Emily & Herman Page 5

  As his anxiety increased, the figure of Susan Gilbert, so disparaged while he and Fiona sated themselves, so impossible to imagine naked and moaning—as impossible to imagine as his own parents engaged in the same activity, which good grief, they actually had done, for there he was, he and his two sisters—came back to him like a balm, a sanctuary to seek refuge within, a proper dress clean and pressed to hold on to. Suddenly, he wanted only to renew his courtship with added respect, to attend services with her at the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, seeking celestial forgiveness for his wantonness. He wished to be his father’s son, and so what in God’s name was he doing accompanying Emily on a trip to New York their father would surely disapprove of? All of it had been due to his scheming weakness. Not even Emily really wanted to go—he knew her well enough to see that—she was just trying to be a sport so that he would think well of her. The knavery of it all!

  And so it went—his heart pounding from fear of being found out if poor Fiona should be with child. But as the ship came into view and slowing his pace, realizing he was on time, another side of him fought to make a case for reason and for his own nature. From where was such subservient cowardice emanating? What had he done that was wrong? Which God was actually paying attention to his womanizing and why? What would a life be like, year after year, with Susan Gilbert in his bed and his father and mother living across the street? Was the coziness of Thanksgiving dinner or a familial reunion on Christmas Eve worth all of the proper drudgery required?

  All four members of the traveling party boarded the Empire State with some misgivings that day. It was only once the ship set forth with many of its passengers waving goodbye to those left behind, parasols mixing with straw boaters, the water of the bay clean and clear, the sea grass and low dunes along the less inhabited sections of shore shimmering under the benevolent July sun, that the futility and sterility of their own too-worried minds gave way to the physical beauty of the external world and to a realization of their present good fortune to be in it.

  After settling their belongings in their respective staterooms and meeting again astern to take tea as the ship made its way down to Newport, they were beginning to relax and enjoy themselves—Emily especially in light of the novelty this outing defined. At precisely this juncture, they were set upon by an unsolicited bore wearing a clerical collar, carrying, in a manner for all to notice, a sorry looking Holy Bible. Unbidden, he addressed them.

  “What a fine and fitting new land of milk and honey these New England shores and coves are to behold. The Lord God of Abraham blesses us with such abundant riches.”

  All four captive listeners remained mute, entertaining the collective hope that the exclamation might be a non sequitor. But the exclaimer took their silence, as bores are apt to do, as acquiescence and even encouragement for his peculiar train of thought. Emily knew, merely by the look of his sensible and too-worn shoes, the sort of man before them—dull, intrusive, clumsy, immensely certain and self-satisfied armed with a bushel basket of homilies repeated ad nauseam without a tinge of shame. On he went.

  “As compensation for this bountiful gift it befalls upon we of the True Faith to enlighten the natives and lesser races who continue to prance about like vermin on these verdant virgin lands.”

  Her parents would have stood for it, out of decorum, bearing up in a courteous fashion, and she of course with them. Given his druthers she imagined Hawthorne would have simply bowed and exited the scene. Her brother Austin, whose matinal activities she refused to imagine even though she could hardly think of another thing, would have taken the man on his own terms, looking to reason and to complementary and more convincing scriptures with which to parry the other’s toe-headed certainty. In fact, she could see Austin wetting his lips as he often did before speaking, preparing to do just that. But it was Melville who interceded first and, in a manner for her, entirely unexpected.

  “What the deuces are you talking about man? Get on with you. Who in their right mind should have to stand for such drivel on a day as fair as this?”

  “I am the right reverend Josiah Huffington and who are you sir to behave in such a rude and bullish way?”

  Melville strode right up to the man.

  “I am the anti-Christ with native American blood in my veins disposed to toss you over the side this very second if you do not remove yourself to another part of this ship straight away.”

  “Well, I never …”

  But retreat he did in a Huffington huff, clutching the Bible with renewed fervor, backing off and then turning away from Melville’s intimidating demeanor. Hawthorne, upstaged yet again by his companion but not yet sure how their audience of two might react, patted his friend on the shoulder. “Herman, you are a genius.” Melville smiled, turned, and looked at Austin and Emily. “I’m not as mean as that. I just knew it was either that or be saddled with him for an hour.”

  Austin, frustrated by not being able to lock horns with the man shot a question to the author instead.

  “Do you really have Indian blood in you, Mr. Melville?”

  “Not a drop, unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately?”

  “My family, as do all of yours, goes back. My father never tired of reminding me of our royal ancestors in Scotland but we have been here since the first waves of colonists landed and we all call ourselves Americans and gaze with unwarranted condescension upon any newcomers. But we are all newcomers. The original Americans are its Indians and they are still its most authentic custodians.”

  “But they are not Christians,” said Emily with a malicious smile.

  “Anti-Christ. That was a good one,” said Hawthorne.

  “My own theory about what it means, or should mean to be a Christian, is a simple one: ‘Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.’”

  “But what might it mean to be pure of heart?” she asked.

  The stern’s upper deck where they were gathered was made from finely varnished wooden boards and a white canvas awning stretched over them keeping the airy salon in shade. A gull flew along with them, hovering for a spell before veering off, shoreward, then coming to a fluttery rest upon a gentle swell.

  “I’d like to think any Wampanoag native waking in the shelter of a wild blueberry shrub is pure of heart—or was …” He paused and looked at Emily directly. “I’d go as far as to say that you, Miss Dickinson, are pure of heart. Have you seen God?”

  Hawthorne jumped in. “You see, he is the anti-Christ after all—pronouncing one blasphemy after the other.”

  Melville smiled but ignored the comment and repeated his question. “Have you seen God Emily?”

  It was the first time he had called her that and it cut her to the quick—catching her once again unprepared. It was as if the organ that was her heart, pure or otherwise and apart from its own rhythmic beating, skipped of its own accord to the side. To mask the feeling she turned from him and from the rest of them, placing her hands upon the railing and looked down at the water of Mt. Hope Bay. Then she looked over her shoulder and answered him.

  “I wonder if perhaps I might be seeing Him right now.”

  Her brother made the connection immediately.

  “My sister has never seen salt water before. She has never been on a boat or ship.”

  She turned around.

  “I’m just a local girl, gentlemen, an Amherst maiden unaccustomed to any body of water larger than Lake Warner in North Hadley. I am overwhelmed.”

  “Then what you are seeing now is but the Archangel Gabriel,” said Melville.’ “God you will see later, just before the evening meal once we’ve left Newport and are out on the open sea a bit before setting a course through the more sheltered sound of Long Island.”

  “There you go, blaspheming again,” said Hawthorne. “I, too, have the greatest respect for the oceans Melville but to call it ‘God’ …”

  “I think he means—it is certainly what I meant,” said Emily in a meek tone, “is that the wonder of the seas r
eflects the majesty of God.”

  “Well put sister.”

  “I can agree with that,” said Hawthorne. “But is that what you meant, Herman?”

  “My God hath not long flowing hair or any resemblance to mankind at all. That presumptuous fantasy for me is a form of blasphemy.”

  “Your God is your great white whale—a massive creature filled with vengeance.”

  “God—whatever that word really means, is to my mind, not only a reflection of nature’s wonders but nature herself, all of it, the living and the dead, all that crawls, and swims, and grows from the soil and sand and all that simply exists upon the earth inanimate and immovable.”

  Austin took flight.

  “I believe the term for a man of your beliefs is ‘pantheist.’ You are an adherent of ‘pantheism.’ It has a noble tradition, going back to the Greeks.”

  “I’ll settle for that,” said Melville. “If only to put an end to anymore discussion about religion.”

  “Amen,” said Emily.

  But Austin and Hawthorne had yet to be sated. “I think it a fine and fitting topic,” the latter enjoined. “As do I,” said the former.

  “And why, I pray, might that be?” Melville inquired.

  “Religion’s hold upon us is such because life ends,” Emily said.

  The Empire State docked at Newport taking on provisions and additional passengers. Before retiring below in order to avoid all of the on-deck commotion, Melville noticed ships from the diminishing slave trade owned by the family of the late and despicable James de Wolf but kept the observation to himself. He rested in his stateroom reading and then fell asleep, not waking until the ship was underway again. Refreshed and back on deck, he watched the Prudence Island lighthouse being left behind. It was twilight. Salmon and violet tones graced all the eye could see, including Emily and Austin who he spotted in conversation up by the prow.

  “Are your feelings any clearer brother?”

  “No. When I first saw Fiona this morning, a morning that now feels like it took place a week ago, I could think of no one else. Then, as I took my leave I was beset with grief and remorse and with stark lucidity I saw the error of my ways and only wished to do whatever is required to secure the hand of Susan. And then an hour after that, just before I reached the dock, I found myself yearning once again for Fiona and viewing my sudden reversion to craving an orderly life with Susan as an act of moral cowardice.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I am relieved to be away from the both of them!”

  “I wonder why you cannot conceive of ‘an orderly life’ with Fiona, simply because she is Irish and not a member of our dour Amherst social circuit? I wonder to what extent her very unsuitability provides in your mind the crucial grain of sand, thus creating a pearl of desire for you?”

  He looked at his sister, born barely a year after he, in a new light. His innards filled simultaneously with affection for her and humiliation directed toward himself.

  “Ahoy there.”

  They turned and found the figure of Melville, a portrait of calm and confidence. Austin returned the greeting.

  “Hello.”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt anything.”

  “Not at all,” said Austin, “You are in truth rescuing me from the tenacious tentacles of my sister’s probing mind.”

  “Tenacious tentacles?” she repeated, feeling the color entering her cheeks and hating it.

  “Not an image I would associate with your sister.”

  “But accurate nevertheless.”

  “I realized we were heading out into the ocean and in this extraordinary light. Impossible to remain in one’s stateroom.”

  “Well if you will both excuse me,” Austin said, “it is to my stateroom I must retire.”

  “Must you?” Emily asked.

  He nodded to them both. “See you at supper then in half an hour.”

  And then he left them. An awkward silence ensued, until Melville pointed out to sea so that she turned to take in the view.

  “Look,” he said. “The face of God, or that of Oceanus at the very least.”

  “Would it not be that of Poseidon, or of his Roman equivalent, Neptune?”

  “Poseidon was associated with the Mediterranean only and Neptune, in the end, by many at least, with bodies of fresh water. But when Odysseus and Nestor walk together along the shore of the sea in the Iliad, their prayers are addressed ‘to the great sea-god who girdles the world.’ It is to Oceanus, not to Poseidon, that their thoughts are directed. But let’s just look. In that direction it is all open sea—the deep Atlantic.”

  With the waning light a breeze was blowing, particularly there near the bowsprit, nullifying the noise made by the engines and the massive midship paddles. She gripped the wooden banister of the railing tightly, to stem the sense of vertigo the view brought with it. Never had she felt so adrift, so on a precipice. The sea did not end. There was only the gradually darkening horizon that helped to make it seem so. She understood how men for ages, upon contemplating this same sight, had naturally assumed the Earth to be flat and that sailing too far away from the land’s safety, one would eventually fall off into a dark and frightful universe much as Lucifer and his hosts of angels had. Melville covered her hand with one of his own. She looked at it—at their hands together—her right hand under his left. Then he withdrew it but neither of them forgot it.

  “It is too much for me,” she said. “Too vast, too open.”

  There were tears in her eyes. He spoke to her very gently.

  “We’re closer to land than perhaps it seems to you. We are in no danger.”

  “We’re surrounded by water, deep and cold and filled with all of those creatures you write about and have dealt with on your ocean travels—and I cannot swim.”

  7

  Where is the Bee—

  Where is the Blush—

  Where is the Hay?—

  Ah, said July—

  Where is the Seed—

  Where is the Bud—

  Where is the May—

  Answer Thee—Me—

  EMILY WOULD WRITE THESE LINES YEARS LATER. BUT tonight her twenty-year-old self awakened of a sudden before dawn. Upon remembering where she was her heart accelerated. The entire stateroom, small, dark, and humid, was vibrating from the force of the steam engines hidden in the bowels. And it swayed as well, back and forth, up and down—gently but unceasingly. She sat up and looked out her porthole and saw the water only a few feet below. All else was darkness. Overcome with sadness for the room and bed that with each revolution of the paddles lay farther and farther behind, she rose and dressed.

  The Empire State, 440 feet long and 90 feet wide, moved upon the waters. The shorelines to either side, made from cobble beaches, coastal bluffs of glacial deposits, rocky headlands, and tidal wetlands, loomed invisible in the dark. Fresh waters fed into the sound from the Connecticut River, the Housatonic, the Thames, and the Nissequogue. Pines and scrub oak, beach plum and rose hip bushes began where the beaches ended. Under the vessel’s barnacle-studded gliding hull lived oysters and lobsters, bluefish and striped bass, winter flounder and fluke … scup … tautog … weakfish.

  A few gas lamps in the lounges were still lit lending an eerie glow to the velvet banquettes. She found a steward asleep slouched upon an easy chair. Desperate for fresh air she chose the first exit and, climbing two flights of stairs, made her way up to the weather deck. It was there she saw a man alone leaning into the breeze. He sensed her presence, turned, and smiled.

  “Emily.”

  “Mr. Melville.”

  “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “My room is so warm—oppressive. And what about you?”

  “I am often awake at this hour—to feed my cows.”

  She joined him and the air was cool and the light the way it is just before actual light appears. And as she came up near to him he took her by both shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed her on the lips. For the fi
rst few seconds she just stood there, unclear about how to react. And then he took her in his arms, moved his head back and looked into her eyes and then he kissed her again. This time she kissed him back. It was when she did this that he experienced a surge of happiness he would long remember. He looked at her again. She looked back at him. Keeping an arm around her they both faced the sea and watched as the first hints of dawn emerged from the east.

  Hours later a pensive Nathaniel Hawthorne, dressed and his bag strapped shut, rested in his stateroom before breakfast. What had been his initial intention of spending a pair of carefree summer weeks with Melville away from their lovely wives and children before he and Sophia moved away from Lenox seemed to have been thwarted. It was, he realized, partly his own damn fault. What had begun as a social call to Amherst, one he himself had imposed, had turned, initially, into a harmless and amusing escapade. He had envisioned the four of them as characters in a novel of manners, not as men and women made of flesh and blood.

  And he genuinely believed that Melville had shared in this same spirit. But clearly something had changed. He would have to speak to Melville about it, a prospect that did not in any way please him. Surely the girl’s chatty brother had noticed and surely, in spite of the young man’s weakness for he and Melville’s literary fame, he was mature enough to warn his sister against giving Melville anything resembling hope for his increasingly obvious love making. He wondered how things might be between Melville and his wife Elizabeth? She was a smart and handsome woman, not a beauty, but neither was the Dickinson girl. At least Elizabeth was a fully formed person quite dedicated it seemed to her husband’s pursuits and decidedly patient with the man’s grueling writing routines … or so it seemed. Who knew what really went on in their bed, in that household with so many other people about? And then there was Melville’s nature. What sort of a fellow, born a gentleman into two upstanding families, leaves his native soil, sails away to the farthest regions imaginable, as a common whaler, only to abandon ship to live (and cavort!) on a jungle island among naked savages with no morals or decorum at all? A sort different than he. A sort capable of anything. Granted he himself often felt constrained in a social sense by his Calvinist creed but he would never go as far as to pronounce aloud the kind of heresies Melville had fired off yesterday afternoon.