Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not.But my life for it he was either practically conversant with his subject,or else marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman.The French are the lads for painting action.Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe,and where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs?Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery,are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.
The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England’s experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.
In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery,there are two other French engravings worthy of note,by some one who subscribes himself “H. Durand.” One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present purpose,nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts.It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific;a French whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm,and lazily taking water on board;the loosened sails of the ship,and the long leaves of the palms in the background,both drooping together in the breezeless air.The effect is very fine,when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.
CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood;in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks,you may have seen a crippled beggar (or _kedger_,as the sailors say) holding a painted board before him,representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg.There are three whales and three boats;and one of the boats (presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification has now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.
Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket,and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor,you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes,graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth,or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone,and other like skrimshander articles,as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner’s fancy.
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, _i.e._ what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.
Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic hours,is his wonderful patience of industry.An ancient Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle,in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving,is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark’s tooth,that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved;and it has cost steady years of steady application.
As with the Hawaiian savage,so with the white sailor-savage.With the same marvellous patience,and with the same single shark’s tooth,of his one poor jack-knife,he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture,not quite as workmanlike,but as close packed in its maziness of design,as the Greek savage, Achilles’s shield;and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness,as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.
At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled with “_Hands off!_” you cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.
In bony, ribby regions of the earth,where at the base of high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges.