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_ I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to
the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is
moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon
there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to
those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is
time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures
of the whale all wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions
will be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian
sculptures. For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times
when on the marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues,
and on shields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in
scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St.
George's; ever since then has something of the same sort of license
prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in
many scientific presentations of him.
Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting
to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of
Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost
endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and
pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages
before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in
some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there
shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate
department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the
form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though
this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the
tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It
looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms
of the true whale's majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian
painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the
antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the
model of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in
painting the same scene in his own "Perseus Descending," make out one
whit better. The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster
undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has
a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into
which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate
leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as
depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers.
What shall be said of these? As for the book-binder's whale winding
like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--as stamped
and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both old and
new--that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature,
imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases. Though
universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this
book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old
Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the
Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a
comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a
species of the Leviathan.
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you
will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all
manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and
Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the
title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning"
you will find some curious whales.
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at
those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific
delineations, by those who know. In old Harris's collection of
voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book
of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in
the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master."
In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are
represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over
their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made
of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain
Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round
Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the
Spermaceti Whale Fisheries." In this book is an outline purporting
to be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale
from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on
deck." I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for
the benefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let
me say that it has an eye which applied, according to the
accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye
of that whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant
captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for
the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness
of mistake. Look at that popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature."
In the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an
alleged "whale" and a "narwhale." I do not wish to seem inelegant,
but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as
for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in
this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine
upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All
these are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or
Greenland whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a
long experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have
its counterpart in nature.
But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which
he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing
that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your
summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm
Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had
the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he
derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his
scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his
authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort
of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and
saucers inform us.
As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage;
breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full
of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue
paint.
But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings
have been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as
correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would
correctly represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride
of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood for their
full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated
himself for his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and
significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and
afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched
line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally
impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to
preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of
the highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking
whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of
one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is
then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that
his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at
all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,
that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape.
Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the
library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a
burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other
leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be
inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the
great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same
relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does
to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity
is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will
be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in the
side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the
human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular
bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all
these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human
fingers in an artificial covering. "However recklessly the whale may
sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day, "he can never be
truly said to handle us without mittens."
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the
world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait
may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with
any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly
way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And
the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his
living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you
run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him.
Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your
curiosity touching this Leviathan. _
Read next: CHAPTER 56 Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes.
Read previous: CHAPTER 54 The Town-Ho's Story.
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