Bartleby the Scrivener (16 page)

—Sophocles

BANK-note—foul note! Industry’s curse;

Ghost of coin, that mocks at toil;

Pictured wealth, that chance may spoil,

Rogues may stamp, and handling coil;

Bank-note—foul note! touch not my purse!

Bank-note—blest note! Trade’s healthy nurse:

Key to stores of treasures gold;

Making timid business bold,

Bringing both to young and old

All that home and heart can hold;

Bank-note—blest note! Come to my purse!

Bank-note—curst note! Emblem of evil;

Seed of henbane to love’s life;

Spur of hate and deadly strife;

Rust of ties ’twixt man and wife;

Whetstone of the bandit’s knife:

Bank-note—curst note! Go to the devil!

Bank-note—sweet note! Emblem of power;

Giving youthful charms to age;

Making fools seem strangely sage;

Winning, despite critic’s rage,

Puffs and glory by the page;

Bank-note—sweet notes! Come in a shower!

—Written
anonymously
for
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine
(see “Phantoms” note below). This poem immediately followed the first installment of
Bartleby, the Scrivener
in the November, 1853 issue
.

Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity:—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers anymore; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

—Herman Melville
,
from
Bartleby, the Scrivener.

All houses wherein men have lived and died,

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With Feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We must meet them at the doorway, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table, than the hosts

Invited;—the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;

He but perceives what is; while unto me

All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands

And hold in mortmain still their old estates

The spirit-world around this world of sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and every where

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise

By earthly wants and aspirations high

Come from the influence of that unseen star,

That undiscovered planet in our sky,

And as the moon, from some dark gate of cloud.

Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,

Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd,

Into the realm of mystery and night;

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,

Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

—Bartleby, the Scrivener
was first published by
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine
in the November and December issues of 1853. The two anonymously published poems, “Inscription For The Back Of A Bank Note” and “Phantoms” directly followed
Bartleby
in each respective issue
.

Take three pounds and a half of flour, three ounces of race ginger beaten and sifted, three ounces of caraway-seeds bruised, and three quarters of a pound of sugar; mix them well together, make a hole in the middle, melt three quarters of a pound of butter in a saucepan, put to it three pounds and a half of treacle; let it be just warm, put it into your flour, with four eggs, beat it well for half an hour with a wooden spoon, let be put into it half a pound of lemon and orange peel; butter the cake pan, put it in, and bake it in a soaking oven two hours and a half.—You may let it stand to cool, then make it into nuts, and them on tins.

—From the 1786 English cookbook
, Every Woman Her Own House-Keeper; Or, The Ladies’ Library.
These stolid biscuits were known as the “pot pie” of the 19
^th
century because of their inexpensive cost and heartiness. The commercial version of a ginger nut was twice baked and often utilized stale or defective biscuits reground into flour. In such cases the biscuits were very spicy as ginger was used to cover any potentially off taste left over from the reconstituted flour. The use of the word “nut” was probably in reference to the extremely hard consistency
.

The
New York Herald
Classifieds, circa 1870

Illustration:
From an 1870 edition of the
New York Herald.
Clearly someone is still looking for help
.

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www.mhpbooks.com/illuminations/bartleby

ILLUMINATIONS FOR BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER INCLUDE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Alexis de Tocqueville

Henry David Thoreau

Jonathan Edwards

Joseph Priestley

Herman Melville

and a recipe for ginger-nuts, dating from 1786.