_American Notes_ was written soon after Dickens had returned from his
first visit to America. That visit had, of course, been a great epoch in
his life; but how much of an epoch men did not truly realise until, some
time after, in the middle of a quiet story about Salisbury and a
ridiculous architect, his feelings flamed out and flared up to the stars
in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. The _American Notes_ are, however, interesting,
because in them he betrays his feelings when he does not know that he is
betraying them. Dickens's first visit to America was, from his own point
of view, and at the beginning, a happy and festive experiment. It is
very characteristic of him that he went among the Americans, enjoyed
them, even admired them, and then had a quarrel with them. Nothing was
ever so unmistakable as his good-will, except his ill-will; and they
were never far apart. And this was not, as some bloodless moderns have
sneeringly insinuated, a mere repetition of the proximity between the
benevolent stage and the quarrelsome stage of drink. It was a piece of
pure optimism; he believed so readily that men were going to be good to
him that an injury to him was something more than an injury: it was a
shock. What was the exact nature of the American shock must, however, be
more carefully stated.
The famous quarrel between Dickens and America, which finds its most
elaborate expression in _American Notes_, though its most brilliant
expression in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, is an incident about which a great
deal remains to be said. But the thing which most specially remains to
be said is this. This old Anglo-American quarrel was much more
fundamentally friendly than most Anglo-American alliances. In Dickens's
day each nation understood the other enough to argue. In our time
neither nation understands itself even enough to quarrel. There was an
English tradition, from Fox and eighteenth-century England; there was an
American tradition from Franklin and eighteenth-century America; and
they were still close enough together to discuss their differences with
acrimony, perhaps, but with certain fundamental understandings. The
eighteenth-century belief in a liberal civilisation was still a dogma;
for dogma is the only thing that makes argument or reasoning possible.
America, under all its swagger, did still really believe that Europe was
its fountain and its mother, because Europe was more fully civilised.
Dickens, under all his disgust, did still believe that America was in
advance of Europe, because it was more democratic. It was an age, in
short, in which the word "progress" could still be used reasonably;
because the whole world looked to one way of escape and there was only
one kind of progress under discussion. Now, of course, "progress" is a
useless word; for progress takes for granted an already defined
direction; and it is exactly about the direction that we disagree. Do
not let us therefore be misled into any mistaken optimism or special
self-congratulation upon what many people would call the improved
relations between England and America. The relations are improved
because America has finally become a foreign country. And with foreign
countries all sane men take care to exchange a certain consideration and
courtesy. But even as late as the time of Dickens's first visit to the
United States, we English still felt America as a colony; an insolent,
offensive, and even unintelligible colony sometimes, but still a colony;
a part of our civilisation, a limb of our life. And America itself, as I
have said, under all its bounce and independence, really regarded us as
a mother country. This being the case it was possible for us to quarrel,
like kinsmen. Now we only bow and smile, like strangers.
This tone, as a sort of family responsibility, can be felt quite
specially all through the satires or suggestions of these _American
Notes_. Dickens is cross with America because he is worried about
America; as if he were its father. He explores its industrial, legal,
and educational arrangements like a mother looking at the housekeeping
of a married son; he makes suggestions with a certain acidity; he takes
a strange pleasure in being pessimistic. He advises them to take note of
how much better certain things are done in England. All this is very
different from Dickens's characteristic way of dealing with a foreign
country. In countries really foreign, such as France, Switzerland, and
Italy, he had two attitudes, neither of them in the least worried or
paternal. When he found a thing in Europe which he did not understand,
such as the Roman Catholic Church, he simply called it an old-world
superstition, and sat looking at it like a moonlit ruin. When he found
something that he did understand, such as luncheon baskets, he burst
into carols of praise over the superior sense in our civilisation and
good management to Continental methods. An example of the first attitude
may be found in one of his letters, in which he describes the
backwardness and idleness of Catholics who would not build a Birmingham
in Italy. He seems quite unconscious of the obvious truth, that the
backwardness of Catholics was simply the refusal of Bob Cratchit to
enter the house of Gradgrind. An example of the second attitude can be
found in the purple patches of fun in _Mugby Junction_; in which the
English waitress denounces the profligate French habit of providing new
bread and clean food for people travelling by rail. The point is,
however, that in neither case has he the air of one suggesting
improvements or sharing a problem with the people engaged on it. He does
not go carefully with a notebook through Jesuit schools nor offer
friendly suggestions to the governors of Parisian prisons. Or if he
does, it is in a different spirit; it is in the spirit of an ordinary
tourist being shown over the Coliseum or the Pyramids. But he visited
America in the spirit of a Government inspector dealing with something
it was his duty to inspect. This is never felt either in his praise or
blame of Continental countries. When he did not leave a foreign country
to decay like a dead dog, he merely watched it at play like a kitten.
France he mistook for a kitten. Italy he mistook for a dead dog.
But with America he could feel--and fear. There he could hate, because
he could love. There he could feel not the past alone nor the present,
but the future also; and, like all brave men, when he saw the future he
was a little afraid of it. For of all tests by which the good citizen
and strong reformer can be distinguished from the vague faddist or the
inhuman sceptic, I know no better test than this--that the unreal
reformer sees in front of him one certain future, the future of his fad;
while the real reformer sees before him ten or twenty futures among
which his country must choose, and may, in some dreadful hour, choose
the wrong one. The true patriot is always doubtful of victory; because
he knows that he is dealing with a living thing; a thing with free will.
To be certain of free will is to be uncertain of success.
The subject matter of the real difference of opinion between Dickens and
the public of America can only be understood if it is thus treated as a
dispute between brothers about the destiny of a common heritage. The
point at issue might be stated like this. Dickens, on his side, did not
in his heart doubt for a moment that England would eventually follow
America along the road towards real political equality and purely
republican institutions. He lived, it must be remembered, before the
revival of aristocracy, which has since overwhelmed us--the revival of
aristocracy worked through popular science and commercial dictatorship,
and which has nowhere been more manifest than in America itself. He knew
nothing of this; in his heart he conceded to the Yankees that not only
was their revolution right but would ultimately be completed everywhere.
But on the other hand, his whole point against the American experiment
was this--that if it ignored certain ancient English contributions it
would go to pieces for lack of them. Of these the first was good manners
and the second individual liberty--liberty, that is, to speak and write
against the trend of the majority. In these things he was much more
serious and much more sensible than it is the fashion to think he was;
he was indeed one of the most serious and sensible critics England ever
had of current and present problems, though his criticism is useless to
the point of nonentity about all things remote from him in style of
civilisation or in time. His point about good manners is really
important. All his grumblings through this book of _American Notes_, all
his shrieking satire in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ are expressions of a grave
and reasonable fear he had touching the future of democracy. And
remember again what has been already remarked--instinctively he paid
America the compliment of looking at her as the future of democracy.
The mistake which he attacked still exists. I cannot imagine why it is
that social equality is somehow supposed to mean social familiarity. Why
should equality mean that all men are equally rude? Should it not rather
mean that all men are equally polite? Might it not quite reasonably mean
that all men should be equally ceremonious and stately and pontifical?
What is there specially Equalitarian, for instance, in calling your
political friends and even your political enemies by their Christian
names in public? There is something very futile in the way in which
certain Socialist leaders call each other Tom, Dick, and Harry;
especially when Tom is accusing Harry of having basely imposed upon the
well-known imbecility of Dick. There is something quite undemocratic in
all men calling each other by the special and affectionate term
"comrade"; especially when they say it with a sneer and smart inquiry
about the funds. Democracy would be quite satisfied if every man called
every other man "sir." Democracy would have no conceivable reason to
complain if every man called every other man "your excellency" or "your
holiness" or "brother of the sun and moon." The only democratic
essential is that it should be a term of dignity and that it should be
given to all. To abolish all terms of dignity is no more specially
democratic than the Roman emperor's wish to cut off everybody's head at
once was specially democratic. That involved equality certainly, but it
was lacking in respect.
Dickens saw America as markedly the seat of this danger. He saw that
there was a perilous possibility that republican ideals might be allied
to a social anarchy good neither for them nor for any other ideals.
Republican simplicity, which is difficult, might be quickly turned into
Bohemian brutality, which is easy. Cincinnatus, instead of putting his
hand to the plough, might put his feet on the tablecloth, and an
impression prevail that it was all a part of the same rugged equality
and freedom. Insolence might become a tradition. Bad manners might have
all the sanctity of good manners. "There you are!" cries Martin
Chuzzlewit indignantly, when the American has befouled the butter. "A
man deliberately makes a hog of himself and _that_ is an Institution."
But the thread of thought which we must always keep in hand in this
matter is that he would not thus have worried about the degradation of
republican simplicity into general rudeness if he had not from first to
last instinctively felt that America held human democracy in her hand,
to exalt it or to let it fall. In one of his gloomier moments he wrote
down his fear that the greatest blow ever struck at liberty would be
struck by America in the failure of her mission upon the earth.
This brings us to the other ground of his alarm--the matter of liberty
of speech. Here also he was much more reasonable and philosophic than
has commonly been realised. The truth is that the lurid individualism of
Carlyle has, with its violent colours, "killed" the tones of most
criticism of his time; and just as we can often see a scheme of
decoration better if we cover some flaming picture, so you can judge
nineteenth-century England much better if you leave Carlyle out. He is
important to moderns because he led that return to Toryism which has
been the chief feature of modernity, but his judgments were often not
only spiritually false, but really quite superficial. Dickens understood
the danger of democracy far better than Carlyle; just as he understood
the merits of democracy far better than Carlyle. And of this fact we can
produce one plain evidence in the matter of which we speak. Carlyle, in
his general dislike of the revolutionary movement, lumped liberty and
democracy together and said that the chief objection to democracy was
that it involved the excess and misuse of liberty; he called democracy
"anarchy or no-rule." Dickens, with far more philosophical insight and
spiritual delicacy, saw that the real danger of democracy is that it
tends to the very opposite of anarchy; even to the very opposite of
liberty. He lamented in America the freedom of manners. But he lamented
even more the absence of freedom of opinion. "I believe there is no
country on the face of the earth," he says, "where there is less freedom
of opinion on any subject in reference to which there is a broad
difference of opinion than in this. There! I write the words with
reluctance, disappointment, and sorrow; but I believe it from the bottom
of my soul. The notion that I, a man alone by myself in America, should
venture to suggest to the Americans that there was one point on which
they were neither just to their own countrymen nor to us, actually
struck the boldest dumb! Washington Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant,
Halleck, Dana, Washington Allston--every man who writes in this country
is devoted to the question, and not one of them _dares_ to raise his
voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. The wonder is that
a breathing man can be found with temerity enough to suggest to the
Americans the possibility of their having done wrong. I wish you could
have seen the faces that I saw down both sides of the table at Hartford
when I began to talk about Scott. I wish you could have heard how I gave
it out. My blood so boiled when I thought of the monstrous injustice
that I felt as if I were twelve feet high when I thrust it down their
throats." Dickens knew no history, but he had all history behind him in
feeling that a pure democracy does tend, when it goes wrong, to be too
traditional and absolute. The truth is indeed a singular example of the
unfair attack upon democracy in our own time. Everybody can repeat the
platitude that the mob can be the greatest of all tyrants. But few
realise or remember the corresponding truth which goes along with
it--that the mob is the only permanent and unassailable high priest.
Democracy drives its traditions too hard; but democracy is the only
thing that keeps any traditions. An aristocracy must always be going
after some new thing. The severity of democracy is far more of a virtue
than its liberty. The decorum of a democracy is far more of a danger
than its lawlessness. Dickens discovered this in his great quarrels
about the copyright, when a whole nation acted on a small point of
opinion as if it were going to lynch him. But, fortunately for the
purpose of this argument, there is no need to go back to the forties for
such a case. Another great literary man has of late visited America; and
it is possible that Maxim Gorky may be in a position to state how far
democracy is likely to err on the side of mere liberty and laxity. He
may have found, like Dickens, some freedom of manners; he did not find
much freedom of morals.
Along with such American criticism should really go his very
characteristic summary of the question of the Red Indian. It marks the
combination between the mental narrowness and the moral justice of the
old Liberal. Dickens can see nothing in the Red Indian except that he is
barbaric, retrograde, bellicose, uncleanly, and superstitious--in short,
that he is not a member of the special civilisation of Birmingham or
Brighton. It is curious to note the contrast between the cheery, nay
Cockney, contempt with which Dickens speaks of the American Indian and
that chivalrous and pathetic essay in which Washington Irving celebrates
the virtues of the vanishing race. Between Washington Irving and his
friend Charles Dickens there was always indeed this ironical comedy of
inversion. It is amusing that the Englishman should have been the
pushing and even pert modernist, and the American the stately
antiquarian and lover of lost causes. But while a man of more mellow
sympathies may well dislike Dickens's dislike of savages, and even
disdain his disdain, he ought to sharply remind himself of the admirable
ethical fairness and equity which meet with that restricted outlook. In
the very act of describing Red Indians as devils who, like so much dirt,
it would pay us to sweep away, he pauses to deny emphatically that we
have any right to sweep them away. We have no right to wrong the man, he
means to say, even if he himself be a kind of wrong. Here we strike the
ringing iron of the old conscience and sense of honour which marked the
best men of his party and of his epoch. This rigid and even reluctant
justice towers, at any rate, far above modern views of savages, above
the sentimentalism of the mere humanitarian and the far weaker
sentimentalism that pleads for brutality and a race war. Dickens was at
least more of a man than the brutalitarian who claims to wrong people
because they are nasty, or the humanitarian who cannot be just to them
without pretending that they are nice.