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Table of Contents
Chapter 55
OF THE
MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES
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 ..
2 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 the 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 ..
3 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. ,
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, , 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 ,
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 , Bernard Germain, Count de
Lacepede, ..
4 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 , 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 ..
5 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 ..
6 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. ..
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