Free Genoa by Paul Metcalf Page B

wife to Domenico, gave birth to a son, Christopher . . .
               “His parents were notable persons, one time rich . . .; at other times they must have been poor . . .”
               Allan Melvill, Herman’s father, in a letter: “I have now to request in the most urgent manner, as equally involving my personal honor & the welfare of my Family, that you would favor me by return of mail with your Note to my Order at six months from 31st March, for Five Thousand Dollars . . .”
    At the age of fourteen, Columbus went to sea . . .
               Melville: “Sad disappointments in several plans which I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.”
    and
               “. . . thought me an erring and a wilful boy, and perhaps I was; but if I was, it had been a hard-hearted world and hard times that had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time . . .”
    Domenico, Christopher’s father, was a well-liked man, easily obtaining property on credit . . .
               Allan Melvill: “I rec d this morning with unutterable satisfaction your most opportune & highly esteemed favour . . . with the annexed two notes drawn by yourself . . . one for $2500—the other for $2750—payable at the Bank of America . . .”
    But—a weaver by trade—he neglected his loom, took on sidelines: cheese, wine, a tavern . . . so that Christopher, returning from a sea voyage, age nineteen, found himself responsible for his father’s debts, and, with his mariner’s wages, secured the father’s freedom from a Genoese j ail.
               Allan Melvill: “. . . my situation has become almost intolerable for the want of $500 to discharge some urgent debts, and provide necessaries for my Family . . . I may soon be prosecuted for my last quarters Rent, & other demands which were unavoidably left unpaid . . .”
    Christopher remained, throughout his life, mysterious regarding his origins, speaking of himself never as Genoese, but only as foreigner . . .
               Ahab, gazing at the corpusants: “Oh, thou magnanimous! Now I do glory in my genealogy! . . . thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire.”
    Columbus and Melville—the paternity blasted . . .
                                             (perhaps Domenico and Allan should have practiced a custom of the Iberians and Caribs,
                                             (The Couvade,
                                             (the father taking to his bed for several days or weeks at the birth of a child, so as not to endanger the delicate affinity with the newborn . . .
    Columbus:
               “Most exalted Sovereigns: At a very early age I entered upon the sea navigating, and I have continued doing so until today. The calling in itself inclines whoever follows it to desire to know the secrets of this world. Forty years are already passing which I have employed in this manner: I have traversed every region which up to the present time is navigated.”
               “During this time I have seen, and in seeing, have studied all writings, cosmography, histories, chronicles, and philosophy and those relating to other arts, by means of which our Lord made me understand with a palpable hand, that it was practicable to navigate from here to the Indies and inspired me with a will for the execution of this navigation. And with this fire, I came to your Highnesses.”
               Melville, as Pierre: “A varied scope of reading, little suspected by his friends, and randomly acquired by a random but lynx-eyed mind . . .;