Chapter 57.00: CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.

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CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
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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.