The Confidence-Man

The Confidence-Man

First edition title page
Author	Herman Melville
Language	English
Genre	Satirical novel, philosophical novel
Published	1857
Publisher	Dix, Edwards & Co.
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
Preceded by	The Piazza Tales
Followed by	Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, first published in New York on April Fool's Day 1857, is the ninth and final novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book was published on the exact day of the novel's setting.

Centered on the title character, The Confidence-Man portrays a group of steamboat passengers. Their interlocking stories are told as they travel on the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The narrative structure is reminiscent of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Scholar Robert Milder notes: "Long mistaken for a flawed novel, the book is now admired as a masterpiece of irony and control, although it continues to resist interpretive consensus."

Summary

Manuscript fragment from Chapter 14 of The Confidence-Man.

The novel's title refers to its central character, an ambiguous figure. He sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the passengers. Their varied reactions constitute the bulk of the text. Each person is forced to confront the placement of his trust.

Character list

• The mute – A man in cream colors, a tossed look, a linty fair cheek, downy chin, flaxen hair. Looks like a stranger. He writes on a slate an allusion to 1 Corinthians 13.
• The barber – Puts up a sign "No Trust". The Cosmopolitan convinces him to remove the sign, and trust that for one week, he will pay for all unpaid services.
• Guinea, an African-American crippled beggar – Catches coins with his mouth. Says he sleeps on the streets. After his honesty is questioned, he gives a list of people who can vouch for him: The man with the weed in his hat, the man in a grey suit, the transfer agent, the herb-doctor, the Cosmopolitan, The Agent of the Philosophical Intelligence Office and Thomas Fry, all of these are main characters potentially attempting to deceive each other.
• A purple faced drover – Gets the initial information about Guinea.
• The man with the wooden leg – Casts doubt on whether Guinea is a cripple.
• A country merchant, Mr. Henry Roberts – A man of generous acts. He is the first to be pushed into believing he used to know Mr. John Ringman, but a memory lapse made him forget. He gives him money, then follows the advice to buy stock at the Black Rapids Coal Company. He later discusses pity with its president, drinks too much, then confesses 'charity and hope' are mere dreams.
• A young Episcopal clergyman – Discusses the genuineness of Guinea, "frozen in cold charity" then "thawed into fluidity" and kind words.
• A Methodist minister – Very martial looking, accuses the man with the wooden leg of being a 'reprobate and a Canada Thistle'.
• A gruff boatman – Asks Guinea to go find anybody to vouch for (Guinea).
• John Ringman, the Man with the Weed – He tries to convince the country merchant, Mr. Roberts, they are acquainted, but Robert's memory faltered. He asks for money, then recommends buying stock at the Black Rapids Coal Company. He is said to be looking for money to be able to go join his daughter after a disastrous divorce left him penniless. He tries to convince the sophomore to throw Tacitus away because it is too depressive. He is reading Mark Akenside's "The Pleasures of the Imagination".
• The sophomore – A young student reading Tacitus to read the gossip. Later, he wants to buy stock from the Black Rapids Coal Company. It turns out he likes "prosperous fellows" and despises "gloomy men".
• A Well-to-do Gentleman – dressed in ruby colored velvet, has a ruby colored cheek. After he is accosted by the man in the gray suit, expresses annoyance at all the beggars allowed on the ferry.
• The man in a gray suit – This man accosts people for donations to a Widow and Orphan Asylum (Seminoles).
• The hard-hearted old gentleman – A bulky man accuses the man in a gray suit of hypocrisy.
• The good man – An elegantly-dressed man with white kid gloves and white hands. Melville explains he is "a good man" but not a righteous man. His hands are kept clean by having a black servant do the dirty work for him. He has a disagreement with the man in a gray suit about poverty.
• A charitable lady – asked to give $20 to the man in the gray suit.
• John Truman, the president and transfer agent for the Black Rapids Coal Company – lives on Jones street in Saint Louis.
• A somewhat elderly person in Quaker dress – spreads his poetry about confidence in one another.
• A little dried-up man – Refuses to do anything outside his habits: no wine, no games, etc.
• The shrunken old miser – sickly, he is afraid of losing his last savings, yet gambles in the Merchant's scheme of tripling returns, and ends up buying boxes from the Herb-doctor, paying in Mexican pistols and not dollars.
• Goneril – The wife of John Ringman, the man with the weed. She is said to be cold-hearted, to touch other men in a sly way, to take revenge for jealousy on her daughter. During the divorce procedures, she dragged her husband to court then was awarded his money. Shortly after, she dies.
• The sick man – The man is sick and tired of doctors offering ineffective remedies. The herb-doctor tries to convince him, with confidence, his herbs will work. After a philosophical debate about whether nature can be trusted, he agrees to try.
• The herb-doctor – Tries to sell "Omni-Balsamic-Reinvigorator" and "Samaritan Pain Dissuader". He tries to set the bones of Tom Fry. He gives part of his earnings to 'charity'. He helps the Old Miser to stand during a conversation with the Missourian.
• The dusk giant – A kind of invalid Titan in homespun. He violently attacks the Herb-Doctor, proclaiming 'there are pains only death can ease'.
• His child – The daughter of the Dusk Giant is bi-racial.
• Auburn-haired gentleman – Thinks the Herb-Doctor needs unmasking.
• An unhappy-looking woman – Sobs after the Herb-Doctor asks if anybody needs charity.
• A man with a hooked nose – Thinks the Herb-Doctor is a fool for giving away some of his earnings to charity.
• A third person with a gossiping expression – Thinks the Herb-Doctor is a 'prowling Jesuit emissary'.
• Thomas Fry, aka, Happy Tom, the "soldier" – A beggar dressed in grimy old regimental coat. He passes off as a veteran of the Mexican wars, but claims his true story is he was crippled in prison while waiting to testify against a rich murderer. The said murderer got off easily because he had friends, whereas Thomas Fry had no friends and was crippled. After he discovers his brother in Indiana died, he took to begging. Confident his story wouldn't arouse any pity, he fakes a different story.
• Pitch, the Missourian bachelor – An eccentric, ursine in aspect. He questions the efficiency of the Herb-Doctor's remedies, proclaiming nature brings about many ills, and is not to be trusted: eye problems, destroyed $10,000 of property, threw hail, and shattered windows, He is skeptical of the goodness of humanity and doesn't have confidence in man: "All rascals", most are "knaves or fools". He makes fun of the Old Miser after he is tricked by the Herb-Doctor, argues with the Herb-Doctor about whether nature is good and trustable, then talks about the dishonesty of teenagers with the Agent of the Philosophical Intelligence Office. The latter, however, convinces the Missourian to try hiring a boy at their agency. After the transaction, The Cosmopolitan accosts him, and as he tries to get rid of him, defends his right to be a solitary misanthrope. Throughout the conversation, he shows broad knowledge of "philosophy and books" equal to his obsession with "woodcraft and rifles".
• The agent of the Philosophical Intelligence Office – A labor-contractor for teenagers. He tries to convince the Missourian bachelor he should try the services of the Philosophical Intelligence Office. After the latter objects he had enough of teenagers, the agent makes an analogy between a child not having a beard but a beard will grow later, and a child who hasn't "evinced any noble quality" will yet "sprout" these qualities, "for, have confidence, it, like the beard, is in him". He also likens baby teeth to "corrupt qualities" in "the man-child", and "the sound, even, beautiful permanent" adult teeth to "sound, even, beautiful and permanent virtues". The baby teeth, like the corrupt qualities are "thrust from their place by the independent undergrowth of the succeeding set" of teeth or virtues. He also likens a teenager to a caterpillar, and an adult to "the natural advance of all creatures" - the butterfly. a teenager is like good wine in maturation. Saint Augustine and Ignatius of Loyola are given as examples of virtuous men, rascals in their youth. He succeeds in convincing the Missourian Bachelor to try a fifteen-year-old boy.
• The cosmopolitan, Francis "Frank" Goodman – A philanthropist, the Cosmopolitan tries to test the ideas of love evoked in the beginning of the book by the Mute, (the references to 1 Corinthians 13), first by arguing with the Missourian one should be warm and confiding with all members of humanity, then by testing the strength of Charlie Nobel's commitment to friendship by asking to borrow money, then by doing the same to the disciple of Mark Winsome, Egbert. The latter test leads to a long debate about whether helping friends leads to an end of their friendship, and if so, how. Finally, the Cosmopolitan convinces the barber momentarily to trust him to pay all the financial losses the barber will accrue for removing the sign "no trust", then does not pay for the shave. In the final chapters, he has a discussion with the Old Man about a warning in the Bible about "an enemy" who "speaketh sweetly in with his lips" but his intention is to tempt, use, and profit from you.
• Charles "Charlie" Arnold Noble – Charlie tells the Cosmopolitan Frank he thinks the Missourian is worse than Colonel John Moredock. Then he tells the story of John Moredock. Then he invites Cosmopolitan Frank to drink together as they discuss the story. Frank clearly tries to get Charlie to drink too much. He agrees to be "best friends" with Frank, but turns cold after Frank reveals he would like to borrow money from him. Frank brings him back to his normal self by performing a ritual.
• Colonel John Moredock – The Indian Hater. He wasted his life taking revenge on Indians for the murder of his family. He is a kind man and a good citizen outside of his revenge sprees.
• Charlemont – The protagonist of the integrated fable told by the Cosmopolitan Frank. He is a young merchant of French descent with many friends. One day, he became morose and unfriendly to everyone, vanishes, and isn't heard from for many years. It appears he was bankrupt, but his strange behavior started several months ago. One day, he comes back, friendly and dressed in expensive clothes. Everybody wondered about events, then one friend asks about them several years later. Charlemont knew his ruin was coming, and didn't want to embarrass his friends into helping him, so he shunned them, and moved to Marseilles (France) so he made his fortune again, then returned, confident he wouldn't embarrass his friends. (The Cosmopolitan Frank stresses there is no moral to this story, it is merely an amusement.)
• Mark Winsome, The mystic Master – cold, restrained. He accosts the Cosmopolitan Frank to warn him Charlie Noble is "an operator". He encourages Frank to think about what it must be like to be a rattlesnake. Then he scares an artist-beggar away with a cold stare. His disciple, Egbert, is the example of following his philosophy.
• Crazy Italian beggar – A haggard seller of a rhapsodical tract. The Cosmopolitan Frank buys his tract and promises to read it. Mark Winsome, the Mystic Master regards him as a scoundrel.
• Egbert – Mark Winsome's disciple. He agrees to do a theoretical exercise with the Cosmopolitan Frank: he pretends to be Frank's "best friend" Charlie Noble, and plays the scene of Frank asking for money. Egbert, following his master's philosophy, gives several reasons for not lending or giving money, and tells the story of China Aster as an illustration.
• China Aster – The protagonist of an integrated fable. He accepts a loan from his friend Orchis with the aim of investing in his business to create more profit. But he doesn't have any business skills, so the money serves to bring about his ruin through unpaid interest on the loan. The devastation is so great, his wife loses her inheritance, his son misses school, and he dies of despair. (The moral of the story—never accept a loan from a friend.)
• Orchis – China Aster's friend. He wins the lottery, then pushes some of it in the form of a loan on his friend.
• The old man – He sits in the middle of the Gentlemen's cabin, awake while others try to sleep, reading the Bible. He discusses the trustworthiness of the Apocrypha with Cosmopolitan Frank. He buys objects from the peddler-boy. He gets a "Counterfeit Detector" as a bonus for buying so much, and tries to use it to see if his banknotes are fake. The Detector is complicated.
• The man talking in his sleep – A man sleeping in a berth in the Gentlemen's cabin while the Old Man and Cosmopolitan Frank have a discussion. His interjections in his sleep coincide with the subject of the discussion, attributing the quote from The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach to a description of the confidence man.
• The peddler-boy – A boy dressed in rags sells items for protecting one's money from thieves on a steamer: a traveler's lock, a money belt. His sales technique involves showing the uselessness of the object just purchased to sell the next object. All his customers receive a bonus of a "Counterfeit Detector".

Background

Early in 1855, there was widespread news coverage of a man who tricked people out of their money in New York by pretending to need an emergency loan. Earlier in the 1850s, magazines portrayed P. T. Barnum's promotion of hoaxes to make money as a similar kind of swindling. These accounts, along with his reading of Don Quixote, likely inspired the themes in The Confidence-Man.

Melville worked on the manuscript for The Confidence-Man between 1855 and 1856. He had problems with severe sciatica pain during 1855. He wanted to publish The Confidence-Man serially in Putnam's, but it was not accepted for publication. While visiting New York in December 1855 (during the composition of the novel), Melville read the entry on himself in Cyclopaedia of American Literature written by Evert Duckinck and his brother. The entry described Melville as a writer who did not trouble himself with "the exactions of artificial life," and concluded that Pierre was a "literary mistake". On request from Allan Melville (Herman's brother), Nathaniel Hawthorne, a longtime friend of Herman, acted as Herman's agent while he was touring Europe and the area around Jerusalem.

The Confidence-Man was published on April Fool's Day in 1857.

Reception

According to biographer Delbanco, critics were "baffled" by The Confidence-Man, and some reviews were "vicious". Whereas reviews of Moby-Dick elicited responses from Melville and caused him insecurity about the popularity of his writing, reviews of The Confidence-Man had less impact on him. It seems that after completing the manuscript, Melville had already decided to stop writing novels. Reviews from London, England were, according to the editors of the Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man, of "more historical significance" than the American reviews. A recent discovery of three more American reviews found that at least some American reviewers considered The Confidence-Man with more "serious attention."

Multiple American newspapers gave reviews of the novel. North American and United States Gazette called it "a sketchy affair" with occasional humor that peeks out "though buried under quite too many words." The Evening Transcript from Boston praised Melville's treatment of the archetypal confidence man and described Melville as dealing "equally well in the material description and the metaphysical insight of human life." Boston's Daily Times was less generous, calling it "ineffably meaningless and trashy." In Maine: "We have found it hard reading." In the recently-discovered longer reviews, the Troy Daily Whig found how Melville puts the confidence man on display "entirely original". The Bangor Daily Whig in Maine wrote that the novel "has a good deal of sound philosophy in it, but some of the incidents of humbuggery." The monthly newspaper United States Journal acknowledged the craftsmanship of the novel, but was highly critical of it, calling it a "desecration of the fine talents and affluent genius of the author. [...] Satire that has no mellowness is inhuman; we are made worse rather than better from it."

Reviews from London were more in-depth and saw Melville's change in style as a sign of his development as an author, while being conscious of the book's flaws. The Athenaeum called the novel a "moral miracle-play" for its focus on how various characters interact in dialogue with the confidence man, either as credulous dupes or would-be followers. They acknowledged that Melville's style is "one, from its peculiarities, difficult to manage" but that he "pours his colours over the narration with discretion as well a prodigality", concluding that the novel was "invariably graphic, fresh, and entertaining." London's Leader described Melville's style as full of "festoons of exuberant fancy" interspersed with descriptions of the American steamboat and surrounding landscape. They praised Melville's use of satire, and criticized his habit of "discours[ing] upon too large a scale" and keeping his characters too rigid. A review from Literary Gazette was not as generous and described the book not as a novel, but as a series of forty-five conversations, which "so far resembling the Dialogues of Plato as to be undoubted Greek to ordinary men." The review continued to criticize the style as long-winded and obscure. They conceded that "this caldron, so thick and slab with nonsense, often bursts into the bright, brief bubbles of fancy and wit" and concluded that the book was ruined with "strained effort after excessive originality." A review at Spectator did not appreciate the "local allusions" in the work, and found the satirical style to be "drawn from the European writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with some of Mr. Melville's own Old World observations superadded."

Later evaluations of The Confidence-Man have been more generous. American historian Walter A. McDougall wrote that it "holds up a mirror to the American people". Melville biographer Delbanco called the book "a prophetically postmodern work in which swindler cannot be distinguished from swindled and the confidence man tells truth and lies simultaneously".

Style

The majority of the text consists of dialogues between steamboat passengers. These are interspersed with the insertion of other texts, including essay, short story, an ode, and "The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating". Unlike in Moby-Dick, when a central narrator unites disparate accounts, these various genres of texts give multiple perspectives. While Melville authored most of these texts-within-the-text, the Indian-Hating chapters come from History, Life, and Manners, in the West by James Hall. Another story, told by one character (Egbert) in the style of another character (Charlie) comes from a short story Melville had written previously. There are three essays on fiction which address the reader directly. The essays on fiction showed Melville reconsidering some of his ideas about fiction. The essay in chapter 33 addressed realism, postulating that it was unnecessary in fiction. The essay in chapter 44 argued that authors do not create original characters most of the time. The essay identifies Hamlet and Milton's Satan as original characters where the entire plot of their narratives revolve around their concerns.

As a satire, The Confidence-Man drew inspiration from British satires like Gulliver's Travels and The Citizen of the World. The highly specific chapter titles were a style popular in the 18th century in humorous books like Tom Jones and Amelia. Additionally, the character of the confidence man is an allegory for how the Christian devil works as the Father of Lies in America, using the imagery of the serpent and Biblical language to make the allegory clear. According to Melville's biographer Hershel Parker, the way that the allegory permeates quotidian conversations makes them significant on a metaphysical level.

The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Many readers place The Confidence-Man alongside Melville's Moby-Dick and "Bartleby, the Scrivener" as a precursor to 20th-century literary pre-occupations with nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. Elizabeth Foster, in her introduction to a 1954 edition, called it a social satire as well as "a philosophical satire on optimism" resembling Candide in its message. However, stylistically, unlike Candide, The Confidence-Man "is [a satire] of subtle, pervasive, elusive irony, of suggestion and understatement rather than exaggeration, of talk rather than action."

Literary analysis

The work includes satires of 19th-century literary figures: Mark Winsome is based on Ralph Waldo Emerson, while his "practical disciple" Egbert is Henry David Thoreau; Charlie Noble is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne; and a beggar in the story was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.

The Confidence-Man could have been inspired by the case of William Thompson, a con artist active in New York City in the late 1840s, whose actions inspired the press to coin the term "confidence man".

Yoshiaki Furui, an English professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, saw the character of Black Guinea as an example of how Melville hints at his characters' emotions rather than explaining them. In a scene where Black Guinea receives alms, he swallows his "secret emotions" and winces when coins strike his face. However, it is unclear if he is wincing in pain, or as part of the performance of begging. The novel indicates that some inner emotion exists, "highlighting both its presence and its unknowability at once".

English professor Caleb Doan, in an article examining gift exchanges in Melville's works, found that The Confidence-Man shows a "dystopic version of exchange" in which gifts are based not on generosity or reciprocation, but on "self-aggrandizement and exploitation." The steamer Fidele corresponds with America in general. The exchange between the barber William Cream and his customer Frank Goodman illustrates the deeply cynical outlook The Confidence-Man takes towards gift economies. Goodman convinces Cream to take down his "No Trust" sign by saying he will pay for anyone who betrays that trust. But then Goodman himself refuses to pay after his shave, telling him to trust him to pay later (which he does not do). Cream puts his "No Trust" sign back up, and we understand that, as Doan explains, "the modern-world economy has corrupted the notion of benevolent exchange."

One of the main themes of the novel is unresolvable conflict, including racial conflict. In the chapter where the confidence man appears as a "non-resistant", the other passengers can't decide whether to have sympathy for him or to see him as trying to take advantage of their sympathy. This mirrors the tension between the belief that philosophy can help to resolve questions of morality and justice, and the belief that, as the title of the chapter states, "many men have many minds." This initial encounter prepares the reader for the "Indian-hating" chapters. Writing for J19, Rachel Ravina, an English professor at Boston University, saw these chapters as commenting on George Copway's writings for a white audience about his experience as an Ojibwe man. Copway also wrote about white culture as an insider-outsider. Melville's chapters focus on the generalizations made in frontier writing. The character Charlie Noble tells the confidence man stories about John Moredock which he heard secondhand. Moredock is the eponymous Indian-hater of the chapter. Ravina interprets this as a commentary on how the information is filtered through multiple people: "we are meant to notice the absence of direct Indian speech, its silencing, filtering, distortion, or inaccessibility, along with the erasure of white violence in the selective process by which colonizers rewrite the facts." Another chapter on Indian-hating is a mock philosophical treatise on the metaphysics of Indian-hating. It posits that Indian-hating may be socialized, or chemically predisposed, and that a simple difference in environment creates physical racial differences. The satire, while trying to find a rational explanations for "Indian nature" as well as Indian-hating, which Ravina states, "points to the limitations of empirical investigations of race and the limitless bias of ethnographic description, which can never have the objectivity its authority performs." The narrator of the chapter points out his own unreliability, stating that an Indian-hating backwoodsman would never use these words, but that another person "found him expression for his meaning." Ravina generalizes the issues these chapters raise, seeing them "as an impetus for readers to recognize the representational limits of their sources and the racial dynamics of power and speech."

Katie McGettigan, a senior lecturer in American literature at Royal Holloway, University of London wrote a book on Melville and Modernity. She argues that the The Confidence-Man engages with mass-produced text and printing in a way that anticipates Walter Benjamin's work on the subject. The novel is modeled after various works that were published in the literary magazines of his day. This mass-reproduction of work led to "the dissolution of the link between authenticity and originality". Rather than a religious allegory, McGettigan sees the book as "novel and periodical, original and copy, frustrating and pleasurable"—a work that attests to "the aesthetic power and creative potential of multiplicity." The resulting work revels in "the partial, multiple, and modern."

Adaptations

The novel was turned into an opera by George Rochberg; it was premiered by the Santa Fe Opera in 1982, but was not held to be a success. The 2008 movie The Brothers Bloom, starring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz, borrows some of the plot and makes numerous references to the book: One of the characters is named Melville, the steamer ship is named Fidèle, and the initial mark refers to these coincidences.

Sources

• Delbanco, Andrew (2005). Melville: his world and work. New York: A. A. Knopf. ISBN 0375403140.
• McGettigan, Katie (2017). Herman Melville: modernity and the material text. Durham, New Hampshire: University of New Hampshire Press. ISBN 9781512601381.
• Melville, Herman; Parker, Hershel; Niemeyer, Mark (2006). The confidence-man: his masquerade: an authoritative text, contemporary reviews, biographical overviews, sources, backgrounds, and criticism (2nd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 9780393979275.
• Milder, Robert. (1988). "Herman Melville." Columbia Literary History of the United States. Gen. Ed. Emory Elliott. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05812-8
• Parker, Hershel (2002). Herman Melville: a biography. Volume 2, 1851-1891. Vol. 2: 1851-1891. Baltimore (Md.) London: the Johns Hopkins university press. ISBN 0801868920.
• Ravina, Rachel S. (2021). ""There Is an Indian Nature": Ethnography, Skepticism, and the "Theory of the Peace Congress" in Melville's Confidence-Man". J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. 9 (2): 331–355. doi:10.1353/jnc.2021.0031.
• Foster, Elizabeth (1954). Introduction to The Confidence-Man. New York: Hendricks House, Inc. pp. xiii–xcv.

External links

• 1954 Hendricks House Confidence-Man, online edition edited by Elizabeth S. Foster
• The Confidence-Man at Project Gutenberg
• The Confidence-Man public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Critical reaction to and a publishing history of The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade from The Life and Works of Herman Melville
• Online text of the novel from the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library