Chapter 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 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 Lacépède, 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.