“Miss Savage & Miss Lincoln called to see me a day or two ago.
“Please spell Allan’s name with an A, not E. Allan, not Allen.”
During this period, the household at 103 Fourth Avenue was busy getting Redburn and Mardi ready for the press. Melville’s sister Augusta seems to have been exhaustless in copying manuscript. Melville’s mother-in-law reports “Miss Augusta is all energy, united with much kindness.” Augusta also evinced a strong religious bent, and during song services—which she loved to attend—she used to grip her hymnal athletically, and beat time with an aggressive rhythm. Her Hymn Book survives, pasted up with dozens of clippings of hymns and prayers, a “selection” entitled The Sinner’s Friend, and the vivacious couplet:
“Jesus, mine’s a pressing case.
Oh, more grace, more grace, MORE GRACE!”
ELIZABETH SHAW MELVILLE
But song-services, and copying manuscript, were not enough to fill Augusta’s busy days. In January, 1848, she was commissioned to find a name satisfactory for Melville’s first child. Mrs. Herman Melville was in Boston to be with her mother and family at the time of the childbirth. On January 27, 1849, Augusta wrote from New York to “My dear Lizzie, My sweet Sister,” reporting that she had been “searching the Genealogical Tree” with designs upon an ancestor with a choice name: and she spends two very diverting and animated pages recounting her adventures among the branches. Her search was rewarded to her satisfaction: “Malcolm Melville! how easily it runs from my pen; how sweetly it sounds to my ear; how musically it falls upon my heart. Malcolm Melville! Methinks I see him in his plaided kilts, with his soft blue eyes, & his long flaxen curls. How I long to press him to my heart. There! I can write no more. The last proof sheets are through. Mardi’s a book.” Augusta concludes with a quotation from Mardi: “‘Oh my own Kagtanza, child of my prayers. Oro’s blessing on thee!’”
In her search of the Genealogical Tree, Augusta had contemptuously brushed by all female branches: she had determined that Melville’s first child should be a son—and a son with blue eyes and blond hair—and in her choice of a name for the unborn infant, she contemptuously ignored the possibility of the child turning out to be a girl. On February 16, 1849, was born in Boston, to Melville and his wife, their first child. There was potency in Augusta’s prayers. It was a boy.
On April 14, 1849, Mardi appeared, published, as was Omoo, by Harper and Brothers in America, by Richard Bentley in London. Redburn appeared on August 18 of the same year. By February 22, 1850 (the date of Melville’s fifth royalty account from Harper and Brothers), 2,154 copies of Mardi, and 4,011 copies of Redburn had been sold. On February 1, 1848, Melville had overdrawn his account with Harper’s to the extent of $256.03. On December 5, 1848, Harper’s advanced Melville $500; on April 28, 1848, $300; on July 2, 1849, $300; on September 14, 1849, $500. Though Mardi and Redburn had had a fairly generous sale, the deduction of his royalties on February 22, 1850, left him in debt to Harper’s $733.69. The outlook was not bright for the responsibilities of fatherhood.