Melville's and Barnum's Man with a Weed

Abstract

CRITICAL SCRUTINY of The Confidence-Man often begins with Black Guinea's puzzling list of character references early in the story. From this list of probable impostors issues what one character calls a 'Wild goose chase!' or the reader's pursuit of the one original confidence man of the masquerade. Unfortunately, no one has succeeded in using Guinea's list for that purpose, for it is generally known that the list is either teasingly incomplete or contradictoryin short, a sham or humbug. Indeed, shortly after Guinea recites his list of ge'mmen, one disbelieving auditor charges, 'He's some white operator, betwisted and painted up for a decoy. He and his friends are all humbugs.' ' Once this accusation has been made, with its confusion of black and white, the reader's dilemma is doubly baffling. Not only must one assess the impostors who follow as reflections on Guinea's character, but one must also suspect them as reflections on the white mute who immediately precedes Guinea. All characters, black and white, now meet the reader's suspicious gaze. effect, one is forced to consider the aesthetically improbable-that all the major characters are disguises or avatars of the one original, despite their radical contrasts in appearance. Such a possibility is slyly reinforced by Guinea's mention of a 'werry nice, good ge'mman wid a weed' (pp. i9-20). This gentleman is usually taken to be the unfortunate John Ringman, who wears a crepe weed of mourning in his hat in remembrance of his dead wife Goneril. Melville's contemporaries, however, were witesses to a real-life man with a weed, and this man was a sham in the fullest sense. I850 P. T. Barnum saturated New York with advertisements of one of his typically bizarre hoaxes. M. R. Werner notes Barnum's preposterous ploy for claiming his attraction's great social value: In August of I850 a negro came to New York who claimed to have discovered a weed that would turn negroes white. Barnum exhibited him at the Museum. He hailed this negro and his weed as the solution of the slavery problem, contending in his advertisements