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 whaleship 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 Elephants, 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 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 titlepages 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 suckling 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 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 much 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.