GLR July-August 2022

To the extent that the larger world was set up to sustain con flict between men, this easy ritual of mutual admiration could only confirm the general suspicion that sailors were inherently depraved. Established churches refused them entry, and every one knew why. Biographer Laurie Robertson-Lorant reminds us that, al though Melville was born in Pearl Street in comfortable cir cumstances at the foot of Manhattan, he lived minutes away from the Five Points, a slum where respectable women could have witnessed workmen swimming naked in the river. Even tually, indoor baths were built to spare casual strollers from such “unexpected” rude sights, but because workers had to pay a fee to be decent indoors, nighttime bathing must have continued outside. Young Melville’s first glimpses of such men were prob ably nearby on the same “fiddler’s green,” where a strip of shore was restricted to sailors. It became a simple matter for him to transfer these Edenic Adams to the high seas. Throughout his work, Melville testifies to the beauty of men. He was himself strikingly good-looking, and he idolized his mentor Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the handsomest men of his day. Billy Budd even contains a scene in which sailors of all the world’s races and colors pay homage to a “Handsome Sailor,” the nautical paragon of strength and beauty. In this case, he is a spectacular, free black man seen abroad in Liverpool, but the author goes on to extend the honor to include the equally savage and supposedly inarticulate blue-eyed, blond Billy Budd, who takes his place, according to Melville’s description of him, among the Anglo-Saxons, seen as an unconquered, barbarian

race. As such, and as an illiterate orphan, Billy instinctively lashes out violently when the ship’s police officer Claggart slan ders him. Yet, in this world at sea, the Handsome Sailor must die at the hands of white, imperialist brutal authority—hanged by the Royal Navy that has kidnapped Billy from a happy, natural life as a merchant marine aboard The Rights of Man . At the ex ecution, Billy’s suspended corpse remains perfectly still, with out displaying any of the involuntary spasms that are typical of a hanging—a demonstration of willpower that the sailors know raises him above the control of his accusers As his last work, Billy Budd could be seen to stand for Melville’s last will and testament, except that the novel is un finished, as Melville claimed that real life doesn’t fit neatly into an acceptable plotline. It may be that he could only dive so far into the depths of his desires and no further, his secret being that he could not entertain other possibilities for his own manhood. Class and race also constricted him, and he was aware of his place in American history as a white man, especially because of his RevolutionaryWar ancestry. In his own experience at sea with people of all races, he had learned that he would always be the white man with an “acceptable” ancestry. But because of his trav els as a white man abroad among others races held captive by white imperialism, he had learned that he could ask: “Who ain’t a slave?” So, Melville accepted that what he had learned else where could not sustain both his leveling experience abroad and his racist life at home. He had learned that a man cannot escape his initial instructions in society, which bind him forever. Nevertheless, because Melville had lived another life but accepted the idea of a traditional home, he felt conflicted and neglected his home life and duties. He was a difficult husband and a failed father, one of whose sons committed suicide. That’s why, in Billy Budd , he gives the last words to the failed father figure Captain Vere and to the men who were Billy’s compan ions. He has Vere repeat Billy Budd’s name in a regretful deathbed rant, and the seamen commemorate the Handsome Sailor’s remarkable resistance to imperialist white authority in a ballad. The authorities also commemorate Billy’s exceptional demonstration of autonomy by contributing a misleading ac count of the sacrificed man. Consequently, Billy’s story cannot be contained by one point of view. In his own life, Melville failed to establish the “intimate affinities” that today would be assumed to define a gay life. For example, in a passionate letter of gratitude to Nathaniel Hawthorne for his kind words about Moby-Dick , Melville wrote: “The divine magnet is on you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question: they are One .” Hawthorne did not respond to this barely disguised fantasy. He probably chalked it up to a friendly, infatuated fan’s desperate recourse to the sen timentality that was permitted between men at that time. What was needed, but apparently impossible in those times, was a sim ple, direct statement of love to a close friend, but Melville’s ex perience of sexuality at sea confused him. R EFERENCES Aldrich, Robert. Gay Lives . Thames and Hudson, 2012. Benemann, William. Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships . Harrington Park Press, 2006. Redfern, W. D. “Between the Lines of Billy Budd .” Journal of American Stud ies , v. 17, no. 2. December 1983. Robertson-Lorant, Laurie. Melville. A Biography . Clarkson Potter, 1996.

The G & LR

24