In Melville's Mother Land

Søren Frank. Photo courtesy of Kim Rune.

Most interesting spot I have seen in England. Made tour of all colleges. It was here I first confessed with gratitude my mother land, & hailed her with pride.

Herman Melville, journal, May 2, 1857

The Eleventh International Melville Conference, "Melville's Crossings," at King's College in London (June 2017) was my second Melville conference, the first being in Tokyo in 2015. This time around I was a little more relaxed. Not only because London was more familiar to me than Tokyo, a city (and country) that I had never been to before the Melville conference, but also, and mostly, because I knew from Tokyo that Melvilleans were in fact, all things considered, very friendly people. In London, one of the first people I ran into was Alex Calder, whom I had also talked to in Tokyo. His first reaction in London was: "Oh, you were the guy who kept saying in Tokyo that you weren't a Melvillean." Well, I guess he was right. In London, having now earned the right to consider myself a semi-experienced Melville conference participant (and perhaps nearing the title of sub-sub-sub-librarian), I realized how the majority of the many young and middle-aged conference debutants began each conversation with a reservation, expressed with much gravity and sincerity: "I am not a Melvillean!" If Melville as an author is awe-inspiring to us all, this quality may rub off on the scholarly experts who become awe-inspiring whales in the eyes of their colleagues. But again, most of these whales turn out to be human after all, and, as I said, friendly and also genuinely interested in talking to the less familiar faces and newcomers.

In London, I had such an experience with one of the distinguished figures in Melville scholarship. In the bus taking us from London to Oxford, with plenty of free seats to choose from, including seats next to old and familiar friends, John Bryant sat himself next to me. Admittedly, at first I felt a bit intimidated, having only spoken very briefly with John in Tokyo and knowing him to be a Leviathan of note in Melville studies, but very quickly we got talking about our respective work on Melville and on different principles and methods of writing biographies. The bus ride to Oxford, which took longer than expected because of traffic, turned out to be a very pleasant and inspiring ride—although it also included a moment of sadness when we passed Grenfell Tower. The afternoon in Oxford was spent listening to Anna Brickhouse's compelling plenary lecture "The Earthquake and the Whale" (reprinted in this issue), which situated Melville's writings in a comparative framework covering the Western Hemisphere and explored them through the lens of "the unsettlement of the Americas" in oceanic, cultural, colonial, racial, and literary dimensions. At the conference dinner, I was fortunate enough to sit opposite Professor Heather O'Donoghue, one of the guests of honor who elegantly instructed us all in Melville's influences from the Old Norse sources during her seven-minute talk, and the composed Edward Sugden, who collaborated with Janet Floyd and Wyn Kelley as the organizer-heroes of the London conference. Next to me on my right was Thomas Zlatic and to my left was Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, whom I had the privilege of visiting in Mystic, Connecticut, the previous fall. The Oxford dinner at Balliol College was a great way of ending the conference in terms of atmosphere, food, and conversation; it was also an appropriate place to end it since Melville probably stopped by there himself in 1857 when he enthusiastically visited Oxford and, according to his journal, "made tour of all the colleges."

Heather O'Donoghue speaking at the Melville Society dinner at Balliol College Hall, Oxford, June 30, 2017. Photo courtesy of Brian Yothers.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Back in London, a few events during the week were particularly memorable. The seriousness...