510 JAMES ALAN McPHERSON

j ust after the y had done it.

movem ents of ot hers and doing what the y did HERMAN MELVILLE
n I look e d into iny partner's face or what I
Still !'cannot rememb er just whe
ed directions andI obe yed:
saw �here . The scratch y voice of the caller b ellow 1819-1891
"Allemande left withyour left hand Melville was born in New York City, the son of a
Right to your partner with a right and left grand . . • " New England merchant who died when Melville
e right inst ead of le ft, I was still young. He took on jobs as clerk, farm­
Although I was told later that I made an allemand hand, and schoolteacher before shipping to th e
have no m emory of the mistake. South Seas on the whaler Acushrtet. In a helter­
skelter period of advent ur e he deserted his ship,
"When you get to your partner pass her by
lived among cannibals, took part in a mutiny
And pick up the next girl on the sly . . . "
aboard an Australian vessel, and then spent almost
only remember that du ring two years on an American man-of-war. At last
Nor can I rem embe r picking up any other girl. I home in America, he began successfully to roman­
into the warm brown eyes
many turns and do-si-dos I found myself looking ticize these adventures in fiction. In six years he
d a t m e . I r ecall that she lau ghed
of Gwen eth Lawson. I re call that she smile published seven novels, the first of which, Typee
with h er an e ternity later.
on anoth er t u rn. I recall thatI lau ghed (1846), was a literary sensation. By the time Mel-
ville wrote Moby-Dick (1851), now universally
". . . promenade that dear old thing
regarded as one of the masterworks of American fiction, his popularity was
Throw your head right back and sing be-cause, just
already waning. The short stories in Piazza Tales (1856) did little to refurbish
be-cause ... "
his reputation. Neither the fine poems he wrote about the Civil War, Battle­
enade before th e record Pieces (1866), nor his long narrative poem Clare! (1876) received much notice .
I do rememb er q u ite well that du ring the final prom As his writing activities declined, Melville made another sea voyage around
andI said to h e r in a voice m u ch louder than
ended' Gwene th stood b eside me
lyn I hope I see you." ButI. do not Cape Horn to San Francisco on a clippe r ship commanded by his broth e r,
that of the caller, "W hen I get up to Brook and for nineteen quiet years he was a customs inspector in New York. By the
b er chat she smiled.
r ememb er what she said in re sponse . I wantto remem time he died, Melville was virtually forgotten. It was not u ntil the 1920s when
I sm i l ed wit h th e l e monn ess of her and the
I know I smile d, dear Gloria. his last fictional masterpiece, Billy Budd (1924), was finally published, that
s of my private self. It was
loving of her pressed deep into those saving place critical interest in his work revived. Since then it has increased in fervor and
when I re ached N ew York,
my plan to savor these , and I did savor them. But scope, discovering the richly ambiguous tho ught structured into his most
followed the old, be aten,
many years late r, I did not chink of4 Brooklyn. I ambitious work. His novels include Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Pierre (1852), and
learned to dance to many
steady paths into uptown Manhactan. By thenI had The Confidence-Man (1856).
savor y smell of lemon. But I
other kinds of mu sic. And I had forgotten the
ear co u ntry music. And altho u gh
think sometime s of Gwenet h now whenI h
main tain th at I am no mere arithmeti-
it is difficult to explain to you , I still
. I am into th e ca lculus of ic
cian in the art of the sq u are danc e
" , back i ng int o yo u r North ern myc�ol�gy.,,"I can
"Go on! you will tell m e
Bartleby, the Scrivener
B u t no h 1llb1lly.
see the hu stle , the hump, maybe e ven theIbo high hfe.
as always, quietly, and
These days I am firm about arg u ing the po1nc, b ut, A Stor y of Wa l l Street
mostly to myself. 1977
am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty
years has bro u ght me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem
an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet not hing
that I know o_f has ever been written:-! mean the law-copyists or scriveners.
I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and ifI pleased,
could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile,
and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other
scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener the
strangestI ever saw or heard of.While of other law-copyistsI might write the
4. That is, into Harlem.