¶ What bogs down Moby-Dick for me — and what made it so popular seventy-odd years ago, I expect — is the fearlessness with which Melville wades into metaphysical speculation. No vicarage teas here! Just manly abstractions — which I, unfortunately, find altogether gaseous. I had to read the following four times just to see what mighty point Melville was laboring to make.

For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab’s case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnabulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

The renown of this charmless book surprises me — unless, as is often the case among self-consciously “serious” men, that charmlessness is the charm. (more…)

¶ In Moby-Dick, Melville/Ishmael attempts to explain the horror of “whiteness,” and fails utterly. Despite two footnotes, endless anecdotes, and an appeal to the subtlety of the imagination, the only thing that Melville can put any weight on is “the instinct of the knowledge of demonism in the world.” This assertion appears in a description of equine fearfulness that must bring a smiling, if not smirking, recollection of Plato’s Meno to mind. In connection with shudders about the white shark, he traces a connection, which my Larousse Étymologie dismisses as “fantaisiste,” between requin (shark) and requiem. (It would seem that Melville at least picked this up from some French armchair etymologists.) Chapter 42 is stuffed with the most garrulous nonsense, all pedantry and no horror. (more…)

¶ To say that Lord Chesterfield advises against laughter is severe understatement.

Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. … In my mind there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: they show the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. … I am neither of a melancholy nor a cyunical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; butr I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh.

Hopelessly Irish, perhaps, I must confess that nothing draws laughter out of me more surely or inevitably than wit and sense. One might as well never weep. (more…)

¶ Chesterfield’s letter to his son of 22 February 1748 is so full of good advice for bloggers and other Internauts that I have dug up a link to it at Google Books.

Some learned men, proud of their knowledge, only speak to decide, and give judgment without appeal; the consequence of which is, that mankind, provoked by the insult, and injured by the oppression, revolt; and in order to shake off the tyranny, even call the lawful authority in question. The more you know, the modester you should be: and (by-the-bye) that modesty is the surest way of gratifying your vanity. Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful; represent, but do not pronounce, and if you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

Advice that I’m afraid I must give myself every day, like a tonic. (more…)

¶ Lord Chesterfield denies the existence of unconditional love. To his son:

Neither is my affection for you that of a mother, of which the only, or at least the chief objects, are health and life: I wish them both most heartily; but, at the same time, I confess they are by no means my principal care.

My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.

(more…)

¶ In Moby-Dick, a wearying, garrulous chapter about dining opportunities aboard the Pequod. Melville’s stab at jocular whimsy sails right by me. The sketch of the “Dough-Boy” who waits table — “naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse” — is rather nasty. (more…)

¶ In La Rochefoucauld, a phrase fit for a sampler, to be looked at, stitched upon a sofa pillow, every day:

Le caprice de notre humeur est encore plus bizarre que celui de la fortune.

I find that I can’t translate this to my satisfaction. “The caprice of our humour is even more bizarre than that of fortune” doesn’t begin to do justice to the elegant thought of the original; we don’t think in that way about that sort of thing in English. (more…)

¶ In Chapter 32 of Moby-Dick, “Cetology,” we have a crisp and timeless portrait of the Crank, the autodidact who plunges into the vasty deeps of his own ignorance with a few rough-and-ready ideas about System, and proceeds, more often than not, to get everything wrong. (more…)

¶ In Moby-Dick, Stubb’s dream of Ahab’s kick — a lot of Shakespearean hoo-ha if you ask me. “But mum; he comes this way. Coming up: “Cetology,” which just may constitute the entirety of a Morning Read next week. (more…)

¶ Lord Chesterfield presses home the indispensability of good manners in the world — something that doltish, obstinate people perversely continue to regard as a failing of the world:

You may possibly ask me, whether a man has it always in his power to get into the best company? and how? I say, Yes, he has, by deserving it; provided he is but in circumstances which enable him to appear upon the footing of a gentleman. Merit and good-breeding will make their way everywhere. Knowledge will introduce him, and good-breeding will endear him to the best companies; for, as I have often told you, politeness and good-breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable. (more…)

¶ In Moby-Dick, the two “Knights and Squires” chapters. There’s a lot of Whitman here; it’s fashionable nowadays to find such manly gushing about manliness “homoerotic,” but I can’t abide the anachronism of it. (more…)

It is about half-past three in the afternoon, so far past morning that I’m tempted to schedule this for tomorrow morning. But who knows where we’ll all be tomorrow?

¶ La Rochefoucauld:

L’interêt, qui aveugle les uns fait la lumière des autres.

Interestedness, which blinds some people, enlightens others.

Better in French, where “interests” aren’t as detachable as they are in English.

¶ Chesterfield puts his finger on what strikes me as a pervasive distinction between the men of Anglophone and Continental upper classes:

These would be my pleasures and amusements, if I were to live the last thirty years over again; they are rational ones; and moreoever, I will tell you, they are really the fashionable ones; for the others are not, in truth, the pleasures of what I call people of fashion, but of those who only call themselves so. Does good company care to have a man reeling drunk among them? or to see another tearing his hair, and blaspheming, for having lost, at play, more than he is able to pay? or a whore-master with half a nose, and crippled by coarse and infamous debauchery? No; those who practise, and much more those who brag of them, make no part of good company; and are most unwillingly, if ever, admitted to it. A real man of fashion and pleasure observes decency: at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy, and secrecy.

Dr Johnson would have complained that the Continentals want candour.

¶ In Moby-Dick, two chapters of almost grotesque padding, even if the chapters themselves are not very long (the second one doesn’t fill a page). “The Advocate” argues that whalers “don’t get no respect.” The climax of this silliness is that whale oil is used to annoint monarchs.

But the only thing to be considered here, is this — what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, not macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

Sorry, Herman, but it not only can be olive oil but is. Whale oil! The idea!

¶ Chapter XXII of Don Quixote is noteworthy for two things. First, our hero finds his helmet, in the guise of a barber-surgeon’s brass bowl. Second, as translator Edith Grossman lets us know in a footnote, he summarizes the plot of the standard chivalrous romance quite perfectly. When Sancho asks why they’ve got to poke about in Spanish backwaters instead of finding adventure in war, Don Quixote outlines the drill, which prevents him from trying to serve a king or an emperor until he can boast of many valorous deeds. Just as well!

Sancho is quick to note that, for his own sake, Don Quixote had better not abduct any fair princesses, because then he won’t be awarding any of his angry father-in-law’s fiefdoms to his faithful squire. I see that Sancho’s foil isn’t that he’s any wiser than Quixote, but only that he’s absolutely not a dreamer.

¶ I read a lot more of Squillions today than I meant to do. That’s because I fell into Coward’s correspondence with Enid Bagnold, author of National Velvet and The Chalk Garden, which Coward starred in in 1956. The “correspondence” consists of several long letters from Bagnold, and none from Coward. Will someone please remind Barry Day of the title of his book? It really ought to have been called, Noël Coward: A Life in Letters (and Chatty Antinote). There was also the now-famous letter to Edward Albee in which Coward makes this enviable claim:

I have enjoyed sex thoroughly, perhaps even excessively all my life but it has never, except for brief wasteful moments, twisted my reason.

¶ Today’s chapter of After the Edwardians is an elegant and engrossing composition on the popularity, in inter-War Britain, of puzzles and mystery novels. It crosses quite impalpably across the theme bridge of English Elegy to a discussion of the non-modernist painting of Stanley Spencer and John Piper. One would have liked a little more about John Cowper Powys.

¶ A maxim for our times from La Rochefoucauld:

Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes.

We make promises according to our hopes, but we hold back according to our fears.

¶ Lord Chesterfield writes to his son about the importance of paying attention: a favorite theme. The advice is all very paternal, but the close is quite sweet: (more…)

¶ In La Rochefoucauld, variations on a theme: If we didn’t have faults, we wouldn’t take pleasure in noticing others’/If we weren’t proud, we wouldn’t complain about the pride of others. If such maxims still hold true in society, I’m unaware of it. (more…)

¶ Advising his son against disparaging women in general, the Earl of Chesterfield goes on to discourage generalizations generally.

All general reflections, upon nations and societies, are the trite, thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to commonplace. Judge of individuals from your own knowledge of them, and not from their sex, profession, or denomination.

Amen!

¶ In Moby-Dick, one of the scenes that I remember from the Classics Illustrated edition: Queequeg makes his mark when he signs on to the Pequod. I remember thinking that it must be pretty easy to forge. More interesting at the moment is Ishmael’s defense of Queequeg’s religion, when Peleg and Bildad balk at signing on a cannibal.

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied, “I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congretation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we join hands.”

I don’t think that Melville was being optimistic about the universality of faith. People simply did not not believe; atheism was for crackpots. It’s a lost world.

¶ In Don Quixote, the famous encounter with the flocks of sheep, within whose dust-clouds our hero makes out Alifanfarón, Pentapolín, and other figures from his “lying books.”

¶ In Squillions, a spate of amusing letters by Noël Coward — what a refreshing change. Here he is in Havana, enjoying a mid-run break from the Broadway production of Private Lives:

It feels funny having a holiday in the middle like this, and very enjoyable. My Spanish came in very useful in Havana, I was surprised to find out how much I knew. It really is a beautiful place. Heavenly drives in the country through Sugar Cane and Banana plantations and masses of every conceivable type of flower.

We dined out in restaurants outside the town, with trees hung with lights and Spanish orchestras playing very softly. The Oliviers are in Nassau and are meeting us tomorrow. I am sorry to see Arnold Bennett is dead.

¶ A N Wilson addresses the change in the status of women after World War I, discussing Lady Astor, Marie Stopes, eugenics and contraception, and Radclyffe Hall. It is a pleasant chapter, very much in favor of “the belief that the world might be a better place if men and women regarded one another* a little more tenderly.”

* See my “Exercice du style,” 16 August. I am aware that my recommendation contradicts an earlier preference, and I recognize that there might once have been a compelling semantic underpinning to Wilson’s usage. But I stick, somewhat obstinately no doubt, with my prescription.

Still gasping for time, I read no new Maxims or Letters, but I did remember a bit from one of Chesterfield’s letters to his son that really ought to be mentioned, because it’s one of those points that becomes more salient with age.

Certain forms, which all people comply with, and certain arts, which all people aim at, hide, in some degree, the truth, and give a general exterior resemblance to almost every body. Attention and sagacity must see though that veil, and discover the natural character.

(more…)

A staggering number of pages today. Melville surprised me with a very long chapter — twelve pages, that is, after a string of two- and four-pagers. Squillions threw up a long “Intermission” about Noël Coward’s professional relationship with Gertrude Lawrence. I’m afraid that I’ll still be writing it all up at dinnertime. (more…)

¶ Two of Lord Chesterfield’s letters today; one to Bubb Dodington, a fellow Tory, about Parliamentary maneuverings. An auld lament:

I entirely agree with you, that we ought to have meetings to concert measures some time before the meeting of the Parliament; but that, I likewise know, will not happen. I have been these seven years endeavouring to bring it about, and have not been able; fox-hunting, gardening, planting, or indifference having always kept our people in the country, till the very day before the meeting of the Parliament.

In a letter to his son, Chesterfield tries to make the case for paying attention by painting a humorous portrait of the inattentive man, who trips over his sword when he enters a room, eats with his knife, &c. Did it make little Philip Stanhope laugh? (more…)

In the middle of the Morning Read today, I discovered that the water in our line of apartments was shut off, would remain shut off for about two hours. I threw on some clothes and walked over to the Museum, partly to have lunch, also to take another look at my favorite Turner painting in the show that’s closing this weekend (Approach to Venice, Exh RA 1844), but mostly to walk into the Park to take some photographs for next week’s Daily Office. Because I’d had a bit of a walk yesterday, my legs began to complain as I came round the Museum toward Fifth Avenue — I’d the bright idea of walking the perimeter of the Museum, taking two sets of photographs (for two weeks of DO’s — pletty crevel, no?). I’d have taken a taxi home, but I was in no hurry to find out that the water was still off. Limping up to the building, I asked Dominic, the doorman on duty, to find out the status of my water supply, lest I have to go round to the Food Emporium to buy some Poland Spring. Never has a thumbs-up been so welcome as Dominic’s report.

Cleaned up and comfortably seated, I found that I could hardly pay attention to what I was reading. I wanted only to sleep. My impressions are correspondingly lackluster.

¶ Lord Chesterfield writes to his son (a boy of seven) about Roman History. (more…)

¶ The Réflexions Morales of François de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (1613-1680), begins by striking what I expect will be the characteristic deflationary note:

Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n’est souvent qu’un assemblage de diverses actions et de diverses intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n’est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes.

What we take to be virtue is often nothing more than an mass of diverse acts and interests arranged by fortune or our shrewdness; and it is not always by valor and chastity that men are valiant and women are chaste.

This has a cynical, post-modern ring. If bravery and modesty are in fact accidental appearances, ought anybody to try to be brave or modest? (more…)