Herman Melville, Matthew Perry, and the Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan

Herman Melville, Matthew Perry, and the Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan DORSEY KLEITZ Tokyo Woman’s Christian University O n his return journey from Japan to the United States in 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry visited Nathaniel Hawthorne in Liverpool to invite him to edit the official United States government account of the expedition of “black ships” that opened Japan to the West. In declining the offer, Hawthorne recommended Herman Melville for the job, a suggestion Perry quickly dismissed. I would like to use Perry’s reaction to Hawthorne’s recommendation as the starting point for a review of MelvillePerry connections and to examine the account of the Japan expedition as it finally appeared in the massive three volume Narrative of an Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan (1856-57). The Narrative ranks with Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840) and Elisha Kent Kane’s Arctic Explorations (1856) as a classic tale of nineteenth-century American sea adventure and exploration and is a key document in the history of American expansion in the Pacific. Hawthorne’s journal entry for December 28, 1854 describes Perry’s visit: Commodore Perry called to see me, this morning—a brisk, gentlemanly , off-hand (but not rough) unaffected, and sensible man, looking not so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well-made wig. He is now on his return from his cruise in the East Indian seas, and goes home by the Baltic, with a prospect of being very well received on account of his treaty with Japan. I seldom meet with a man who puts himself more immediately on conversible terms than the Commodore. He soon introduced his particular business with me—it being to inquire whether I could recommend some suitable person to prepare his notes and materials for the publication of an account of his voyage. He was good enough to say that he had fixed upon me, in his own mind, for the office, but that my public duties would of course prevent me from engaging in it. I spoke of C
2006 The Authors Journal compilation C
2006 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 25 D O R S E Y K L E I T Z Herman Melville, and one or two others; but he seems to have some acquaintance with the literature of the day, and did not grasp very cordially at any name that I could think of; nor, indeed, could I recommend anyone with full confidence. It would be a very desirable labor for a young literary man, or, for that matter, an old one; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less hacknied theme than Japan.1 Hawthorne’s description of Perry is well-observed, though he is wrong about the wig—the Commodore wore no wig. The most interesting lines, however, are the next-to-last sentence in which Hawthorne uses balance, grace, and understatement to reveal conflict. If Hawthorne was not caught off guard by the Commodore’s visit, he was clearly unprepared to advise him on choosing an editor for the Narrative. In mentioning Melville, Hawthorne touched a nerve in Perry. What’s going on here? Melville and Perry’s very different but parallel lives overlapped at several points including family involvement in the 1842 Somers mutiny, a shared interest in naval discipline, and a deep concern with Western influence in the Pacific. The Somers mutiny, famous as a source for Billy Budd, is worth briefly reviewing for the light it throws on the complex Melville-Perry relationship. Built under Commodore Perry’s supervision, the U.S.S. Somers was one of the fastest ships in the navy. Perry chose his brother-in-law, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, to command it. Also on board were two of Perry’s sons: twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Matthew Calbraith Perry, Jr. and seventeenyear -old Oliver Hazard Perry II...