PHILADELPHIA, WASHINGTON, AND THE SOUTH.
1842.
At Philadelphia--Rule in Printing
Letters--Promise as to Railroads--Experience of
them--Railway-cars--Charcoal Stoves--Ladies'
Cars--Spittoons--Massachusetts and New
York--Police-cells and Prisons--House of
Detention and Inmates--Women and Boy
Prisoners--Capital Punishment--A House of
Correction--Four Hundred Single
Cells--Comparison with English Prisons--Inns
and Landlords--At Washington--Hotel
Extortion--Philadelphia Penitentiary--The
Solitary System--Solitary Prisoners--Talk with
Inspectors--Bookseller Carey--Changes of
Temperature--Henry Clay--Proposed
Journeyings--Letters from England--Congress and
Senate--Leading American Statesmen--The People
of America--Englishmen "located" there--"Surgit
amari aliquid"--The Copyright Petition--At
Richmond--Irving appointed to Spain--Experience
of a Slave City--Incidents of Slave
Life--Discussion with a Slaveholder--Feeling of
South to England--Levees at Richmond--One more
Banquet accepted--My Gift of _Shakspeare_--Home
Letters and Fancies--Self-reproach of a Noble
Nature--Washington Irving's Leave-taking.
DICKENS'S next letter was begun in the "United States Hotel,
Philadelphia," and bore date "Sunday, sixth March, 1842." It treated of
much dealt with afterwards at greater length in the _Notes_, but the
freshness and vivacity of the first impressions in it have surprised me.
I do not, however, print any passage here which has not its own interest
independently of anything contained in that book. The rule will be
continued, as in the portions of letters already given, of not
transcribing anything before printed, or anything having even but a near
resemblance to descriptions that appear in the _Notes_.
". . . . . . As this is likely to be the only quiet day I shall have for a
long time, I devote it to writing to you. We have heard nothing from
you[49] yet, and only have for our consolation the reflection that the
Columbia[50] is now on her way out. No news had been heard of the
Caledonia yesterday afternoon, when we left New York. We _were_ to have
quitted that place last Tuesday, but have been detained there all the
week by Kate having so bad a sore throat that she was obliged to keep
her bed. We left yesterday afternoon at five o'clock, and arrived here
at eleven last night. Let me say, by the way, that this is a very trying
climate.
"I have often asked Americans in London which were the better
railroads,--ours or theirs? They have taken time for reflection, and
generally replied on mature consideration that they rather thought we
excelled; in respect of the punctuality with which we arrived at our
stations, and the smoothness of our traveling. I wish you could see what
an American railroad is, in some parts where I now have seen them. I
won't say I wish you could feel what it is, because that would be an
unchristian and savage aspiration. It is never inclosed, or warded off.
You walk down the main street of a large town; and, slap-dash,
headlong, pell-mell, down the middle of the street, with pigs burrowing,
and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women
talking, and children crawling, close to the very rails, there comes
tearing along a mad locomotive with its train of cars, scattering a
red-hot shower of sparks (from its _wood_ fire) in all directions;
screeching, hissing, yelling, and panting; and nobody one atom more
concerned than if it were a hundred miles away. You cross a
turnpike-road; and there is no gate, no policeman, no signal--nothing to
keep the wayfarer or quiet traveler out of the way, but a wooden arch on
which is written, in great letters, 'Look out for the locomotive.' And
if any man, woman, or child don't look out, why, it's his or her fault,
and there's an end of it.
"The cars are like very shabby omnibuses,--only larger; holding sixty or
seventy people. The seats, instead of being placed long ways, are put
cross-wise, back to front. Each holds two. There is a long row of these
on each side of the caravan, and a narrow passage up the centre. The
windows are usually all closed, and there is very often, in addition, a
hot, close, most intolerable charcoal stove in a red-hot glow. The heat
and closeness are quite insupportable. But this is the characteristic of
all American houses, of all the public institutions, chapels, theatres,
and prisons. From the constant use of the hard anthracite coal in these
beastly furnaces, a perfectly new class of diseases is springing up in
the country. Their effect upon an Englishman is briefly told. He is
always very sick and very faint; and has an intolerable headache,
morning, noon, and night.
"In the ladies' car, there is no smoking of tobacco allowed. All
gentlemen who have ladies with them sit in this car; and it is usually
very full. Before it, is the gentlemen's car; which is something
narrower. As I had a window close to me yesterday which commanded this
gentlemen's car, I looked at it pretty often, perforce. The flashes of
saliva flew so perpetually and incessantly out of the windows all the
way, that it looked as though they were ripping open feather-beds
inside, and letting the wind dispose of the feathers.[51] But this
spitting is universal. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon
on the bench, the counsel have theirs, the witness has his, the prisoner
his, and the crier his. The jury are accommodated at the rate of three
men to a spittoon (or spit-box as they call it here); and the spectators
in the gallery are provided for, as so many men who in the course of
nature expectorate without cessation. There are spit-boxes in every
steamboat, bar-room, public dining-room, house of office, and place of
general resort, no matter what it be. In the hospitals, the students are
requested, by placard, to use the boxes provided for them, and not to
spit upon the stairs. I have twice seen gentlemen, at evening parties in
New York, turn aside when they were not engaged in conversation, and
spit upon the drawing-room carpet. And in every bar-room and hotel
passage the stone floor looks as if it were paved with open
oysters--from the quantity of this kind of deposit which tessellates it
all over. . . .
"The institutions at Boston, and at Hartford, are most admirable. It
would be very difficult indeed to improve upon them. But this is not so
at New York; where there is an ill-managed lunatic asylum, a bad jail, a
dismal workhouse, and a perfectly intolerable place of police-imprisonment.
A man is found drunk in the streets, and is thrown into a cell below the
surface of the earth; profoundly dark; so full of noisome vapors that
when you enter it with a candle you see a ring about the light, like
that which surrounds the moon in wet and cloudy weather; and so
offensive and disgusting in its filthy odors that you _cannot bear_ its
stench. He is shut up within an iron door, in a series of vaulted
passages where no one stays; has no drop of water, or ray of light, or
visitor, or help of any kind; and there he remains until the
magistrate's arrival. If he die (as one man did not long ago), he is
half eaten by the rats in an hour's time (as this man was). I expressed,
on seeing these places the other night, the disgust I felt, and which it
would be impossible to repress. 'Well, I don't know,' said the night
constable--that's a national answer, by-the-by,--'well, I don't know.
I've had six-and-twenty young women locked up here together, and
beautiful ones too, and that's a fact.' The cell was certainly no larger
than the wine-cellar in Devonshire Terrace; at least three feet lower;
and stunk like a common sewer. There was one woman in it then. The
magistrate begins his examinations at five o'clock in the morning; the
watch is set at seven at night; if the prisoners have been given in
charge by an officer, they are not taken out before nine or ten; and in
the interval they remain in these places, where they could no more be
heard to cry for help, in case of a fit or swoon among them, than a
man's voice could be heard after he was coffined up in his grave.
"There is a prison in this same city, and indeed in the same building,
where prisoners for grave offenses await their trial, and to which they
are sent back when under remand. It sometimes happens that a man or
woman will remain here for twelve months, waiting the result of motions
for new trial, and in arrest of judgment, and what not. I went into it
the other day: without any notice or preparation, otherwise I find it
difficult to catch them in their work-a-day aspect. I stood in a long,
high, narrow building, consisting of four galleries one above the other,
with a bridge across each, on which sat a turnkey, sleeping or reading
as the case might be. From the roof, a couple of wind-sails dangled and
drooped, limp and useless; the sky-light being fast closed, and they
only designed for summer use. In the centre of the building was the
eternal stove; and along both sides of every gallery was a long row of
iron doors--looking like furnace-doors, being very small, but black and
cold as if the fires within had gone out.
"A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-looking fellow, and,
in his way, civil and obliging." (I omit a dialogue of which the
substance has been printed,[52] and give only that which appears for the
first time here.)
"'Suppose a man's here for twelve months. Do you mean to say he never
comes out at that little iron door?'
"'He _may_ walk some, perhaps--not much.'
"'Will you show me a few of them?'
"'Ah! All, if you like.'
"He threw open a door, and I looked in. An old man was sitting on his
bed, reading. The light came in through a small chink, very high up in
the wall. Across the room ran a thick iron pipe to carry off filth; this
was bored for the reception of something like a big funnel in shape; and
over the funnel was a watercock. This was his washing apparatus and
water-closet. It was not savory, but not very offensive. He looked up at
me; gave himself an odd, dogged kind of shake; and fixed his eyes on his
book again. I came out, and the door was shut and locked. He had been
there a month, and would have to wait another month for his trial. 'Has
he ever walked out now, for instance?' 'No.'. . .
"'In England, if a man is under sentence of death even, he has a yard to
walk in at certain times.'
"'Possible?'
". . . Making me this answer with a coolness which is perfectly
untranslatable and inexpressible, and which is quite peculiar to the
soil, he took me to the women's side, telling me, upon the way, all
about this man, who, it seems, murdered his wife, and will certainly be
hanged. The women's doors have a small square aperture in them; I looked
through one, and saw a pretty boy about ten or twelve years old, who
seemed lonely and miserable enough--as well he might. 'What's _he_ been
doing?' says I. 'Nothing,' says my friend. 'Nothing!' says I. 'No,' says
he. 'He's here for safe keeping. He saw his father kill his mother, and
is detained to give evidence against him--that was his father you saw
just now.' 'But that's rather hard treatment for a witness, isn't it?'
'Well, I don't know. It a'n't a very rowdy life, and _that's_ a fact.'
So my friend, who was an excellent fellow in his way, and very obliging,
and a handsome young man to boot, took me off to show me some more
curiosities; and I was very much obliged to him, for the place was so
hot, and I so giddy, that I could scarcely stand. . . .
"When a man is hanged in New York, he is walked out of one of these
cells, without any condemned sermon or other religious formalities,
straight into the narrow jail-yard, which may be about the width of
Cranbourn Alley. There, a gibbet is erected, which is of curious
construction; for the culprit stands on the earth with the rope about
his neck, which passes through a pulley in the top of the 'Tree' (see
_Newgate Calendar_ passim), and is attached to a weight something
heavier than the man. This weight, being suddenly let go, drags the rope
down with it, and sends the criminal flying up fourteen feet into the
air; while the judge, and jury, and five-and-twenty citizens (whose
presence is required by the law), stand by, that they may afterwards
certify to the fact. This yard is a very dismal place; and when I looked
at it, I thought the practice infinitely superior to ours: much more
solemn, and far less degrading and indecent.
[Illustration]
"There is another prison near New York which is a house of correction.
The convicts labor in stone-quarries near at hand, but the jail has no
covered yards or shops, so that when the weather is wet (as it was when
I was there) each man is shut up in his own little cell, all the
live-long day. These cells, in all the correction-houses I have seen,
are on one uniform plan,--thus: A, B, C, and D, are the walls of the
building with windows in them, high up in the wall. The shaded place in
the centre represents four tiers of cells, one above the other, with
doors of grated iron, and a light grated gallery to each tier. Four
tiers front to B, and four to D, so that by this means you may be said,
in walking round, to see eight tiers in all. The intermediate blank
space you walk in, looking up at these galleries; so that, coming in at
the door E, and going either to the right or left till you come back to
the door again, you see all the cells under one roof and in one high
room. Imagine them in number 400, and in every one a man locked up; this
one with his hands through the bars of his grate, this one in bed (in
the middle of the day, remember), and this one flung down in a heap upon
the ground with his head against the bars like a wild beast. Make the
rain pour down in torrents outside. Put the everlasting stove in the
midst; hot, suffocating, and vaporous, as a witch's cauldron. Add a
smell like that of a thousand old mildewed umbrellas wet through, and a
thousand dirty-clothes-bags musty, moist, and fusty, and you will have
some idea--a very feeble one, my dear friend, on my word--of this place
yesterday week. You know of course that we adopted our improvements in
prison-discipline from the American pattern; but I am confident that the
writers who have the most lustily lauded the American prisons have never
seen Chesterton's domain or Tracey's.[53] There is no more comparison
between these two prisons of ours, and any I have seen here YET, than
there is between the keepers here, and those two gentlemen. Putting out
of sight the difficulty we have in England of finding _useful_ labor for
the prisoners (which of course arises from our being an older country
and having vast numbers of artisans unemployed), our system is more
complete, more impressive, and more satisfactory in every respect. It is
very possible that I have not come to the best, not having yet seen
Mount Auburn. I will tell you when I have. And also when I have come to
those inns, mentioned--vaguely rather--by Miss Martineau, where they
undercharge literary people for the love the landlords bear them. My
experience, so far, has been of establishments where (perhaps for the
same reason) they very monstrously and violently overcharge a man whose
position forbids remonstrance.
"WASHINGTON, Sunday, March the Thirteenth, 1842.
"In allusion to the last sentence, my dear friend, I must tell you a
slight experience I had in Philadelphia. My rooms had been ordered for a
week, but, in consequence of Kate's illness, only Mr. Q. and the luggage
had gone on. Mr. Q. always lives at the table-d'hote, so that while we
were in New York our rooms were empty. The landlord not only charged me
half the full rent for the time during which the rooms were reserved for
us (which was quite right), but charged me also _for board for myself
and Kate and Anne, at the rate of nine dollars per day_ for the same
period, when we were actually living, at the same expense, in New
York!!! I _did_ remonstrate upon this head, but was coolly told it was
the custom (which I have since been assured is a lie), and had nothing
for it but to pay the amount. What else could I do? I was going away by
the steamboat at five o'clock in the morning; and the landlord knew
perfectly well that my disputing an item of his bill would draw down
upon me the sacred wrath of the newspapers, which would one and all
demand in capitals if THIS was the gratitude of the man whom America had
received as she had never received any other man but La Fayette?
"I went last Tuesday to the Eastern Penitentiary near Philadelphia,
which is the only prison in the States, or I believe in the world, on
the principle of hopeless, strict, and unrelaxed solitary confinement,
during the whole term of the sentence. It is wonderfully kept, but a
most dreadful, fearful place. The inspectors, immediately on my arrival
in Philadelphia, invited me to pass the day in the jail, and to dine
with them when I had finished my inspection, that they might hear my
opinion of the system. Accordingly I passed the whole day in going from
cell to cell, and conversing with the prisoners. Every facility was
given me, and no constraint whatever imposed upon any man's free speech.
If I were to write you a letter of twenty sheets, I could not tell you
this one day's work; so I will reserve it until that happy time when we
shall sit round the table a Jack Straw's--you, and I, and Mac--and go
over my diary. I never shall be able to dismiss from my mind the
impressions of that day. Making notes of them, as I have done, is an
absurdity, for they are written, beyond all power of erasure, in my
brain. I saw men who had been there, five years, six years, eleven
years, two years, two months, two days; some whose term was nearly over,
and some whose term had only just begun. Women too, under the same
variety of circumstances. Every prisoner who comes into the jail comes
at night; is put into a bath, and dressed in the prison-garb; and then a
black hood is drawn over his face and head, and he is led to the cell
from which he never stirs again until his whole period of confinement
has expired. I looked at some of them with the same awe as I should have
looked at men who had been buried alive and dug up again.
"We dined in the jail: and I told them after dinner how much the sight
had affected me, and what an awful punishment it was. I dwelt upon this;
for, although the inspectors are extremely kind and benevolent men, I
question whether they are sufficiently acquainted with the human mind to
know what it is they are doing. Indeed, I am sure they do not know. I
bore testimony, as every one who sees it must, to the admirable
government of the institution (Stanfield is the keeper: grown a little
younger, that's all); but added that nothing could justify such a
punishment but its working a reformation in the prisoners. That for
short terms--say two years for the maximum--I conceived, especially
after what they had told me of its good effects in certain cases, it
might perhaps be highly beneficial; but that, carried to so great an
extent, I thought it cruel and unjustifiable; and, further, that their
sentences for small offenses were very rigorous, not to say savage. All
this they took like men who were really anxious to have one's free
opinion and to do right. And we were very much pleased with each other,
and parted in the friendliest way.
"They sent me back to Philadelphia in a carriage they had sent for me in
the morning; and then I had to dress in a hurry, and follow Kate to
Carey's the bookseller's, where there was a party. He married a sister
of Leslie's. There are three Miss Leslies here, very accomplished; and
one of them has copied all her brother's principal pictures. These
copies hang about the room. We got away from this as soon as we could;
and next morning had to turn out at five. In the morning I had received
and shaken hands with five hundred people, so you may suppose that I was
pretty well tired. Indeed, I am obliged to be very careful of myself; to
avoid smoking and drinking; to get to bed soon; and to be particular in
respect of what I eat. . . . You cannot think how bilious and trying the
climate is. One day it is hot summer, without a breath of air; the next,
twenty degrees below freezing, with a wind blowing that cuts your skin
like steel. These changes have occurred here several times since last
Wednesday night.
"I have altered my route, and don't mean to go to Charleston. The
country, all the way from here, is nothing but a dismal swamp; there is
a bad night of sea-coasting in the journey; the equinoctial gales are
blowing hard; and Clay (a most _charming_ fellow, by-the-by), whom I
have consulted, strongly dissuades me. The weather is intensely hot
there; the spring fever is coming on; and there is very little to see,
after all. We therefore go next Wednesday night to Richmond, which we
shall reach on Thursday. There we shall stop three days; my object being
to see some tobacco-plantations. Then we shall go by James River back to
Baltimore, which we have already passed through, and where we shall stay
two days. Then we shall go West at once, straight through the most
gigantic part of this continent: across the Alleghany Mountains, and
over a prairie.
"STILL AT WASHINGTON, Fifteenth March, 1842. . . . It is impossible, my
dear friend, to tell you what we felt when Mr. Q. (who is a fearfully
sentimental genius, but heartily interested in all that concerns us)
came to where we were dining last Sunday, and sent in a note to the
effect that the Caledonia[54] had arrived! Being really assured of her
safety, we felt as if the distance between us and home were diminished
by at least one-half. There was great joy everywhere here, for she had
been quite despaired of, but our joy was beyond all telling. This news
came on by express. Last night your letters reached us. I was dining
with a club (for I can't avoid a dinner of that sort, now and then), and
Kate sent me a note about nine o'clock to say they were here. But she
didn't open them--which I consider heroic--until I came home. That was
about half-past ten; and we read them until nearly two in the morning.
"I won't say a word about your letters; except that Kate and I have come
to a conclusion which makes me tremble in my shoes, for we decide that
humorous narrative is your forte, and not statesmen of the commonwealth.
I won't say a word about your news; for how could I in that case, while
you want to hear what we are doing, resist the temptation of expending
pages on those darling children? . . .
"I have the privilege of appearing on the floor of both Houses here, and
go to them every day. They are very handsome and commodious. There is a
great deal of bad speaking, but there are a great many very remarkable
men, in the legislature: such as John Quincy Adams, Clay, Preston,
Calhoun, and others: with whom I need scarcely add I have been placed in
the friendliest relations. Adams is a fine old fellow--seventy-six years
old, but with most surprising vigor, memory, readiness, and pluck. Clay
is perfectly enchanting; an irresistible man. There are some very
notable specimens, too, out of the West. Splendid men to look at, hard
to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in varied
accomplishments, Indians in quickness of eye and gesture, Americans in
affectionate and generous impulse. It would be difficult to exaggerate
the nobility of some of these glorious fellows.
"When Clay retires, as he does this month, Preston will become the
leader of the Whig party. He so solemnly assures me that the
international copyright shall and will be passed, that I almost begin to
hope; and I shall be entitled to say, if it be, that I have brought it
about. You have no idea how universal the discussion of its merits and
demerits has become, or how eager for the change I have made a portion
of the people.
"You remember what ---- was, in England. If you _could_ but see him
here! If you could only have seen him when he called on us the other
day,--feigning abstraction in the dreadful pressure of affairs of state;
rubbing his forehead as one who was aweary of the world; and exhibiting
a sublime caricature of Lord Burleigh. He is the only thoroughly unreal
man I have seen on this side the ocean. Heaven help the President! All
parties are against him, and he appears truly wretched. We go to a levee
at his house to-night. He has invited me to dinner on Friday, but I am
obliged to decline; for we leave, per steamboat, to-morrow night.
"I said I wouldn't write anything more concerning the American people,
for two months. Second thoughts are best. I shall not change, and may as
well speak out--to _you_. They are friendly, earnest, hospitable, kind,
frank, very often accomplished, far less prejudiced than you would
suppose, warm-hearted, fervent, and enthusiastic. They are chivalrous in
their universal politeness to women, courteous, obliging, disinterested;
and, when they conceive a perfect affection for a man (as I may venture
to say of myself), entirely devoted to him. I have received thousands of
people of all ranks and grades, and have never once been asked an
offensive or unpolite question,--except by Englishmen, who, when they
have been 'located' here for some years, are worse than the devil in
his blackest painting. The State is a parent to its people; has a
parental care and watch over all poor children, women laboring of child,
sick persons, and captives. The common men render you assistance in the
streets, and would revolt from the offer of a piece of money. The desire
to oblige is universal; and I have never once traveled in a public
conveyance without making some generous acquaintance whom I have been
sorry to part from, and who has in many cases come on miles, to see us
again. But I don't like the country. I would not live here, on any
consideration. It goes against the grain with me. It would with you. I
think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here
and be happy. I have a confidence that I must be right, because I have
everything, God knows, to lead me to the opposite conclusion; and yet I
cannot resist coming to this one. As to the causes, they are too many to
enter upon here. . . .
"One of two petitions for an international copyright which I brought
here from American authors, with Irving at their head, has been
presented to the House of Representatives. Clay retains the other for
presentation to the Senate after I have left Washington. The presented
one has been referred to a committee; the Speaker has nominated as its
chairman Mr. Kennedy, member for Baltimore, who is himself an author and
notoriously favorable to such a law; and I am going to assist him in his
report.
"RICHMOND, IN VIRGINIA. Thursday Night, March 17.
"Irving was with me at Washington yesterday, and _wept heartily_ at
parting. He is a fine fellow, when you know him well; and you would
relish him, my dear friend, of all things. We have laughed together at
some absurdities we have encountered in company, quite in my vociferous
Devonshire-Terrace style. The 'Merrikin' government has treated him, he
says, most liberally and handsomely in every respect. He thinks of
sailing for Liverpool on the 7th of April, passing a short time in
London, and then going to Paris. Perhaps you may meet him. If you do, he
will know that you are my dearest friend, and will open his whole heart
to you at once. His secretary of legation, Mr. Coggleswell, is a man of
very remarkable information, a great traveler, a good talker, and a
scholar.
"I am going to sketch you our trip here from Washington, as it involves
nine miles of a 'Virginny Road.' That done, I must be brief, good
brother.". . .
The reader of the _American Notes_ will remember the admirable and most
humorous description of the night steamer on the Potomac, and of the
black driver over the Virginia road. Both were in this letter; which,
after three days, he resumed "At Washington again, Monday, March the
twenty-first:
"We had intended to go to Baltimore from Richmond, by a place called
Norfolk; but, one of the boats being under repair, I found we should
probably be detained at this Norfolk two days. Therefore we came back
here yesterday, by the road we had traveled before; lay here last night;
and go on to Baltimore this afternoon, at four o'clock. It is a journey
of only two hours and a half. Richmond is a prettily situated town, but,
like other towns in slave districts (as the planters themselves admit),
has an aspect of decay and gloom which to an unaccustomed eye is _most_
distressing. In the black car (for they don't let them sit with the
whites), on the railroad as we went there, were a mother and family,
whom the steamer was conveying away, to sell; retaining the man (the
husband and father, I mean) on his plantation. The children cried the
whole way. Yesterday, on board the boat, a slave-owner and two
constables were our fellow-passengers. They were coming here in search
of two negroes who had run away on the previous day. On the bridge at
Richmond there is a notice against fast driving over it, as it is rotten
and crazy: penalty--for whites, five dollars; for slaves, fifteen
stripes. My heart is lightened as if a great load had been taken from
it, when I think that we are turning our backs on this accursed and
detested system. I really don't think I could have borne it any longer.
It is all very well to say 'be silent on the subject.' They won't let
you be silent. They _will_ ask you what you think of it; and _will_
expatiate on slavery as if it were one of the greatest blessings of
mankind. 'It's not,' said a hard, bad-looking fellow to me the other
day, 'it's not the interest of a man to use his slaves ill. It's damned
nonsense that you hear in England.'--I told him quietly that it was not
a man's interest to get drunk, or to steal, or to game, or to indulge in
any other vice, but he _did_ indulge in it for all that; that cruelty,
and the abuse of irresponsible power, were two of the bad passions of
human nature, with the gratification of which, considerations of
interest or of ruin, had nothing whatever to do; and that, while every
candid man must admit that even a slave might be happy enough with a
good master, all human beings knew that bad masters, cruel masters, and
masters who disgraced the form they bore, were matters of experience and
history, whose existence was as undisputed as that of slaves themselves.
He was a little taken aback by this, and asked me if I believed in the
Bible. Yes, I said, but if any man could prove to me that it sanctioned
slavery, I would place no further credence in it. 'Well then,' he said,
'by God, sir, the niggers must be kept down, and the whites have put
down the colored people wherever they have found them.' 'That's the
whole question,' said I. 'Yes, and by God,' says he, 'the British had
better not stand out on that point when Lord Ashburton comes over, for I
never felt so warlike as I do now,--and that's a fact.' I was obliged to
accept a public supper in this Richmond, and I saw plainly enough there
that the hatred which these Southern States bear to us as a nation has
been fanned up and revived again by this Creole business, and can
scarcely be exaggerated.
. . . . "We were desperately tired at Richmond, as we went to a great many
places and received a very great number of visitors. We appoint usually
two hours in every day for this latter purpose, and have our room so
full at that period that it is difficult to move or breathe. Before we
left Richmond, a gentleman told me, when I really was so exhausted that
I could hardly stand, that 'three people of great fashion' were much
offended by having been told, when they called last evening, that I was
tired and not visible, then, but would be 'at home' from twelve to two
next day! Another gentleman (no doubt of great fashion also) sent a
letter to me two hours after I had gone to bed, preparatory to rising at
four next morning, with instructions to the slave who brought it to
knock me up and wait for an answer!
"I am going to break my resolution of accepting no more public
entertainments, in favor of the originators of the printed document
overleaf. They live upon the confines of the Indian territory, some two
thousand miles or more west of New York! Think of my dining there! And
yet, please God, the festival will come off--I should say about the 12th
or 15th of next month.". . .
The printed document was a series of resolutions, moved at a public
meeting attended by all the principal citizens, judges, professors, and
doctors of St. Louis, urgently inviting to that city of the Far West the
distinguished writer then the guest of America, eulogizing his genius,
and tendering to him their warmest hospitalities. He was at Baltimore
when he closed his letter.
"BALTIMORE, _Tuesday, March 22d._
"I have a great diffidence in running counter to any impression formed
by a man of Maclise's genius, on a subject he has fully considered."
(Referring, apparently, to some remark by myself on the picture of the
Play-scene in _Hamlet_, exhibited this year.) "But I quite agree with
you about the King in _Hamlet_. Talking of Hamlet, I constantly carry in
my great-coat pocket the _Shakspeare_ you bought for me in Liverpool.
What an unspeakable source of delight that book is to me!
"Your Ontario letter I found here to-night: sent on by the vigilant and
faithful Colden, who makes every thing having reference to us or our
affairs a labor of the heartiest love. We devoured its contents,
greedily. Good Heaven, my dear fellow, how I miss you! and how I count
the time 'twixt this and coming home again! Shall I ever forget the day
of our parting at Liverpool! when even ---- became jolly and radiant in
his sympathy with our separation! Never, never shall I forget that time.
Ah! how seriously I thought then, and how seriously I have thought many,
many times since, of the terrible folly of ever quarreling with a true
friend, on good-for-nothing trifles! Every little hasty word that has
ever passed between us rose up before me like a reproachful ghost. At
this great distance, I seem to look back upon any miserable small
interruption of our affectionate intercourse, though only for the
instant it has never outlived, with a sort of pity for myself as if I
were another creature.
"I have bought another accordion. The steward lent me one, on the
passage out, and I regaled the ladies' cabin with my performances. You
can't think with what feeling I play _Home Sweet Home_ every night, or
how pleasantly sad it makes us. . . . And so God bless you. . . . I leave
space for a short postscript before sealing this, but it will probably
contain nothing. The dear, dear children! what a happiness it is to know
that they are in such hands!
* * * * *
"P.S. Twenty-third March, 1842. Nothing new. And all well. I have not
heard that the Columbia is in, but she is hourly expected. Washington
Irving has come on for another leave-taking,[55] and dines with me
to-day. We start for the West, at half-after eight to-morrow morning. I
send you a newspaper, the most respectable in the States, with a very
just copyright article."
FOOTNOTES:
[49] At the top of the sheet, above the address and date, are the words
"Read on. We _have_ your precious letters, but you'll think at first we
have not. C. D."
[50] The ship next in rotation to the Caledonia from Liverpool.
[51] This comparison is employed in another descriptive passage to be
found in the _Notes_ (p. 57).
[52] _Notes_, p. 49.
[53] See _ante_, p. 280.
[54] This was the Acadia with the Caledonia mails.
[55] At his second visit to America, when in Washington in February,
1868, Dickens, replying to a letter in which Irving was named, thus
describes the last meeting and leave-taking to which he alludes above:
"Your reference to my dear friend Washington Irving renews the vivid
impressions reawakened in my mind at Baltimore but the other day. I saw
his fine face for the last time in that city. He came there from New
York to pass a day or two with me before I went westward; and they were
made among the most memorable of my life by his delightful fancy and
genial humor. Some unknown admirer of his books and mine sent to the
hotel a most enormous mint-julep, wreathed with flowers. We sat, one on
either side of it, with great solemnity (it filled a respectably-sized
round table), but the solemnity was of very short duration. It was quite
an enchanted julep, and carried us among innumerable people and places
that we both knew. The julep held out far into the night, and my memory
never saw him afterwards otherwise than as bending over it, with his
straw, with an attempted air of gravity (after some anecdote involving
some wonderfully droll and delicate observation of character), and then,
as his eye caught mine, melting into that captivating laugh of his,
which was the brightest and best I have ever heard."