When Melville and Hathorne picnicked on Mount Mansfield in August 1852, Piper Heidsieck corks were popped. That’s what Cornelius Mathews wrote The Literary World during their climb to the summit. Until this meeting, the two authors were unacquainted though they lived seven miles apart; Hawthorne in Lenox and Melville in Pittsfield. In Pittsfield.
Asher Durand. Monument Mountain. Berkshires (1850c)
Mathews wrote that the authors accepted Dudley Field’s invitation for an afternoon “pic-nic” and a dinner at his home in Great Barrington. Though fourteen persons were invited, neither of the authors’s wives seem to have attended. The “pic nic” party traveled by horseback and a long wagon to an overlook where the coachman carried a wicker basket and a man and woman “magically spread” a feast in the wilderness. Heidsieck champagne for anyone who wanted to get buzzed, but what was served is unknown.
While many of the party remained at the overlook, Melville, Hawthorne, and a few others scrambled upwards, drinking as they went. By the time they reached the summit,
Dudley Fields’s diary euphemistically suggests both men were “merry.” Mathews, who dubbed Hawthorne “Mr. Noble Melancholy,” wrote that he called out “lustily” that “certain destruction was inevitable to us all.” Melville, who seemed sure-footed, climbed far out on a ledge as if it was a bowsprit and leaned perilously over the edge. Mathews called him the “New Poseidon,” an allusion to Melville’s South Sea adventure tales.
Later, Hawthorne was cool, and his journal record is terse: “Ascended the mountain-that is to say, Mrs. Fields & Miss Jenny Field-Messrs. Field & Fields-Dr. Holmes, Messrs. Duyckinck, Mathews, Melville, Mr. Henry Sedgewick, &. -and were caught in a shower.”
At work on Moby Dick, Melville dedicated the novel to Hawthorne, but Hawthorne did not reciprocate.
Featured Image: Edward Sorel’s 1995 illustration shows Melville and Hawthorne earnestly chatting despite a rainstorm.
See Jay Leyda. The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819-1891. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1951. 2 vols.; James T. Fields. Yesterday with Authors. Boston, 1878); David B. Kesterson. “Hawthorne and Melville.” 2000; Cornelius Mathews. “Several Days in Berkshire” in The Literary World. September 7, 1850; Edward Sorel. First Encounter: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Atlantic. January 1995; Edward Sorel First Encounter. The Atlantic January 1995