Edmund Elmendorf may have owned a slave according to a historical receipt, raising questions about the reality versus fiction of legal documents from the time period of Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener". The story describes Bartleby and other clerks copying legal documents, but details of their work are vague and their actions may have included forging documents. This Puzzler challenges readers to investigate whether any fictionalized court cases were produced and if Bartleby himself was fictionalizing legal documents through his "stone-wall reveries".

1. A P.Y.M. Sunday Puzzler
ESCAPADE
for May 15, 2011:
Edmund Elmendorf referenced as slaveowner Image: New York Historical Society
JUST WHAT WAS BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
REALLY WORKING ON, ANYWAY?
BUT FIRST …….
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2. FOUND!! THE PILLARS OF ATLAS
Last week’s clue – an excerpt from a map, showing the Pillars of Atlas – rotated 90°
First of all, thanks to the many score of readers who sent in their solutions to last week’s Puzzler “Can YOU Find
the Pillars of Atlas?” (May 8, 2011) After staff sorted through these, FORTUNATELY, one of the submissions was
actually found to be right, and precisely so. Many were very funny too! However, Puzzler player Robert Rogers, C.E.,
County Purveyor (Ret.) of Coon County, Oregon, submitted a map of Territory of Utah, from Atlas of the United States
(1857) by Prof. H.D. Rogers and A. Keith Johnson. Thanks to effective rapid-fire arrangements with David Rumsey,
himself an avid Puzzler player, an image of this map has been uploaded, and is now available for viewing at the David
Rumsey website, www.davidrumsey.com --
Territory of Utah Image Courtesy www.davidrumsey.com
The Territory of Utah map sent in by Purveyor Rogers – who is no relation to Prof. Rogers, the cartographer of the Utah
map -- exactly matches the description of this lost mountain range described by Dr. Atlas Fredonyer:
The fourth is the Pillars of Atlas, which lie in the interior basin, along the western border of the Pyramid and
Low Mud lakes, and the Boiling Spring Valley; and ranges in a north north-east course to their terminus,
near the mouth of High Rock Canyon in about latitude 41° north.
Conveniently, Rogers’ solution also has the rubric “Pillars of Atlas” written along the length of the mountains. Robert
even took the time to draw the 41st
Parallel on the map of the Territory of Utah, to illustrate it’s correspondence to
Fredonyer’s description. As we stated last week, the Pillars of Atlas range can be found on a number of other maps of the
mid-1850’s, substantiating it as probably the original name for this range, and as certainly historical. It remains of course
for geologists to confirm Dr. Fredonyer’s identification of these mountains, as comprising a unique and coherent
geological “feature” -- a volcanic mountain range. Congratulations, Robert!
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3. State of California Image Courtesy www.davidrumsey.com
Here again is another page from Atlas of the United States (1857) by Prof. H.D. Rogers and A. Keith Johnson, this one of
the State of California. Wouldn’t Dr. Fredonyer be surprised to learn that his namesake mountain range, is featured on
maps contained in the pages of an actual… ATLAS!! He wrote warmly of this interrupted, or bifurcated, range:
The Pillars of Atlas, the fourth range of mountains before spoken of, are of volcanic origin, rugged in their
appearance, and entirely destitute of timber.
At a point near the north end of Lower Mud Lake, and opposite the great Boiling Spring, the continuity of
the ridge is broken, forming one of the grandest ruptures in nature. One side of the cleft rises to a giddy
hight [sic] of a thousand feet, with a nearly perpendicular declivity, while the other inclines off in a gradual
retiring strata to nearly double that distance. The bottoms through that gorge are on a level with the
adjoining plain, and affords a free passage for the McNamey Creek through into Mud Lake. [See the picture
clue above, and in last week’s Puzzler] About twelve miles north of this point, and little west of the Pillars of
Atlas, is situated Mount Observation, which rises to an elevation of three thousand feet above the plains of
the Interior Basin, and is of a conical shape, and perfectly barren. * * *
Immediately to the east of the north division o the Pillars of Atlas, lies Boiling Springs Valley, bounded on
its east side by the Black Rock Ridge, and extending northward from the Boiling Spring to the Canyon
Bluffs, at the north of Meadow Creek. The creek issues from the northern base of the Pillars of Atlas, and
thence flows eastward through extensive meadows, till it empties into Upper Mud Lake, at the north
extremity of the Black Rock Ridge.
Etc. However, upon inquiry by the prize panel, it was learned the Robert had simply Googled “Pillars of Atlas” to pull up
the Rogers’ map. At the time of the compilation of this material -- and, we presumed, last week’s Puzzler -- there was no
information available online, regarding the Pillars of Atlas.
Therefore, to counterbalance the use of such “enhanced interrogation techniques” like or as Google and Wikipedia, the
difficulty level of today’s P.Y.M. Puzzler has been re-upped to “Escapade” range; and because Wikipedia cannot
distinguish between fact and fiction, that very interface constituted the arena of today’s Puzzler.
Hence:
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4. 4
WAS BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER REAL? Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener (1853), is a story about an
idiosyncratic clerk to the Master of Chancery of New York. For background, read this short story again, or read the
excellent article, Herbert H. Smith, “Melville’s Master in Chancery and his Recalcitrant Clerk,” American Quarterly,
Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 734-731 (1965); or follow the narrator of a uinique Youtube version. Bartleby is hired into the
Chancellor’s office, where he takes his place among three other working clerks, all four men largely being occupied as
copyists: writing out longhand, creating and proofing duplicate, triplicate etc. verbatim copies of legal documents to
various transactions, for filing with, or safekeeping by various parties or administrators involved in those transactions. In
one case Bartleby was working on “quadruplicates [!] of a week’s testimony taken before me [the Chancellor] in my
High Court of Chancery. It became necessary to examine them, it was an important suit and great accuracy was
imperative.” Etc. The names, in Bartleby, of the other, longstanding, Clerks at Chancery, are Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger
Nut. But, these are of course nicknames, and not the real names of the Clerks;: and this raises the possibility that Bartleby
is not Bartleby’s real name either, but a nickname given by the Master of Chancery, the narrator of the story. Who was
the real Clerk of Chancery, nicknamed “Bartleby”? What were the real names of Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut? Etc.
The impetus of narrative tension in Bartleby, is Bartleby’s impertinent refusal to participate in joint read-throughs -- oral
proof-reading sessions -- of the multiple copies which are the very raison d’etre of his clerical office, and the
psychomache created in the mind of the narrator, the Chancellor, by this avoidance of clerical duty. However, in the
melee of the Chancellor’s mind-gaming – the “interior monologue” --which comprises the “story-core,” what is never
addressed are the mechanics of the document creation and verification at the High Court of Chancery, used to check the
problem -- how the clerical staff successfully dealt with Bartleby’s dereliction of duty. In short: who proofed his copy?
Who guaranteed that Bartleby was not committing errors of transcription or copying? Who guarded the integrity of the
record of the High Court of Chancery? This does not appear to have been at the front of the mind of the Chancellor.
Leaving to one side the scores and scores of worthwhile scholarly articles on Bartleby the Scrivener, the narrator observes
in passing -- in what the master of Chancery would call obiter dicta -- that Nippers also had occasionally left the path of
strictly rigorous replication of legal texts, that bounded his position as Clerk of the Court, and instead .. gotten creative:
Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and on the whole a rather piratical-looking young
man …. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers – ambition and indigestion. The ambition was
evinced by 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 . . .
There’s an ambiguity in that last phrase. Another term for Nippers’ originality, might be forgery. In the “original
drawing up of legal documents” was Nippers committing forgery; or was he practicing law without a license?
Alternatively, was he outright fabricating “legal fictions”? In the same discussion, Nippers it is said, “did a little
business at the Justices’ courts…” Was Nippers accepting bribes? Committing graft?
Nippers “original drawing up of legal documents” raises the question of whether he was the only Chancery Court Clerk in
his office, who was fabricating legal texts. Did he have company among the likes of Turkey and Bartleby? (Ginger Nut
appears to have been more of an office boy.) If Nippers was forging texts, and if Bartleby was writing and proofing his
own copy, without the aid of other clerical staff, there could be court cases, testimony, and legal opinions of the High
Court of Chancery which are – outright fictions. And, in that regard, Bartleby himself eventually develops another
peculiar idiosyncracy in the execution of his office; that of staring off into space, in what the chancellor calls “stone-wall
reveries”. What was Bartleby doing in these apparent non-functional trances? Daydreaming? Or developing plot lines?
This week’s Puzzler ESCAPADE asks the question: Is Bartleby the Scrivener a true story, about a Chancery Court
Clerk who wrote fictional – or fictionalized -- Chancery Court cases – and if so, can you find one? Bartleby was first
published in 1853: the first half of the 19th
century is a good range w/in which to conduct your Puzzler ESCAPADE.
BONUS QUESTION
Edmund Elmendorf, Clerk in Chancery, served as clerk to New York Master of Chancery James Kent, who held that
office from 1813 to ca. 1825. Elmendorf’s term of service has not been pinned down by historians. The image on page 1,
above, shows a receipt for a donation by Elmendorf, for the support of a child of a slave owned by Elmendorf.
Was Elmendorf’s ownership of the slave, a reality, or a legal fiction?