ALFRED KAZIN
89
$3.60). At a time when bright prophetic Britishers, like Robert Bu–
chanan, for whom the author of
Moby-Dick
was "a Titan," came
looking for him, astonishing important literary mediocrities of the day
like E.C. Stedman, who could only report that Melville was "dwelling
somewhere in New York," Melville did
pot
even have assurance of
tenure in his job. His brother-in-law John Hoadley wrote to the
Secretary of the Treasury:
.. . to ask you, if you can, to do or say something in the proper
quarter to secure him permanently, or at present, the undisturbed
enjoyment 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 so as to 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.
During the Gilded Age, the Brownstone Decades, the Iron Age that
made New York (until our day) the supreme capital-of money,
moneymaking, of the power panorama in architecture, art, publishing,
the cosmopolitan intellectualism fused by mass immigration–
Melville in his evenings, "nerve-shredded with fatigue" as his wife
said, worked at the poetry that she was afraid to tell the family he was
writing-"you know how such news get around."
Battle-Pieces,
his
poems on the Civil War impelled, he said, by the fall of Richmond, had
already been above the battle, just as in "The House-Top," the most
personal poem in the collection, he was on his rooftop scorning the
New York mob whose insurrection against the Draft Act he heard as:
... a mixed surf
Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot.
Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought,
Baleh:lly glares red Arson-there-and there.
The Town is taken by its rats-ship-rats
And rats of the wharves. All civil charms
And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe–
Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway
Than sway of self;
These like a dream dissolve,
And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
