The Prototype for Melville's Confidence-Man
During the summer of 1849, while Melville was in New York writing White Jacket, the New York Herald carried a running story of the arrest and trial of a petty criminal known as the “Confidence Man.” There are several parallels between the Herald's “Confidence Man” and the character that Melville created in his later novel The Confidence-Man. Both the New York “Confidence Man” and Melville's Confidence-Man use the same approach and the same line of reasoning, leading to the same question: “Could you put any confidence in me?” Both men work under several aliases; both men use the former-acquaintance routine to relax their victims. In both the reality and the fiction there is a matter of bail to get out of the Tombs. And in both the novel and a Herald editorial a strong parallel is drawn between petty confidence men and the confidence men of Wall Street. From this correlation there is little doubt that this “Confidence Man” of 1849 was, in fact, the prototype for a major part of Melville's character in 1857.