ellauri107.html on line 179: The zenith of [Hawthorne and Melville’s] relationship was reached . . . when Moby-Dick was published in middle November of 1851 and was dedicated to Hawthorne [“To Nathaniel Hawthorne: In token of my admiration for his genius”]. Hawthorne’s letter to Melville [at the time], like most of those to his friend, has not been preserved, but Melville’s answer on November 17 . . . speaks of the effect Hawthorne’s letter had upon him, in terms characteristic of his impassioned utterances:
ellauri107.html on line 183: As [Arlin]Turner says in analyzing this letter, “[Melville] was aware, it can be assumed, of the inclusiveness and interwoven imagery of his letter, and no less aware of the meaning behind the imagery. The same awareness can be assumed on the part of Hawthorne”. Edwin Haviland Miller, who interprets Melville’s affection for Hawthorne as in part sexual, says that in this passage, “the most ardent and doubtlessly one of the most painful he was ever to write, he candidly and boldly laid bare his love”. Miller goes on to say that “when Hawthorne retreated from Lenox, he retreated from Melville. How Hawthorne felt his reticences keep us from knowing, but his friend wrestled with the problems and nature of the relationship almost until the end of his life”. Turner says only that “there is evidence through the remaining forty years of Melville’s life that he thought he had been rebuffed by Hawthorne, and that he felt a genuine regret for his loss.”
ellauri107.html on line 191: . . . Hawthorne liked [Melville’s novel Typee], observing [in 1846] that . . . Melville has “that freedom of view—it would be too harsh to call it laxity of principle—which renders him tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own; a spirit proper enough to a young and adventurous sailor . . .”
ellauri107.html on line 193: Hawthorne is much more explicit in regard to same sex relationships and perhaps alludes to Melville’s wooing of him in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance. In excerpting that work for the website, I introduced it as follows:
ellauri107.html on line 218: The major occurrence in Melville’s life . . . during the writing of Moby-Dick was the growing friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne . . . . We are reminded that throughout the fall and winter of 1850, and summer of 1851, Hawthorne and Melville were visiting and writing to each other. . Hawthorne encapsulating their conversation [of August 1, 1851] by writing in his journal: “Melville and I had a talk about time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters, that lasted pretty deep into the night . . . .”
ellauri107.html on line 222: Melville’s concluding words are from his “Monody,” a poem that is thought to express his deep personal loss when learning of Hawthorne’s death in 1864:
ellauri107.html on line 238: Same sex relationships in the all male environment of Billy Budd’s British as well as Herman Melville’s American ships are understood. As former First Lord of the Admiralty, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once witheringly quipped, British naval tradition might well be equated with sodomy. Although Billy Budd lacks the “marriage” rites of Moby-Dick’s Ishmael and Queequeg, itcontains endearments for “Handsome Sailor” Billy that leave little doubt as to many of his mates’ ardent feelings toward him. The old Dansker on the British warship originates “Baby Budd,” also shortened to “Baby,” in reference to Billy, “the name by which the foretopman eventually became known aboard ship.” Readers also hear “one Donald” addressing Billy as “Beauty.”
ellauri107.html on line 244: Claggart’s repressed, closeted attraction to Billy finds parallels with some interpretations of Hawthorne’s evident spurning of Melville’s too intimate attentions and Hawthorne’s character in The Blithedale Romance Coverdale’s similar rejection of the invitation from Holingsworth to be his “friend of friends, forever.” For Melville, Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmesdale’s agonizing acknowledgement of adultery must have seemed a stunning parallel with what later generations would term “coming out of the closet.” Whether Hawthorne himself were a closeted gay man, it is clear that Melville was relatively open in his affections for the senior author and that those affections were somehow turned away and seem to have left a wound that never fully healed. The evils of the closet constitute a subtext in Billy Budd that may well have brought to its author’s mind the sad sundering of his closeness with Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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