Charles Dickens: Travels in America

On January 22, 1842, Charles Dickens arrived in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, Catherine. From the article:

"Charles Dickens: Travels in America
On January 3, 1842 Charles Dickens, a month shy of his 30th birthday, sailed from

Liverpool on the steamship Britannia bound for America. Dickens was at the height of his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic and, securing a year off from writing, determined to visit the young nation to see for himself this haven for

the oppressed which had righted all the wrongs of the Old World. The voyage out, accompanied by his wife, Catherine, and her maid, Anne Brown, proved to be one of the stormiest in years and his cabin aboard the Britannia proved to be so small that Dickens quipped that their portmanteaux could "no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be forced into a flowerpot."

The violent seas on the journey can best be described by Dickens' comical account of trying to administer a little brandy to his wife and her traveling companions to calm their fears:

They, and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better occurring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured a tumblerful without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa -- a fixture, extending entirely across the cabin -- where they clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned. When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to administer it, with many consolatory expressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other end! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I suppose I dodged them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, without reaching them once; and, by the time I did catch them, the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a tea-spoonful.

Arriving in Boston on January 22, 1842 Charles Dickens was at once mobbed and generally given the adulation afforded four other young Englishmen who would invade America more than a century later. Dickens at first reveled in the attention but soon the never-ending demand of his time began to wear on his enthusiasm. He complained in a letter to his friend John Forster "I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude."

One of the things on Dickens' agenda for the trip to America was to try to put forth the idea of international copyright. Dickens' works were routinely pirated in America and for the most part he received not a penny for his writing there. Dickens argued that American authors would benefit also as they were pirated in Europe but these arguments generally fell on deaf ears. Indeed there would be no international copyright law for another 50 years. Dickens did not touch on the tempest caused by his argument for international copyright in American Notes but revealed the controversy in this letter to his friend John Forster.

Laura Bridgman
While in the Boston area Charles Dickens visited the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind where he observed Laura Bridgman (1829-1889),
Laura Bridgman
a blind and deaf girl Dickens chronicled in American Notes. Laura's remarkable education through the teaching of Samuel Gridley Howe, director of the school. 40 years later Captain Arthur Keller and his wife, Kate, were inspired by Dickens' account of Laura Bridgman and the Perkins Institution. The Keller's blind and deaf daughter, Helen Keller (1880-1968), also received part of her remarkable education at the Perkins school through Anne Sullivan, a visually impaired teacher and recent graduate of the institution.
In keeping with his fascination for the unusual, visits to prisons, hospitals for the insane, reform schools, and schools for blind and deaf children were high on his list of places to visit in almost every city he toured. He also toured factories, the industrial mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, a Shaker village in New York, and a prairie in Illinois. While in Washington he attended sessions of Congress, toured the White House, and met President Tyler. In the White House, as just about everywhere he went in America, Dickens was appalled at the American male passion for chewing tobacco. He gives this account of a visit to the Capital building:

Both Houses are handsomely carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon with which every honourable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account.

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to see so many honourable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough, too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair, with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient "plug" with his penknife, and, when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place.

Dickens wanted to see the South and observe slavery first hand. His initial plan was to go to Charleston but because of the heat and the length of the trip he settled for Richmond, Virginia. He was revolted by what he saw in Richmond, both by the condition of the slaves themselves and by the whites' attitudes towards slavery. In American Notes, the book written after he returned to England describing his American visit, he wrote scathingly about the institution of slavery, citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves horribly disfigured by their cruel masters.

From Richmond Dickens returned to Washington and started a trek westward to St. Louis. Traveling by riverboat and stagecoach the Dickens entourage, which included Dickens, his wife Catherine, Kate's maid, Anne Brown, and George Putnam, Charles' traveling secretary, endured quite an adventure. Gaining anonymity and more personal freedom the further west they went, Dickens' power of observation provides a very entertaining and enlightening view of early America.

Charles Dickens came away from his American experience with a sense of disappointment. To his friend William Macready he wrote "this is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination". On returning to England Dickens began an account of his American trip which he completed in four months. Not only did Dickens attack slavery in American Notes, he also attacked the American press whom he blamed for the American's lack of general information. In Dickens' next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, he sends young Martin to America where he continues to vent his feelings for the young republic. American response to both books was extremely negative but eventually the passion subsided and Dickens' popularity was restored.

George Washington Putnam
Read Dickens' traveling secretary, George Washington Putnam's (1812-1896) account of the 1842 American visit: Four Months with Charles Dickens. An article he wrote for Atlantic Monthly in October 1870, shortly after Dickens' death.

Charles Dickens' Observations America and Canada 1842
Boston - The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, to impress all strangers very favourably.

New York - The beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean a city as Boston, but many of its streets have the same characteristics; except that the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, the sign-boards are not quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not quite so golden, the bricks not quite so red, the stone not quite so white, the blinds and area railings not quite so green, the knobs and plates upon the street-doors not quite so bright and twinkling.

Philadelphia - It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerly influence.

Baltimore - This capital of the state of Maryland is a bustling, busy town, with a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in particular of water commerce. That portion of the town which it most favours is none of the cleanest, it is true; but the upper part is of a very different character, and has many agreeable streets and public buildings.

Washington - It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from the top of the Capitol that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public to be complete; and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament -- are its leading features.

Richmond - The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the town, which is delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging James River; a sparkling stream, studded here and there with bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although it was yet but the middle of March, the weather in this southern temperature was extremely warm; the peach-trees and magnolias were in full bloom; and the trees were green.

Cincinnati - Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does: with its clean houses of red and white, its well-paved roads, and footways bright tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The streets are broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private residences remarkable for their elegance and neatness.

Louisville - There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this day's journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We slept at the Galt House; a splendid hotel; and were as handsomely lodged as though we had been in Paris, rather than hundreds of miles beyond the Alleghanies.

St. Louis - In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque: being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs, or rather ladders, from the street. There are queer little barbers' shops, and drinking-houses too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking casements, such as may be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French shrug about them; and, being lop-sided with age, appear to hold their heads askew besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American Improvements.

Niagara Falls - It was not until I came on Table Rock, and looked -- Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright green water! -- that it came upon me in its full might and majesty. Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect, and the enduring one -- instant and lasting -- of the tremendous spectacle, was Peace.

Montreal - Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. Lawrence, and is backed by some bold heights, about which there are charming rides and drives. The streets are generally narrow and irregular, as in most French towns of any age; but, in the more modern parts of the city, they are wide and airy. All the rides in the vicinity were made doubly interesting by the bursting out of spring, which is here so rapid that it is but a day's leap from barren winter to the blooming youth of summer.

On completion of the dangerous voyage aboard the Britannia Charles Dickens made a presentation of silver plate to Captain Hewett on behalf of the passengers.
Read Dickens' speech

In Dickens In America, distinguished British actress Miriam Margolyes, a lifelong fan of Dickens, follows Dickens' 1842 American footsteps while encountering 21st century USA and some of its residents.

Interspersing history, travelogue and interviews, Dickens In America offers insight into Charles Dickens' love/hate relationship with North America and paints a personal and revealing portrait of modern day USA.

America's favorite poet met Charles Dickens in Boston in 1842 and the two became lifelong friends. Longfellow's observations of his flamboyant friend:

"He has not a moment's rest;-calls innumerable-invitations innumerable;-and is engaged three deep for the remainder of his stay, in the way of dinners and parties.

He is a gay, free and easy character;-a fine bright face; blue eyes, long dark hair, and withal a slight dash of the Dick Swiveller in him."

Herb Moskovitz relates the circumstances of Charles Dickens' meeting with Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia in March 1842

Charles Dickens directed and acted in three plays at the Theatre Royal in Montreal during the two weeks he was there in 1842. His wife also played a part in Deaf as a Post.
See the playbill

Suppressed Introductory Chapter to American Notes

Charles Dickens wrote an introductory chapter to American Notes that his friend and future biographer, John Forster, talked him out of including in the published book. Forster felt that the chapter should be withheld until sufficient time had passed to diffuse ill feelings over some of Dickens' criticism of America. Forster included the chapter in his biography The Life of Charles Dickens, published after Dickens death.

In the latIn the late 1850s Charles Dickens began to contemplate a second visit to America, tempted by the money that he believed Dickens by J. Gurney New York 1867
Dickens by J. Gurney
New York 1867he could make by extending his reading tour, hugely successful in Britain, to the New World. The outbreak of the Civil War in America in 1861 put those plans on hold. After the war, renewed offers from America of huge profits to be made if Dickens would read there convinced him to go, despite questions of poor health and objections from his friend and advisor, John Forster and others. Dickens' argument for going was penned in what he called the "Case in a Nutshell" which he forwarded to Forster and other doubters.

Having decided to make the trip, he arrived in Boston on November 19, 1867. Though a few articles appeared in the press concerning Dickens' comments made following his first American visit, more than a quarter of a century before, these were quickly forgotten and he was again adored by the American public. His health, however, was in rapid decline and he suffered greatly during this trip. On several occasions Dickens' manager on the tour, George Dolby, feared that he would not be able to go on with an evening's reading. However, no shows were cancelled. Dickens quipped that "No man had a right to break an engagement with the public if he were able to be out of bed."

The original plan called for a visit to Chicago and as far west as St. Louis. Because of ill-health and bad weather this idea was scrapped and Dickens did not venture from the northeastern states. He stayed for five months and gave 76 performances for which he earned an incredible $228,000. After expenses of $39,000 he was able to bank nearly £19,000. Mark Twain saw Dickens perform in January, 1868 at the Steinway Hall in New York and gave this report.

At a dinner in his honor in New York on April 18, 1868 Dickens, alluding to negative aspects of the 1842 trip, noted that both he and America had undergone considerable change since his last visit. He commented on the excellent treatment he had received from everyone he came in contact with on this trip and vowed to include these words as an appendix to every copy of the two books in which he refers to America (American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit).

Following a Charles Dickens reading in Portland, Maine, on the 30th of March, 1868 12-year-old Kate Wiggin, having missed the Portland reading, encountered Charles Dickens on a train bound for Boston. Dickens was quite taken with this precocious child and spent considerable time talking with her during the journey. He was amused when she told him that she had read all of his books, skipping over some of the "lengthy dull parts." Kate grew up to be a novelist herself, publishing Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm in 1903. In 1912 she published her account of the meeting with Dickens as A Child's Journey with Dickens.

The Old Curiosity Shop in Braille
During his 1867-68 reading tour in America Charles Dickens was contacted by Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts, asking permission to publish The Old Curiosity Shop in braille. Dickens, who had visited the Perkins school in 1842 and had devoted 14 pages to it in American Notes, went even further. He paid $1700 to have 250 copies of the book printed in braille and distributed to all of the blind schools in America.


Charles Dickens' American Reading Tour 1867/68 - A Hot Ticket

Steinway Hall in New York
Tickets for Charles Dickens readings were sold out as soon as they appeared. Despite Dickens' and his manager's best efforts to make the readings affordable, ticket scalpers ('speculators' in the following article) were buying up the tickets and reselling them at exorbitant prices. The following article from a Philadelphia paper describes the sale of tickets to New York shows.

"The pay-place was to open at nine on a Wednesday morning, and at midnight of Tuesday a long line of speculators were assembled in queue; at two in the morning a few honest buyers had begun to arrive; at five there were, of all classes, two lines of not less than 800 each; at eight there were at least 5,000 persons in the two lines; at nine each line was more than three-quarters of a mile in length, and neither became sensibly shorter during the whole morning. The tickets for the course were all sold before noon. Members of families relieved each other in the queues; waiters flew across the streets and squares from the neighbouring restaurant, to serve parties who were taking their breakfast in the open December air; while excited men offered five and ten dollars for the mere permission to exchange places with other persons standing nearer the head of the line!"

George Dolby
Charles Dickens' reading manager George Dolby tells the story of the English and American Readings in Charles Dickens As I Knew Him. Very entertaining!"