Elizabeth Shaw Melville

Elizabeth Shaw Melville, also called Lizzie, appears in the account of Herman Melville’s life at three consequential points: as his wife and the mother of their young son, as the person who kept to an agreed daily routine around his writing, and as the custodian of his papers after his death. Though the record gives little direct access to her thoughts, it shows her in the practical circumstances surrounding his literary life and its afterlife.

Marriage and family

A year after the success of Typee, Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of Lemuel Shaw, a wealthy Boston judge and a friend of Melville’s father. The couple settled at 103 Fourth Avenue in New York. In late 1849, Melville left his young wife and their baby son, Malcolm, to travel to England, hoping to sell White-Jacket and perhaps fund further journeys. The account records the separation as part of his literary and financial undertaking, without describing Elizabeth’s response to his departure.

The household around his writing

At Arrowhead, the rural household followed a regular schedule. Melville rose at eight to feed the cow and horse, then worked until half past two. By arrangement, Lizzie knocked and continued knocking until he answered. The detail makes her presence part of the structure of his working day: his isolation had a timetable, and her repeated knocks marked its appointed end. The account does not say what passed between them when he answered, or how she regarded this daily arrangement.

Papers and legacy

After Melville died in September 1891, Elizabeth tidied his papers and put the manuscript of Billy Budd, Sailor away in a drawer. The gesture preserved a work that had not been published during his lifetime. A tiny clipping bearing the words “Keep true to the dreams of thy youth” was glued inside the desk on which he wrote the manuscript; the account places that remnant beside Elizabeth’s careful handling of his papers, linking the material traces of his writing to the work she kept. Her role in the record is therefore both domestic and archival: she appears within the routines that surrounded his writing and, after his death, as the person who put one of his manuscripts away for its future.