Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

Of course, its significance was recognised long ago: it stands among the great classics of nineteenth-century American literature, yielding in importance only to Dana’s junior and admirer, Melville, whose beginnings were inspired by his example. Nevertheless, even though connoisseurs and scholars, literary historians, writers and critics have fully acknowledged Dana’s literary accomplishment, and though for more than 100 years studies have multiplied on his subject, one must forgive ordinary readers who simply love this book as a gripping sea adventure: after all, there are no bad reasons for loving a good book. And, anyhow, the author began to take the full measure of his achievement only fairly late in life — too late, in fact, for at that time he also realised that he had missed his true calling.

Dana was born in 1815 into an old patrician family of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a pure product of the Puritan society of New England, an elite that, armed with Protestant faith, British culture, American democracy and Yankee patriotism, was possessed with an unshakeable belief that it constituted the salt of the earth.

The members of this closed society had a haughty awareness of the privileges they had inherited at birth, but these in turn were matched by a demanding notion of their duties and responsibilities. Always under the eye of a stern God, they were permanently subject to the scrutiny of their individual conscience. This austere high bourgeoisie knew how to marry mysticism with realism and audacity with common sense. Their prosperity and their power, fruits of their courage and industry, were to them signs of God’s favour.

Soon after the start of his law studies at Harvard University, Dana was struck by a mysterious illness, the symptoms of which were migraines and failing eyesight (these were thought to be the sequels to measles; in fact they may well have had a nervous origin). As the doctors could suggest no remedy, he decided to cure himself by adopting a completely different way of life: he enlisted as an ordinary seaman on a ship bound for California — at that time still a remote and half-wild province of Mexico — for a voyage of at least two years around Cape Horn. He was nineteen.

The hard life of a seaman — and he took pride in mastering all its technical aspects as a thorough professional — soon achieved its original purpose: Dana’s health was restored. But, more important, it allowed him to discover not only new skies, but also an entirely new side of the human condition: to enter the sailor’s world, with its language, ways and customs that are utterly foreign to landlubbers. Ashore, he observed a Spanish and Catholic America with its exotic society of Mexicans, Native Americans and kanakas (as the indentured labourers from the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii, were called).

Two years later, on his return to Boston, he resumed his earlier university studies. Simultaneously he wrote in six months a first draft of his seafaring experiences.

The year 1840 marked for him a decisive turning point: after graduation, he opened a law office in Boston, married the daughter of a respected local family and finally found a publisher for Two Years Before the Mast . These three events were to determine the orientation of the rest of his life.

He was successful in his professional activity and in his personal life: his law office kept him intensely busy, his wife gave him six children (five daughters and one son) and rock-solid support until the end of his life. Thus he found himself permanently anchored in the position of respected citizen, pater familias , warden of the Episcopalian Church and patron of the arts and letters.

His father was himself a writer of some distinction; his uncle, Washington Allston, was a famous painter and poet who introduced him to the cultured circles of Boston; his own son was to marry the daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; he patronised the same club as Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He became an influential scholar, specialised in international law and admiralty law. (Incidentally, it was he who formulated the still universally accepted principle that sailing vessels have right of way over those under power.)

Soon, also, he made himself quite famous by his political activity: with courage and eloquence, he joined the movement against slavery, and for a while it appeared as if even the highest office of the land might be within his reach.

Meanwhile, the publication of Two Years Before the Mast earned him at once, if not royalties (a disastrous contract deprived him of the fortune that was exclusively to enrich his publishers*), then at least extraordinary fame; at that time only a new novel by Charles Dickens, then at the high point of his immense popularity, could enjoy similar attention. The success of his book was immediate, universal (loved by the public and praised by the sophisticated critics) and long-lasting: since its first publication 170 years ago, it has never been out of print.

This tremendous (and unexpected) success further strengthened Dana’s social position, but instead of taking advantage of such a triumphant beginning to pursue his literary career, Dana not only became increasingly busy with his activity at the Bar, he launched himself more fully into politics; in this field, however, his ambitions were finally derailed by the vile intrigues of some rivals.

He had in him the makings of a great writer, but he chose instead to become a distinguished lawyer and a failed politician. Like other people of his caste, constant exercise of self-examination enabled him to draw a clear-sighted assessment of his achievements. At fifty-seven, he wrote in a letter to his son: “My life has been a failure compared to what I might and ought to have done. My great success — my book — was a boy’s work, done before I came to the Bar.”

After having exhausted himself all his life in an activity that was intensely absorbing but not really creative, it seems that Dana, in his final years, eventually found a certain form of inner peace: he abandoned his law office to his son and together with his wife went into self-imposed exile from the United States. The old couple first spent two years in Paris, then moved to Rome. Paradoxically, it was in Rome, the Latin and papist Babylon, that our New England Puritan finally felt as if he had reached port. He confessed, “At last I found my life’s dream.” Yet he was not able to enjoy it long: three years later, in 1882, he died of pneumonia. As one of his biographers recalls, “The ghost of his former strength took hold of him at the very end, and during his last days he suffered from hallucinations, struggling to leave his bed as if he wished, once again, to launch himself into some long and hazardous journey.” He was buried in that same Protestant cemetery that had contained the graves of Keats and Shelley.

The personality of Dana was deeply divided. First among all his critics, D.H. Lawrence perceived this inner conflict. This insight was all the more remarkable in that Lawrence had virtually no biographical information on Dana: his brilliant 1924 essay, published in Studies in Classic American Literature , was simply based on a reading of Two Years Before the Mast .

In a way, Dana’s decision to go to sea had been a challenge thrown at his conventional society, at the establishment that had produced and nourished him. Then, on his return, the writing of his book was a continuation and a memorial of this youthful rebellion. Dana’s return to Boston was like the return of the prodigal son and for this reason his literary achievement could have no further development. The transparent simplicity of Two Years Before the Mast is misleading: the power and inner tension of his narrative are largely the products of all that Dana chose to hide. One single incident can provide a good example of this.