April 6th, 1951
Dear Andy,
I realize to get a letter from me, here and now, when I could just as easily pull you aside or visit your room, is bordering on lunatic, depending on my nerve of course and if I’ll put a stamp on the upper right corner & let this piece of paper travel miles in order to gain a distance of a few feet. But speaking is not my strong suit—as you well know—& some thoughts are best put down using one’s finest pen—as you well know again. So what are these thoughts? you might be asking now. In all honestly, I’m not sure. I’m just going to let the nib and ink guide me like a tattooist working on dear Queequeg-Savage sentiments, perhaps. I’m sure now you’re curious so …
For the last month I have had terrible dreams, really just one dream in particular with a dozen different tails. In this dream you die. How you die changes but the manner of death is usually gruesome, I regret to inform you. Falling through ice. Shot up on a battlefield. Throat slit by a madman. Sometimes I find you collapsed & bleeding & I have no idea the cause, only its grisly effect. I seem to be having these dreams every night & even on the few occasions when I nap I awake damp with the horror of my oldest dearest friend dead. For you are my oldest & dearest friend, Andy. I cannot imagine my life without you. You are an essential gear within my clockwork jewels and without you I am stopped. That is the sense I get in these dreams. An absolute stoppage. I try to comfort you as you pass from this earth to that great beyond that you have forever reminded me is my earlier due. I squeeze your hand. I brush the hair from your face—in these dreams your appearance seems inspired by the Romantics. You are Wordsworth to my Coleridge, Keats to my Shelley. And my lap is your final resting place. Forgive the language. It is late at night and I seem inspired by these poets as well. But it always seems so real, this dream; I can tap into it even during the most mundane moments of my waking day & turn standing in line for lunch or pretending to play right field into a threnody. Already I am laughable enough at this school without people seeing me wipe my eyes as a brace of drake mallards fly by. Ridiculous. The thing is, I haven’t had a proper sleep for the last few weeks & I’m exhausted & featherbrained, certainly weary, possibly deranged, absolutely hopeless, constantly lonely & fearful that I’m a drag on you. I can sense that when you catch me staring. But you are the window with a view onto the ocean and I am the cripple, chin perched on the sill. I remember all the times you stood up for me & spoke for me & brought me along when Darwin would have left me behind, and I am certain much of that came not from clear affection or easy affinity but from the long haul of our time together, a rapport manufactured by parents & school & proximity. Yet buried in there was an understanding, I think. You, brave knight, defended me. It was part of your code. But now, after seventeen years together, I must seem so weak. And you must be so sick and tired.
Which brings us to sleeping, which brings us to dreaming, which brings us to the point of this letter. I remember when your father passed away and my parents told me I had to say something to you, give you my sympathies, and I had no nerve, & no voice, to properly entertain this notion. Yet I tried. I probably picked the wrong place & the wrong time, and you stopped me & told me my father would die some day so there was no point in bothering with the sorrys. We were all in the same boat. Fathers die. Mothers too. I think I cried because I didn’t understand the point. And you were angry—of course you were angry. But we do die, some sooner than others, and we should try our best to say the things that might mean something before that day does arrive. After much thought, I understand that you’re not the one who’s dying in my dreams. I am. I sense it every night as I try to fall asleep, the descent steeper and longer, the landing harder. I am at Wit’s End. But what I need to tell you before I hit wherever I might land is that I have a tremendous affection for you, my friend. I always have. You mean everything to me. I can scarcely define my life without regarding you as the measure. I still remember holding hands when we were toddlers on the march & feeling the thrill as our arms swung. Even then I never wanted to let you go. And as close as we are, or were, or have been, or never will be again, I still yearned—yearn to be closer. Those nights we occupied the same dimension of sleep, whether camping or an overnight, I wanted to reach over and touch you just to confirm there was flesh to my feelings. I wanted to show you the secrets of my devotion; its tremendous volume. I wanted my chest to be a door. I wanted you to see, if just for a moment, what you mean to me within this small room. That’s what this letter is, I suppose, a coffin, in keeping with sweet strange Queequeg. Not that this paper will keep you afloat.
I wish I could say all of this was hastily put down in some fever dream, but I am knee-deep in nineteen drafts. Every word is the best that I can manage, even the ampersands. Particularly the ampersands. You & Me. I do hope the effort will help me get some sleep. Maybe it will do its job without ever having to pass through the mailman’s hands. Regardless I do hope you take these words as what they are—a tribute, a whisper of my endearment. That said, after reading, please send this letter to the fire so that regardless of its content at least for a moment it might provide you with a bit of warmth.
Melville to your Hawthorne,
Charlie