Melville in Love by Michael Shelden

Author:Michael Shelden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

15

LOT’S WIFE

As mountaintops go, Greylock’s is rather tame—at least in summer. The summit is broad with lots of room to wander from side to side for different views. Some of the slopes are gentle enough to encourage cautious strolls near the edge of the mountain. What mere photos can’t convey is the sense at the top of standing in a snow globe at rest—a tranquil, watery atmosphere of blue and white where everything around the mountain seems to be floating in and out of the hazy distance. The wide grandeur of the green countryside below also seems in movement, changing with the light. When Henry David Thoreau spent the night here in July 1844, he felt that he was immersed in “an undulating country of clouds. . . . A country as we might see in dreams.”1

It can be exhilarating to stand at the top in high summer, the air cool and pungent with the smell of balsam. When darkness falls, the light fades slowly as the horizon goes gray and then black. Modern climbers can stay overnight at a lodge with all the comforts of the world below, but in Melville’s day the only shelter was a ramshackle observatory with rough places for sleeping that brought to mind the comfort of a hayloft. It was exactly what Sarah was hoping for. She loved the rustic feel of the structure, and she was in awe of the view, which was all the more impressive to those of her time, who were born long before anyone could admire the landscape from an aircraft window.

Far from exhausted by the ascent, Sarah reveled in it, stopping frequently to admire the views and the vegetation, and to gather wildflowers. By the time everyone reached the summit, the sun was going down and a summer mist was hanging over the rugged expanse below, adding—said Sarah—“beauty to what was already too beautiful for description.” Their evening meal was taken in the observatory (Sarah called it the Tower), with “brandy cherries” served as a special treat. Melville—by far the strongest in the group—chopped wood for a large fire outside, and everyone gathered around it to warm themselves. Looking up, they watched the summer moon—“full and red”—rise “more majestically than usual.” The whole party stayed up until midnight, talking and drinking champagne, with extra supplies of rum and port wine. Then they gathered in the observatory to sleep under buffalo robes left behind in the winter. A candle made from the oil of a sperm whale was placed in a champagne bottle to provide a little light, but it flickered out long before dawn.

Soon many in the group were sound asleep, but not Sarah and Melville, who stayed up all night. They were among the few who were “too merry for sleep,” as she put it. Her laughter kept waking up Evert Duyckinck, who muttered wittily, “Sleep no more, Morewood has murdered sleep.” Casting her gaze across the awkward forms of her slumbering friends, Sarah liked the unguarded,

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