Did you hear of the _______?

Did you hear of the _______? by Scott Norsworthy

A shared 5-gram in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" and Herman Melville's "The Lightning-Rod Man"

Read on Substack

 

"A sort of philosophical Christian swindler"

Melville's Confidence-Man favorably reviewed in the Hartford Evening Express, edited by Joseph R. Hawley.

Found on genealogybank.com and transcribed herein, a previously uncollected review of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade in the Hartford Evening Express for April 14, 1857. Published in Hartford, Connecticut the Evening Express was a Republican daily newspaper then edited by Joseph Roswell Hawley in partnership with William Faxon. After the Civil War, General Hawley's Evening Express merged with the Hartford Courant which the distinguished war hero, governor, and future United States Representative and Senator from Connecticut also owned and edited. 

This item is not reprinted or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). 

Instead of giving titles of Melville's previous works in the header, Hawley's Evening Express printed "&c." (for etc. or et cetera) three times, presuming that "everybody knows" Melville and his books. 

Hartford Evening Express - April 14, 1857

THE CONFIDENCE MAN: HIS MASQUERADE. By Herman Melville—Author of &c., &c., &c.— (we need not say what—everybody knows him.). Published by Dix, Edwards & Co.

A series of "rough and tumble" dashes at western life and American peculiarities generally, thrown off in the style of a man who would lead you to believe he isn't half trying: as an artist might take charcoal in his toes and show you how good a portrait he can sketch with his hands tied behind him and his eyes shut. Nevertheless Mr. Mellville is a good deal in earnest and makes a fascinating book—of course. The scene of operations is on a Mississippi steamboat, and the Confidence Man appears to be a sort of philosophical Christian swindler, making all kinds of experiments upon poor human nature with as little mercy as an entomologist pins beetles. 

For sale by F. A. Brown. 

*** 

Early notice of Melville's CONFIDENCE-MAN in the Cincinnati ENQUIRER, edited by Alexander Walker

A Mississippi River Landing
via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

This favorable notice of The Confidence Man: His Masquerade in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer for April 10, 1857 is not reprinted or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). Contemporary Reviews on page 506 does give the negative evaluation that appeared the next year in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer (February 3, 1858) trashing Melville's Confidence-Man as "one of the dullest and most dismally monotonous books we remember to have read." Although the editors of Contemporary Reviews do not indicate where they got it, the dismissive treatment of the Confidence-Man as the worst of Melville's increasingly bad books after Typee and Omoo, forms a kind of editorial preface to a longer review of Melville's 1858 lecture on Statues in Rome.

The earlier, more positive notice in the Cincinnati Enquirer commends the Confidence-Man as a "graphic" display of the social "amusement and fun" to be had when travelling by steamboat "on the Western Rivers." Found on newspapers.com and transcribed below.

Cincinnati Daily Enquirer - April 10, 1857

Book Notice.

THE CONFIDENCE MAN. By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," "Typee," &c. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. For sale by L. Danforth. Cincinnati: Rickey, Mallory & Webb.

Mr. Melville is known by the sketches of travel and adventure among the islands of the Pacific, to which he owes his earliest fame. In the work before us he has selected a home scene. The volume opens at St. Louis, and describes the incidents of a voyage down the Mississippi River. The author exhibits, with graphic accuracy, the peculiarities of some of those eccentric originals so often encountered on that frequent route of travel, with whom confinement on board the same steamer for days makes more or less of social intercourse a necessity, if it were not commonly, as in fact it is, a source of very great amusement and fun. The truth of this will be readily assented to by those who are familiar with steamboat travel on the Western Rivers, and none can finish the perusal of this volume without craving a practical relish of the entertainment it affords. 

10 Apr 1857, Fri The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) Newspapers.com

Very likely the change from mild praise to outright disdain for Melville's Confidence-Man in the pages of the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer from April 1857 to February 1858 reflects the change of editors during the same period of time. 

When the first notice of the Confidence-Man appeared on April 10, 1857, Virginia born lawyer and journalist Alexander Walker (1819-1893) aka "Judge" Walker had been editing the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer for two years. Walker was already the author of Jackson and New Orleans (New York: J. C. Derby, 1856). During the Civil War, the New York Times ("Affairs in New Orleans," September 11, 1862) would grudgingly acknowledge the ardent secessionist and influential editor of the New Orleans Delta as "one of the ablest writers and literary men the Southwest has produced." At that time, after the capture of New Orleans, Walker was still in prison, being held with other civilian detainees at Fort Massachusetts on West Ship Island, Mississippi.

New Orleans Daily Picayune - January 25, 1893

Near the end of August 1857, the Cincinnati Enqurier was jointly acquired by Washington McLean and former owner-editor James John Faran (1808-1892). Faran served as mayor of Cincinnati in 1855-1857, when Walker was editor of the Enquirer. 

The masthead named James J. Faran as chief editor of the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer when the review of Melville's lecture on "Statues in Rome" appeared on February 3, 1858, prefaced by a survey of Melville's books which estimated his last work the Confidence-Man as "decidedly the worst." 

Related post:

• Cincinnati ENQUIRER review, Melville's 1857-8 lecture on Statues in Rome https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/11/cincinnati-enquirer-review-melvilles.html 

Where is Melville?

A Man of the Sandwich Islands, with his Helmet
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Disappointed with Kiana: A Tradition of Hawaii (1857) by James Jackson Jarves, one contemporary reviewer complained that "Romance plainly is not Mr. Jarves' forte" and wondered,

"Where is Melville?"

Surely the author of Typee, Omoo, and Mardi would have made a more entertaining story out of the same Polynesian material. 

A newspaper clipping of the 1857 Kiana review was kept by the Melville family and eventually deposited at Harvard. I'm guessing it's still there:

• G. News clippings and other. Herman Melville papers, MS Am 188-188.6, MS Am 188. Houghton Library. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/hou00338c00597/catalog Accessed May 28, 2023.

 Jay Leyda put it in The Melville Log Volume 2 on page [583]:

Cited in the back of Volume 2 as "clipping, HCL-M" = "Papers & library of the Melville family, Harvard College Library."

Leyda got the place (Boston) right, along with the correct month (September) and year (1857) of the newspaper clipping. For those who care about such things, I'm happy to supply the missing name and date of the newspaper in which this interesting query appeared. Transcribed below, from the Boston Daily Traveller of September 14, 1857:

Boston Daily Traveller - September 14, 1857

 

Mr. Jarves' well known books--Parisian and Italian Sights--led us to look with favor upon anything coming from his pen. We are sorry to be disappointed in KIANA, a Tradition of Hawaii, just published by Munroe & Co. Romance plainly is not Mr. Jarves' forte. He had a charming subject, susceptible of the highest style of treatment in this difficult province of fiction. There is a tradition among the people of the Sandwich Islands, that during the reign of Kiana, eighteen generations of kings previous to Kamehameha I., a white priest came among them with an idol and a new god, lived with them long, and dying, left a reputation for goodness that was green in the memories of the Hawaiians three centuries later. The date of this tradition synchronizes with that of the loss of two vessels sent by Cortez upon an exploring expedition to California. Mr. Jarves supposes the possible identity of the white strangers of Hawaii with the missing adventurers of Cortez, and from this fertile source derives the materials for his story. 

 

With such a beginning one might look for a romance equal to Mayo's Kaloolah or Melville's Omoo and Typee. The field is illimitable, the colors of every hue, and the license ample, only the skill of the romancer was wanting. It is a pity so good a piece of canvass should be spoiled. Where is Melville? Will he not leave the mazes of Pierre or the Ambiguities, and the eccentricities of the Confidence Man, and with some such charming tradition as this bring back the days and the delights of beautiful Fayaway, or take us voyaging to another Mardi. -- Boston Daily Traveller, September 14, 1857.

 

Emily Dickinson's friend Samuel Bowles of the Springfield, Mass. Republican had served as editor of the Boston Traveller since April 1857. In Springfield, Bowles was formerly assisted by Melville's "friendly critic" Josiah Gilbert Holland, so identified by Jay Leyda:

• Leyda, Jay. “Another Friendly Critic for Melville.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2, 1954, pp. 243–49. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/362806. Accessed 28 May 2023.  

After a short tenure as editor of the Traveller, Bowles would reclaim his position as editor of the Springfield Republican.

 

19 Sep 1857, Sat The Waukegan Weekly Gazette (Waukegan, Illinois) Newspapers.com  

The departure of Samuel Bowles as editor of the Traveller was announced on September 10th in the Boston Evening Transcript. Possibly the Kiana review on September 14, 1857 was one of the last literary pieces that Bowles contributed or supervised as editor of the Boston Traveller. 

Where is Melville?

In the Boston Traveller Bowles or somebody wondered, "Where is Melville?" We might be able to answer the question, now that we know the date on which it appeared in print. Where WAS Herman Melville on September 14, 1857? Back home in Pittsfield, Mass., brainstorming lecture topics, as he revealed the next day in a letter to George W. Curtis:

-- I have been trying to scratch my brains for a Lecture. What is a good, earnest subject? "Daily progress of man towards a state of intellectual & moral perfection, as evidenced in history of 5th Avenue & 5 Points."

Even better, brainstorming lecture topics and satirizing utopian schemes of famous communists after reading Robert Owen:

By the wondrous and, hitherto, mysterious organic construction of man and woman, the adults of the first generation that shall acquire a practical knowledge of their own powers to re-form the matured character of each individual, will be enabled, almost to re-create the character of succeeding generations; to re-create it by training each individual from birth, by a new and very superior arrangement of external circumstances, to have a sound physical constitution, to have superior dispositions, habits and manners, to have much valuable knowledge, and to make a daily progress towards physical, intellectual and moral perfection.

-- Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World (London, 1836) page 103.

Robert Owen, Esq. via NYPL Digital Collections

 

Melville's words and phrasing, specifically the stipulation of "daily progress" in the march "towards" a condition of "intellectual and moral perfection" are Robert Owen's in The Book of the New Moral World (London, 1836). "Subjects: Communism" as catalogued by HathiTrust Digital Library. 

 

As it turned out, the real lecture Melville composed on Statues in Rome was delivered in Boston on December 2, 1857 and reported the next evening in the Boston Evening Traveller. Traces of Melville's epistolary parody of Owen linger in his reference to the utopian "scheme of Fourier" that had yet to dissolve the need for a whole code of laws against criminal conduct. 

Related posts

• Melville's friendly critic at the Springfield Republican
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2014/08/melvilles-friendly-critic-at.html
  

• Melville's anti-communist math
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/08/2-2-4-melvilles-anti-communist-math.html
  

• Melville on Justinian and Juvenal, remembered in Minnesota
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/08/melville-on-justinian-and-juvenal.html
  

• Can art not life make the ideal?
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/02/can-art-not-life-make-ideal-herman.html
  

The Confidence-Man | Herman Melville

Finely stated at 16:40:

"... I'm not unconvinced (as Melville would put it) that there is at least some intention to put the question to readers the question which is worse, a surplus of trust which is naivete, or a deficit of trust which is cynicism. And this dialectic goes unresolved ...."

Bravo!!!

Newburyport notice of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN

 

This item is reprinted on page 498 in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009).

The Confidence Man His Masquerade By Herman Melville New York, Dix, Edwards & Co. For sale by M O Hall. 

Mr Melville is a writer of no ordinary talent. His former works were read with an interest that sharpened the appetite for almost anything his pen might indite. Though the "Confidence Man" is a book exhibiting close observations of human nature and a judicious and careful estimate of human virtues and frailties, we cannot accord to it the interest possessed by his less pretentious stories. It differs materially in manner from his other books, and lacks in geniality. Its philosophy is of a character that perhaps calls for too much exertion to fully enjoy, and the agents used in presenting it are of a class that seem to forbid an acquaintance.-- 

However, many would regard the book more favorably, and undoubtedly award to it high praise.

 -- Newburyport, Massachusetts Daily Herald, April 22, 1857; now accessible with newly added titles on NewspaperArchive.

 Also available in Digital Archives of the Newburyport Public Library:

• https://newburyport.advantage-preservation.com/

The Newburyport Daily Herald was then edited by George J. L. Colby and Joseph B. Morss. According to his obituary in the Boston Globe (December 1, 1890), Colby once was employed "in the Salem custom house with Nathaniel Hawthorne." The 1890 obit identifies Colby as "principal editorial writer" for the Daily Herald "down to 1869."

 

Related post:

• Newburyport MA Daily Herald, notice of THE PIAZZA TALES
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/09/newburyport-daily-herald-notice-of.html
  

Yale Literary Magazine notice of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN

This notice of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man appeared in the April 1857 issue of The Yale Literary Magazine. Not transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009).

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. By HERMAN MELVILLE. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. For sale by T. H. Pease. 

Mr. Melville’s new book outdoes in strangeness and eccentricity even his own later stories, which have made people wonder, by the odd kind of metaphysical wildness which pervaded them. We can use no terms which will adequately characterize this his last production. It has evidently a moral, and yet this is so hidden by grotesque incidents and strange situations, that we cannot be sure that we have hit upon the right key to this metaphysico-romantic novel, in which there is no word of love, no heroine and a hero who appears and disappears in as many parts and characters, as the sole actor in a small theater. The conclusion seems to promise a continuance of the Masquerade, and we shall be glad to see it, for we are in a state of utter bewilderment as to the real faces under the masks of the present book. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks to the complete understanding of the book, we could not best [but] be charmed by its pure style and by the beauty of many of the thoughts. If its plan is poor, (which we cannot decide without further light,) its execution is sufficient to redeem it. The book may attract by its novelty, but we doubt if it adds anything to the reputation of the author of “Typee.”

This book, as well as the others published by Dix, Edwards & Co., is issued in that neat and elegant style which marks all the publications of this house. 

 The Harvard copy of Yale Literary Magazine volume 22 was Google-digitized in July 2018. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=Irq-BwX2TfgC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false 

 EBSCO Cite: 

“Literary Notices.” Yale Literary Magazine (New Haven, CT) 22, no. 6 (April 1857): 245–47. http://search.ebscohost.com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lpn&AN=43393372&site=ehost-live.

Confidence-Man in Syracuse NY Daily Journal

Syracuse Daily Journal - Tuesday April 7, 1857

 NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Confidence Man: his masquerade. By HERMAN MELVILLE. New York: DIX, EDWARDS & CO. 

We can hardly believe that this book proceeds from the same powerful pen that created "Omoo" and "Typee." It can only be regarded as an utter failure. Its characters are exaggerated and awkward, and their principal [motivation?] appears to be to utter stupid and vapid things. Its apparent aim is to burlesque some of the popular modes of dispensing charities at the present day--but even its travesty is pointless and absurd. MELVILLE must have been the victim of somnambulism, or of downright insanity, when he consented to the publication of so sorry a volume of trash. We fear that his previous reputation will suffer in consequence. The work is for sale by W. T. HAMILTON. 

-- Syracuse NY Daily Journal for April 7, 1857; found on the great Fulton History site, Tom Tryniski's matchless archive of digitized pages from old newspapers of the past. Link below to support his amazing work on Fultonhistory.com :

•  https://fultonhistory.com/Donation%20paypal.html

London Weekly Dispatch on The Confidence-Man

Found among recently digitized images of historic newspapers on The British Newspaper Archive and transcribed by me below, a review of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man in the London Weekly Dispatch for Sunday, 26 April 1857. Previously unrecorded in Melville scholarship I think--pages from the Weekly Dispatch and Sunday Dispatch were not available on the British Newspaper Archive before October 2020.

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN: HIS MASQUERADE. BY HERMAN MELVILLE.—Longman and Co., Paternoster-row.— This volume may come very properly under the denomination of Psychological fiction (or any quite as vague or definite, which ever the reader pleases), but it is, in structure and style, in manner, as in matter, as distinct from any of those former magnificent productions of Herman Melville's gifted pen as it is possible to conceive. We confess ourselves puzzled by it, while all the time, a clear analysis of social cant, sham assent to philanthropic dogmas and maxims, which we all ignore (more or less) when put to the test, and a demonstration that selfishness is substituted for confidence in daily and mutual intercourse are fully perceptible. His agent is a masquerader of many parts, assumptions and pretensions, each one more protean and elusive than the other, but each, and every one, harping upon "confidence," the test being, asking frankly for a hundred dollars upon the basis of an unquestioning "confidence" in the representations made. The deduction is, that there is no great reliance placed, or to be placed, in the frank virtue of " confidence " but which, in the form of the expressive platitude "No Trust" (in theory or in practice), is not quite so clear a fact as may be thought. Hospitals, innumerable schools, asylums, places of repentance, of reformation, homes of health, of sanity, &c., without number, have been built, and are supported through "confidence." What means "supported by voluntary subscriptions" but "confidence"? How is it that so many thousand begging-letter impostors live, and live well, but upon the "letter of credit" drawn upon "confidence"? We have not quite lost confidence in each other, bad as the world may be, and "backward as we all may be in going forward." Is it astonishing to the author that his agent should meet with so many rebuffs, that a little solid basis for this "confidence" (value 100 dollars) should be required? If we have got hold of his purpose at all (and we may very easily have failed from the eccentric adumbra veiling his "masquerade") he has not proved his point. If we have not we cannot understand him. Besides, what is glorious rhapsody, almost poetry, in "Moby Dick," for instance, is in this volume, "prose" — that is to say, "prosy"—and we regret to say it. Flashes of the man's strong and striking originality appear not unfrequently; but these cast only a lambent glare upon the misty moorland of his hidden meaning. He may mean that which we cannot solve; and the Œdipus is, therefore, to be found—will be found without question, and questionless with ease. It is a book to read, however queer and quaint, tedious, yet oracular; and, as a specimen of what is to be met with in its pages, take the following: — 

FRIENDS (WITH "CONFIDENCE") WANTED. 

[excerpt from The Confidence-Man chapter 19] "My name is Thomas Fry. Until my 23rd year, I went by the nickname of Happy Tom—happy—ha, ha! They called me Happy Tom, d'ye see? because I was so good-natured and laughing all the time, just as I am now—ha, ha!" Upon this, the herb-doctor would, perhaps, have run, but once more the hyæna clawed him. Presently, sobering down, he continued:— "Well, I was born in New York, and there I lived a steady, hard-working man, a cooper by trade. One evening I went to a political meeting in the Park — for you must know, I was in those days a great patriot. As bad luck would have it, there was trouble near, between a gentleman who had been drinking wine and a pavior who was sober. The pavior chewed tobacco, and the gentleman said it was beastly in him, and pushed him, wanting to have his place. The pavior chewed on, and pushed back. Well, the gentleman carried a sword-cane, and presently the pavior was down—skewered." "How was that?" "Why you see the pavior undertook something above his strength." "The other must have been a Samson then. 'Strong as a pavior,' is a proverb." "So it is, and the gentleman was in body a rather weakly man, but for all that, I say again, the pavior undertook something above his strength." "What are you talking about'? He tried to maintain his rights, didn't he ?" "Yes; but for all that, I say again, he undertook something above his strength." "I don't understand you. But go on." "Along with the gentleman, I, with other witnesses, was taken to the Tombs. There was an examination, and, to appear at the trial, the gentleman and witnesses all gave bail—I mean all but me." "And why didn't you?" "Could'nt get it." "Steady, hard-working cooper like you; what was the reason you could'nt get bail?" "Steady, hard-working cooper hadn't no friends. Well, souse I went into a wet cell, like a canal-boat splashing into the lock; locked up in pickle, d'ye see? against the time of the trial." "But what had you done?" "Why, I hadn't got any friends, I tell ye. A worse crime than murder, as yell see afore long." "Murder? Did the wounded man die?" "Died the third night." "Then the gentleman's bail didn't help him. Imprisoned now, wasn't he?" "Had too many friends. No, it was I that was imprisoned.— But I was going on: They let me walk about the corridor day by day but at night I must into lock. There the wet and the damp struck into my bones. They doctored me, but no use. When the trial came, I was boosted up and said my say." "And what was that?" "My say was that I saw the steel go in, and saw it sticking in." "And that hung the gentleman?" "Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a meeting in the Park, and presented him with a gold watch and chain upon his acquittal." "Acquittal?" "Didn't I say he had friends?" There was a pause, broken at last by the herb-doctor's saying:— "Well, there is a bright side to everything. If this speak prosaically for justice, it speaks romantically for friendship? But go on, my fine fellow." "My say being said, they told me I might go. I said I could not without help. So the constables helped me, asking where would I go? I told them back to the 'Tombs.' I knew no other place. 'But where are your friends?' said they. 'I have none.' So they put me into a hand-barrow with an awning to it, and wheeled me down to the dock and on board a boat, and away to Blackwell's Island to the Corporation Hospital. There I got worse—got pretty much as you see me now. Couldn't cure me. After three years, I grew sick of lying in a grated iron bed alongside of groaning thieves and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver dollars, and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an only brother who went to Indiana, years ago. I begged about, to make up a sum to go to him; got to Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It was on a great plain, in a log churchyard with a stump fence, the old gray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers. The bier, set over the grave, it being the last dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green twigs sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets on the mound, but it was a poor soil (always choose the poorest soils for grave-yards), and they were all dried to tinder. I was going to sit and rest myself on the bier, and think about my brother in heaven, but the bier broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after driving some hogs out of the yard that were rooting there, I came away, and, not to make too long a story of it, here I am, drifting down stream like any other bit of wreck." 

Surveying Putnam's Monthly Magazine for July and August 1855, the same newspaper had noticed "a wild fiction called 'The Bell Tower'" in the August issue:

"... from the wild, fitful and deeply sculptured arabesque of the style (if we may be permitted so to designate it), we should at once point out Herman Melville as the author."

-- London Weekly Dispatch, 2 September 1855. 

Call me Frank

Mid-1850's Melville riffs on "frank" as name and character-trait:

“Thank you for your frankness,” said Paul; “frank myself, I love to deal with a frank man. You, Doctor Franklin, are true and deep, and so you are frank.”

The sage sedately smiled, a queer incredulity just lurking in the corner of his mouth.

-- Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855); first printed in Putnam's Monthly Magazine - September 1854

Paul's genuine frankness contrasts with the more calculating and ambiguous behavior displayed by Benjamin Franklin. Hennig Cohen has noted how Melville's wordplay on the "frank" in Franklin looks forward to the ironic naming of Frank Goodman, the confidence-man's confidence man: 

99.9-11 frankness . . . frank man . . . Franklin . . . frank 

Paul Jones appears to be nothing if not frank, though Franklin, who appears at times to be less so, listens to his words with a lurking "incredulity" (99.12). Melville is once more turning to account the suggestiveness of a personal name. He is also anticipating the significant name, Frank Goodman, of The Confidence-Man (Chap. 29) who at times seems less than frank.

-- Annotations to Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, edited by Hennig Cohen (Fordham University Press, 1991) page 395.

Confidence-Man in Yonkers

Here is a contemporary notice of The Confidence-Man from the Yonkers NY Examiner of April 16, 1857. This one turned up on Newspapers.com among digitized pages just added within the past month. 

Founded in 1856, The Examiner was published by Matthew F. Rowe (1829-1914), formerly editor of The Republican in Peekskill. Excerpts from this 1857 notice are given by Gary Scharnhorst in the second part of his two-part article, "Melville Bibliography 1846-1897: A Sheaf of Uncollected Excerpts, Notices and Reviews," Melville Society Extracts 75 (November 1988) pages 3-8 at page 7. It's listed as CM21 in the 1992 Checklist of Melville Reviews, edited by Kevin Hayes and Hershel Parker. Not reprinted in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Thu, Apr 16, 1857 – 2 · Yonkers Examiner (Yonkers, New York) · Newspapers.com

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN: His Masquerade. By Herman Melville, author of "Typee," &c. 12 mo. Dix, Edwards & Co., New York.

That Melville is a man of genius is generally admitted by critics and by a large portion of the reading public. That his genius sometimes exhibits itself in eccentric and provoking shapes, his readers are all well aware. This "Confidence Man" has an air and manner which seems to imply the utmost "confidence" in his success; and in truth there is something to admire, or at least to wonder at, that the masquerade of and adventurer in various disguises, during a single trip on a Mississippi steamer, should suffice for the entire story which fills this good-looking volume of four hundred pages. It is true that on this slender thread the author has strung a good many shrewd and quaint observations on human nature and matters and things in general, but on the whole, although the book is readable enough it scarcely justifies the author's reputation.

Three phantom pirates by Peterson

In 1865 Philadelphia publisher T. B. Peterson reprinted Melville's historical romance of Israel Potter (1854-5) under a different title, The Refugee. Melville complained more than once about the unauthorized publication of his work. The author of Israel Potter formally and finally disavowed The Refugee in a letter to the editor of the New York World, published there on January 28, 1876. Zachary Turpin first located Melville's epistolary "Protest," as discussed in Turpin's March 2017 Leviathan article, Melville's Letter to the World.

Turpin cites relevant lists of Peterson titles including The Refugee that appeared in 1876 editions of novels by E.D.E.N. Southworth. Years before, in back of the 1857 edition of Southworth's Vivia; or, The Secret of Power, T. B. Peterson & Brothers advertised a forthcoming edition of Israel Potter with a different title: Fifty Years in Exile.



Similarly converting Melville's original subtitles to main titles, Peterson also promoted cheap editions of The Confidence-Man as "The Masquerade" and The Encantadas (recently collected in The Piazza Tales) as "The Enchanted Isles." All three apparently unauthorized titles were listed among "Works in Press by the Best Authors" in Peterson's edition of Vivia (Philadelphia, 1857) by Emma D. E. N. Southworth. None of these titles was actually published in 1857 or any other year, so far as I can tell.

Fifty years in Exile. 

By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," "Typee," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover, price $1.00; or in one volume, cloth, $1.25. 

The Masquerade. 

By Herman Melville, author "Typee," "Omoo," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25.  

The Enchanted Isles.

By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," “Typee," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25

https://books.google.com/books?id=xK8edm7GYA4C&pg=PT12&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

These phantom editions of works by Herman Melville are NOT listed with advertised titles in the first edition Vivia in the E.D.E.N. Southworth Collection at the University of South Carolina.

Coincidentally, the "author-hero" that Melville's author-hero Pierre writes about in the 1852 novel Pierre or The Ambiguities is also named Vivia.

Pittsfield's Bildad

Robert Melvill aka Robert Melville was Herman Melville's first cousin. Herman's father Allan Melvill was the older brother of Robert's father Thomas Melvill, Jr. While Herman was living at Arrowhead in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and still working on Moby-Dick, his cousin Robert got appointed administrator for the estate of deceased Pittsfield resident Bildad Williams (1784-1851). Robert Melvill was a Pittsfield farmer. With his wife Susan, Robert ran the old Melvill mansion as a boarding house, until the property was sold to John Rowland Morewood. Later in 1851, some time after the Morewoods returned to Pittsfield from England, Robert moved to Galena, Illinois. Later he settled in Davenport, Iowa. I don't know how or why Herman's cousin Robert Melvill would have been involved in the settlement of Bildad's estate.

Bildad in the Bible is one of Job's three friends. In Moby-Dick, one of the Quaker owners of the whaleship Pequod is named Bildad. As Ishmael describes him in chapter 16 of Moby-Dick, the fictional Bildad is characteristically pious and parsimonious. At sea, Captain Bildad had been a notoriously demanding employer or "task-master":

Now Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard task-master. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used to swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-colored eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something—a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished from before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat. 

--Moby-Dick Chapter 16: The Ship 

Pittsfield's real Bildad also might have been hard to work for. Or maybe he was just unlucky in his reliance on rascally "boys," like Pitch in The Confidence-Man ("all boys are rascals"). No telling why, exactly, but in October 1838, a young apprentice named Henry ran away from Bildad Williams.

Thu, Nov 15, 1838 – 1 · The Pittsfield Sun (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) · Newspapers.com

NOTICE.

RAN away from the subscriber, on the 20th inst, HENRY W. WARD, a lad about 12 years old, light complexion, dark hair, and blue eyes; without hat or shoes. All persons are hereby cautioned not to harbor, trust or employ said boy; and whosoever will give information where he may be found shall receive the thanks of
BILDAD WILLIAMS.
Pittsfield, Oct. 22, 1838. 

Henry W. Ward must have been returned to Bildad, for he ran away again two years later:

Pittsfield Sun - February 4, 1841 via GenealogyBank

NOTICE.

RUN away from me on the 27th ult. a Boy by the name of HENRY W. WARD, 14 years old, stocky built, gray eyes, dark hair, and walks stooping. He wore away a light mixed roundabout, black vest with a red back, and moleskin pantaloons--all considerably worn. He also wore away a good hair seal cap, and a pair of good boots, and took some other articles of clothing. All persons are forbid harboring, trusting or employing said runaway; and whoever will give information where he may be found will confer a favor on
BILDAD WILLIAMS.
Pittsfield, Feb. 2, 1841.

The summer before Henry's second departure, in July 1840, a warrant had been issued against the estate of Bildad Williams, evidently in connection with bankruptcy proceedings.

After Bildad's death from "Disease of the kidneys" on April 27, 1851, Herman's cousin Robert Melvill was named Administrator of the estate.

Pittsfield, MA Sun - May 8, 1851
via GenealogyBank

Bildad Williams' Estate.

NOTICE is hereby given, that the subscriber has been duly appointed Administrator on the estate of BILDAD WILLIAMS, late of Pittsfield, in the County of Berkshire, deceased, and has taken upon himself that trust, by giving bond as the law directs. All persons having demands upon the estate of the said deceased, are requested to exhibit the same; and all persons indebted to said estate, are called upon to make payment to
ROBERT MELVILL, Adm'r.
May 6, 1851.

In Robert's ad for the subsequent estate sale, remaining possessions of the deceased included "a large assortment of Household Furniture" along with "Comb Makers Tools and other articles."

Pittsfield, MA Culturist and Gazette - May 14, 1851
via GenealogyBank

Notice.

THE Subscriber will expose for sale at Public Auction on Saturday, the seventeenth day of May inst., at the residence of the late Bildad Williams, a large assortment of Household Furniture. Comb Makers Tools and other articles.

ROB'T. MELVILLE, Administrator.
Pittsfield, May 13, 1851. 

The official register of deaths in Pittsfield gives the occupation of Bildad Williams as "Comb Maker." So then, young Henry Ward the 1838 and 1841 runaway possibly had been employed by Bildad in the manufacture of combs. However, according to the United States Federal Census for 1850, Bildad Williams at that time worked as a "Grocer."

Bildad's given age of 66 in the October 1850 census and April 1851 death register puts his birth year around 1784. In the category of "Sex and Condition" the death register indicates "Widower-Colored." According to the 1850 Census Bildad Williams lived alone, and owned Real Estate valued at $800.

Bildad's wife Juliana Williams died on June 28, 1846, age 65.

Pittsfield Bildad was born in Connecticut, according to census and death records accessible on Ancestry.com. At seventeen, a Bildad Williams ran away from Cato Williams (his uncle? or father?) in Mansfield, Connecticut.

Cato Williams, Bildad Williams ran away, Mansfield Mon, May 11, 1801 – Page 4 · Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) · Newspapers.com

"RAN away from the Subscriber in Mansfield, on the 20th inst. Bildad Williams, seventeen years old, well built, walks stooping; wore away a blue long coat, swansdown vest, blue trowsers, and a poor felt hat. This is to forbid all persons, or masters of vessels, harboring said boy on penalty of the law. Whoever will take up said boy or give information of him shall have one cent reward, and all charges paid. CATO WILLIAMS. Mansfield, 27th April 1801." 

Robert Underhill, current President of the Historical Society of Clarendon Vermont, has identified Mansfield's Bildad Williams as the son of Cato Williams with his wife Lydia Williams. As reported by Underhill and others, this Cato Williams died in Westfield, MA in 1828. A Cato Williams is listed as the head of household in the 1820 U. S. Federal Census for Lenox in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The Williams household of five was then comprised of four "Free Colored Persons" and one "Free White Person." Another researcher on Ancestry.com gives the father of Bildad Williams as Elisha Williams (1717-1784), who owned property in Mansfield, CT next to land sold for $215 in 1809 by Jesse Spafford to Lydia, Isham, and Bildad Williams. In 1817, Bildad sold his remaining share of the Mansfield property to Simeon Allen.

Originally in Windham County Connecticut. Mansfield was annexed to Tolland County in 1827. Tolland County, CT happens to be the stated birthplace of Melville's fictional cabin boy, Pip. In Moby-Dick, Melville's narrator Ishmael refers to Pip's "native Tolland county in Connecticut" (Chapter 93); and Pip relates a story about his father in "old Tolland county" (Chapter 99). The Black cabin boy Pip may be partly based on John Backus, Melville's shipmate on the whaler Acushnet. But the birthplace of Backus has not been established, leading some readers of Moby-Dick to wonder with the editors of the 1988 Northwestern-Newberry Edition, page 853, "what made him bring in Tolland County at all?"

This Mansfield, Connecticut Bildad was reportedly 17 in 1801, which would make his birth year 1784--identical with that of the "colored" widower Bildad Williams who died in Pittsfield at the age of 66 on April 27, 1851. The same Bildad whose estate, after his death, was sold at auction by Herman Melville's cousin Robert.

In spite of the published warning to "masters of vessels" by Cato Williams in May 1801, Mansfield's Bildad Williams actually did receive New England Seamen's Protection Certificate number 2209 in New London on September 19, 1801. Age 18;  height 5' 8"; complexion "Mulatto."

So Bildad Williams from Mansfield, Connecticut went to sea. Where he sailed is unknown--the earliest New London Crew Lists on the website of Mystic Seaport Museum, are from 1803. From New London, Bildad in 1801 would not have gone a-whaling. The first commercial whaling voyage from New London was by the Dauphin in 1805, according to Alexander Starbuck's History of the American Whale Fishery.

Moby-Dick fans may be interested in the relative scarcity of sailors named Bildad. Of Melville's two retired Quaker captains, Peleg bore the commoner name. The 30,988 total records in the Registers of Seamen's Protection Certificates contain more than thirty Pelegs, but just one Bildad.

Related post:

• Robert Melville obits
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/07/robert-melville-obits.html

Olive Branch notice of The Confidence-Man

Richard E. Winslow III found and transcribed this item in "Contemporary Notice of Melville at Home and Abroad," Melville Society Extracts Number 106, September 1996, page 9. The favorable notice of The Confidence-Man in the Boston Olive Branch is worth another look, especially in view of Mary A. Denison's editorial work for the Olive Branch and later The Sea (1859-60). As shown in the previous post, extant copies of THE SEA in the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 4 all include the name of Herman Melville on the front-page list of Special Contributors.

https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-sea-1859-60-journal-for-sailors.html

From The Boston Olive Branch, April 11, 1857:

THE CONFIDENCE MAN: His Masquerade. By Herman Melville, Author of "Piazza Tales," "Omoo," "Typee," &c. &c. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. 

All of Melville's works are characterized by originality; and "The Confidence Man" also abounds in passages of genuine humor, and healthful sarcasm. It is a capital book, well conceived, well written, and published in a handsome duodecimo volume of about four hundred pages. We cordially recommend it to the attention of our readers. A. Williams & Co. have it. 

Citation: 

“THE CONFIDENCE MAN: Masquerade.” Boston Olive Branch, vol. 22, no. 15, Apr. 1857, p. 003. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sdd&AN=66759556&site=ehost-live. 

Then edited by Erasmus Addison Norris, son of founder Thomas F. Norris. Patricia Okker in Our Sister Editors (University of Georgia Press, 1995; paperback 2008) credits Mary A. Denison as "Co-Editor" of the Boston Olive Branch. Mrs. Denison's tenure evidently resumed in 1856; she is listed as "assistant editor" in The Boston Directory for the Year 1852, when the paper was edited by Thomas F. Norris. From Arthur's Home Magazine, Volume 7 (February 1856) page 145:

MRS. MARY A. DENISON. 

For the past year, this gifted lady has been residing at Florence, N. J., with her husband. But, she has recently removed to Boston, and is now permanently engaged as the sole editor of the Ladies' Enterprise, and assistant editor of the Olive Branch....  

 https://books.google.com/books?id=thVLAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA145&pg=PA145&#v=onepage&q&f=false

Boston city directories confirm Mary A. Denison's role as Assistant Editor of the Olive Branch in 1856-7.

The 1857 Complete Business Directory of Boston names E. A. Norris as Editor, and "Mrs. Mary A. Denison" as "Assistant Ed." The younger Norris and Mrs. Denison also collaborated on Ladies' Enterprise, "a paper issued under the management of the Olive Branch Company" according to Martha Louise Rayne in What Can a Woman Do (Detroit, 1887), page 35.

When the notice of Melville's Confidence-Man appeared on April 11, 1857, the Olive Branch had recently been acquired by John H. Sleeper & Co. and was called The Boston Olive Branch.

Hendricks House editions

Here are links to some Hendricks House editions of books by Herman Melville that are Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.

MOBY-DICK (1851)

• Moby-Dick; or, The Whale 1952, ed. Howard P. Vincent and Luther S. Mansfield.
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015046801760>

PIERRE (1852)

• Pierre; or, The Ambiguities 1949, ed. Henry A. Murray. 
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015066059091>

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN (1857)

• The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade 1954, ed. Elizabeth S. Foster.
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015002987603>

CLAREL (1876)

• Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land 1960, ed. Walter E. Bezanson
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015005201424>

Update - 04/28/2024

As alert readers have pointed out in the comments, digital versions of Hendricks House editions are also accessible courtesy of the Internet Archive. Virtual editions there now include The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville (Hendricks House, 1948) and Gordon Roper's copy of Melville's Collected Poems (Hendricks House, 1947), donated to the Trent University Library. Both titles are available to borrow for 1 hour at a time. 

THE PIAZZA TALES (1856)  

• The Piazza Tales 1948, edited by Egbert S. Oliver.<https://archive.org/details/piazzatales0000melv_j8m0/page/n7/mode/2up> 

COLLECTED POEMS (1947)

• Collected Poems 1947, edited by Howard P. Vincent.<https://archive.org/details/collectedpoemsof0000melv/page/n1/mode/2up>

Alas, I still have not seen or heard about any digital version of the 1990 Hendricks House Mardi and a voyage thither, edited by Nathalia Wright.

Melville's illy

Introducing the 2017 Norton Critical Edition of Pierre, editors Robert S. Levine and Cindy Weinstein warn readers about Melville's problematic deployments of "new words" and cite illy as one them, taking it for a neologism like battalionings. But illy in 1852 ain't isn't exactly a new word even for Melville, who used it in Redburn, and tried to in "Hawthorne and His Mosses." In manuscript, thanks to NYPL Digital Collections, you can see Melville's illy in the handwriting of the scribe his wife Elizabeth.

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "“Hawthorne and his mosses”" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1850.

http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/23ebb010-184f-0133-f66c-58d385a7bbd0

Melville originally wrote:

 "Nevertheless, it would argue too illy of my country were this maxim to hold good concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne...."

In print the Literary World gave the standard form "ill" for Melville's "illy":

The Literary World 186 - August 24, 1850
https://books.google.com/books?id=VTsZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA145&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Most versions of "Hawthorne and His Mosses" after 1987 restore Melville's illy, following the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. The editorial Notes on Mosses at 672-3 include a characteristically illuminating discussion.

Changed to "ill" in LW...As an adverbial form "illy" was becoming ill regarded....

Consulting OED the Northwestern-Newberry editors found usages before Melville's by Jefferson (1785), Southey (1795), Lowell (1848), and Irving (1849).

The Norton Critical Edition of Pierre forgoes Northwestern-Newberry texts as well as end notes. Instead, NCE gives the 1852 text of Pierre (silently corrected, as acknowledged in "A Note on the Text")


and a selection from the 1850 text (silently silently-corrected) in the New York Literary World of "Hawthorne and His Mosses." I guess "silently silently corrected" because the NCE version reads "sane madness" for the 1850 misprint "same madness" without explanation. (Which on reflection makes it look like the NCE reading "sane madness" is only accidentally correct, a fortuitous typo for the Literary World typo "same madness.")

The grammar police in Melville's day called illy improper or "Bad English," which is doubtlessly doubtless why Evert Duyckinck or a compositor changed it in "Hawthorne and His Mosses."

New York Commercial Advertiser - September 12, 1846
via GenealogyBank

We commend to the writer in question, as a fault worthy of his censure, the increasing disposition to make new adverbs by the addition of ly where it is not wanted. In very many of the newspapers we find illy substituted for ill--the writers seeming to imagine that ill is always an adjective, and must be changed to illy where an adverb is required. It is not so. Ill and well are adverbs as well as adjectives--adverbs when used in connection with a verb, adjectives when used when with a noun. Nobody, as yet, says "welly done"--why, then, do we meet with "illy done"? "Well done" and "ill done" are the proper modes of expression.  --New York Commercial Advertiser, September 12, 1846

Besides being bad English, "illy" for ill was also regarded as an Americanism according to Webster as quoted in Seth T. Hurd's  A Grammatical Corrector (Philadelphia, 1847).

Nevertheless, the author of Pierre also wrote illy into Israel Potter four times. Ignorantly? Patriotically, as peculiarly American? Carelessly? Defiantly? Whatever the original motive, Melville later repented, as shown by corrections he made in a volume "From the Library of Herman Melville" now at Houghton Library, Harvard University, AC85.M4977.855ic (A).

http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990035152470203941/catalog

As noted in the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Israel Potter (page 247), duly cross-referenced in the NN Piazza Tales,

Four of the alterations consist of striking the "y" from "illy" ...

Perhaps then Melville would also have wanted to revise the four instances of illy in The Confidence-Man (1857), were there any chance of getting out another edition after the failure of his original publisher, Dix, Edwards & Co.

Related posts

• Missing Table of Contents
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/01/missing-table-of-contents.html

• Clams, boats and footnotes in Pierre
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/05/clams-boats-and-footnotes-in-pierre.html

• Sops for hell-hounds in Pierre
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/05/sops-for-hell-hounds-in-pierre.html

• Where Pierre shot Glen Stanly
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/05/where-pierre-shot-glen-stanly.html