On November 10, Melville received a reply to the note he had sent to Bentley announcing his presence in London. Bentley expressed a willingness to come up from Brighton to see Melville at any time convenient to Melville. Melville appointed “Monday noon, in New Burlington Street,” and went forth again to explore the city. He visited the Temple Courts. By way of Cock Lane—reflecting on Dr. Johnson’s Ghost—he walked on to the Charter House, “where I had a sociable chat with an old pensioner who guided me through some fine old cloisters, kitchens, chapels.” Saturday night, with Adler, he strolled over to Holborn “vagabonding thro’ the courts and lanes and looking in at windows. Stopped at a penny theatre—very comical. Adler afraid. To bed early.” On Sunday Melville went “down to Temple Church to hear the music,” looked in at St. Paul’s, and then, with Adler, “took a bus for Hampton Court.” They enjoyed the ride down, the pictures at Hampton Court, and then dinner at the Adelphi in the evening.
On Monday, Melville saw Bentley. “Very polite,” says Melville. “Gave me his note for £100 at ten days for Redburn. Couldn’t do better, he said. He expressed much anxiety and vexation at the state of the copyright question. Proposed my new book White-Jacket to him and showed him the table of contents. He was much pleased with it, and notwithstanding the vexatious and uncertain state of the copyright matter, he made me the following offer: To pay me £200 for the first thousand copies of the book (the privilege of publishing that number) and as we might afterwards arrange concerning subsequent editions. A liberal offer. But he could make no advance—left him and called upon Mr. Murray. Not in. Out of town.... Walked to St. Paul’s and sat over an hour in a dozy state listening to the chanting of the choir. Felt homesick and sentimentally unhappy.”
To sweeten his blood, he sallied forth, with Adler, early on the morrow, “to see the last end of the Mannings. An innumerable crowd in all the streets. Police by hundreds. Men and women fainting. The man and wife were hung side by side—still unreconciled to each other—what a change from the time they stood up to be married together! The mob was brutish. All in all, a most wonderful, horrible, and unspeakable scene.—Breakfasted about 11 A. M. and went to the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park. Very pretty. Fine giraffes. Dreary and rainy day.”
On the morrow “Rigged up again, and in my green jacket called upon Mr. Murray in Albemarle Street. He was very civil, much vexed about copyright matters. I proposed White-Jacket to him—he seemed decidedly pleased and has since sent for the proof sheets, according to agreement. That evening we went to the New Strand Theatre, to see Coleman’s The Clandestine Marriage.” Melville’s comment upon Leigh Murray, who played Melvil, would do credit to the lost diary of Mrs. Pepys: “the finest leg I ever saw on a man—a devilishly well turned-out man, upon my soul.”
The day following—November 15—was by the Queen appointed as a day of special thanksgiving. Melville again sallied forth sight-seeing. On the morrow he made two attempts to see Murray; the second found him in. “Very polite—but would not be in his line to publish my book.” On November 17, Colbour declined Melville’s offer of £200 for a thousand copies of White-Jacket, “and principally because of the cussed state of the copyright. Bad news enough—I shall not see Rome—I’m floored—appetite unimpaired, however.” On the 19th, he saw Longman, to be told “they bided by the original terms.” On the twentieth, he saw Moxen, the publisher. “Found him in—sitting alone in a back room. He was at first very stiff, cold, clammy and clumsy. Managed to bring him to, tho, by clever speeches. Talked of Charles Lamb—he warmed up and ended by saying he would send me a copy of his works. He said he had often put Lamb to bed—drunk. He spoke of Dana—he published D’s book here.” Moxen sent Melville copies of Lamb’s works: but Moxen did not accept Melville’s invitation to publish White-Jacket.
On November 22—after a jovial evening spent over porter, gin, brandy, whiskey, and cigars—Melville rose late, and with a headache. So he rode out to Windsor, to inspect the state apartments,—which he found “cheerlessly damned fine”—and to view the Royal Stables. “On the way down from the town, met the Queen coming from visiting the sick Queen Dowager. Carriage and four going past with outriders. The Prince with her. My English friend bowed, so did I—salute returned by the Queen but not by the Prince. I would commend to the Queen, Rowland’s Kalydon for clarifying the complexion. She is an amiable domestic woman though, I doubt not, and God bless her, say I, and long live the ‘Prince of Whales’—The stables were splendid.”
On Friday, November 23, at quarter to eleven, Melville “had just returned from Mr. Murray’s where I dined agreeable to invitation. It was a most amusing affair. Mr. Murray was there in a short vest and dress coat, looking quizzical enough; his footman was there also, habited in small clothes and breeches, revealing a despicable pair of sheepshanks. The impudence of the fellow in showing his legs, and such a pair of legs too! in public, I thought extraordinary. The ladies should have blushed, one would have thought, but they did not. Lockhart was there also, in a prodigious white cravat (made from Walter Scott’s shroud, I suppose). He stalked about like a half galvanised ghost,—gave me the tips of two skinny fingers, when introduced to me, or rather, I to him. Then there was a round faced chap by the name of Cook—who seemed to be Murray’s factotum. His duty consisted in pointing out the portraits on the wall and saying that this or that one was esteemed a good likeness of the high and mighty ghost Lockhart. There were four or five others present, nameless, fifth-rate looking varlets and four lean women. One of them proved agreeable in the end. She had visited some time in China. I talked with her some time. Besides these there was a footman or boy in a light jacket with bell-buttons.”
The lines following, Melville has heavily crossed out. They are, in most part, decipherable, however, and they are not excessively complimentary either to his host or the guest of honour. “I managed to get through, though, somehow,” Melville continues after this blotted abuse, “by conversing with Dr. Holland, a very eminent physician, it seems,—and a very affable, intelligent man who has travelled immensely. After the ladies withdrew, the three decanters, port, sherry and claret, were kept going the rounds with great regularity. I sat next to Lockhart and seeing that he was a customer who was full of himself and expected great homage, and knowing him to be a thoroughgoing Tory and fish-blooded Churchman and conservative, and withal editor of the Quarterly—I refrained from playing the snob to him like the rest—and the consequence was he grinned at me his ghastly smiles. After returning to the drawing-room coffee and tea were served. I soon after came away.” After two more blotted lines, Melville concludes: “Oh, Conventionalism, what a ninny thou art, to be sure. And now I must turn in.”
Melville continued to interview publishers, and publishers continued to chasten him with reflections on the state of the copyright laws. Between times he amused himself as best he could; but there was little novelty, brilliancy or excitement in the amusement. He was once entertained very formally at dinner, however: a Baroness Somebody on his left, an anonymous Baron opposite him, and near him at table “a most lovely young girl, a daughter of Captain Chamier, the sea novelist.” And in these brilliant surroundings, he saw a copy of Typee on a table in the drawing room. He ran upon an old friend of Gansevoort’s, too, and as a result was betrayed into sober and sentimental reflections. “No doubt, two years ago, or three, Gansevoort was writing here in London, about the same hour as this—alone in his chamber, in profound silence, as I am now. This silence, is a strange thing. No wonder the Greeks deemed it the vestibule to the higher mysteries.”
He paid for his sentimentality, however, by passing “a most extraordinary night—one continuous nightmare—till daybreak. Hereafter, if I should be condemned to purgatory, I shall plead the night of November 25, 1849, in extenuation of the sentence.”