8 The Pulpit
CHAPTER 8
THE PULPIT.
I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father MappleFather Mapple: Mapple is a composite portrait of Reverend Enoch Mudge (1776-1850), pastor at the New Bedford Seamen's Bethel, and the well-known “Father” Edward Taylor of Boston, who had been a sailor. Melville attended one of Mudge’s sermons before sailing on the Acushnet., so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom—the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February’s snow. No one having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hattarpaulin hat: made of waterproofed canvas. ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot clothpilot cloth: coarse, strong fabric. jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headedheaded: finished at the top., and stained with a mahogany color, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-topmain-top: platform at the top of the lower mainmast. of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebecdrag up the ladder . . . Quebec: Mansfield and Vincent suggest an allusion here to Emerson’s comment in “Shakespeare,” in Representative Men, that “the Genius draws up the ladder after him.” Quebec, Canada’s imposing fortress over-looking the St. Lawrence River, was besieged and taken from the French by the British in 1759..
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold—a lofty EhrenbreitsteinEhrenbreitstein: Melville had visited this fortress on the Rhine, in Koblenz, Germany, in 1849, and refers to it again in Pierre, IV, 2., with a perennial well of water within the walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place, borrowed from the chaplain’s former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphscenotaphs: memorials to the dead whose remains are elsewhere. on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coastlee coast: shore toward which a ship is being blown. of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high above the flying scudflying scud: driving mist or low, broken clouds. and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel’s face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into the Victory’s plank where Nelson fellVictory’s plank where Nelson fell: Viscount Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) died of wounds on the deck of his flagship Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. By the 1830s, the ship was permanently docked in Portsmouth Harbor. On Christmas morning, 1849, an hour before he sailed out of Portsmouth on his return to New York, Melville "Saw the 'Victory,' Nelson's ship, at anchor" (NN Journals 47). In Billy Budd, Sailor, Melville discusses the nature of Nelson's heroism and the controversy over his self-exposure in battle.. “Ah, noble ship,” the angel seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off—serenest azure is at hand.”
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bowsbluff bows: rounded, full front., and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beakbeak: wood carving like the head of a violin, substituting for a ship’s ornamental figurehead..
What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descriedREVISION NARRATIVE: it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried // In the British edition this sentence is revised to “From thence it is that the storm’s quick wrath is that first descried,” more, perhaps, for stylistic than religious reasons. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin., and the bowbow: the front of a vessel, but here, metaphorically, the pulpit, which receives the "brunt" of God's wrath. must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.