Chapter LV: 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 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 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, 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 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.