in the Canary Islands

"Last Scene of All": T h e A u t h o r o f M i r i a m C o f f i n in the Canary Islands

By A. Stuart Pitt

THE ULTIMATE NANTUCKET novel is Miriam Coffin by Joseph Coleman Hart, first published in 1834. Melville's Moby-Dick, not inconceivably the Great American Novel, towers over it, of course, but despite its wry little chapter XIV "Nantucket" and its Nantucket characters, the great book is only launched from the island. But Miriam Coffin is about Nantucket: its people, its history, its houses, its settlements, its beaches, its customs, its lore.

Hart's opening chapter establishes this focus and concentration: "...that little and peculiar world... is the abode of much wealth and intelligence; and...we have constituted it the principal scene of our story."

Perhaps there is no other place in the wide world of similar size and population, possessing so few intrinsic attractions, which has produced, under so many disadvantages, such an industrious and enterprising people as Nantucket. Though it is said to be literally sterile in the spontaneous gifts of nature, yet it is rife in the physical and intellectual vigour of manhood. For more than a century the islanders have exhibited the curious and unique spectacle of a thrifty community, bound together by a common interest as well as by a relative tie of consanguinity; — primitive though not altogether puritanic in their manners,... — reaping harvests where they„have not sown, and fishing up competency for their families from the unappropriated natural wealth in the depths of the sea.

Calling them, admiringly, "an amphibious race. . .half quaker-half sailor" he describes them further as "a bold and hardy race of men;—in danger, cool, collected and adventurous;—seldom or never indulging in the vices or evil propensities of the common sailor, but possessing all his generous and manly qualities, tempered with correct notions of economy and of the true obligations of society," while their women are "modest, virtuous, and agreeable, and thrive with a commendable industry at home."

Miriam Coffin, or the Whale Fishermen: A Tale — in another of his books, The Romance of Yachting (1848), the author designates it a "semiromance of the sea" — deserves a revival. It is a successful amalgam of local-color sketch, whaling yarn, and moral fable, quaint, exciting, and homiletic by turns, as well as a precursor and narrative archetype of Moby Dick, as I have detailed elsewhere. 1 The biography of its author is at the moment anything but definitive, but what is known is engaging (as well as tantalizing), and has in it a good many of the ironies and virtues of the Nantucket culture he was so fond of: "We love to linger upon this island."

The varied and intensely active career of Joseph Coleman Hart (1798 1855) suggests some intriguing coincidences with the strengths and energies of the Nantucket natives he so warmly praised. The son of Mary Coleman, daughter of John Coleman of Nantucket, he lived most of his life in New York. Besides being a writer, he was a school principal, a compiler of widely used school atlases, geographies, and geographical exercises, a lawyer, and ultimately (and briefly) American Consul at Santa Cruz on Teneriffe (also spelled Tenerife) in the Canary Islands. On the title page of the 1872 San Francisco reprint of Miriam Coffin he is identified as "Colonel".

About the time he became principal of the Mechanics' Society School in his mid twenties, he began to put together a highly successful series of school atlases and geographies that were still being "Revised, enlarged, and improved" and used after his death thirty years later. His first production, Introduction to Geography, appeared in 1826. An abridgement of his Geographical Exercises reached its fourteenth edition in two years, and subsequent versions came out as late as 1857. The ninth edition of A Modern Atlas of Fourteen Maps was published in 1833. This lifelong interest in geography and its implications seems reflected in the panoramic scope of his vision in Miriam Coffin, in which the Nantucket men are "fishermen upon a grand scale, and pursue and conquer the monarch of the seas in distant and remote waters" and "lamp-supplyers to more than half of the civilized nations of the globe." It may also account for his later obsession with becoming a consul somewhere, or anywhere.

1. " 'A Semi-Romance of the Sea': Miriam Coffin as Precursor of MobyDick, Historic Nantucket, 19 (April 1972), 15-30.

THE LAST SCENE 1 1

But it was the final chapter of his life that came closest to being an episode in romantic fiction, the Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history,... in the tag from Jaques' speech in As You Like It (II. vii. 163-4) that 9ervod as epigraph for the last chapter of Miriam Coffin.

After having for more than a year importuned Secretary of State William L. Marcy and President Franklin Pierce for a patronage job, particularly a post as consul, because he was "without adequate employment while surrounded by a large family," Hart was finally appointed consul at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe in the Canary Islands on 2 August 1854, following unsuccessful requests for the consulships at Trieste, Malaga, Matanzas, Tunis, Bermuda, and Marseilles — unsuccessful despite the fact that he was "an intelligent and orthodox Democrat" and had been recommended to President Pierce by Boss Tweed. Preparations, routine difficulties, and the problem of finding a ship that was going to or somewhere near the Canaries delayed his departure until February of 1855, but at last he was able to inform Marcy in "Despatch No. 3" that he had arrived in Santa Cruz on the 21st of April though only after "a stormy and most unpleasant passage of 63 days from New York, in the brig 'J. Guttenberg' during which we were driven to the Cape Verdes, where we put in for water, and were again driven as far North as the Azores or Western Isles..."

He seems to have settled down to his duties earnestly and conscientiously, though a bit anxious, in Dispatch No. 4 of 30 June 1855, about the fact that the new law "remodeling the Diplomatic and Consular systems,"which had just come into his hands, made no mention of a consulate at Teneriffe, and therefore he could well be a man without* a country to authorize him. Nevertheless, he set about submitting his dispatches, inventories, account sheets, and recommendations very promptly and efficiently, a pleasant change for the State Department from the habits of one of Hart's predecessors at Santa Cruz, who had never bothered to report to his post at all and whose whereabouts was unknown. He joined with the local citizens in expressing outrage that the territorial waters of Teneriffe had been violated by a posse of "Nine New York Policemen" aboard the brig Grapeshot, which had been chartered by the mayor or the police of New York City in their extraordinarily zealous efforts to apprehend the notorious Baker, alleged murderer of Poole. Hart also concerned himself with seeking out good locations for coaling stations and recommending the profitable trade in cochineal and barilla.

But within a month he was dead, in circumstances that would make a

chapter in any romance, and involving a coincidence that even he might have hesitated to invent:

U.S. Flag Ship Jamestown Off Santa Cruz, (Teneriffe,) July 26th 1855

Sir,

It has become my duty to inform you of the sudden death of Mr. Joseph C. Hart, American Consul at this port. On my arrival here on the 23rd inst. I received a note from him, stating that he was too unwell to visit the ship. I immediately sent a Surgeon and other officers to his relief; but their efforts proved unavailing;—they found him in a state of stupor which continued until his death on the morning of the 24th—His remains were interred in the English cemetery, with all the honors due his position.

I have requested Mr. Charles Le Brun, formerly American Consul, to take charge of the Consular effects, and attend to the unfinished business at hand. It was my desire to have him act as commercial agent until the wishes of the State Department were known, but he declined.

Mr. Hart's private effects have been taken in charge by his nephew Jn. E. Hart, Acting Master of this.ship. I am, very respectfully, Your Obdt. Servt. Thomas Crabbe, Commander in chief of the U.S. Naval Forces Coast of Africa

Hon. Wm. L. Marcy Secretary of State.

With these appropriate ironies Hart's final months mimicked the stuff of romance he himself had written. 2

2. The letters and other documents cited, reproduced, and quoted from are available on microfilm at the National Archives: Microcopy 967, "Letters of Application and Recommendation During the Administrations of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan 1853 - 1861," Roll 21, and Microcopy T-690, "Tenerife, 1795-1906, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in," Roll 3, "July 15, 1853-Dec. 31, 1863."