[In the following essay, Lang and Lease examine Herman Melville's portrayal of Taylor in The Confidence Man.]

Shortly after finishing The Confidence-Man, Melville came down from the Berkshires to New York where he spent “a good stirring evening” with Evert Duyckinck (as Duyckinck described it in a diary entry dated October 1, 1856). According to Duyckinck, Melville was “charged to the muzzle with his sailor metaphysics and jargon of things unknowable” and overflowing with ironical wit. Duyckinck concludes his entry with a significant sentence that has been overlooked by commentators on The Confidence-Man: “[Melville] Said of Bayard Taylor that as some augur predicted the misfortunes of Charles I from the infelicity of his countenance so Taylor's prosperity ‘borne up by the Gods’ was written in his face.”¹ Melville's characterization of Taylor as a darling of the gods is an important clue to the fact that the Cosmopolitan, the last avatar in The Confidence-Man, is in large part a portrait of Bayard Taylor—and that the sources for Melville's “dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West”² need not be exclusively Midwestern but could be Californian as well.

The thought and phraseology of Taylor's Preface to his Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel (dated July, 1856) are echoed in Melville's Masquerade. According to Taylor, the modern traveler “is characterized by scepticism rather than credulity” and, thanks to increased commerce and colonization, “is no longer obliged to masquerade in the disguises of other races than his own, but bears about him the distinguishing stamp of his nationality. He is thus less truly a cosmopolite than his prototype of two centuries back, and while his delineations of nature are in most cases as exact and faithful as possible, he gives us less of that extrinsic human nature which lends such a charm to the story of the latter.”³ Though he was one of America's most celebrated modern travelers, Taylor identified himself with those masquerading cosmopolites of the past who adopted the garb, customs, and point of view of the distant lands they visited. An extended passage from Taylor's account of his journeys in Egypt (published in 1854) will convey something of the Bayard Taylor who fascinated Melville—and who contributed much to Melville's portrait of the Cosmopolitan:

I then sent out for a barber, had my hair shorn close to the skin, and assumed the complete Egyptian costume. I was already accustomed to the turban and shawl around the waist, and the addition of a light silk sidree, or shirt, and trowsers which contained eighteen yards of muslin, completed the dress, which in its grace, convenience, and adaptation to the climate and habits of the East, is immeasurably superior to the Frank costume […]. The legs […] are even less fettered by the wide Turkish trowsers than by a Highland kilt […].

After dinner, I seated myself at the tent door, wrapped in my capote, and gave myself up to the pipe of meditation. […] The Nile had already become my home, endeared to me not more by the grand associations of its eldest human history than by the rest and the patience which I had breathed in its calm atmosphere […]. “Achmet,” said I to the Theban who was sitting not far off, silently smoking, “we are going into strange countries—have you no fear?” “You remember, master,” he answered, “that we left Cairo on a lucky day, and why should I fear, since all things are in the hands of Allah?”⁴

Here is the original of Melville's “king of traveled good-fellows,” a cosmopolitan who “ties himself to no narrow tailor or teacher, but federates, in heart as in costume, something of the various gallantries of men under various suns” (114–15). The Cosmopolitan's “style participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse” (114)—and other furnishings, including maroon-colored slippers—reflects Bayard Taylor's sartorial style in Egypt and in Khartoum, where he prepared for a visit to the Pasha's palace by dressing himself “in Frank costume with the exception of the tarboosh, shawl and red slippers.”⁵ Noteworthy among these parallels are the references to “a Highland kilt” in Taylor and “a Highland plaid” in Melville.

“I have been daguerreotyped in Arab dress, to be engraved for Putnam's Magazine […],” Taylor wrote to his mother from New York on June 13, 1854.⁶ Melville undoubtedly saw this portrait of a turbaned Taylor in flowing Arabian garb, right hand gripping a scimitar, for it served as the frontispiece of the same number (August, 1854) in which appeared the second installment of Israel Potter.⁷ Melville was a regular contributor to Putnam's between November, 1853, and early 1856; numerous travel articles by Taylor (and references to him) were also being featured by that journal during the same period. “Our young friend, Bayard Taylor, is clearly the traveler of the nineteenth century,” an editorial note of Putnam's proclaimed in September, 1854. The same number of Putnam's in which the seventh installment of Israel Potter appeared (January, 1855) included a laudatory review of Taylor's latest travel book in language that Melville would not overlook: “Bayard Taylor […] gives us book after book, with as much facility as he steps from California to Cairo, or from Jersey to Japan.” Since he himself was mentioned in it, Melville would probably have taken note of an omnibus review in the June number of that year, “American Travelers.” The reviewer's opening gambit was that “the Englishman is at once the most rational and the most cosmopolitan of men,” but two pages later he writes:

The American is the great national eclectic, and, in the sense of adaptability, he is more cosmopolitan than the Englishman […] He learns easily, and accommodates readily. He has a more flexible accent, a more graceful taste, than any other traveler.

Taylor is singled out for praise as a traveler in the same sense that Mungo Park and John Ledyard were travelers—one who travels for the love of it.⁸Putnam's reviewer of Taylor's Poems of the Orient applauded the author's “cosmopolitan sympathy,” and Taylor's India, China, and Japan was introduced in an editorial note as “the last of his cosmopolitan series.”⁹

There is another feature which links Bayard Taylor to the cosmopolitan. As Merton M. Sealts has shown, “genial” with its cognates is a key word in Melville's work. In The Confidence-Man alone, there are more than seventy instances concentrated in chapters 9–11, 13, 23–24, 2–31, 34, 36—most of them chapters dominated by the cosmopolitan.¹⁰ “A clear, simple, and truthful narrative, gives us confidence in our guide, while an undercurrent of strong yet genial enthusiasm keeps alive and animated” was the praise bestowed on Taylor in the editorial note of September, 1854, which also mentioned his “sort of imperturbable complacency.”¹¹

Bayard Taylor's glowing pictures of California and Californians in Eldorado (1850), so different from Yoomy's apocalyptic vision of avarice in Mardi (ch. 166), may also have contributed importantly to The Confidence-Man and the Cosmopolitan; one passage dealing with men and society during the gold rush is especially relevant:

The cosmopolitan cast of society in California, resulting from the commingling of so many races and the primitive mode of life, gave a character of good-fellowship to all its members; and in no part of the world have I ever seen help more freely given to the needy, or more ready cooperation in any humane proposition. Personally, I can safely say that I never met with such unvarying kindness from comparative strangers.¹²

It is scarcely necessary to add that Melville's Cosmopolitan is a man of many more meanings that any image of Bayard Taylor as a cosmopolitan, a genial traveler and flamboyant sartorialist could contain. Especially wanting in Taylor's personality are the more sinister traits of Melville's confidence-man. In this respect, another article in Putnam's Magazine, “The History of a Cosmopolite,” is of interest.

A Cosmopolite has no country in particular, but makes himself at home in all. As he easily unlearns prejudices, he as easily adapts himself to the most varied practices […]. He is never astonished at anything, for he has paid periodical visits to France since 1793 […]. But, in forgetting his prejudices, he is apt to forget his principles: in becoming cosmopolitan, he generally loses love of country. […] He is disposed to caricature—he has an eye considerably keener for faults than for virtues: he is not troubled by modesty: and his infacility for being humbugged has begotten in him a too general irreverence, incredulousness and distrust. He reverses our common law maxim, and supposes every man to be guilty until he has proved him to be innocent.

These general characteristics of a cosmopolite are illustrated “by some passages in the life of Mr. Vincent Nolte,” whose memoirs are under review, and whose

slight tailor's bill for one year, containing the items of twelve coats of all colors, and twenty-two pairs of small clothes, suggests the possibility of his being addicted to dress.¹³

It is important to realize that Melville, simply by reading Putnam's Magazine, could have found a conjunction of motifs basic to his novel-in-the-making: trust, cosmopolitanism and masquerade. The appropriately surnamed Taylor came in for some personal satire.

There was an aftermath, sufficiently ironic. As a failed novelist and struggling lecturer in the years immediately following the publication of The Confidence-Man, Melville found himself frequently and disadvantageously compared to the most popular lecturer in the lyceum circuit, the magnetic Bayard Taylor, “a famous man, the elect of lyceums, and the pride of booksellers.”¹⁴ “Lecturing is evidently not Mr. Melville's sphere,” was one critic's response; another could not decide whether to blame Melville or consider him unlucky in having to follow “the matchless word-painting and the clear-ringing cadences of the handsome Bayard […].” Several years later, on February 24, 1865, Taylor invited Melville to attend a sociable gathering of “The Travellers,” a club made up of men who “had seen much of the earth's surface.” There is no record of Melville's attendance and Elizabeth Melville Metcalf attributes his apparent failure to accept Taylor's invitation to poor health and low spirits.¹⁵ Her explanation may be accurate but does not tell all.

Notes

1. Evert Duyckinck's diary, October 1, 1856, Jay Leyda, The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), II, 523. That The Confidence-Man had just been completed (or was almost finished) is indicated by Melville's agreement to deliver the manuscript to Dix and Edwards by October 11. Leyda, II, 525. A later contractual agreement postponed the promised delivery date until November 1; see Elizabeth S. Foster, Introduction to The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (New York: Hendricks House, 1954), p. xxvi. For Melville's earlier involvement with Taylor, see Hugh Hetherington, Melville's Reviewers (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1961), esp. pp. 120-21 and n. 28, 152. Taylor composed a valentine for Melville for Anne Lynch's party in 1848 and wrote favorable reviews of Mardi and Redburn for Graham's Magazine in May 1849 and January 1850, respectively.

2. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, ed. Hershel Parker (New York: W. W. Morton, 1971), p. 4. Subsequent references to this edition will appear parenthetically in the text. Critics have shown an awareness of Melville's use of real persons as models for some of the characters in The Confidence-Man but have neglected the Cosmopolitan. For a persuasive identification of a real person in the novel see Harrison Hayford, “Poe in The Confidence-Man,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 14 (December, 1959), 207–18. More recently, William Norris has presented a convincing case for a real-life counterpart of the “gentleman with gold sleeve-buttons” of Chapter 7; see “Abbott Lawrence in The Confidence-Man: American Success or American Failure?” American Studies, 17 (Spring 1976), 25-38.

3. (New York and Cincinnati: Moore …, 1860 [1856], I, viii.

4. Life and Landscapes From Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile (London: Sampson, Low, 1854), pp. 169-70.

5. Life and Landscapes, p. 288. In a letter to his mother from Egypt dated December 11, 1851 (perhaps accessible to Melville when incorporated into one of Taylor's numerous travel books or articles), Taylor includes a reference to “white baggy trowsers” very similar to those worn by the Cosmopolitan: “I am now wearing one of [my dragoman's] dresses: a green embroidered jacket, with slashed sleeves; a sort of striped vest, with a row of about thirty buttons from the neck to the waist; a large plaid silk shawl as belt; white baggy trowsers, gathered at the knee, with long, tight-fitting stokkings […].” Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ed. Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884), I, 223.

6. Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, I, 277.

7. Putnam's Magazine, 4 (August, 1854). The frontispiece portrait of Taylor faces p. 121; the second installment of Israel Potter is on pp. 135-46. The same portrait of Taylor in Arab dress is also used as the frontispiece for Life and Landscapes, published the same year.

8. See Putnam's Magazine, 4 (September, 1854), 343; 5 (January, 1855), 109; 5 (June, 1855), 561-76, quotation 566. Among the many travel articles by Taylor that appeared in Putnam's while Melville was contributing to that magazine are “The Vision of Hasheesh,” 3 (April, 1854), 402-8; “Experiences in Mount Lebanon,” 6 (October, 1855), 396-401; “Notes in Syria,” 6 (November, 1855), 493-500.

9. See Putnam's Magazine, 6 (July, 1855), 53; 6 (November, 1855), 551.

10. “Melville's ‘Geniality’,” in: Max F. Schulz, et al., eds., Essays in American and English Literature Presented to Bruce Robert McElderry, Jr. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1967), 3-26.

11. Putnam's Magazine, 4 (September, 1854), 343-44.

12. Eldorado (New York: Knopf, 1949 [1850]); the passage is on p. 79. For details about Taylor's Visits to California, see Nanelia S. Doughty, “Bayard Taylor: First California Booster,” Western Review, 7 (1970), 22-27; and “Bayard Taylor's Second Look at California (1859),” Western Review, 8 (1970), 51-55.

13. Putnam's Magazine, 4 (September, 1854), 325-30.

14. Putnam's Magazine, 7 (May, 1856), 551. The following quotations are from Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Melville As Lecturer (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 90, 82, 87, et passim.

15. Sealts, p. 82 n. 13; Elizabeth Melville Metcalfe, Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953), p. 203.