When Biography Becomes Romantic Fantasy

[A Correction]

How Did Moby-Dick Happen? In other words, how did Herman Melville enable himself to write the book that some have considered the finest work of prose fiction in the English language? Since the revival of interest in Melville during the early twentieth century, many people have devised many different answers to questions like these. With Melville in Love Michael Shelden offers a new answer, one that differs radically from those that Melville scholars have formulated over the previous century.

So far, the study of the composition of Moby-Dick (1851) has taken two directions based on two different types of evidence. Some scholars have examined the internal evidence, looking for hints within Moby-Dick to see how textual anomalies and inconsistencies offer subtle clues to discern Melville's writing process. Others have studied the external evidence, looking for clues in both Melville's correspondence and the supplemental documentary evidence to determine why and when he wrote what.¹

Those who have studied the external evidence generally agree that a 'catalytic agent' activated Moby-Dick, but disagree as to who or what it was. Charles Olson argued that Melville's discovery of Shakespeare triggered Moby-Dick. According to another interpretation, Melville's friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his encounter with Hawthorne's fiction during the summer of 1850 inspired him to change his current project from a straightforward whaling narrative into a metaphysical journey into the mind.

Shelden's thesis aligns Melville in Love with the studies of external evidence, but, judging by the gaps in his bibliography, he has little interest in his scholarly predecessors. Charles R. Anderson, James Barbour, Leon Howard, Charles Olson, George R. Stewart, Howard P. Vincent: Shelden cites none of these scholars, all of whom have advanced the subject of Melville's composition of Moby-Dick. Neither does he use the term 'catalytic agent', but there is no doubt he has one in mind. Shelden's catalyst, the 'muse' of his subtitle, is Melville's Berkshire neighbour, Sarah Morewood. According to Shelden, Melville cheated on his wife and began an adulterous affair with the wife of John Rowland Morewood. Melville's love for Mrs Morewood inspired him to write Moby-Dick.

Though Shelden claims to have discovered new information as he researched Melville in Love, there is really nothing in his book that has not been known to Melville scholars for decades. His prologue reveals his method. It flashes forward to December 1851, the month after Harpers published the New York edition of Moby-Dick. Hosting a Christmas dinner at Broadhall, the neighbouring farmhouse her husband had purchased from Melville's cousins, Sarah placed a crown of bays atop Herman's head. Embarrassed, he quickly removed the wreath and placed it on her. Shelden interprets the episode as a reflection of their shared intimacy, refusing to consider any other possibility. But Melville was a naturally shy person who disliked calling attention to himself during social gatherings. It is perfectly in character for him to remove the silly wreath. Shelden's inability to recognise behaviour typical for Melville suggests that he never really came to grips with the man or his work.

Melville in Love suffers another methodological problem. Once Shelden asserts an interpretation on one page, it magically becomes fact on the next. On the page after the wreath episode, for example, he calls Sarah's love for Herman 'the obvious, but unspoken truth'; his love for her suddenly becomes a 'simple fact' (p. 7). Shelden's sweeping truth claims do not stop there. Two pages later he states, 'Sarah saved enough of his letters that we know beyond doubt how he felt about her.' For proof he quotes one of Melville's letters, which ends: 'With due obeisance & three times kissing of your Ladyship's hands, & salutes to all your Ladyship's household, I am, Dear Lady of Southmount, Your Ladyship's Knight of the...