Extract

Herman Melville was born on 1 August 1819 on Pearl Street in downtown New York City. His father, Allan Melvill (as the family spelled its name at the time), was a trader whose own father, Thomas, had participated in the Boston Tea Party in 1773 as part of the American colonists' protest against high British tariffs. Herman Melville's mother, Maria Gansevoort, was from a distinguished family of Dutch origin. Maria's father, Peter Gansevoort, had been a revolutionary war officer known as the Hero of Fort Stanwix for his 1777 defense of an outpost in Rome, New York, against the British general John Burgoyne. Despite these distinguished ancestors, Allan Melvill could not turn a profit at his trade, importing dry goods from France to Boston. He dissipated the family fortune with ill-fated business ventures. In 1819, Allan Melvill wrote to his brother-in-law to announce Herman's birth: “The little stranger has good lungs, sleeps well and feeds kindly, he is in truth a chopping Boy,” and to a business colleague in Paris, the proud father described the newborn as “un beau Garcon” (a handsome boy). He was named after his mother's brother, Herman Gansevoort, and baptized in the South Reformed Dutch Church. As part of the ceremony, the priest reminded his parents that according to the tenets of the church, children are “conceived and born in sin, and therefore are subject to all miseries, yea to condemnation itself.” Before he was two years old, Herman had suffered a bout of measles, which his father described as including “very bad coughs, inflamed eyes, and virulent eruptions which characterize this troublesome disorder.” This early illness may have been the origin of Melville's sensitive eyes, which he later described as “tender as young sparrows.” Such passing ailments apart, the boy's health was generally good, as Allan explained in a family letter in 1821: “Little Herman is in fine spirits and rugged as a Bear.” When the Melvilles had another son in 1823, four-year-old Herman spoke his first recorded words: “Pa now got two ittle Boys.” Three years later his father described him to an uncle as “an honest hearted double rooted Knickerbocker of the true Albany stamp…he is very backward in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension, but you will find him as far as he understands men and things both solid and profound.” Herman's first ten years were spent in luxury, living in pleasant and spacious Manhattan homes. But in 1830 the family was forced to flee Manhattan for Albany to escape debts incurred by Allan Melvill in unsuccessful business ventures. Soon Allan went mad and died in January 1832 from stresses linked to his indebtedness. Herman witnessed his father's harrowing decline and death and his family's sufferings. These experiences would be echoed in the 1852 novel Pierre, in which a dying father “wander[s] so ambiguously in his mind.”