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Nelson and Vere: Hero and Victim in Billy Budd, Sailor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ralph W. Willett
Ralph W. Willett*
Affiliation:
University of Hull Hull, England
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Extract

Emerson's faith in the historic role of the hero did not prevent him from evaluating Nelson morally as a man without principle. Unfortunately, he failed to make his criticism specific; only the grouping of Nelson with Napoleon offers a clue to the origin of Emerson's disapproval. Hawthorne and Melville were more well-disposed in their appreciations, which resemble each other in extravagance of sentiment. Whereas Hawthorne's treatment takes the form of an essay, Melville incorporates Nelson into his short novel, Billy Budd, Sailor, and puts to his own uses what Hawthorne called, in Our Old Home, the “symbolic poetry” (i, 275) of Nelson's life.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , October 1967 , pp. 370 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

Note 1 in page 370 The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. ii, 1822–26, ed. William H. Gilman, Alfred R. Ferguson, Merrell R. Davis (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 90.

Note 2 in page 370 References are to the definitive edition: Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. (Chicago, 1962)—hereafter cited as Billy Budd, Sailor. I am deeply indebted to Professor Sealts and Professor Lyon Richardson for reading this paper and offering suggestions.

Note 3 in page 370 See, e.g., Wendell Glick, “Expediency and Absolute Morality in Billy Budd,” PMLA, lxviii (March 1953), 10–110, and Phil Withim, “Billy Budd: Testament of Resistance,” MLQ, xx (June 1959), 115–127.

Note 4 in page 370 Billy Budd, Sailor, p. 59.

Note 5 in page 370 Vere is so impressed by Billy Budd that he thinks of promoting him; conversely he is suspicious of Claggart's “patriotism.”

Note 6 in page 371 Billy Budd, Sailor, p. 377, Leaf 229 c.

Note 7 in page 371 Thomas Carlyle, Lectures on Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, ed. P. C. Parr (Oxford, 1925), p. 1.

Note 8 in page 371 Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (New York, 1961), p. 278.

Note 9 in page 372 Billy Budd, Sailor, p. 111.

Note 10 in page 372 For a full description of the stages, see the definitive edition, Billy Budd, Sailor, pp. 236–239.

Note 11 in page 372 Ibid., p. 246.

Note 12 in page 373 See John McArthur, Principles and Practice of Naval and Military Courts Martial, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1813), i, 333.

Note 13 in page 373 See Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (New York, 1950), p. 39.

Note 14 in page 374 “The Age of the Antonines,” ll. 21, 25–28, in Collected Poems, ed. Howard P. Vincent (Chicago, 1947), pp. 235–236.

Note 15 in page 374 While-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War (New York, 1963).

Note 16 in page 374 As Charles Roberts Anderson points out in Melville in the South Seas (New York, 1939), pp. 382–384, Jack Chase jumped ship at Callao, Peru, on 18 May 1842 and was later picked up by the U. S. ship Neversink. His misdemeanor was condoned as a result of the intervention of the Peruvian Admiral under whom he was serving, not, as in White-Jacket, on account of his personal qualities.

Note 17 in page 374 See John D. Seelye, “ ‘Spontaneous Impress of Truth’: Melville's Jack Chase: A Source, an Analogue, a Conjecture,” NCF, xxi (March 1966), 367–376, and Howard P. Vincent's forthcoming work, The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket.

Note 18 in page 375 Moby-Dick, p. 61.

Note 19 in page 375 Herman Melville, Israel Potter, His Fifty Years of Exile (New York, 1963), p. 121.

Note 20 in page 375 Herman Melville, Benito Cereno (Boston, 1965), p. 44.

Note 21 in page 376 See, e.g., Henry Bamford Parkes, The American Experience (New York, 1959), p. 213, and A. N. Kaul, The American Vision (New Haven and London, 1963), p. 277.

Note 22 in page 376 Herman Melville (New York, 1949), p. 158.