The day after the Lawyer officially fires Bartleby he finds Bartleby still in the office, seemingly never having left. The Lawyer captures his feelings of rage toward Bartleby via an allusion to John C. Colt’s infamous 1841 murder of Samuel Adams:
Bartleby and I were alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt in the solitary office of the latter […] Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that had that altercation taken place in the public street, or at a private residence, it would not have terminated as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations […] which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt.
As the Lawyer alludes to, John C. Colt (the author of a textbook about bookkeeping) killed Samuel Adams (the publisher of the textbook) while alone together in Colt’s office. The two men fought over the money that Colt owed Adams for the printing of the textbooks, leading Colt to kill Adams. This became a highly publicized murder case in the 1840s, and Melville likely assumed that his readers at the time would know what he was referring to.
It is notable that the Lawyer places the blame for the murder on the site where it took place—“a solitary office” in a building “entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations.” Melville is offering important yet subtle social commentary here. “Bartleby, the Scrivener” was written when working- and middle-class people were moving from rural jobs like farming and agriculture to corporate urban jobs like administrative positions in offices. In this passage, Melville is arguing that these new corporate jobs in empty offices led people to feel much more disconnected from one another, so much so that murdering someone over a bill discrepancy while alone together in an office was not off the table.
While the Lawyer’s office is primarily unadorned, he does have a bust of Cicero on display—an allusion to the ancient Roman philosopher and statesman. The Lawyer mentions the sculpture in the scene in which he asks Bartleby about himself, and Bartleby refuses to share anything:
“Will you tell me any thing about yourself?”
“I would prefer not to.”
“But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards you.”
He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero, which as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head.
Though this allusion is a subtle one, it is clearly important—there is a reason (or possibly reasons) that Melville has Bartleby “[keep] his gaze fixed upon” the bust of Cicero while engaging in his passive resistance. Melville had intensively studied Cicero’s writings before the publication of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and was even a member of the Ciceronian Debating Society as a young man, so he is clearly making an informed choice to include Cicero here.
While scholars continue to debate Melville’s intentions in including Cicero in the story, one theory is that, as an early proponent of humanism, Cicero represents the Lawyer’s commitment to respecting Bartleby in spite of his rebelliousness. The same way that Cicero sought to respect people of all different opinions and temperaments, the Lawyer tries to respect Bartleby.
A very different interpretation is that, like Cicero, the Lawyer is comfortable with the class divisions in society. Cicero came from a wealthy family and believed that the educated aristocratic class had the right to govern (and enslave) those from lower class backgrounds. The Lawyer’s bewilderment over Bartleby’s refusal to answer his questions may be due to the fact that he believes, as an employee, Bartleby should do whatever the Lawyer, as the boss, asks of him.
