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- to meet him until it became necessary to obtain his portrait for an
anthology in course of publication. The interview was brief, and the
interviewer could not help feeling although treated with pleasant
courtesy, that more important matters were in hand than the perpetuation
of a romancer’s countenance to future generations; but a friendly family
acquaintance grew up from the incident, and will remain an abiding
memory.
Mr. Melville died at his home in New York City early on the morning of
September 28, 1891. His serious illness had lasted a number of
months, so that the end came as a release. True to his ruling passion,
philosophy had claimed him to the last, a set of Schopenhauer’s works
receiving his attention when able to study; but this was varied with
readings in the ‘Mermaid Series’ of old plays, in which he took much
pleasure. His library, in addition to numerous works on philosophy and
the fine arts, was composed of standard books of all classes, including,
of course, a proportion of nautical literature. Especially interesting
are fifteen or twenty first editions of Hawthorne’s books inscribed to
Mr. and Mrs. Melville by the author and his wife.
The immediate acceptance of ‘Typee’ by John Murray was followed by an
arrangement with the London agent of an American publisher, for its
simultaneous publication in the United States. I understand that Murray
did not then publish fiction. At any rate, the book was accepted by him
on the assurance of Gansevoort Melville that it contained nothing not
actually experienced by his brother. Murray brought it out early in
1846, in his Colonial and Home Library, as ‘A Narrative of a Four
Months’ Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas
Islands; or, a Peep at Polynesian Life,’ or, more briefly, ‘Melville’s
Marquesas Islands.’ It was issued in America with the author’s own
title, ‘Typee,’ and in the outward shape of a work of fiction. Mr.
Melville found himself famous at once. Many discussions were carried on
as to the genuineness of the author’s name and the reality of the events
portrayed, but English and American critics alike recognised the book’s
importance as a contribution to literature.
Melville, in a letter to Hawthorne, speaks of himself as having no
development at all until his twenty-fifth year, the time of his return
from the Pacific; but surely the process of development must have been
well advanced to permit of so virile and artistic a creation as ‘Typee.’
While the narrative does not always run smoothly, yet the style for the
most part is graceful and alluring, so that we pass from one scene of
Pacific enchantment to another quite oblivious of the vast amount of
descriptive detail which is being poured out upon us. It is the varying
fortune of the hero which engrosses our attention. We follow his
adventures with breathless interest, or luxuriate with him in the leafy
bowers of the ‘Happy Valley,’ surrounded by joyous children of nature.
When all is ended, we then for the first time realise that we know these
people and their ways as if we too had dwelt among them.
I do not believe that ‘Typee’ will ever lose its position as a classic
of American Literature. The pioneer in South Sea romance--for
the mechanical descriptions of earlier voyagers are not worthy of
comparison--this book has as yet met with no superior, even in French
literature; nor has it met with a rival in any other language than the
French. The character of ‘Fayaway,’ and, no less, William S. Mayo’s
‘Kaloolah,’ the enchanting dreams of many a youthful heart, will retain
their charm; and this in spite of endless variations by modern explorers
in the same domain. A faint type of both characters may be found in the
Surinam Yarico of Captain John Gabriel Stedman, whose ‘Narrative of a
Five Years’ Expedition’ appeared in 1796.
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