Saving Bartleby

''Can You Save the Scrivener?'' ''Next Step'' [[Go to the character page ->Characters]] and make a choice, then see where that choice leads you. ''About the Story'' //Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street// is a short story written by Herman Melville. First published in 1853, the storyline is deceptively simple: a worker’s passive resistance leads to his death. The story’s narrator is the title character’s last boss, who strives in vain to facilitate a change in this worker's behavior. Here is a link to the full text of the story, courtesy of Project Gutenberg: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231"> //Bartleby, The Scrivener//</a>. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Librarians.png" width="456" height="600" alt="Scribes of a Certain Order"> ^^I loved this daguerreotype photography from 1853. It shows three New York gentlemen: the publisher Charles Benjamin Norton with the librarians Seth Hastings Grant and Daniel Coit Gilman. I thought this might be what Bartleby, Nippers and Turkey looked like.^^ ''What was a Scrivener?'' A scrivener was a kind of human "typewriter". Sometimes they would compose original letters. However, their primary function was to copy existing documents. Keep in mind that the mechanical typewriter as we understand it was first produced in 1874 (some twenty years after our tale), so when the story was written the scrivener was a **critical** office worker (Acocella). ''About the Game'' Readers may recall the frustration of the characters in the story when they found they could not effect any kind of change in the title character’s behavior. While much of the action takes place in law offices, mentions are made of what the characters do when they are not in the office, for example, Turkey’s time spent in bars drinking, or Ginger Nut’s forays to the market to buy treats for the staff. =>This game focuses on what some of the characters are doing when they are away from the office.<= ''About the Tool'' We used Twine to create this game. Twine is free and open-sourced. <a href="https://twinery.org/"> Click here to learn more about Twine</a>. --- ''Works Cited'' Acocella, Joan. “The Typing Life, How Writers Used to Write.” The New Yorker, Apr. 2007, https://newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/04/09/070409crbo_books_acocella Brady, Mathew B. Charles Benjamin Norton, publisher and bookseller; Seth Hastings Grant, librarian at the New York Mercantile Library; and Daniel Coit Gilman, assistant librarian at Yale at the first annual meeting of American librarians, September in New York City. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2004664034.

//The Cast of Characters// ''Ginger Nut'': a twelve-year-old apprentice who mainly runs errands. [[Go to Ginger Nut's page ->Ginger Nut]]. ''Mister Cutlets'': A cook at the local jail, also known as the grub-man. [[Go to Mr. Cutlet's page ->Cutlets]]. ''Narrator'': We never learn his name. He is an older gentleman whose law practice focuses on bonds, mortgages and title-deeds. [[Go to the Narrator's page ->Narrator]]. ''Nippers'': a piratical looking twenty-five-year-old man, whose whiskered face and sallow complexion hides his ambitions. [[Go to Nippers' page->Nippers]]. ''Turkey'': a short, asthmatic Englishman in his late fifties who drinks to excess. [[Go to Turkey's page ->Turkey]]. --- <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/FivePoints.png" width="800" height="526" alt="Five Points"> In the 1800s, horses were the primary way people got around town, after human feet. Horses were everywhere pulling carts and trolleys and carrying humans. It is estimated that in 1900, New York City horses produced some 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day (Burrows). All that poop attracted uncountable flies. And, when it dried, the winds blew it around. Brigades of sweepers collected the stuff; their work made more difficult by the free-living hogs that roamed freely. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Street-Pigs.png" width="700" height="395" alt="Five Points"> "Pork Lively" - A Sketch From Nature At The Corner Of Broadway And Fourth Street. Circa 1859. There was no such thing as a clean street. Here is how Charles Dickens’ described the situation from his travelogue //American Notes//: // They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are; having, for the most part, scanty brown backs, like the lids of old horsehair trunks: spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for his profile, nobody would recognize it for a pig’s likeness. They are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are thrown upon their own resources in early life, and become preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows where he lives, much better than anybody could tell him// (Dickens). There is some debate as whether Dickens’ notes were an over-reaction at the state of the city or a strategy to poke fun at his American cousins. However, there can be no doubt that New York was growing at a rate that many of its inhabitants found alarming. While always diverse, culturing the city had been dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestants. However, in 1845 a potato blight devastated Ireland and some 200,000 Irish made Gotham their home. These overwhelming poor immigrants became a source of cheap labor, displacing the native born and triggering street riots (Reitano). While Melville does not tackle these changes head-on, the sly way the ‘lawful’ residents of the office building react to Bartleby’s haunting of their halls is not so different than the resistance many ‘natives’ felt to the influx of so many immigrants. Here’s passage from the story: //These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B—" pointing to the lawyer, "has turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting the building generally, sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by night. Every body is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some fears are entertained of a mob; something you must do, and that without delay// (Melville). <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/OverProduction.png" width="800" height="600" alt="Over Production"> //Print shows a vignette cartoon with Father Knickerbocker standing at center looking on in dismay at the site of a planned "49" story building near several other skyscrapers already under construction; the surrounding vignettes show an abundance of college athletes, excessive periods of mourning, a spate of frivolous lawsuits with juries that take "busy men" away their work, "over-production of trashy newspapers and voracious newspaper readers", and overly ostentatious "mausoleums"// (LOC). --- ''Work Cited'' Burrows, Edwin G. and Wallace, Mike. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 Louie Crew, Charles Dickens as a Critic of the United States, Midwest Quarterly 16.1 (1974): 42-50 Dickens, Charles, and Marcus Stone. “American Notes by Charles Dickens.” Project Gutenberg, 1 Oct. 1996, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/675. Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Pork Lively" - A Sketch From Nature At The Corner Of Broadway And Fourth Street." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1859. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-d780-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Reitano, Joanne R. “The Proud and Passionate City, 1840-1865.” The Restless City: a Short History of New York from Colonial Times to the Present, by, Routledge, 2010, pp. 64–65. Opper, Frederick Burr, Artist, and S. D Ehrhart. Over-production / F. Opper & Ehrhart. N.Y.: Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2012648500/.

''Turkey'' //In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o'clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o'clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve o'clock, meridian. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o'clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easy to be matched—for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his eccentricities I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily and smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled. …The truth was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time// (Melville). [[Go to the Tavern page ->Tavern]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/DrunkAgain.png" width="400" height="676" alt="Drunk again an glad of it"> This comic character is from a tobacco trading card. These cards were an early form of collectible advertising. I thought it caught Turkey’s impish nature and the narrator’s description of his clerk’s “fine florid hue”. The implication here is that Turkey was sober at the start of day, but at his meal-break would drink heavily, so that when he returned to the office he was inebriated and could not be trusted to write cleanly. Below is an excerpt from the published diary of an English captain, who made a tour of the U.S. in 1836 and shared his observations of U.S. drinking habits. //I am sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink; if you close a bargain you drink; they quarrel in their drink, and they make it up with a drink. They drink because it is hot; they drink because it is cold. If successful in elections, they drink and rejoice; if not, they drink and swear; they begin to drink early in the morning, they leave off late at night; they commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they soon drop into the grave// (Marryat). There are many reasons why Americans in general, and New Yorkers in particular, drank so heavily. Most compelling was the high cost of potable water. For many, beer was cheaper, and safer, to drink than the muddy local waters. It took a massive cholera epidemic in the 1830s, which killed more than three-thousand residents, for New Yorkers to vote to build a public water network (Soll). It is clear our narrator has an ambiguous view of Turkey’s drinking. He does not condemn the man for his excesses, but instead, tries to work around them. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/TemperanceCard.png" width="800" height="522" alt="Temperance Card"> How people thought about drinking, and drinking to excess, changed in the 1800s. When the century started, the puritanical view of indulgence was popular: the character of the person doing the drinking was called into question. But by the end of the century, beliefs had shifted to take a more medicinal view and blame the substance itself, and by extension, the saloon owners who made a business from it. This change created a temperance movement and eventually led the Federal government to ban the general sale of alcohol in 1920. Prohibition, as it came to be known, succeeding at “the destruction of the 170,000 saloons” (Aaron) but did not stop the citizenry from drinking. The law was repealed in 1933. --- ''Work Cited'' Aaron, Paul, and David Musto. “Temperance and Prohibition in America: A Historical Overview.” Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Jan. 1981, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216414/. George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. //Drunk again an glad of it.// The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-380b-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Printed pledge card of the National Christian Temperance Union" //The New York Public Library Digital Collections//. 1887. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/1c1ab4f0-0435-0134-fd0e-00505686a51c Marryat , Frederick. //Diary in America, Series One : Captain Marryat (1792-1848).// Internet Archive, Athelstane e-Books, London, England, United Kingdom, 1 Jan. 1970, https://archive.org/details/Captain_Marryat_Diary_in_America_Series_One. Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. Sol, David. “Introduction: The Evolution of a Water System.” //Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply//. Cornell University Press, Ithaca; London, 2013, pp. 1–10. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1xx649.4. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020.

''The Tavern'' // I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went any where in particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at present; that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health// (Melville). [[Return to the Instructions ->Can You Save the Scrivener?]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/NickerInn.png" width="600" height="406" alt="Knickerbocker Kitchen"> The Knickerbocker Kitchen, Union Square. Circa 1864 Taverns and beer gardens (make popular by the huge influx of German immigrants) proliferated in New York, so that by 1883 the streetscape was dominated by those establishments. The map below shows just how ubiquitous they were! Several factors contributed to this. The local wells and streams were polluted, and potable water was expensive while beer and whiskey were cheap. As historian David Soll noted in //Empire of Water//, “it was not until the 1830s, in the wake of a ferocious cholera epidemic that killed more than three thousand residents, that New Yorkers voted to build a public water network to convey high-quality supplies from outside the city” (Sol) <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Liquordom.png" width="600" height="801" alt="Liquordom in New York City "> An 1883 map of the saloons in one section of the lower east side of Manhattan. Here is how travel writer James McCabe described the downtown scene. //Between the hours of noon and three o’clock, the down-town restaurants are generally crowded with a hungry throng. In some of them every seat at the long counters and at the tables is filled, and the floor is crowded with men standing and eating from plates which they hold in their hands. The noise, the bustle, the clatter of knives and dishes, the slamming of doors, and the cries of the waiters as they shout out the orders of the guests, are deafening. The waiters move about with a celerity that is astonishing; food is served and eaten with a dispatch peculiar to these places. A constant stream of men is pouring out of the doors, and as steady a stream flowing in to take their places. At some of the largest of these establishments as many as fifteen hundred people are supplied with food during the course of the day// (McCabe). <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/GothamInn.png" width="760" height="497" alt="Gotham Inn "> The exterior of the Old Gotham Inn on the Bowery, circa 1862. Below is a menu from the Metropolitan Hotel from 1859. It was heavy on the meat *and* the breakfast wines. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Menu.png" width="461" height="800" alt="Gotham Inn "> --- ''Work Cited'' McCabe, James Dabney. “Lights and Shadows of New York Life.” p. 510. Project Gutenberg, 27 Oct. 2006, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19642. Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "The Old "Gotham" Inn, --In Bowery." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1862. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-d6c3-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "The Knickerbocker Kitchen, Union Square." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1864. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-d764-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. "BREAKFAST MENU held by METROPOLITAN HOTEL at "NEW YORK, NY" (HOTEL)" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1859. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-1a1d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. //Liquordom in New York City// The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1883. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/20bcbf10-f3b2-0130-c1bc-58d385a7b928

''Nippers'' //I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers — ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. But with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, ...was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers// (Melville). [[Go to the Tavern ->Tavern]] [[Go to the Tombs ->The Tombs]] [[Go to the Office -> The Office]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Nippers.png" width="450" height="450" alt="Lower Manhattan at the Time of the Story"> This panel was taken from Mark Twain's novel "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today". The drawing is by Charles Warner. I enjoy the crooked smile and lupine cast of this gentleman's face. I can imagine Nippers, meeting with a client, decked out in his best suit, looking to close a transaction. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Ward.png" width="800" height="551" alt="Lower Manhattan at the Time of the Story"> New York City Wards and Assembly Districts and also Senatorial Districts 1885. For political purposes, New York State use to divide its land mass into districts and wards, with wards being the smaller unit. This system was replaced with the current scheme in 1938. However, at the time of the story, ward politics drove the political machine. // The ward boss was chosen by consensus from within the controlling democratic club or society, which voted semiannually on such matters. Both the precinct captain and the ward boss were commonly referred to as ward heelers, a term used to describe anyone who “worked the ward” by giving out turkeys to the poor and needy on holidays and soliciting votes and support for the organization// (Hague). Implied in the story is that Nippers may have political ambitions. And, that he spent time on the step of the Halls of Justice, more colloquially known as “The Tombs” to make deals between his clients and city officials. --- ''Work Cited'' Hague Frank, and Nucky Johnson “In the Court of the Emerald King”. American Dictators: and the Perfection of the Urban Political Machine, by Steven Hart, Rutgers University Press, 2013, pp. 11–29. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bmzkjj.5. Accessed 9 Dec. 2020. Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. "New York City Wards and Assembly Districts and also Senatorial Districts 1885." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/468f7e80-db56-012f-b02d-58d385a7bbd0 Melville, Herman. //Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville//. Project Gutenberg, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. Twain, Mark, and Charles Warner. “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.” //Project Gutenberg//, 21 June 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3178.

''Ginger Nut'' //A lad some twelve years old. His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nut-shell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he discharged with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers. Copying law papers being proverbially dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake—small, flat, round, and very spicy—after which he had been named by them// (Melville). [[Go to a stall by the Custom House ->Custom House Stall]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/newsboy.png" width="282" height="519" alt="A romantic illustration of a newsboy from the era."> A romantic illustration of a newsboy from the era. Child-labor was common in the 1800s with many children being apprenticed to a trade, rather than going to school to learn one. The basis was in English Common Law which found the child was property of the father. "Seldom were questions raised about the right of the father to benefit from the labors of his offspring. This practice was simply seen as one of the natural privileges of parenthood" (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). --- ''Work Cited'' Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. The Manhattan shirts are the best in the world. [New York: publisher not transcribed] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018694515/. “History of Child Labor in the United States-Part 1: Little Children Working : Monthly Labor Review.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1 Jan. 2017, www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm.

''Stall by the Custom House'' //Copying law papers being proverbially dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake—small, flat, round, and very spicy—after which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers—indeed they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny—the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and flurried rashnesses of Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by making an oriental bow, and saying—"With submission, sir, it was generous of me to find you in stationery on my own account."// (Melville). [[Return to the Instructions ->Can You Save the Scrivener?]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Custom-House.png" width="700" height="525" alt="Custom House"> A romantic rendering of the Custom House, circa 1850. A custom house is generally a place where the government collects money on goods moving in and out of its territory. New York City is a port city and at the time of the story nearly two-thirds of the nation’s wealth was generated through the Port of New York (Federal Hall). Most of that money past through its custom house. In the 1800s, there were numerous scandals regarding graft and corruption that surrounded the Custom House. The cartoon below comes from //Puck//, a satirical magazine whose “main target was political corruption—regardless of whether it originated in the Republican or the Democratic Party” (Dickinson). <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/CustomeHouseCartoon.png" width="800" height="535" alt="The custom-house code of morals under our beautiful tariff system"> The custom-house code of morals under our beautiful tariff system. Spitzenbergs are a kind of apple, native to New York State. Ginger biscuits are a hard cookie that uses ginger and molasses and were popularized by the British in the 1840s (Biscuit people). I laugh when I think of the office boy being sent on trips throughout the day to bring fruit and cookies back to the office. Even Bartleby succumbs to the lure of the Gingernut cookies. At the time of the story, street vendors were ubiquitous. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Custom-House-2.png" width="700" height="525" alt="Custom House2"> A more realistic view of the Custom House as seen from Broad Street, circa 1845. --- ''Work Cited'' Biscuit people. “Ginger Biscuits.” Biscuit People, Biscuit People, 4 Dec. 2020, www.biscuitpeople.com/magazine/post/ginger-biscuits. Dickinson State University. “Puck Magazine.” TR Center - Puck Magazine, Dickinson State University, www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Reading-and-Writing/Puck-Magazine.aspx. Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Custom House" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1850 - 1945. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5f46d300-b55c-0132-6cb5-58d385a7bbd0 Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy. “History Timeline.” Federal Hall, National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy, 1 Jan. 1970, federalhall.org/history-timeline/?v=7516fd43adaa. Opper, Frederick Burr, Artist. The custom-house code of morals under our beautiful tariff system / F. Opper. N.Y.: Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661313/. Views in New York by Robert Kerr, architect. No. 1, the Custom House, Wall Street viewed from Broad Street. 1845. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003666946/

''Mister Cutlets'' //As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man, in an apron, accosted me, and jerking his thumb over his shoulder said—"Is that your friend?" "Yes." "Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that's all." "Who are you?" asked I, not knowing what to make of such an unofficially speaking person in such a place. "I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to provide them with something good to eat." "Is this so?" said I, turning to the turnkey. He said it was. "Well then," said I, slipping some silver into the grub-man's hands (for so they called him). "I want you to give particular attention to my friend there; let him have the best dinner you can get. And you must be as polite to him as possible." "Introduce me, will you?" said the grub-man, looking at me with an expression which seem to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a specimen of his breeding. Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and asking the grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby. "Bartleby, this is Mr. Cutlets; you will find him very useful to you." "Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant," said the grub-man, making a low salutation behind his apron. "Hope you find it pleasant here, sir;—spacious grounds—cool apartments, sir—hope you'll stay with us some time—try to make it agreeable. May Mrs. Cutlets and I have the pleasure of your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets' private room?" "I prefer not to dine to-day," said Bartleby, turning away. "It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners." So saying he slowly moved to the other side of the inclosure, and took up a position fronting the dead-wall. "How's this?" said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare of astonishment. "He's odd, aint he?" "I think he is a little deranged," said I, sadly// (Melville). [[Go to The Tombs ->The Tombs]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Cutlets.png" width="400" height="532" alt="Cutlets"> The Tombs was a local jail. More of a waystation for people who had been arrested, with most being released with a fine and some facing conviction and then being moved to the Blackwell Island prison (we now call that island Roosevelt Island) (McCarthy). As such, it is not surprising our narrator would have had little issue gaining entrance, or that once inside, the workers would have taken notice of him. Melville writes Cutlets speech so we might hear the character’s accent, words like “sarvant” and “aint he”? In this way, Melville indicates the class difference between the lawyer and the grubman. The term “turnkey” was slang for a prison guard (Pray). <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Zebras.png" width="700" height="525" alt="Cutlets"> "Zebras" At Work On Blackwell's Island, New York. The term Zebra spoke to the black-and-white striped pants prisoners wore. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Turnkey.png" width="348" height="599" alt="OldTurnkey"> Hopkins, Tighe. "The Dungeons of Old Paris", 1897. --- ''Work Cited'' Hopkins, Tighe. "The Dungeons of Old Paris", 1897. https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Turnkey.png Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. McCarthy, Tom. “New York Correction Timeline.” //NY Correction Timeline I//, www.correctionhistory.org/html/timeline/html/timeline.html. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Zebras" At Work On Blackwell'S Island, New York." //The New York Public Library Digital Collections//. 1882. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-0718-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Pray, Roger T. “How Did Our Prisons Get That Way?” AMERICAN HERITAGE, 1987, www.americanheritage.com/how-did-our-prisons-get-way. Pughe, J. S. , Artist. Not this Thanksgiving / J.S. Pughe. N.Y.: Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2012648583/.

''The Tombs'' // When again I entered my office, lo, a note from the landlord lay upon the desk. I opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the writer had sent to the police, and had Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant. …As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be conducted to the Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but in his pale unmoving way, silently acquiesced. …The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs, or to speak more properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the purpose of my call, and was informed that the individual I described was indeed within. I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated, however unaccountably eccentric. I narrated all I knew and closed by suggesting the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement as possible till something less harsh might be done—though indeed I hardly knew what. At all events, if nothing else could be decided upon, the alms-house must receive him. I then begged to have an interview. Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and especially in the enclosed grass-platted yard thereof. And so, I found him there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves// (Melville). [[Return to the Instructions ->Can You Save the Scrivener?]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/PrisonPenTombs.png" width="450" height="600" alt="The Prison Pen in The Tombs"> The Prison Pen in The Tombs. At the time of the story, this prison was already notorious. Built in the image of an Egyptian mausoleum and over an underground Spring, it began to sink as soon as it was erected. Journalist Thomas McCarthy described it thusly: “You have to picture all of this, and what that would be like for (the prisoners) …They mentally they had sunk so low, and now they were in a room that was damp and cold, and dark and dank that was sinking into the ground, just like a tomb”. This 1896 print shows the prison, built 1835-1840, at Centre, Elm, Franklin, and Leonard Streets, New York City. While this rendering conveys a certain grandness, the interior was anything but grand. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/ToomsDrawing.png" width="400" height="337" alt="The Halls of Justice, the Tombs"> In 1872, the travel writer James McCabe penned his history of New York City, which included a chapter on the Tombs. Here is how he described it. //Entering through the gloomy portal upon which the sunlight never falls, the visitor is chilled with the dampness which greets him as soon as he passes into the shadow of the heavy columns. Upon reaching the inner side of the enclosure, he finds that the portion of the prison seen from the street encloses a large courtyard, in the centre of which stands a second prison, 142 feet long by 45 feet deep, and containing 148 cells. This is the male prison, and is connected with the outer building by a bridge known as the Bridge of Sighs, since it is by means of it that condemned criminals pass from their cells to the scaffold at the time of their execution// (McCabe). This photograph, taken some time after 1890, shows the interior. I think of Bartleby wasting away in that terrible place. <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/ToomsInterior.png" width="400" height="437" alt="Interior of the Tombs - New York"> Eventually, the City removed all structures from the land and now it is a small park. Here is a picture from the NYC Parks Department page for Collect Pond Park. <img src="https://www.nycgovparks.org/photo_gallery/full_size/23758.jpg" width="800" height="450" alt="Collect Pond Park"> --- ''Work Cited'' The Halls of Justice, the Tombs / ED French s. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2003664765/. Interior of the Tombs - New York. Between 1890 and 1900. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017649877/. Marcius, Chelsia Rose. “NYC's Most Notorious Jail: A Look Back at The Tombs.” Nydailynews.com, New York Daily News, 17 Oct. 2020, https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-nyc-jail-correction-department-the-tombs-history-20201017-qz5rxebchnbxziygby7tlkvyie-story.html. McCabe, James Dabney. “Lights and Shadows of New York Life.” p. 234. Project Gutenberg, 27 Oct. 2006, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19642. Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” Project Gutenberg, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. NYC Parks Department. “Collect Pond Park.” //Collect Pond Park Highlights : NYC Parks//, www.nycgovparks.org/parks/collect-pond-park/history.

''The Narrator'' //I am a rather elderly man. I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method// (Melville). [[Go to the Office -> The Office]] [[Go to the Tombs ->The Tombs]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/Narrator.png" width="400" height="574" alt="Our Narrator"> The drawing is by Charles Warner. This is how I imagine our narrator, surrounded by books in a comfortable office mired in thought about what to do about the difficult situation Bartleby has created by their preference to no longer write. Until the Civil War, lawyers in the U.S. were primarily known as advocates within a court room setting. Courtroom dramas were followed by the masses and political fortunes could be made on the spine of a successful practice. //“As one looks back, for example, accounts of Abraham Lincoln, as circuit-riding lawyer in the Illinois of the first half of the nineteenth century, one can see the courtroom existed in the atmosphere of what Roscoe Pound once called the sporting or the game theory of law: that the essence of the matter was the contest, rather than the resolution”// (Hurst). However, the early-1800s saw a change. Land ownership went from the public domain to private land titles, and armies of lawyers and scribes were needed to create its scaffolding. When our narrator describes himself as doing a “snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds” (Melville), he is speaking to what had become one of the dominant functions of the practice of law. --- ''Work Cited'' Hurst, James Willard. “Lawyers in American Society 1750-1966.” Marquette University, Marquette Law Review, 1967, scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2502&context=mulr. Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. Twain, Mark, and Charles Warner. “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.” Project Gutenberg, 21 June 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3178.

[[Click here to go to the instructions. ->Can You Save the Scrivener?]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/WallStreet1860.png" width="500" height="375" alt="Wall and Broad Streets"> An early morning view of Wall Street, circa 1860 (Milstein). Below is an excerpt from a map of lower Manhattan made in 1852, which is the time of the story. The grid is almost identical to our current streetscape, thought the buildings of that time would have been much shorter. However, they were just as crowded together and afforded very little light to the interior rooms. Our narrator explains it thusly when describing his offices: //"At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call "life." But if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade."// (Melville) <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/HarrisonMap.png" width="800" height="600" alt="Lower Manhattan at the Time of the Story"> Lower Manhattan (Harrison). <a href="http://www.loc.gov/item/2017586293/">Click this link</a> to leave this page and visit the original. It is very grand. --- ''Work Cited'' Harrison, John F., Cartographer, et al. //Map of the city of New-York: extending northward to Fiftieth St. N.Y. New York//: Publ'd by M. Dripps, . Phil'a Philadelphia: Engraved and printed at Kollner's Lithographic Establishment, 1852. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017586293/. Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Manhattan: Wall Street - Broad Street" //The New York Public Library Digital Collections//. 1860. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-5ae8-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231.

''The Law Office'' //Also, when a Reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and witnesses and business was driving fast; some deeply occupied legal gentleman present, seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to his (the legal gentleman's) office and fetch some papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would give a great stare, and turn to me. And what could I say? At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much. And as the idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises; keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings (for doubtless he spent but half a dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the apparition in my room; a great change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my faculties together, and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus// (Melville). [[Return to the Instructions ->Can You Save the Scrivener?]] <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/WallStPanic.png" width="600" height="799" alt="Wall Street in a Panic"> Our characters work near Wall Street. This illustration is from //Harper's Weekly// and shows Wall Street in a panic, following the 1884 failure of two local banks. These panics, where depositors would stampede to their bank to recover their savings before the bank ran out of money, were common occurrences during the so-called "gilded" age. It was not until 1913 that the U.S. created the Federal Reserve System, which helped to stabilize the banking system (Richardson). Given the instability of the banking system, it comes as no surprise that a poor scrivener would keep his life’s saving in an “old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and knotted” stashed in the drawer of his desk (Melville). I found James McCabe’s contemporary description of how New York lawyers operated in alignment with how Melville perceived them. Here is an excerpt from McCabe’s travelogue. //In most cities the members of the legal profession form a clique and are very clannish. Each one knows everybody else, and if one member of the bar is assailed, the rest are prompt to defend him. In New York, however, there is no such thing as a legal “fraternity.” Each man is wrapped in his own affairs and knows little and cares less about other members of the profession. We have been surprised to find how little these men know about each other. Some have never even heard of others who are really prosperous and talented. The courts of the city are very numerous; and each man, in entering upon his practice, makes a specialty of some one or more of them, and confines himself to them. His chances of success are better for doing this, than they would be by adopting a general practice. Indeed, it would be simply impossible for one man to practice in all. Many of the best lawyers rarely go into the courts. They prefer chamber practice and will not try a case in court if they can help it. The process in the courts is slow and vexatious and consumes too much of their time. Their chamber practice is profitable to them, and beneficial to the community, as it prevents much tedious litigation// (McCabe). <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/LawyersTrial.png" width="700" height="525" alt="Proctor-Moulton Suit"> A courtroom scene from 1874. --- //Work Cited// McCabe, James Dabney. “Lights and Shadows of New York Life.” p. 520. Project Gutenberg, 27 Oct. 2006, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19642. Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville.” //Project Gutenberg//, 1 Feb. 2004, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Brooklyn -- The Proctor-Moulton Suit." //The New York Public Library Digital Collections//. 1874. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-0d25-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 The panic - scenes in Wall Street Wednesday morning, May 14 / drawn by Schell and Hogan. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/00651213/. Richardson, Gary. Banking Panics of the Gilded Age. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/banking-panics-of-the-gilded-age. The panic - scenes in Wall Street Wednesday morning, May 14 / drawn by Schell and Hogan. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/00651213/.

''Saving Bartleby'' //A Twine game based on the Melville story of Bartleby, the Scrivener.// <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/ScribeComic.png" width="300" height="103" alt="Lower Manhattan at the Time of the Story">

--- <img src="https://bartleby.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/15366/files/2020/12/CCLicensePic.png" width="88" height="31" alt="CC License Logo"> ^^ <a href=" https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)</a>^^