Before publication in book form, Bleak House was serialized in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, to which Melville subscribed. A prominently displayed advertisement on the back cover of the 1852 issue boldly and enthusiastically announced the forthcoming serialization as a literary event of great magnitude.

The first installment of three chapters appeared as announced in the April 1852 issue with succeeding monthly installments until the October 1853 issue when a final installment of eight chapters was printed, bringing the total to sixty-seven chapters. All other installments were three chapters each except April and May 1853 issues with four chapters each.

The preponderance of comparable material is in the earlier chapters. Melville's borrowings, then, would probably have been from the magazine and not from the book, which was not published until September 21, 1853, whereas the first installments of "Bartleby, " published in Putnam 's Magazine, appeared as early as November, less than two months later.¹

NEW YORK. March 1st, 1852.

The Publishers of HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE are happy to announce, that they have completed an arrangement by which they will receive, regularly in advance of its publication in England, the sheets of the New Novel of Mr. CHARLES DICKENS, to be entitled "BLEAK HOUSE, OR THE EAST WIND." The first number of this work will be published in the April number of this Magazine, in an attractive and popular form. For the privilege of thus laying this new and important work of the greatest of living novelists before the readers of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, in advance of its appearance in any other form in the United States, the Publishers have paid the sum of TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS. They refer to this fact simply as indicating their purpose to spare no expense necessary to render their Magazine, in every respect, deserving of the unparalleled success it has achieved. Mr. DICKENS stands confessedly at the head of living authors, and his writings surpass those of all others, not more in the genius they display and the absorbing interest by which they are marked, than in their steady and consistent devotion to the interests of morality and of the great masses of the people of every country. They are, therefore, preeminently adapted to the special purpose for which this work was established; and the Publishers hope, by the expense they have incurred, and the pains they have taken to present it to their readers at the earliest possible day, to increase still further the popularity and usefulness of their Magazine.

The Publishers now issue regularly SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND COPIES of the New Monthly Magazine, and it is still increasing, rapidly and steadily, from month to month.

Melville undoubtedly found Dickens--and Bleak House--of interest for reasons other than those set forth in Harper's New Monthly advertisement. In seeking grist for his literary mill, and under pressure to entice more readers, Melville did the obvious in scrutinizing the work of the most successful author of the day. Nor is it unlikely that he was unmindful of similarities between his writings and those of the great English novelist. Evert Duyckinck in 1846 wrote his brother that the account of the church buildings in Typee "is very much in the spirit of Dickens' humorous handling of sacred things in Italy."² A review of Omoo in Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book about a year later commented: "Dickens has nothing more amusing in his Pickwick Papers than the portraits of Zeke and Shorty."³ Melville's skill in character

creation was also likened to that of Dickens in The Albion's review of Redburn: "The Oliver Twists of ocean life are his best dramatic personae. . ."⁴

Melville could hardly have been unaware of the even broader and more basic similarity. Both had attacked and bitterly satirized evidence of society's hypocrisy, cruelty, and injustice. Redburn contains a description of the horrible poverty in Liverpool that recalls scenes in Oliver Twist and some of Dickens' other novels.

Then, too, Melville was aware that he and the author of Bleak House were leading advocates of an international copyright agreement and recognized as among the chief victims of the lack of such an agreement.⁵

Melville could have found Bleak House of interest for a more personal reason. One of the characters, as will be seen, was a legal scrivener who may have brought to mind Eli James Murdock Fly, a close friend from boyhood days and an apprentice in the law office of Peter Glansevoort, Melville's uncle. At one time he held a job where he had "incessant writing from morning to Eve." It is likely, as Leyda notes, that Fly also may have helped inspire the figure of Bartleby.⁶

"Bartleby" is the story of an eccentric and inscrutable scrivener or copyist of legal documents and the Wall Street lawyer--formerly a "master in chancery"--who hired him through a newspaper advertisement. The lawyer's staff consists of two other scriveners, Turkey, a 60-year-old Englishman, and Nippers, about twenty-five, and a twelve-year-old office boy and "student at law" named Ginger Nut. Turkey is industrious and reverential in the morning but thereafter becomes slipshod and insolent. Nippers, irritable and nervous in the morning, is a model employee in the afternoon.

Bartleby, about whose past "nothing was ascertainable," (p. 3)⁷ at first applied himself without stint, turning out "an extraordinary quantity of writing" both night and day. (p. 12) Pleased with him, the lawyer would have been even more so had it not been for the scrivener's pale reserve and air of melancholy.

The lawyer one day calls on Bartleby to help him proofread a document and is dumfounded when the scrivener unaccountably replies, "I would prefer not to." (p. 13) Threats, cajolery, and gentle remonstrance prove futile and later Bartleby "prefers not" to do certain other routine tasks. Finally, he even refuses to do any more copying, presumably because his eyesight is failing.

The lawyer discovers that Bartleby, apparently homeless, has been lodging at the office. Moved to great compassion by Bartleby's hopeless plight, he decides to let him go only when his practice is in jeopardy. In spite of repeated requests, stern or kindly, Bartleby refuses to leave. At length, the attorney is forced to move his offices to another building, leaving the unfortunate copyist to haunt the premises. Bartleby is arrested for vagrancy, imprisoned in the Tombs, and dies after refusing nourishment.

Bleak House is an intricately woven narrative of 67 chapters with a huge cast of characters. It satirizes the cumbersome and cruelly unjust English legal system, especially the court of chancery, as exemplified in the nighmarish case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. The principal characters are all more or less involved, some with tragic consequences. The Kafkalike legal proceedings serve as background for love affairs by the heroine and others, and for a murder mystery. Included are scenes of appalling poverty along with much delightful comedy and satire.

Of special significance for readers of "Bartleby," is that much of it, especially the earlier chapters, concerns lawyers, lawyers' apprentices, and in particular, a legal scrivener who recklessly pursues a course of self-destruction.

In the novel was a veritable smorgasbord of quirks and eccentricities for the creation of characters like Bartleby, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut and even for Bartleby's employer.

Bartleby's possible prototype is Nemo (Latin for No One), a poor tragic scrivener who is actually off-stage in the novel as a living person except in the mind and conversation of other characters. In Chapter Five a sign placed by him in the window of a rag and bottle shop, above which he lodges, announces that "a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and despatch." (p. 49). Like Bartleby Nemo is willing to work day and night. The output of both is referred to as folios, in this sense a legal term indicating a set number of words per page. Working around the clock Nemo, his employer reports on one occasion, has turned out "forty-two folio." (p. 122) Bartleby copied for his employer "at the usual rate of four cents a folio." (p. 20)

Reminiscent of Bartleby, of whom nothing was known, Nemo's "path in life" has left "no more track behind him, that any one can trace, than a deserted infant." (p. 131) Both are solitary, shun society, and have no known relatives. "He told me once, I was the nearest relation he had," says Nemo's landlord, aware that Nemo was being bitter and ironical. (p. 126)

The concept of scriveners as a "somewhat singular set of men" (p. 3) and the "strangeness" of Bartleby who seemed to have nothing "ordinarily human about him" also occurs in Bleak House. "Our law-writers, who live by job-work," declares Nemo's employer, "are a queer lot," (p. 122), adding shortly thereafter that "they're a wild lot in general, sir." (p. 123) An air of unearthliness about Nemo is conveyed in rumors that he has sold himself to the devil. (pp. 124, 133).

Some of the circumstances attending the death of the two copyists are parallel, though here as elsewhere mere coincidence cannot be ruled out. Both are found dead but at first merely appear to be asleep. Death comes to both as a release from intolerable conditions. Claiming food would "disagree" with him Bartleby dies of starvation though some suspicion lingers as to whether it was a form of suicide. Nemo dies of an overdose of opium. A coroner's jury after much deliberation rules that the death was accidental. However, evidence of suicide is very strong. Six weeks behind in his rent, among other depressing circumstances, Nemo took an over-dose large enough "to kill a dozen people." (p. 126)

It is perhaps not too far-fetched to mention another bit of similarity. Just before finding the body of Bartleby, the narrator speaks of the "Egyptian character of the masonry" and of the "eternal pyramids." (p. 45). Nemo is twice referred to as "dead as Pharaoh" (pp. 126, 127), possibly suggesting to Melville his imagery.

Finally in this connection, the term "winding-sheet" may be unusual enough to warrant mention as occurring once in "Bartleby" and twice in Bleak House, the first time in reference to Nemo. (pp. 124, 396).

Melville's story and the portrait of Bartleby may owe something to another character in Bleak House. In throwing himself on the mercy of his employer in expecting to be maintained without doing his work, Bartleby is somewhat reminiscent of Harold Skimpole, introduced early in the novel as living off his friend Jarndyce. Once a physician to a German prince he was fired

because when he was wanted to bleed the prince, or physic any of his people, he was generally found lying on his back, in bed, reading the newspaper, or making fancy sketches in pencil and couldn't come. (p. 66)

Skimpole attempts to justify his irresponsible behavior by claiming he is really just a child. He confesses to

two of the oddest infirmities in the world; one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. . . . All he asked of society was, to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. . . . He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only--let Harold Skimpole live!" (p. 66)

"Bartleby," as mentioned earlier, has over the years been cited as evocative of Dickens, with Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut referred to as prime examples of Dickensian portraiture. Resemblances, general and specific, between these eccentric individuals and certain characters in Bleak House are more or less clearly discernible. Discernible also are several parallel incidents.

Turkey in some ways is much like Mr. Boythorn, a kindly gentleman and friend of John Jarndyce, one of the principals in the novel. Turkey, equable and industrious each day, after six p.m. undergoes a personality change. He then becomes "slightly rash with his tongue--in fact insolent" and quick with his fists. (p. 6) "I think I'll just step behind his (Bartleby's) screen and black his eyes for him!, he growls at one point, and then throws "his arms in a pugilistic position. Later he again asks, "Shall I go black his eyes?" (p. 18)

Mr. Boythorn also uncharacteristically voices dire but harmless threats of bodily harm with his fists. He regrets that he "didn't knock his brains out" (p. 106) in speaking of a fellow who had misdirected him. Of a bully he once knew he shouts that if he should meet him again he would "fell him like a rotten tree!" (p. 106) "I would seize every Master in Chancery by the throat tomorrow morning," he proclaims almost in the very next breath, "and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets, and his bones rattled in his skin." (p. 108)

About Turkey there is a "flighty recklessness of activity," toward the end of the day. (p. 6) He is "rather noisy" and at times becomes "oratorical" in his remonstrances to his employer. (p. 7) For his part Mr. Boythorn is "the most impetuous man" in the world, is very loud, speaks with the "greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone, and gives the impression of tremendous energy.

A difference is that Turkey's bursts of activity and noisiness are presented in a somewhat unfavorable light whereas Mr. Boythorn's comparable traits and mannerisms are meant to add to his engaging personality and charm.

Physically they are unlike in that Turkey is short while Mr. Boythorn is tall. Turkey is "pursy" while Mr. Boythorn has a "figure that might have become corpulent" had he not been so active. On the other hand, they are both elderly and, before Turkey's evening decline, both have pleasant countenances that radiate good-will. In the morning Turkey's "face was of a fine florid hue", a "red and radiant countenance" which sent forth its beams in "undiminished glory." (p. 5) Mr. Boythorn's "face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness" that "it seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide." (p. 107) It should be recalled that both are Englishmen.

A possible model for some of Nippers' traits and mannerisms is William Guppy, a young overly aggressive law clerk. Nippers is a man with a "diseased" ambition mainly manifested in "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." (pp. 7, 8) This characterization fits Guppy fairly closely.

A mere law clerk and in a great rush to become a fullfledged attorney, Guppy tries to advance himself by transcending his authority as well as violating social and other proprieties in pursuing a noblewoman's secret on his own. He displays outrageous presumption in daring to propose marriage, almost at first sight, to the novel's narrator, a girl who is far above him in cultural background and social standing.

Nippers' frustration in adjusting the height of his table indicated that "he knew not what he wanted." Guppy betrays restlessness in constantly stabbing at his desk with his penknife, and a bit more in the manner of Nippers, by "trying out all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy." (p. 245).

Another possible borrowing is the narration of Nippers' fondness for "receiving visits from certain ambiguous fellows in seedy coats." One of these, Nippers insists, is a client, but his employer has reason to believe he is but "a dun." This passage may have been suggested in part by an account of Guppy's encounter with a couple of his cronies, a young colleague named Smallweed, and Jobling, who is unemployed, "looks hungry," and "has the appearance of having run to seed in the market-garden down by Deptford." Jobling's reference during the conversation to "creditors making rows at the office" of course brings to mind Nippers' dun.

Ginger Nut may have a counterpart in young Smallweed. Ginger Nut, referred to as the third on the list of employees

was a lad, some twelve years old. His father was a car-man 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, cleaner, and sweeper. . . . Indeed, to this quick-witted youth, the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nutshell. . . . Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar . . . cake after which he had been named by them. (p. 10)

Young Smallweed, also referred to as the third member of a law office, is about the same age, is also a legal apprentice and office boy, and also precocious in his knowledge of the law. Dickens, more facetious in his description, writes

His (Guppy's) satisfaction communicates itself to a third saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office; to wit, Young Smallweed.

Whether Young Smallweed. . . was ever a boy is much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen, and an old limb of the law. (pp. 244-45)

In the next paragraph is the information that "Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent drinks."

Also possibly contributing to the portrait of Ginger Nut is the statement, later in the novel, that "His spirit shone through his son, (Smallweed's grandfather) to whom he had always preached of 'going out' early in life, and whom he made a clerk in a sharp scrivener's office at twelve years old. "

Bartleby's employer, in the degree of his patience and kindness toward the scrivener and his impositions, is a highly improbable character. What busy lawyer would retain a clerk who refuses to do his job? What lawyer or any other employer would move his office just to avoid, out of humanitarian considerations, evicting such an insubordinate?

As unlikely as it may seem, Bartleby's employer has something of a counterpart in an even more improbably kind and patient character--John Jarndyce, one of the many parties to the lawsuit, beloved guardian of the narrator of the novel, philanthropist, and man of goodwill. Among those dependent on his bounty is the charming but parasitic Harold Skimpole, who would try the patience of a saint. He disobeys Jarndyce's gentle remonstrance against borrowing from others to pay debts thoughtlessly and irresponsibly incurred. He is guilty of heartlessness in advising against Jarndyce's taking in a poor, sick lad and of treachery in revealing the lad's whereabouts to a detective. For a compassionate man like Jarndyce these are especially heinous crimes. Yet he continues to try to make allowances for Skimpole's repugnant behavior and to provide for him as kindly and as generously as ever.

Jarndyce manifests the same incredible kindness and patience toward another dependent he has volunteered to support, the young and handsome Richard Carstone. Again, he tries to make allowance for Carstone even after Carstone is guilty of the most flagrant ingratitude and baseless hostility.

Some of the many references in Bleak House to walls deserve scrutiny as possibly helping to suggest the chief setting in "Bartleby." Bartleby's employer says of his office that "my windows command an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall . . . was pushed up to within ten feet of my window-panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chamber being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern." (p. 5)

This scene may owe something to the following bits of description in the novel:

. . . the shop was blinded besides by the wall of Lincoln's Inn (p. 49)

a narrow street of high houses, like an oblong cistern to hold the fog (p. 36)

References to Bartleby's looking out at a "dead brick wall" (p. 24) and to his "dead-wall reveries" (pp. 28, 35) are echoed in mention of an office that also "blinks at a dead wall." Elsewhere (p. 43) Bartleby is described as standing with his "face toward a high wall." In the novel one of the characters is depicted no less than six times, almost like a motif, as sadly leaning with "his head against a wall." (pp. 41, 373, 377, 473, 603, 604)

Melville's imagery and colorful details sometimes recall metaphorical language and details in Bleak House. Turkey is described as having "gobbled up scores" of ginger cakes as if "they were mere wafers," (p. 10) and "once moistening a gingercake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage, for a seal." (p. 11) This typically Melvillian touch may have been suggested by the following words in the novel: "a few old prints. . . wafered against the wall. " (p. 53); a reference to the "Great Seal" (p. 54); and a later reference to "sealing wax, and wafers." (p. 116)

Another parallel worth noting is the deserted atmosphere of Wall Street on a Sunday and the dormant, deserted atmosphere of the "legal neighbourhood in London during the long vacation." Then, with members of the bar at resorts and watering-places abroad, "Scarcely one is to be encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane." (p. 233)

Bartleby's employer, depressed by the solitude and emptiness of a Wall Street devoid of people, remembers "the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway." (p. 23) In a somewhat similar figure of speech Dickens speaks of a wretched lad sitting on a street corner, "the river running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two streams." (p. 244)

In view of the foregoing it is not surprising that many reviewers and critics throughout the years have been reminded of Dickens in reading "Bartleby." "For originality of invention and grotesqueness of humor," commented the Boston Evening Traveller in 1856, "it is equal to anything . . . of Dickens, whose writings it closely resembles, both as to the character of the sketch and the peculiarity of the style."⁸ Most recently, in The New York Review of Books (July 16, 1981), Elizabeth Hardwick in her article "Bartleby and Manhattan," speaks of the story's "cheerful, confident, rather optimistic, Dickensian manner.⁹

This discovery of Melville's debt to Bleak House, as mentioned earlier, may or may not help illuminate the meaning of his baffling tale. But by providing still another of many disclosures of the nature and extent of his borrowings from other works, it may be of help to those interested in his compositional methods and in the workings of his imagination.

At the very least, it is of interest as revealing a hitherto unknown link between these two literary giants.

1. Melville may also have found suggestions for the character of Bartleby and his employer in another very popular novel then being serialized. Anonymous, it was The Lawyer's Story; Or, The Wrongs of the Orphans, by "a member of the bar." Actually, it was written by James A. Maitland, a bestselling novelist of the period. The first chapter was printed in both the New York Tribune and the New York Times for February 18, 1853 as an advertisement for the novel. The remaining chapters appeared in The Sunday Dispatch. See Johannes D. Bergmann, "Bartleby and the Lawyer's Story, " American Literature (November 1975), pp. 432-36.

To use well-known works as source material was for Melville, as often shown, fairly standard procedure. For example, one of the sketches in the "Encantadas," entitled "Norfolk Isles and the Chola Widow," was also based on a currently popular work, in this case a long, front-page account of a "Female Robinson Crusoe." See Robert Sattelmeyer and James Barbour, "The Sources and Genesis of Melville's Norfolk Isle and the Cho/a Widow," American Literature (November 1978), pp. 398-417. Moby-Dick was also indebted to a publication that was very much a center of interest here and abroad--Charles Wilkes' Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During The Years 1838-42 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845). See David Jaffé The Stormy Petrel and the Whale: Some Origins of Moby-Dick (Baltimore, Privately printed, 1976) and Daniel C. Haskell, The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842, and Its Publications (New York: New York Public Library, 1942).

2. Jay Leyda, The Melville Log (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951), I, 230.

3. Ibid., I, 254.

4. Ibid., I, 338.

5. Ibid., I, 361.

6. Jay Leyda, Ed. The Complete Stories of Herman Melville (New York: Random House, 1949), p. 455. See also Leyda, The Melville Log, I, 455.

By an odd coincidence, Melville, though probably unaware of it when writing "Bartleby," had another personal connection with Bleak House. He had witnessed the hanging in London, on November 13, 1849, of Marie Manning and her husband. Marie was reported to be the prototype of Hortense, a character in the novel. Dickens was also present at the execution but, sadly, no evidence exists of a meeting. See Eleanor M. Metcalf, Ed., Journal of a Visit to London and the Continent, 1849-50 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948) p. 114, and Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens, 2 Vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), II, 672.

7. Page references are to Jay Leyda, Ed. The Complete Stories of Herman Melville and to Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Norton Critical Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).

8. Hugh W. Hetherington, Melville's Reviewers (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1961), p. 249.

9. Another writer actually speculated that Bleak House "may well be a source for Bartleby." See Kingsley Widmer, The Ways of Nihilism (Los Angeles: The California State Colleges, 1970), p. 108.

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