Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry

Modern Chivalry Containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O'Reagan, His Servant is a rather odd book to have crept onto my list of con man texts, and I'm a bit at a loss as to what it's doing there. The lengthy work, published in four pieces between 1792 and 1819, is a sort of American take on Don Quixote, a kind of prose Hudribras for the new nation, complete with a vehement repudiation of Irish intelligence and the wisdom of the American electorate. The work is entirely episodic, following the adventures of Captain Farrago and his long-legged bog-trotter (servant, I gather) Teague O'Reagan (a common name for an Irish person, like Pat would be today).

Those adventures consist entirely of the Captain's valiant efforts in prevent Teague's social elevation. Everywhere the two travel, someone tries to elect the illiterate, lazy, drunk, and profligate Teague to public office, and each time the Captain must rescue the poor lovable fellow from elevation to a position he does not genuinely desire and cannot fulfill. For indeed, the Captain always knows best. When at last Teague is appointed as a tax collector, he is so unsuited to the position that he finds himself tarred, feathered, and set up as a man-bird curiosity for the scientific community. This is, of course, really what Teague has been all along, a sort of racist curiosity for the amusement of Brackenridge's readers, few of whom, I imagine, were Irish.

Of course, it's not just Teague who is being critiqued here, but the American people, who are so bent on the elevation of the lowly that they will elect only the most boorish of men to public office. These people share Benjamin Franklin's rosy view of the capacities of the working class, trusting that Teague's lack of book learning is an asset rather than a deficiency. Brackenridge, of course, disagrees; though he was staunchly democratic, Brackenridge recognized the problems inherent in a system that gives so much power to the people, who are, more often than not, selfish and ignorant even when they are also well-meaning.

Viewing this text in terms of the con, the only real connection comes circuitously by way of the picaresque. Teague is something of a picaro, a roving character falling in and out of trouble as often as you turn the page, and that is something that he shares with the con man, though he is a bit too stupid to qualify otherwise. (Of course, he's a bit stupid for a picaro as well. Tom Jones he is not.) The episodic nature of the work is also typical of con man texts, and the lovable amorality of Teague might have served as the starting point for one in a different life.

As a work on the con man, Modern Chivalry is certainly lacking, but as a critique of turn-of-the-century American values, it is genuinely entertaining, if, as I mentioned before, just a wee bit racist.