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- CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the
eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored
alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.
It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious
imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the
world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For
ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,
medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of
chain-armor like Saladin’s, and a helmeted head like St. George’s; ever
since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not
only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
presentations of him.
Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting
to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of
Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless
sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits,
every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of
them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our
noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The
Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall,
depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly
known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and
half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small
section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an
anaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale’s majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian
painter’s portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the
antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido’s picture of Perseus rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model
of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the
same scene in his own “Perseus Descending,” make out one whit better.
The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the
surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on
its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are
rolling, might be taken for the Traitors’ Gate leading from the Thames
by water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old
Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale, as depicted in the prints of old
Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said of these? As for
the book-binder’s whale winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a
descending anchor—as stamped and gilded on the backs and title-pages of
many books both old and new—that is a very picturesque but purely
fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on
antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless
call this book-binder’s fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so
intended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an
old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the
Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a
comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a
species of the Leviathan.
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