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Redburn's Prosy Old Guidebook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Willard Thorp
Willard Thorp*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

I will not quote thee, old Morocco, before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities would only be skipped and dishonoured by shallow-minded readers; and for me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from a guidebook—the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!—Redburn.

The purpose of this paper is to add another chapter to the constantly growing account of Melville as a writer who, in calculating his effects, often had recourse to travel diaries and guidebooks to furnish him with factual information and with dramatic episodes, which appear as the authentic experiences of his characters. In this instance the book is Redburn, the novel which he regarded as one of the least of his works, but which many besides John Masefield have admired as a spirited and sometimes harrowing narrative of a boy's running away to sea.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1938 , pp. 1146 - 1156
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

Note 1 in page 1146 Redburn, p. 196.—References are to the Standard Edition of the Works of Herman Melville (London, 1922).

Note 2 in page 1146 Redburn lists the titles of nine guidebooks of his father's in which he had given himself many courses of study as a child. The last of these is The Picture of Liverpool. It has been possible to identify with certainty seven of these books. What Melville has done in almost every instance is either to exaggerate humorously some pretentious phrase in the title-page or to invent some feature for the book. For those who wish to compare the actual titles with Melville's alterations as given in Redburn, pp. 180–182, the original title-pages will be of interest:

  1. Voyage / Descriptif et Philosophique / de / L'Ancien et du Nouveau / Paris. / Miroir Fidèle / Qui indique aux étrangers et même aux Parisiens ce / qui'ils doivent connaoetre et éviter dans cette Capitale; / . . . Par L. P[rudhomme] / A Paris, / Chez l'Auteur, rue des Marais, F. S. Germain, n° 18. / 1814. / (A fat, pink-covered duodecimo.)

  2. Itinéraire / Instructif / De Rome / Ancienne et Moderne, / Ou Description Generale / Des Monumens Anciens Et Modernes, / Et Des Ouvrages Les Plus Remar / quables En Peinture, Sculpture, / Et Architecture / De Cette Ville Celebre / Et De Ses Environs,/ Par Le Chevalier M. Vasi, / Membre De L'Académie Etrusque / De Cortone. / Corrigé et augmentée par le même / Auteur / . . . . A Rome mdcccxx. / Avec Privilège du Souverain Pontife. / Chez l'Auteur, rue du Babouin, près / de la place d'Espagne, num. 122. / Prix, deux écus, broché. / (Melville invented the vignette of Romulus and Remus.)

  3. I have not been able to identify The Conductor through, Holland.

  4. The / Picture / of London, / for / 1803;/ Being a / Correct Guide / to / All the Curiosities, Amusements, Exhibitions, Public / Establishments, and remarkable Objects, in / and near London; / With a Collection of Appropriate Tables. / For the Use of Strangers, Foreigners, and / all Persons who are not intimately / Acquainted with the British / Metropolis. / London: / Printed by Lewis and Co. Paternoster-row / . . . (This work came out in many editions, but in none which I have seen do the pictures exactly correspond to the eight which Melville notes.)

  5. Cary's / New Itinerary; / or, an / Accurate Delineation / of the / Great Roads, / Both Direct and Cross, / Throughout / England and Wales; / With many of the principal Roads in / Scotland. / From an / Actual Admeasuremen, made by Command of / His / Majesty's Postmaster General, / for / Official Purposes; / under the Direction and Inspection of / Thomas Hasker, Esq. / Surveyer of the Roads to the General Postoffice. / To which are added, at the end of each Route, / The Names of those Inns which supply Post Horses and Carriages; / Accompanied with a most extensive Selection of / Noblemen & Gentlemen's Seats; / A List of the Packet Boats, and their Time of sailing; / Copious Indexes, &c. &c. / London: Printed for John Cary, N° 181 Strand, 1798 / . . . Dedicated / By Permission / To the Right Honourable the / Earls / Chesterfield & Leicester / The / Liberal Patrons of this Work / By / Their Lordships' / Much obliged and / very obedient Servant / London Feby 1 1798 John Cary. /

  6. A / Description of York, / Containing / Some Account / of its / Antiquities, Public Buildings, &c / Particularly / The Cathedral. / “Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt.” / . . . Compiled from the most Authentic Records and Authorities. / York-London / 1809 /

  7. No Cambridge guide which I have been able to find fits Melville's title. The nearest to it is: The / Cambridge Guide / Including / Historical and Architectural Notices / of the / Public Buildings, / and / A Concise Account of the Customs and Ceremonies / of / The University. / With a Sketch of / the Places Most Worthy of Remark in the County / . . . Cambridge: / . . . mdcccxlv. /

  8. New Description / of / Blenheim. / The Seat of / His Grace / The / Duke of Marlborough. / Containing a full and accurate Account / of the / Paintings, Tapestry, and Furniture; / A Picturesque Tour of the Gardens / and Park; / And every other Circumstance connected with the / Subject, that can afford either Information / or Entertainment / . . . A New and Improved Edition. / Embellished with an elegant Plan of the Park, &c. / London, 1793 / (The frontispiece of this volume is labeled “North, or Grand Front of Blenheim, in Oxfordshire.”)

Note 3 in page 1149 The question naturally arises whether Melville was using an earlier copy of the Picture than this edition of 1808, since he gives 1803 as the date of the copy which Redburn's father owned. So far as I can discover, the only edition of the work before that of 1808 was the 1805 issue, the first. Melville could not have been using a copy of this edition for the following reasons: it contains no plates, and he refers five times to the engravings which “embellish” the work; it does not have the “nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end—‘Hope Place, 1st Sept. 1803.‘” Riddough's Hotel where Redburn, Senior, lodged and which his son discovered had long since been pulled down, is not mentioned in the 1805 edition, whereas eight lines (pp. 174–175) are devoted to it in 1808: “Riddiough's [sic] Royal Hotel, at the bottom of Lord-street, where are accomodations for families of the first rank, their retinues, carriages, and horses; as also every other description of travellers who wish to be well accomodated. There is a public ordinary. This situation is deemed the most central in the town; it is also the lowest with respect to elevation.” Melville represents Redburn's father as putting up at this hotel because it is the most genteel in the city.

Note 4 in page 1149 Redburn, pp. 185–186.

Note 5 in page 1149 Ibid., p. 187.

Note 6 in page 1150 See Redburn, p. 184, where Wellingborough reads through his father's list of engagements in Liverpool and notes that he dined with “Mr. Roscoe on Monday.” Also Wellingborough's meditation on “my father's friend, the good and great Roscoe” (pp. 198–199).

Note 7 in page 1150 The compiler of The Picture of Liverpool was William Jones, according to the entry in Liverpool Prints and Documents. Catalogue of Maps, Plans, Views, Portraits, Memoirs, Literature &c. in the Reference Library, relating to Liverpool. . . (Liverpool) 1908.

Note 8 in page 1150 Picture, p. 6.

Note 9 in page 1151 Redburn, p. 191.

Note 10 in page 1151 Given on p. 22 of the Picture. See Redburn, p. 192.

Note 11 in page 1151 The section on “Public Buildings” fills pages 113–172 of the guide. Redburn says there “were no less than seventeen plates in the work” (p. 192). This is the actual number.

Note 12 in page 1151 Redbum's emotions are particularly stirred because his father had marked out on the map the route he took in walking in the town. He sets out to follow him “according to the dotted lines in the diagram” (p. 196). Melville may have caught this happy idea from observing the dotted lines in the map which are apparently intended to mark the boundaries of the old city.

Note 13 in page 1151 The source may be a broadside by William Roscoe: Lord Nelson's Monument in the Area of the Liverpool Exchange Buildings (?Liverpool), 1813. I do not quote the pertinent passage here because the similarities are too general to make it possible to say positively that Melville made use of Roscoe's account. The description in Redburn is found on pp. 197–198.

Note 14 in page 1153 Picture, pp. 73–74.

Note 15 in page 1155 Melville may have received a hint for his indignant digression on the desecration of f the tombs in the church yard from a section of the Picture entitled The Old Churchyard (pp. 86–87). As there are no verbal similarities between the two passages, I have not printed this section here.