon) was on “real water.” Enraged at his wrongs, his losses, and his galling chain, the “robustious beast” acted in a ridiculous and unbearable manner; aye, “tore his passion to tatters, to very rags,”—splinters; the stage (wagon) could not hold him: and finally in despair, he “imitated humanity so abominably,” as to throw himself headlong, and so drown—or hang himself: (the author cannot decide which—even after a post mortem examination;—and so leaves the decision of this important point to the commentators. My tragedy is all true,—and if not quite serious, has, as is proper, its moral;—but rather, as I have alluded to the primitive tragedy, let that “future reader” here imagine the entry of the Chorus, and their song to Freedom! That dumb beasts prefer death to slavery! Liberty lost, they can die without the excitement of the world’s applause, or hopes of a grateful posterity! (It is not possible, I think, that the cub could have known that I would immortalize him.)** **From "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" in the Southern Literary Messenger 19 (March 1853): 159. Heading for this installment alludes to a lapse in the series, only now "Continued from Sept. No., 1852.” Reprinted in chapter 17 of Philip St. George Cooke, Scenes and Adventures in the Army at pp. 390-391.
Apart from the context of Herman Melville's Pierre and its critical reception, the Captain's narrative is barely intelligible. Formally, Cub dramatizes a relatively minor event of the 1845 Rocky Mountain expedition by U. S. Dragoons. On June 25th, as topographical engineer William B. Franklin recorded in his journal, "two of the men brought in a pair of grizzly bear cubs, one was live, but they had been obliged to kill the other" (March to South Pass, ed. Frank N. Schubert, p. 20). Of the same event, J. Henry Carleton wrote to much the same effect, that buffalo hunters "accidentally came across two fine grizzly bear cubs, one of which they were obliged to kill―but the other they succeeded in bringing into camp alive." Carleton adds only a brief sequel: "It was the commanding officer's intention to have had him taken to the States; but a few days afterwards, unfortunately, he died" (Prairie Logbooks, ed. Louis Pelzer, pp. 258-9).
In "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," the narrating "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" presents this unfortunate bear cub as “the imprisoned hero” of a mock tragedy. The Cub’s prison is a wagon, transformed into a theatrical "stage." As recounted by the Captain, the history of this bear marks it as a stand-in for Melville’s Pierre―the youthful hero Pierre and also Pierre, the book. References to brother and sister, an enraged “lady-mother,” imprisonment, hanging, “the author,” and critical reception by “the commentators” and “the future reader” all have identifiable counterparts in the text and contemporary criticism of Melville’s Pierre.
Below the surface of the "play," Cub plays wittily on key words and phrases in the New York Herald review of Melville's Pierre. The Herald reviewer taunted Melville with the aesthetic preferences of “modern readers.” Modern readers want action, not overextended "analysis," Melville was told. In reply, the Captain goes out of his way to address a more sympathetic “future reader,” someone who is more “patient and attentive” than the moderns exalted in the Herald.
The reviewer faulted Melville for expository overkill and compared him to a primitive artist who has to affix warning labels like “this is a horse” to wretchedly executed drawings. Defying the Herald reviewer on this point with great gusto, the author of Cub takes pains to label horses and wagons everywhere he can. The hero was hauled off by “a ‘real’ horse.” The stage on which Cub plays out is really a wagon. When the “stage (wagon)” fords a river, the author dutifully reminds his audience that the wagon is now “on ‘real’ water.”
Quotations from the third act of Hamlet associate the “robustious” bear cub with the bad actor who struts and roars for the entertainment of the groundlings. Perversely, the caged grizzly bear cub violates Hamlet’s stated rules for good acting, just as the author of Cub violates the New York Herald’s rules for good writing by giving his depictions such obvious labels as "horse," "wagon," and "water."
The only way the hero of Cub can “move” the “spectators” (soldiers, also his jailers) is by howling. Finally, the caged cub self-destructively rebels. It is left for unnamed “commentators” to fix the true cause of death as drowning or hanging. The otherwise outlandish notion of a bear committing suicide by hanging is perfectly consistent with the reading of Cub as a satire on the Herald review of Pierre. Melville’s fictional hero, Pierre, was condemned to hang but instead committed suicide. The suicide outraged the Herald reviewer, who twice advised Melville, “Let him hang.” As if to conciliate the judicious critic of the Herald, the author of Cub leaves the “important point” of how the hero died for the critics to puzzle over. The Captain's way of leaving the resolution to future "commentators" closely parallels the way Melville left a crux in the Vivenza chapters of his third book (the problem of identifying the anonymous author of a fiery social critique) for his future critics: "the commentators on Mardi, some four or five hundred centuries hence."
The Herald reviewer accused the author of Pierre of having mistaken his novel for Greek tragedy. Melville was so hopelessly windy and old-fashioned, he needed a Greek Chorus to expound and comment on the action. Here again, Cub sides with Melville against the Herald reviewer. In another "in your face" move, the author casts his mockudrama as “high tragedy.” After the play is done "the Chorus" (explicitly described as such!) enters and comments on the action. According to the Herald Melville wanted a Chorus; the Captain gives us a Chorus. In their “song to Freedom,” the Chorus delivers the unambiguous “moral” of the Captain's play: “That dumb beasts prefer death to slavery!”
... dumb beasts prefer death to slavery!
What a moral! What a writer, to draw it—to admire and in some measure identify with the poor brute that perishes “without the excitement of the world’s applause, or hopes of a grateful posterity.” In connection with captured animals, the real Philip St. George Cooke never talks of slavery, or nobility, or humble dignity. No, your authentic Captain of U. S. Dragoons speaks in more practical terms of stuffing and mounting, or eating.
The Herald reviewer intuited Melville’s desire for a Greek Chorus and commentary, but did not look for any “moral” in Pierre. Melville’s fastidious friend Evert Duyckinck, however, complained emphatically in the Literary World of the book’s “most immoral moral” (Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker, p. 430). The “song to Freedom” in Cub thus answers at least two influentially negative reviews of Pierre.
The theatrical staging and other contrived elements beg the question, why bother? Why does the author bother to elaborate and embellish and over-dramatize a plain tale that takes up one or two sentences in reports of the same thing by others? All these contrivances―staged imprisonment, ambiguous suicide, dissection by “the commentators,” protest of slavery by “the Chorus,” and transcription for the benefit of some ideally sympathetic “future reader”―seem nonsensical except in some relation to an allegory of artistic integrity. The author, Philip St. George Cooke's gifted ghostwriter, insists on treating the captured bear cub as a symbol of the oppressed artist who defies confinement by popular expectations (so helpfully articulated in the Herald review of Pierre) and suffers accordingly. The Cub episode appeared in the March 1853 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger. Near the end of the same year, in November and December 1853, Putnam's magazine featured the story of another of Melville's prisoners, "Bartleby, the Scrivener."
Bartleby's soulmates (if only he knew it!) are the Captain's nameless bear cub and all dumb creatures who prefer death to slavery.
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