Details
MELVILLE, HERMAN. Autograph letter signed ("H. Melville") to James Billson, New York, 20 December 1885. 4 pages, 8vo, in dark brown ink, integral second leaf inlaid in quarto sheet of heavy paper, slight tears at ends of center fold, with typed transcript in binder.
MELVILLE ON JAMES THOMSON AND THE NATURE OF LITERARY "FAME"
In early October Billson had sent Melville James Thomson's Essays and Phantasies (London, 1881) and Satires and Profanities (London, 1884). In this fine and lengthy letter Melville writes: "...For the two books I thank you very much. It is long since I have been so interested in a volume as in that of the Essays & Phantasies. -- 'Bumble' -- 'Indolence' -- 'The Poet,' etc., each is so admirably honest and original and informed throughout with the spirit of the noblest natures, that it would have been wonderful indeed had they hit the popular taste. They would have to be painstakingly diluted for that -- diluted with that prudential wordly element, wherewithall Mr. [Matthew] Arnold has conciliated the conventionalists while at the same time showing the absurdity of Bumble. But for your admirable friend [Thomson] this would have been too much like trimming -- if trimming in fact it be. The motions of his mind in the best of the Essays are utterly untrammelled and independent, and yet falling naturally into grace and poetry. It is good for me to think of such a mind -- to know that such a brave intelligence has been -- and may yet be, for aught anyone can demonstrate to the contrary. --
"As to his not achieving 'fame' -- what of that? He is not the less, but so much the more. And it must have occurred to you as it has to me, that the further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does 'fame' become, especially of the literary sort. This species of 'fame' a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured thro the agency of a certain house that has a correspondent in every one of the almost innumerable journals that enlighten our millions from the [Great] Lakes to the Gulf & from the Atlantic to the Pacific. -- But this 'vanity of vanities' has been inimitably touched upon by your friend in one of his Essays..." At the end of the month Melville would retire as Customs Inspector, a post that he had held for nineteen years; virtually all of his books would be out of print. Letters, ed. M.R. Davis & W.H. Gilman, no. 237.
Provenance: H. Bradley Martin (sale, Sotheby's New York, 30 January 1990, part of lot 2170A).
MELVILLE ON JAMES THOMSON AND THE NATURE OF LITERARY "FAME"
In early October Billson had sent Melville James Thomson's Essays and Phantasies (London, 1881) and Satires and Profanities (London, 1884). In this fine and lengthy letter Melville writes: "...For the two books I thank you very much. It is long since I have been so interested in a volume as in that of the Essays & Phantasies. -- 'Bumble' -- 'Indolence' -- 'The Poet,' etc., each is so admirably honest and original and informed throughout with the spirit of the noblest natures, that it would have been wonderful indeed had they hit the popular taste. They would have to be painstakingly diluted for that -- diluted with that prudential wordly element, wherewithall Mr. [Matthew] Arnold has conciliated the conventionalists while at the same time showing the absurdity of Bumble. But for your admirable friend [Thomson] this would have been too much like trimming -- if trimming in fact it be. The motions of his mind in the best of the Essays are utterly untrammelled and independent, and yet falling naturally into grace and poetry. It is good for me to think of such a mind -- to know that such a brave intelligence has been -- and may yet be, for aught anyone can demonstrate to the contrary. --
"As to his not achieving 'fame' -- what of that? He is not the less, but so much the more. And it must have occurred to you as it has to me, that the further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does 'fame' become, especially of the literary sort. This species of 'fame' a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured thro the agency of a certain house that has a correspondent in every one of the almost innumerable journals that enlighten our millions from the [Great] Lakes to the Gulf & from the Atlantic to the Pacific. -- But this 'vanity of vanities' has been inimitably touched upon by your friend in one of his Essays..." At the end of the month Melville would retire as Customs Inspector, a post that he had held for nineteen years; virtually all of his books would be out of print. Letters, ed. M.R. Davis & W.H. Gilman, no. 237.
Provenance: H. Bradley Martin (sale, Sotheby's New York, 30 January 1990, part of lot 2170A).