Melville's London—and Ours

Wyn Kelley. Photo courtesy of David Shaerf.

As Edward Sugden's and Janet Floyd's "sleeping-partner" (the Melville Society liaison) in their splendid production of the Melville Society Conference at Kings College, London (KCL), I enjoyed extraordinary backstage access. The Society liaison participates in planning, reads paper abstracts, supports graduate students and staff, and circles around the edges of the conference. I helped out at the registration table, filled in where needed, and—like Flask—ate last.

Also, I got to see London.

Other conference-goers will sing their praises of the conference's many delights: superb keynote addresses (two of which are reprinted in this issue) and exciting papers (some to appear in essay versions in a forthcoming issue); a dynamic public program at the British Library celebrating artists, filmmakers, and writers; trips to Tate Britain, Greenwich, and Liverpool that enriched what was already available in the vicinity of KCL; and gracious receptions, genial pub crawls, and guided walks, culminating in a marvelous banquet at Balliol College, Oxford, with performances of Schubert lieder and Norse tales.

Less celestial, I celebrate London and the material residue of Melville's affection for it—his 1849 journal—not only for what it says about his urban travels and spirit of adventure and discovery, but for the boisterous, welcoming city it reveals. Melville begins laconically enough: "I commence this Journal at 25 Craven Street, Strand, at 6 ½ P.M. on Wednesday Nov 7^th 1849—being just arrived from dinner at a Chop House, and feeling like it" (Journals, ed. Howard C. Horsford and Lynn Horth, in The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 15 [1989]: 12). I had anticipated a similarly workmanlike response. But before the conference, as news of two terrorist attacks and an unsettling Brexit vote made many of us wary, a London friend wrote to say that she hoped the disastrous events of spring 2017 would not keep conference participants from enjoying this historic moment of transatlantic fellowship. On the contrary, I came away with immense gratitude for the kindness of English friends old and new, too numerous to name here. Much as Melville's wanderings expanded his vision, these friends enlarged my heart and mind. His London and theirs offered a world of wonders.

An MIT grant enabled me to arrive early and walk some of Melville's London routes, recorded in great detail in the journal. (The project included creating a digital map of Melville's journal, now visible, though still in process, as "Melville in London" at the Digital Research Center at Hofstra University: <http://hofstra.github.io/itinerary/melville-in-london/>.) In these walks, as in my research, the conference theme of "Crossings" figured largely, whether Melville was crossing the Thames via his favorite bridges (London, Westminster) or crossing more subtle social and racial boundaries. These subtler crossings became visible in Melville's travels when he visited the Charterhouse, site of a medieval almshouse; Greenwich Hospital, where he mingled with naval pensioners and spoke with a Baltimore "negro" later mentioned in Billy Budd; St. Bride's Church, where he attended a charity sermon; and in the crowded, often festive, sometimes sinister neighborhoods he sought out: Seven Dials, Angel Inn, Smithfield Market, the "labyrinth of blind allis & courts" near St. Paul's, the "cellars & anti-lanes in … the rear of Guildhall, with a crowd of beggars," and Haymarket, where one evening he had a "singular interview" (23, 21, 15, 23). As this research progressed, it became clear that while Melville called dutifully on publishers and attended salons and dinners as a young writer must, and eagerly sought out museums, castles, and other tourist attractions, his wanderings in more ambiguous zones aroused more intriguing, though often veiled and coded, reflections. We may remember him gazing from "one of the Bridges" on what he called a "city of Dis" (14). His encounter with London was more complicated than that image suggests, as I learned from my London guides.

The grant included honoraria for two KCL graduate-student assistants, and I was lucky to visit the Charterhouse with Anna...