The appearance of Omoo on January 30, 1847, augmented Melville’s notoriety, and contributed to his fame. Both Typee and Omoo stirred up a whole regiment of critics, at home, in England and in France. France was patronising, of course, after the manner of the period; but France flattered Melville by the prolixity of her patronage. The interest of France in Melville was not a merely literary absorption, however. Melville had arrived at the Marquesas in the wake of Admiral Du Petit-Thouars; and at Tahiti Melville had been a prisoner on board the Reine Blanche. In England, Melville was flattered not only by vitriolic evangelistical damnation, and the uncritical flatter of Gansevoort’s friends, but even Blackwood’s, the most anti-American of British journals, said of Omoo: “Musing the other day over our matutinal hyson, the volume itself was laid before us, and we found ourselves in the society of Marquesan Melville, the Phœnix of modern voyages—springing, it would seem, from the mingled ashes of Captain Cook and Robinson Crusoe.” Writing of Typee, the insular John Bull said: “Since the joyous moment when we first read Robinson Crusoe and believed it, we have not met so bewitching a book as this narrative of Herman Melville’s.” The London Times descended to amiability and said: “That Mr. Melville will favour us with his further adventures in the South Seas, we have no doubt whatever. We shall expect them with impatience, and receive them with pleasure. He is a companion after our own hearts. His voice is pleasant, and we are sure that if we could see his face it would be a pleasant one.” While such pronouncements were no earnest of fame, they may have contributed somewhat to augment Melville’s royalties. And in Mardi—written before Melville’s secular critics began to assail him—Melville took a violent fling at his reviewers. “True critics,” he said, “are more rare than true poets. A great critic is a sultan among satraps; but pretenders are thick as ants striving to scale a palm after its aerial sweetness. Oh! that an eagle should be stabbed by a goose-quill!” Withal, when Melville wrote Mardi he had spent some reflection on the nature of Fame, and mocked at those who console themselves for the neglect of their contemporaries by bethinking themselves of the glorious harvest of bravos their ghosts will reap. And time, he saw, was an undertaker, not a resurrectionist: “He who on all hands passes for a cipher to-day, if at all remembered, will be sure to pass to-morrow for the same. For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living than of being underrated when dead.”

Noticed by reviewers, and encouraged by payments from his publishers, Melville began to look more hopefully at the world. In Clarel he later wrote: “The dagger-icicle draws blood; but give it sun.” He seemed at last to have stepped decoratively and profitably into his assigned niche in the cosmic order. It was delightful to rehearse outlived pleasures and hardships; and it was a lucrative delight: by writing, too, some men had achieved fame. And so, undeterred by the wail of the Preacher of Jerusalem, Melville settled to the multiplication of books. He would perpetuate his reveries—and he doubted not that sparkling wines would crown his cup. Then it was that the beckoning image of an ultimate earthly felicity swam over the beaded brim.

Melville had dedicated Typee to Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts. The Shaws and the Melvilles were friends of years’ standing. When a student at Amherst, Lemuel Shaw had been engaged to Melville’s aunt, Nancy. “To his death,” says Frederic Hathway Chase in his Lemuel Shaw, “Shaw carefully preserved two tender notes written in the delicate hand of his first betrothed, timidly referring to their immature plans for the future and her admiration and love for him. The untimely death of the young lady, unhappily cut short their youthful dreams, and not until he was thirty-seven years of age were Shaw’s affections again engaged. The intimacy between Shaw and the Melville family, however, continued after the young lady’s death.” Yet were the demands of Shaw’s affections not satisfied by his intimacy with the Melvilles or by the two love-letters among his precious belongings. He married twice; the first time in 1818 to Elizabeth Knapp; the second time in 1827 to Hope Savage. By each wife he had two children. By Elizabeth, John Oakes, who died in 1902; and Elizabeth, who married Melville. By Hope, was born to him Lemuel, who lived till 1884, and Samuel Savage, born in 1833 in the Shaw home at 49 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, where he lived till his death in 1915. Melville heartily detested his brothers-in-law.

On March 19, 1846, Melville wrote from Lansingburg to Chief Justice Shaw:

“My Dear Sir:

“Herewith you have one of the first bound copies of Typee I have been able to procure—the dedication is very simple, for the world would hardly have sympathised to the full extent of those feelings with which I regard my father’s friend and the constant friend of all his family.

“I hope that the perusal of this little narrative of mine will afford you some entertainment, even if it should not possess much other merit. Your knowing the author so well, will impart some interest to it.—I intended to have sent at the same time with this copies of Typee for each of my aunts, but have been disappointed in not receiving as many as I expected.—I mention, however, in the accompanying letter to my Aunt Priscilla that they shall soon be forthcoming.

“Remember me most warmly to Mrs. Shaw & Miss Elizabeth, and to all your family, & tell them I shall not soon forget that agreeable visit to Boston.

“With sincere respect, Judge Shaw, I remain gratefully & truly yours,

“Herman Melville.