Chapter 7

by Herman Melville

　　In view of the part that the Commander of the Indomitable plays inscenes shortly to follow, it may be well to fill out that sketch of hisoutlined in the previous chapter.Aside from his qualities as a sea-officer, Captain Vere was anexceptional character. Unlike no few of England's renowned sailors, longand arduous service with signal devotion to it, had not resulted inabsorbing and salting the entire man. He had a marked leaning towardeverything intellectual. He loved books, never going to sea without anewly replenished library, compact but of the best. The isolatedleisure, in some cases so wearisome, falling at intervals to commanderseven during a war-cruise, never was tedious to Captain Vere. Withnothing of that literary taste which less heeds the thing conveyed thanthe vehicle, his bias was toward those books to which every serious mindof superior order occupying any active post of authority in the worldnaturally inclines; books treating of actual men and events no matter ofwhat era -- history, biography and unconventional writers, who, freefrom cant and convention, like Montaigne, honestly and in the spirit ofcommon sense philosophize upon realities.In this line of reading he found confirmation of his own morereasoned thoughts -- confirmation which he had vainly sought in socialconverse, so that as touching most fundamental topics, there had got tobe established in him some positive convictions, which he forefelt wouldabide in him essentially unmodified so long as his intelligent partremained unimpaired. In view of the troubled period in which his lot wascast this was well for him. His settled convictions were as a dykeagainst those invading waters of novel opinion, social, political andotherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in thosedays, minds by nature not inferior to his own. While other members ofthat aristocracy to which by birth he belonged were incensed at theinnovators mainly because their theories were inimical to the privilegedclasses, not alone Captain Vere disinterestedly opposed them becausethey seemed to him incapable of embodiment in lasting institutions, butat war with the peace of the world and the true welfare of mankind.With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers ofhis rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found himlacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, asthey deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from their company one would beapt to say to another, something like this: "Vere is a noble fellow,Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio" (meaning him with the Lordtitle) "is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between youand me now, don't you think there is a queer streak of the pedanticrunning thro' him? Yes, like the King's yarn in a coil of navy-rope?"Some apparent ground there was for this sort of confidentialcriticism; since not only did the Captain's discourse never fall intothe jocosely familiar, but in illustrating of any point touching thestirring personages and events of the time he would be as apt to citesome historic character or incident of antiquity as that he would citefrom the moderns. He seemed unmindful of the circumstance that to hisbluff company such remote allusions, however pertinent they might reallybe, were altogether alien to men whose reading was mainly confined tothe journals. But considerateness in such matters is not easy to naturesconstituted like Captain Vere's. Their honesty prescribes to themdirectness, sometimes far-reaching like that of a migratory fowl that inits flight never heeds when it crosses a frontier.