In 1779, Major Melville was elected fire ward of Boston, and when he resigned in 1825, he was offered a vote of thanks “for the zeal, intrepidity and judgment with which he has on all occasions discharged his duties as fire ward for forty-six years in succession, and for twenty-six as chairman of the board.” In those days, volunteer fire companies were fashionable sporting clubs, and such was the distinction attached to membership that a premium was often paid for the privilege of belonging to such an exclusive and diverting fraternity. Melville’s father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of Massachusetts, was Fire Warden between 1818 and 1821. Melville’s grandfather and future father-in-law may have met at many a fire and, for all we know to the contrary, the intimacy between the Shaws and the Melvilles that culminated in Herman’s marriage, may have been first kindled by a burning house.
The tradition survives of Major Melville that the excitement of running to fire grew upon him like gambling upon more sedentary mortals, and that his death was caused by over-fatigue and exposure at a fire near his house he attended at the age of eighty-one.
Of Melville’s two grandmothers, Catharine Van Schaick and Priscilla Scollay, there is no mention in any of his writings. It is a peculiarity of Melville’s writings indeed, completely to disregard all of his female relatives,—with the notable exceptions of his mother, his mother-in-law, and his wife.
Major Thomas Melville, by his marriage with Priscilla Scollay, is said to have aggravated an already ample fortune, though the terms of his resignation from the Revolutionary army argue a dwindling of income during unsettled times. The Scollays, one of the oldest of Boston families, were related to Melville not only by direct blood descent, but Melville’s great-great-uncle, John Melville (who died in London in 1798) married Deborah Scollay, Melville’s great-aunt. Deborah Scollay, Priscilla’s sister, was the first of thirteen children; Priscilla the tenth. The Scollays, in brave competition with the Melvilles and the Gansevoorts, seem to have devoutly accepted the Mosaic edict to increase and multiply: they were, as Carlyle says of Dr. Thomas Arnold, of “unhastening, unresting diligence.” Major Thomas Melville had eleven children by his wife Priscilla, Melville’s father Allan being the fourth child and second son. Of the influence of Allan’s numerous brothers and sisters upon Melville there are scant records to show. His aunt Priscilla, however, mentioned him in her will.
Allan’s oldest sister, Mary (1778-1859) married Captain John DeWolf II. of Bristol, Rhode Island. In Moby-Dick, in offering instances of ships being charged upon by whales, Melville quotes from the Voyages of Captain Langsdorff, a member of Admiral Krusenstern’s famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the last century. In the passage quoted by Melville is mentioned a Captain D’Wolf. “Now, the Captain D’Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in question,” says Melville, “is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual adventures as a sea captain, this day resides in the village of Dorchester, near Boston. I have the honour of being a nephew of his. I have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates every word.” In Redburn, Melville speaks of “an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain, with white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in Russia, and who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when Captain Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St. Petersburg, drawn by large dogs in a sled.... He was the very first sea captain I had ever seen, and his white hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an impression upon me that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw him during this one visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the White Sea some years after.” Just what, if anything besides two contradictory statements—Melville owed to this uncle it would be worthless to surmise.
Another of Melville’s uncles, however, Thomas—Allan’s older brother—played an important rôle in Melville’s development. After an eventful residence of twenty-one years in France, Thomas returned to America with his wife Françoise Raymonde Eulogie Marie des Douleurs Lamé Fleury, shortly before the War of 1812. Enlisted in the army, he was sent to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with the rank of Major. After the war he continued in Pittsfield, and with his family set up at what is now Broadhall.
Broadhall, built by Henry Van Schaek in 1781, bought by Elkanah Watson in 1807, was, in 1816, acquired by Major Thomas Melville of the cocked hat. His son, Major Thomas Melville of the French wife, lived in Broadhall until 1837, when he moved to Galena, Illinois, where he died on August 1—Melville’s birthday—1845. By a parallel irony of fate, just as the Stanwix House of the Gansevoorts is now a hotel, Broadhall of the Melvilles is now a country club.
It was a strange transplanting, that of Major Thomas Melville and his wife, Marie des Douleurs, from Paris to the rustic crudities of the farming outskirts of civilisation. Marie des Douleurs rapidly pined and wilted in the harsh brusque air. A bundle of her letters survive, written in a delicate drooping hand: letters that might have been written by a wasted and homesick nun. In 1814, within the space of a single month, Mrs. Thomas Melville and two of her children died of consumption. Thomas, of more vigorous stock, survived to marry again—this time to Mary Anna Augusta Hobard, and to take actively to farming. He achieved a local reputation for his successful devotion to the soil; presiding at meetings of the Berkshire Agricultural Association, and winning a first prize at a ploughing match at the Berkshire Fair. As a boy, Melville was sent to alternate his visits to the Gansevoorts by trips to his uncle at Pittsfield. The single record of his life at Broadhall is preserved in The History of Pittsfield (1876) “compiled and written, under the general direction of a committee, by J. E. A. Smith.” Melville says:
“In 1836 circumstances made me the greater portion of a year an inmate of my uncle’s family, and an active assistant upon the farm. He was then grey haired, but not wrinkled; of a pleasing complexion, but little, if any, bowed in figure; and preserving evident traces of the prepossessing good looks of his youth. His manners were mild and kindly, with a faded brocade of old French breeding, which—contrasted with his surroundings at the time—impressed me as not a little interesting, not wholly without a touch of pathos.
“He never used the scythe, but I frequently raked with him in the hay field. At the end of the swath he would at times pause in the sun and, taking out his smooth worn box of satinwood, gracefully help himself to a pinch of snuff, while leaning on his rake; quite naturally: and yet with a look, which—as I recall it—presents him in the shadowy aspect of a courtier of Louis XVI, reduced as a refugee to humble employment in a region far from gilded Versailles.