Typee | Page 5

experience as a sailor. At any rate, he once more signed a ship's articles,

and on January 1, 1841, sailed from New Bedford harbour in the
whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific Ocean and the sperm fishery.
He has left very little direct information as to the events of this eighteen
months' cruise, although his whaling romance, 'Moby Dick; or, the
Whale,' probably gives many pictures of life on board the Acushnet. In
the present volume he confines himself to a general account of the
captain's bad treatment of the crew, and of his non-fulfilment of
agreements. Under these considerations, Melville decided to abandon
the vessel on reaching the Marquesas Islands; and the narrative of
'Typee' begins at this point. However, he always recognised the
immense influence the voyage had had upon his career, and in regard to
its results has said in 'Moby Dick,'--
'If I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed
world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I
shall do anything that on the whole a man might rather have done than
to have left undone . . . then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour
and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and
my Harvard.'
The record, then, of Melville's escape from the Dolly, otherwise the
Acushnet, the sojourn of his companion Toby and himself in the Typee
Valley on the island of Nukuheva, Toby's mysterious disappearance,
and Melville's own escape, is fully given in the succeeding pages; and
rash indeed would he be who would enter into a descriptive contest
with these inimitable pictures of aboriginal life in the 'Happy Valley.'
So great an interest has always centred in the character of Toby, whose
actual existence has been questioned, that I am glad to be able to
declare him an authentic personage, by name Richard T. Greene. He
was enabled to discover himself again to Mr. Melville through the
publication of the present volume, and their acquaintance was renewed,
lasting for quite a long period. I have seen his portrait,--a rare old
daguerrotype,--and some of his letters to our author. One of his children
was named for the latter, but Mr. Melville lost trace of him in recent
years.
With the author's rescue from what Dr. T. M. Coan has styled his

'anxious paradise,' 'Typee' ends, and its sequel, 'Omoo,' begins. Here,
again, it seems wisest to leave the remaining adventures in the South
Seas to the reader's own discovery, simply stating that, after a sojourn
at the Society Islands, Melville shipped for Honolulu. There he
remained for four months, employed as a clerk. He joined the crew of
the American frigate United States, which reached Boston, stopping on
the way at one of the Peruvian ports, in October of 1844. Once more
was a narrative of his experiences to be preserved in 'White Jacket; or,
the World in a Man-of-War.' Thus, of Melville's four most important
books, three, 'Typee,' 'Omoo,' and 'White-Jacket,' are directly auto
biographical, and 'Moby Dick' is partially so; while the less important
'Redburn' is between the two classes in this respect. Melville's other
prose works, as will be shown, were, with some exceptions,
unsuccessful efforts at creative romance.
Whether our author entered on his whaling adventures in the South
Seas with a determination to make them available for literary purposes,
may never be certainly known. There was no such elaborate
announcement or advance preparation as in some later cases. I am
inclined to believe that the literary prospect was an after-thought, and
that this insured a freshness and enthusiasm of style not otherwise to be
attained. Returning to his mother's home at Lansingburg, Melville soon
began the writing of 'Typee,' which was completed by the autumn of
1845. Shortly after this his older brother, Gansevoort Melville, sailed
for England as secretary of legation to Ambassador McLane, and the
manuscript was intrusted to Gansevoort for submission to John Murray.
Its immediate acceptance and publication followed in 1846. 'Typee' was
dedicated to Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts, an old
friendship between the author's family and that of Justice Shaw having
been renewed about this time. Mr. Melville became engaged to Miss
Elizabeth Shaw, the only daughter of the Chief Justice, and their
marriage followed on August 4, 1847, in Boston.
The wanderings of our nautical Othello were thus brought to a
conclusion. Mr. and Mrs. Melville resided in New York City until 1850,
when they purchased a farmhouse at Pittsfield, their farm adjoining that
formerly owned by Mr. Melville's uncle, which had been inherited by

the latter's son. The new place was named 'Arrow Head,' from the
numerous Indian antiquities found in the neighbourhood. The house
was so situated as to command an uninterrupted view of Greylock
Mountain