FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
1842.
Rough Passage--A Steamer in a Storm--Resigned
to the Worst--Of Himself and
Fellow-travelers--The Atlantic from Deck--The
Ladies' Cabin--Its Occupants--Card-playing on
the Atlantic--Ship-news--A Wager--Halifax
Harbor--Ship aground--Captain Hewitt--Speaker
of House of Assembly--Ovation to C. D.--Arrival
at Boston--Incursion of Editors--At Tremont
House--The Welcome--Deputations--Dr. Channing
to C. D.--Public Appearances--A Secretary
engaged--Bostonians--General
Characteristics--Personal Notices--Perils of
Steamers--A Home-thought--American
Institutions--How first impressed--Reasons for
the Greeting--What was welcomed in C. D.--Old
World and New World--Daniel Webster as to C.
D.--Channing as to C. D.--Subsequent
Disappointments--New York Invitation to
Dinner--Fac-similes of Signatures--Additional
Fac-similes--New York Invitation to
Ball--Fac-similes of Signatures--Additional
Fac-similes.
THE first lines of that letter were written as soon as he got sight of
earth again, from the banks of Newfoundland, on Monday, the 17th of
January, the fourteenth day from their departure: even then so far from
Halifax that they could not expect to make it before Wednesday night, or
to reach Boston until Saturday or Sunday. They had not been fortunate in
the passage. During the whole voyage the weather had been
unprecedentedly bad, the wind for the most part dead against them, the
wet intolerable, the sea horribly disturbed, the days dark, and the
nights fearful. On the previous Monday night it had blown a hurricane,
beginning at five in the afternoon and raging all night. His description
of the storm is published, and the peculiarities of a steamer's behavior
in such circumstances are hit off as if he had been all his life a
sailor. Any but so extraordinary an observer would have described a
steamer in a storm as he would have described a sailing-ship in a storm.
But any description of the latter would be as inapplicable to my
friend's account of the other as the ways of a jackass to those of a mad
bull. In the letter from which it was taken, however, there were some
things addressed to myself alone: "For two or three hours we gave it up
as a lost thing; and with many thoughts of you, and the children, and
those others who are dearest to us, waited quietly for the worst. I
never expected to see the day again, and resigned myself to God as well
as I could. It was a great comfort to think of the earnest and devoted
friends we had left behind, and to know that the darlings would not
want."
This was not the exaggerated apprehension of a landsman merely. The head
engineer, who had been in one or other of the Cunard vessels since they
began running, had never seen such stress of weather; and I heard
Captain Hewitt himself say afterwards that nothing but a steamer, and
one of that strength, could have kept her course and stood it out. A
sailing-vessel must have beaten off and driven where she could; while
through all the fury of that gale they actually made fifty-four miles
headlong through the tempest, straight on end, not varying their track
in the least.
He stood out against sickness only for the day following that on which
they sailed. For the three following days he kept his bed, miserable
enough, and had not, until the eighth day of the voyage, six days before
the date of his letter, been able to get to work at the dinner-table.
What he then observed of his fellow-travelers, and had to tell of their
life on board, has been set forth in his _Notes_ with delightful humor;
but in its first freshness I received it in this letter, and some
whimsical passages, then suppressed, there will be no harm in printing
now:
"We have 86 passengers; and such a strange collection of beasts never
was got together upon the sea, since the days of the Ark. I have never
been in the saloon since the first day; the noise, the smell, and the
closeness being quite intolerable. I have only been on deck _once_!--and
then I was surprised and disappointed at the smallness of the panorama.
The sea, running as it does and has done, is very stupendous, and viewed
from the air or some great height would be grand no doubt. But seen from
the wet and rolling decks, in this weather and these circumstances, it
only impresses one giddily and painfully. I was very glad to turn away,
and come below again.
"I have established myself, from the first, in the ladies' cabin--you
remember it? I'll describe its other occupants, and our way of passing
the time, to you.
"First, for the occupants. Kate and I, and Anne--when she is out of bed,
which is not often. A queer little Scotch body, a Mrs. P--,[44] whose
husband is a silversmith in New York. He married her at Glasgow three
years ago, and bolted the day after the wedding; being (which he had not
told her) heavily in debt. Since then she has been living with her
mother; and she is now going out under the protection of a male cousin,
to give him a year's trial. If she is not comfortable at the expiration
of that time, she means to go back to Scotland again. A Mrs. B--, about
20 years old, whose husband is on board with her. He is a young
Englishman domiciled in New York, and by trade (as well as I can make
out) a woolen-draper. They have been married a fortnight. A Mr. and Mrs.
C--, marvelously fond of each other, complete the catalogue. Mrs. C--, I
have settled, is a publican's daughter, and Mr. C-- is running away with
her, the till, the time-piece off the bar mantel-shelf, the mother's
gold watch from the pocket at the head of the bed; and other
miscellaneous property. The women are all pretty; unusually pretty. I
never saw such good faces together, anywhere."
Their "way of passing the time" will be found in the _Notes_ much as it
was written to me; except that there was one point connected with the
card-playing which he feared might overtax the credulity of his readers,
but which he protested had occurred more than once: "Apropos of rolling,
I have forgotten to mention that in playing whist we are obliged to put
the tricks in our pockets, to keep them from disappearing altogether;
and that five or six times in the course of every rubber we are all
flung from our seats, roll out at different doors, and keep on rolling
until we are picked up by stewards. This has become such a matter of
course, that we go through it with perfect gravity, and, when we are
bolstered up on our sofas again, resume our conversation or our game at
the point where it was interrupted." The news that excited them from day
to day, too, of which little more than a hint appears in the _Notes_, is
worth giving as originally written:
"As for news, we have more of that than you would think for. One man
lost fourteen pounds at vingt-un in the saloon yesterday, or another got
drunk before dinner was over, or another was blinded with lobster-sauce
spilt over him by the steward, or another had a fall on deck and
fainted. The ship's cook was drunk yesterday morning (having got at some
salt-water-damaged whiskey), and the captain ordered the boatswain to
play upon him with the hose of the fire-engine until he roared for
mercy--which he didn't get: for he was sentenced to look out, for four
hours at a stretch for four nights running, without a great-coat, and to
have his grog stopped. Four dozen plates were broken at dinner. One
steward fell down the cabin stairs with a round of beef, and injured his
foot severely. Another steward fell down after him and cut his eye open.
The baker's taken ill; so is the pastry-cook. A new man, sick to death,
has been required to fill the place of the latter officer, and has been
dragged out of bed and propped up in a little house upon deck, between
two casks, and ordered (the captain standing over him) to make and roll
out pie-crust; which he protests, with tears in his eyes, it is death to
him in his bilious state to look at. Twelve dozen of bottled porter has
got loose upon deck, and the bottles are rolling about distractedly,
overhead. Lord Mulgrave (a handsome fellow, by-the-by, to look at, and
nothing but a good 'un to go) laid a wager with twenty-five other men
last night, whose berths, like his, are in the fore-cabin, which can
only be got at by crossing the deck, that he would reach his cabin
first. Watches were set by the captain's, and they sallied forth,
wrapped up in coats and storm caps. The sea broke over the ship so
violently, that they were _five-and-twenty minutes_ holding on by the
handrail at the starboard paddle-box, drenched to the skin by every
wave, and not daring to go on or come back, lest they should be washed
overboard. News! A dozen murders in town wouldn't interest us half as
much."
Nevertheless their excitements were not over. At the very end of the
voyage came an incident very lightly touched in the _Notes_, but more
freely told to me under date of the 21st January: "We were running into
Halifax harbor on Wednesday night, with little wind and a bright moon;
had made the light at its outer entrance, and given the ship in charge
to the pilot; were playing our rubber, all in good spirits (for it had
been comparatively smooth for some days, with tolerably dry decks and
other unusual comforts), when suddenly the ship STRUCK! A rush upon deck
followed, of course. The men (I mean the crew! think of this) were
kicking off their shoes and throwing off their jackets preparatory to
swimming ashore; the pilot was beside himself; the passengers dismayed;
and everything in the most intolerable confusion and hurry. Breakers
were roaring ahead; the land within a couple of hundred yards; and the
vessel driving upon the surf, although her paddles were worked
backwards, and everything done to stay her course. It is not the custom
of steamers, it seems, to have an anchor ready. An accident occurred in
getting ours over the side; and for half an hour we were throwing up
rockets, burning blue-lights, and firing signals of distress, all of
which remained unanswered, though we were so close to the shore that we
could see the waving branches of the trees. All this time, as we veered
about, a man was heaving the lead every two minutes; the depths of water
constantly decreasing; and nobody self-possessed but Hewitt. They let go
the anchor at last, got out a boat, and sent her ashore with the fourth
officer, the pilot, and four men aboard, to try and find out where we
were. The pilot had no idea; but Hewitt put his little finger upon a
certain part of the chart, and was as confident of the exact spot
(though he had never been there in his life) as if he had lived there
from infancy. The boat's return about an hour afterwards proved him to
be quite right. We had got into a place called the Eastern Passage, in a
sudden fog and through the pilot's folly. We had struck upon a mud-bank,
and driven into a perfect little pond, surrounded by banks and rocks and
shoals of all kinds: the only safe speck in the place. Eased by this
report, and the assurance that the tide was past the ebb, we turned in
at three o'clock in the morning, to lie there all night."
The next day's landing at Halifax, and delivery of the mails, are
sketched in the _Notes_; but not his personal part in what followed:
"Then, sir, comes a breathless man who has been already into the ship
and out again, shouting my name as he tears along. I stop, arm in arm
with the little doctor whom I have taken ashore for oysters. The
breathless man introduces himself as The Speaker of the House of
Assembly; _will_ drag me away to his house; and _will_ have a carriage
and his wife sent down for Kate, who is laid up with a hideously swoln
face. Then he drags me up to the Governor's house (Lord Falkland is the
governor), and then Heaven knows where; concluding with both houses of
parliament, which happen to meet for the session that very day, and are
opened by a mock speech from the throne delivered by the governor, with
one of Lord Grey's sons for his aide-de-camp, and a great host of
officers about him. I wish you could have seen the crowds cheering the
inimitable[45] in the streets. I wish you could have seen judges,
law-officers, bishops, and law-makers welcoming the inimitable. I wish
you could have seen the inimitable shown to a great elbow-chair by the
Speaker's throne, and sitting alone in the middle of the floor of the
House of Commons, the observed of all observers, listening with
exemplary gravity to the queerest speaking possible, and breaking in
spite of himself into a smile as he thought of this commencement to the
Thousand and One stories in reserve for home and Lincoln's Inn Fields
and Jack Straw's Castle.--Ah, Forster! when I _do_ come back again!----"
He resumed his letter at Tremont House on Saturday, the 28th of January,
having reached Boston that day week at five in the afternoon; and, as
his first American experience is very lightly glanced at in the _Notes_,
a fuller picture will perhaps be welcome. "As the Cunard boats have a
wharf of their own at the custom-house, and that a narrow one, we were a
long time (an hour at least) working in. I was standing in full fig on
the paddle-box beside the captain, staring about me, when suddenly, long
before we were moored to the wharf, a dozen men came leaping on board at
the peril of their lives, with great bundles of newspapers under their
arms; worsted comforters (very much the worse for wear) round their
necks; and so forth. 'Aha!' says I, 'this is like our London Bridge;'
believing of course that these visitors were news-boys. But what do you
think of their being EDITORS? And what do you think of their tearing
violently up to me and beginning to shake hands like madmen? Oh! if you
could have seen how I wrung their wrists! And if you could but know how
I hated one man in very dirty gaiters, and with very protruding upper
teeth, who said to all comers after him, 'So you've been introduced to
our friend Dickens--eh?' There was one among them, though, who really
was of use; a Doctor S., editor of the ----. He ran off here (two miles
at least), and ordered rooms and dinner. And in course of time Kate, and
I, and Lord Mulgrave (who was going back to his regiment at Montreal on
Monday, and had agreed to live with us in the mean while) sat down in a
spacious and handsome room to a very handsome dinner, bating
peculiarities of putting on table, and had forgotten the ship entirely.
A Mr. Alexander, to whom I had written from England promising to sit for
a portrait, was on board directly we touched the land, and brought us
here in his carriage. Then, after sending a present of most beautiful
flowers, he left us to ourselves, and we thanked him for it."
What further he had to say of that week's experience finds its first
public utterance here. "How can I tell you," he continues, "what has
happened since that first day? How can I give you the faintest notion of
my reception here; of the crowds that pour in and out the whole day; of
the people that line the streets when I go out; of the cheering when I
went to the theatre; of the copies of verses, letters of congratulation,
welcomes of all kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without end? There is
to be a public dinner to me here in Boston, next Tuesday, and great
dissatisfaction has been given to the many by the high price (three
pounds sterling each) of the tickets. There is to be a ball next Monday
week at New York, and 150 names appear on the list of the committee.
There is to be a dinner in the same place, in the same week, to which I
have had an invitation with every known name in America appended to it.
But what can I tell you about any of these things which will give you
the slightest notion of the enthusiastic greeting they give me, or the
cry that runs through the whole country? I have had deputations from the
Far West, who have come from more than two thousand miles' distance:
from the lakes, the rivers, the back-woods, the log houses, the cities,
factories, villages, and towns. Authorities from nearly all the States
have written to me. I have heard from the universities, Congress,
Senate, and bodies, public and private, of every sort and kind. 'It is
no-nonsense, and no common feeling,' wrote Dr. Channing to me yesterday.
'It is all heart. There never was, and never will be, such a triumph.'
And it is a good thing, is it not, . . . to find those fancies it has
given me and you the greatest satisfaction to think of, at the core of
it all? It makes my heart quieter, and me a more retiring, sober,
tranquil man, to watch the effect of those thoughts in all this noise
and hurry, even than if I sat, pen in hand, to put them down for the
first time. I feel, in the best aspects of this welcome, something of
the presence and influence of that spirit which directs my life, and
through a heavy sorrow has pointed upwards with unchanging finger for
more than four years past. And if I know my heart, not twenty times this
praise would move me to an act of folly.". . .
There were but two days more before the post left for England, and the
close of this part of his letter sketched the engagements that awaited
him on leaving Boston: "We leave here next Saturday. We go to a place
called Worcester, about 75 miles off, to the house of the governor of
this place; and stay with him all Sunday. On Monday we go on by railroad
about 50 miles further to a town called Springfield, where I am met by a
'reception committee' from Hartford 20 miles further, and carried on by
the multitude: I am sure I don't know how, but I shouldn't wonder if
they appear with a triumphal car. On Wednesday I have a public dinner
there. On Friday I shall be obliged to present myself in public again,
at a place called New Haven, about 30 miles further. On Saturday
evening I hope to be at New York; and there I shall stay ten days or a
fortnight. You will suppose that I have enough to do. I am sitting for a
portrait and for a bust. I have the correspondence of a secretary of
state, and the engagements of a fashionable physician. I have a
secretary whom I take on with me. He is a young man of the name of Q.;
was strongly recommended to me; is most modest, obliging, silent, and
willing; and does his work _well_. He boards and lodges at my expense
when we travel; and his salary is ten dollars per month--about two
pounds five of our English money. There will be dinners and balls at
Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and I believe everywhere. In
Canada, I have promised to _play_ at the theatre with the officers, for
the benefit of a charity. We are already weary, at times, past all
expression; and I finish this by means of a pious fraud. We were engaged
to a party, and have written to say we are both desperately ill. . . .
'Well,' I can fancy you saying, 'but about his impressions of Boston and
the Americans?'--Of the latter, I will not say a word until I have seen
more of them, and have gone into the interior. I will only say, now,
that we have never yet been required to dine at a table-d'hote; that,
thus far, our rooms are as much our own here as they would be at the
Clarendon; that but for an odd phrase now and then--such as _Snap of
cold weather_; a _tongue-y man_ for a talkative fellow; _Possible?_ as a
solitary interrogation; and _Yes?_ for indeed--I should have marked, so
far, no difference whatever between the parties here and those I have
left behind. The women are very beautiful, but they soon fade; the
general breeding is neither stiff nor forward; the good nature,
universal. If you ask the way to a place--of some common water-side man,
who don't know you from Adam--he turns and goes with you. Universal
deference is paid to ladies; and they walk about at all seasons, wholly
unprotected. . . . This hotel is a trifle smaller than Finsbury Square; and
is made so infernally hot (I use the expression advisedly) by means of a
furnace with pipes running through the passages, that we can hardly bear
it. There are no curtains to the beds, or to the bedroom windows. I am
told there never are, hardly, all through America. The bedrooms are
indeed very bare of furniture. Ours is nearly as large as your great
room, and has a wardrobe in it of painted wood not larger (I appeal to
K.) than an English watch-box. I slept in this room for two nights,
quite satisfied with the belief that it was a shower-bath."
The last addition made to this letter, from which many vividest pages of
the _Notes_ (among them the bright quaint picture of Boston streets)
were taken with small alteration, bore date the 29th of January: "I
hardly know what to add to all this long and unconnected history. Dana,
the author of that _Two Years before the Mast_" (a book which I had
praised much to him, thinking it like De Foe), "is a very nice fellow
indeed; and in appearance not at all the man you would expect. He is
short, mild-looking, and has a care-worn face. His father is exactly
like George Cruikshank after a night's jollity--only shorter. The
professors at the Cambridge university, Longfellow, Felton, Jared
Sparks, are noble fellows. So is Kenyon's friend, Ticknor. Bancroft is
a famous man; a straightforward, manly, earnest heart; and talks much of
you, which is a great comfort. Doctor Channing I will tell you more of,
after I have breakfasted alone with him next Wednesday. . . . Sumner is of
great service to me. . . . The president of the Senate here presides at my
dinner on Tuesday. Lord Mulgrave lingered with us till last Tuesday (we
had our little captain to dinner on the Monday), and then went on to
Canada. Kate is quite well, and so is Anne, whose smartness surpasses
belief. They yearn for home, and so do I.
"Of course you will not see in the papers any true account of our
voyage, for they keep the dangers of the passage, when there are any,
very quiet. I observed so many perils peculiar to steamers that I am
still undecided whether we shall not return by one of the New York
liners. On the night of the storm, I was wondering within myself where
we should be, if the chimney were blown overboard; in which case, it
needs no great observation to discover that the vessel must be instantly
on fire from stem to stern. When I went on deck next day, I saw that it
was held up by a perfect forest of chains and ropes, which had been
rigged in the night. Hewitt told me (when we were on shore, not before)
that they had men lashed, hoisted up, and swinging there, all through
the gale, getting these stays about it. This is not agreeable--is it?
"I wonder whether you will remember that next Tuesday is my birthday!
This letter will leave here that morning.
"On looking back through these sheets, I am astonished to find how
little I have told you, and how much I have, even now, in store which
shall be yours by word of mouth. The American poor, the American
factories, the institutions of all kinds--I have a book, already. There
is no man in this town, or in this State of New England, who has not a
blazing fire and a meat dinner every day of his life. A flaming sword in
the air would not attract so much attention as a beggar in the streets.
There are no charity uniforms, no wearisome repetition of the same dull
ugly dress, in that blind school.[46] All are attired after their own
tastes, and every boy and girl has his or her individuality as distinct
and unimpaired as you would find it in their own homes. At the theatres,
all the ladies sit in the fronts of the boxes. The gallery are as quiet
as the dress circle at dear Drury Lane. A man with seven heads would be
no sight at all, compared with one who couldn't read and write.
"I won't speak (I say 'speak'! I wish I could) about the dear precious
children, because I know how much we shall hear about them when we
receive those letters from home for which we long so ardently."
* * * * *
Unmistakably to be seen, in this earliest of his letters, is the quite
fresh and unalloyed impression first received by him at this memorable
visit; and it is due, as well to himself as to the great country which
welcomed him, that this should be considered independently of any
modification it afterwards underwent. Of the fervency and universality
of the welcome there could indeed be no doubt, and as little that it
sprang from feelings honorable both to giver and receiver. The sources
of Dickens's popularity in England were in truth multiplied many-fold in
America. The hearty, cordial, and humane side of his genius had
fascinated them quite as much; but there was also something beyond this.
The cheerful temper that had given new beauty to the commonest forms of
life, the abounding humor which had added largely to all innocent
enjoyment, the honorable and in those days rare distinction of America
which left no home in the Union inaccessible to such advantages, had
made Dickens the object everywhere of grateful admiration, for the most
part of personal affection. But even this was not all. I do not say it
either to lessen or to increase the value of the tribute, but to express
simply what it was; and there cannot be a question that the young
English author, whom by his language they claimed equally for their own,
was almost universally regarded by the Americans as a kind of embodied
protest against what they believed to be worst in the institutions of
England, depressing and overshadowing in a social sense, and adverse to
purely intellectual influences. In all the papers of every grade in the
Union, of which many were sent to me at the time, the feeling of triumph
over the mother-country in this particular is everywhere predominant.
You worship titles, they said, and military heroes, and millionaires,
and we of the New World want to show you, by extending the kind of
homage that the Old World reserves for kings and conquerors, to a young
man with nothing to distinguish him but his heart and his genius, what
it is we think in these parts worthier of honor, than birth, or wealth,
a title, or a sword. Well, there was something in this too, apart from a
mere crowing over the mother-country. The Americans had honestly more
than a common share in the triumphs of a genius which in more than one
sense had made the deserts and wildernesses of life to blossom like the
rose. They were entitled to select for a welcome, as emphatic as they
might please to render it, the writer who pre-eminently in his
generation had busied himself to "detect and save," in human creatures,
such sparks of virtue as misery or vice had not availed to extinguish;
to discover what is beautiful and comely under what commonly passes for
the ungainly and the deformed; to draw happiness and hopefulness from
despair itself; and, above all, so to have made known to his own
countrymen the wants and sufferings of the poor, the ignorant, and the
neglected, that they could be left in absolute neglect no more. "A
triumph has been prepared for him," wrote Mr. Ticknor to our dear friend
Kenyon, "in which the whole country will join. He will have a progress
through the States unequaled since Lafayette's." Daniel Webster told the
Americans that Dickens had done more already to ameliorate the condition
of the English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had sent into
Parliament. His sympathies are such, exclaimed Dr. Channing, as to
recommend him in an especial manner to us. He seeks out that class, in
order to benefit them, with whom American institutions and laws
sympathize most strongly; and it is in the passions, sufferings, and
virtues of the mass that he has found his subjects of most thrilling
interest. "He shows that life in its rudest form may wear a tragic
grandeur; that amidst follies and excesses, provoking laughter or scorn,
the moral feelings do not wholly die; and that the haunts of the
blackest crime are sometimes lighted up by the presence and influence of
the noblest souls. His pictures have a tendency to awaken sympathy with
our race, and to change the unfeeling indifference which has prevailed
towards the depressed multitude, into a sorrowful and indignant
sensibility to their wrongs and woes."
Whatever may be the turn which we are to see the welcome take, by
dissatisfaction that arose on both sides, it is well that we should thus
understand what in its first manifestations was honorable to both.
Dickens had his disappointments, and the Americans had theirs; but what
was really genuine in the first enthusiasm remained without grave alloy
from either; and the letters, as I proceed to give them, will so
naturally explain and illustrate the misunderstanding as to require
little further comment. I am happy to be able here to place on record
fac-similes of the invitations to the public entertainments in New York
which reached him before he quitted Boston. The mere signatures suffice
to show how universal the welcome was from that great city of the
Union.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] The initials used here are in no case those of the real names,
being employed in every case for the express purpose of disguising the
names. Generally the remark is applicable to all initials used in the
letters printed in the course of this work.
[45] This word, applied to him by his old master; Mr. Giles (_ante_, p.
33), was for a long time the epithet we called him by.
[46] His descriptions of this school, and of the case of Laura
Bridgeman, will be found in the _Notes_, and have therefore been, of
course, omitted here.