LESS fortunate than the two gentlemen who have preceded me, it is
confided to me to mention a name which cannot be pronounced without
sorrow, a name in which Scotland had a great triumph, and which England
delighted to honour. One of the gifted of the earth has passed away, as
it were, yesterday; one who was devoted to his art, and his art was
nature—I mean David Wilkie. {53} He was one who made the cottage hearth
a graceful thing—of whom it might truly be said that he found “books in
the running brooks,” and who has left in all he did some breathing of the
air which stirs the heather. But however desirous to enlarge on his
genius as an artist, I would rather speak of him now as a friend who has
gone from amongst us. There is his deserted studio—the empty easel lying
idly by—the unfinished picture with its face turned to the wall, and
there is that bereaved sister, who loved him with an affection which
death cannot quench. He has left a name in fame clear as the bright sky;
he has filled our minds with memories pure as the blue waves which roll
over him. Let us hope that she who more than all others mourns his loss,
may learn to reflect that he died in the fulness of his time, before age
or sickness had dimmed his powers—and that she may yet associate with
feelings as calm and pleasant as we do now the memory of Wilkie.
II.
JANUARY, 1842.
[In presenting Captain Hewett, of the _Britannia_, {55} with a service of
plate on behalf of the passengers, Mr. Dickens addressed him as follows:]
CAPTAIN HEWETT,—I am very proud and happy to have been selected as the
instrument of conveying to you the heartfelt thanks of my
fellow-passengers on board the ship entrusted to your charge, and of
entreating your acceptance of this trifling present. The ingenious
artists who work in silver do not always, I find, keep their promises,
even in Boston. I regret that, instead of two goblets, which there
should be here, there is, at present, only one. The deficiency, however,
will soon be supplied; and, when it is, our little testimonial will be,
so far, complete.
You are a sailor, Captain Hewett, in the truest sense of the word; and
the devoted admiration of the ladies, God bless them, is a sailor’s first
boast. I need not enlarge upon the honour they have done you, I am sure,
by their presence here. Judging of you by myself, I am certain that the
recollection of their beautiful faces will cheer your lonely vigils upon
the ocean for a long time to come.
In all time to come, and in all your voyages upon the sea, I hope you
will have a thought for those who wish to live in your memory by the help
of these trifles. As they will often connect you with the pleasure of
those homes and fire sides from which they once wandered, and which, but
for you, they might never have regained, so they trust that you will
sometimes associate them with your hours of festive enjoyment; and, that,
when you drink from these cups, you will feel that the draught is
commended to your lips by friends whose best wishes you have; and who
earnestly and truly hope for your success, happiness, and prosperity, in
all the undertakings of your life.
III.
FEBRUARY 1842.
[At dinner given to Mr. Dickens by the young men of Boston. The company
consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George Bancroft,
Washington Allston, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The toast of “Health,
happiness, and a hearty welcome to Charles Dickens,” having been proposed
by the chairman, Mr. Quincy, and received with great applause, Mr.
Dickens responded with the following address:]
GENTLEMEN,—If you had given this splendid entertainment to anyone else in
the whole wide world—if I were to-night to exult in the triumph of my
dearest friend—if I stood here upon my defence, to repel any unjust
attack—to appeal as a stranger to your generosity and kindness as the
freest people on the earth—I could, putting some restraint upon myself,
stand among you as self-possessed and unmoved as I should be alone in my
own room in England. But when I have the echoes of your cordial greeting
ringing in my ears; when I see your kind faces beaming a welcome so warm
and earnest as never man had—I feel, it is my nature, so vanquished and
subdued, that I have hardly fortitude enough to thank you. If your
President, instead of pouring forth that delightful mixture of humour and
pathos which you have just heard, had been but a caustic, ill-natured
man—if he had only been a dull one—if I could only have doubted or
distrusted him or you, I should have had my wits at my fingers’ ends,
and, using them, could have held you at arm’s-length. But you have given
me no such opportunity; you take advantage of me in the tenderest point;
you give me no chance of playing at company, or holding you at a
distance, but flock about me like a host of brothers, and make this place
like home. Indeed, gentlemen, indeed, if it be natural and allowable for
each of us, on his own hearth, to express his thoughts in the most homely
fashion, and to appear in his plainest garb, I have a fair claim upon you
to let me do so to-night, for you have made my home an Aladdin’s Palace.
You fold so tenderly within your breasts that common household lamp in
which my feeble fire is all enshrined, and at which my flickering torch
is lighted up, that straight my household gods take wing, and are
transported there. And whereas it is written of that fairy structure
that it never moved without two shocks—one when it rose, and one when it
settled down—I can say of mine that, however sharp a tug it took to pluck
it from its native ground, it struck at once an easy, and a deep and
lasting root into this soil; and loved it as its own. I can say more of
it, and say with truth, that long before it moved, or had a chance of
moving, its master—perhaps from some secret sympathy between its timbers,
and a certain stately tree that has its being hereabout, and spreads its
broad branches far and wide—dreamed by day and night, for years, of
setting foot upon this shore, and breathing this pure air. And, trust
me, gentlemen, that, if I had wandered here, unknowing and unknown, I
would—if I know my own heart—have come with all my sympathies clustering
as richly about this land and people—with all my sense of justice as
keenly alive to their high claims on every man who loves God’s image—with
all my energies as fully bent on judging for myself, and speaking out,
and telling in my sphere the truth, as I do now, when you rain down your
welcomes on my head.
Our President has alluded to those writings which have been my occupation
for some years past; and you have received his allusions in a manner
which assures me—if I needed any such assurance—that we are old friends
in the spirit, and have been in close communion for a long time.
It is not easy for a man to speak of his own books. I daresay that few
persons have been more interested in mine than I, and if it be a general
principle in nature that a lover’s love is blind, and that a mother’s
love is blind, I believe it may be said of an author’s attachment to the
creatures of his own imagination, that it is a perfect model of constancy
and devotion, and is the blindest of all. But the objects and purposes I
have had in view are very plain and simple, and may be easily told. I
have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to
contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful
cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and always shall have, an
invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which loves the
darkness, and winks and scowls in the light. I believe that Virtue shows
quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in purple and fine linen.
I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature, claims
some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf
of daily bread. I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I
believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she
does in courts and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and
profitable to track her out, and follow her. I believe that to lay one’s
hand upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long
forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and most
thoughtless—“These creatures have the same elements and capacities of
goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same form, and made of
the same clay; and though ten times worse than you, may, in having
retained anything of their original nature amidst the trials and
distresses of their condition, be really ten times better;” I believe
that to do this is to pursue a worthy and not useless vocation.
Gentlemen, that you think so too, your fervent greeting sufficiently
assures me. That this feeling is alive in the Old World as well as in
the New, no man should know better than I—I, who have found such wide and
ready sympathy in my own dear land. That in expressing it, we are but
treading in the steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before,
we know by reference to all the bright examples in our literature, from
Shakespeare downward.
There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call them
so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot help
adverting. I cannot help expressing the delight, the more than happiness
it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened on this side of the
water, in favour of that little heroine of mine, to whom your president
has made allusion, who died in her youth. I had letters about that
child, in England, from the dwellers in log-houses among the morasses,
and swamps, and densest forests, and deep solitudes of the far west.
Many a sturdy hand, hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the
summer’s sun, has taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of
domestic joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something
of interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived
from it, and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a writer of
books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles away, but as a
friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and sorrows of his own
fireside. Many a mother—I could reckon them now by dozens, not by
units—has done the like, and has told me how she lost such a child at
such a time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how, in
this or that respect, she resembles Nell. I do assure you that no
circumstance of my life has given me one hundredth part of the
gratification I have derived from this source. I was wavering at the
time whether or not to wind up my Clock, {61} and come and see this
country, and this decided me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as
if I were bound to pack up my clothes, and come and see my friends; and
even now I have such an odd sensation in connexion with these things,
that you have no chance of spoiling me. I feel as though we were
agreeing—as indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the
classes from which they are drawn—about third parties, in whom we had a
common interest. At every new act of kindness on your part, I say to
myself “That’s for Oliver; I should not wonder if that was meant for
Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;” and so I become a much
happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man than ever I was
before.
Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America, brings me back, naturally
and of course, to you. Coming back to you, and being thereby reminded of
the pleasure we have in store in hearing the gentlemen who sit about me,
I arrive by the easiest, though not by the shortest course in the world,
at the end of what I have to say. But before I sit down, there is one
topic on which I am desirous to lay particular stress. It has, or should
have, a strong interest for us all, since to its literature every country
must look for one great means of refining and improving its people, and
one great source of national pride and honour. You have in America great
writers—great writers—who will live in all time, and are as familiar to
our lips as household words. Deriving (as they all do in a greater or
less degree, in their several walks) their inspiration from the
stupendous country that gave them birth, they diffuse a better knowledge
of it, and a higher love for it, all over the civilized world. I take
leave to say, in the presence of some of those gentleman, that I hope the
time is not far distant when they, in America, will receive of right some
substantial profit and return in England from their labours; and when we,
in England, shall receive some substantial profit and return in America
for ours. Pray do not misunderstand me. Securing to myself from day to
day the means of an honourable subsistence, I would rather have the
affectionate regard of my fellow men, than I would have heaps and mines
of gold. But the two things do not seem to me incompatible. They cannot
be, for nothing good is incompatible with justice; there must be an
international arrangement in this respect: England has done her part, and
I am confident that the time is not far distant when America will do
hers. It becomes the character of a great country; _firstly_, because it
is justice; _secondly_, because without it you never can have, and keep,
a literature of your own.
Gentlemen, I thank you with feelings of gratitude, such as are not often
awakened, and can never be expressed. As I understand it to be the
pleasant custom here to finish with a toast, I would beg to give you:
AMERICA AND ENGLAND, and may they never have any division but the
Atlantic between them.
IV.
FEBRUARY 7, 1842.
GENTLEMEN,—To say that I thank you for the earnest manner in which you
have drunk the toast just now so eloquently proposed to you—to say that I
give you back your kind wishes and good feelings with more than compound
interest; and that I feel how dumb and powerless the best acknowledgments
would be beside such genial hospitality as yours, is nothing. To say
that in this winter season, flowers have sprung up in every footstep’s
length of the path which has brought me here; that no country ever smiled
more pleasantly than yours has smiled on me, and that I have rarely
looked upon a brighter summer prospect than that which lies before me
now, {63} is nothing.
But it is something to be no stranger in a strange place—to feel, sitting
at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an old guest,
and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family as to have a
homely, genuine interest in its every member—it is, I say, something to
be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And, as it is of your
creation, and owes its being to you, I have no reluctance in urging it as
a reason why, in addressing you, I should not so much consult the form
and fashion of my speech, as I should employ that universal language of
the heart, which you, and such as you, best teach, and best can
understand. Gentlemen, in that universal language—common to you in
America, and to us in England, as that younger mother-tongue, which, by
the means of, and through the happy union of our two great countries,
shall be spoken ages hence, by land and sea, over the wide surface of the
globe—I thank you.
I had occasion to say the other night in Boston, as I have more than once
had occasion to remark before, that it is not easy for an author to speak
of his own books. If the task be a difficult one at any time, its
difficulty, certainly, is not diminished when a frequent recurrence to
the same theme has left one nothing new to say. Still, I feel that, in a
company like this, and especially after what has been said by the
President, that I ought not to pass lightly over those labours of love,
which, if they had no other merit, have been the happy means of bringing
us together.
It has been often observed, that you cannot judge of an author’s personal
character from his writings. It may be that you cannot. I think it very
likely, for many reasons, that you cannot. But, at least, a reader will
rise from the perusal of a book with some defined and tangible idea of
the writer’s moral creed and broad purposes, if he has any at all; and it
is probable enough that he may like to have this idea confirmed from the
author’s lips, or dissipated by his explanation. Gentlemen, my moral
creed—which is a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects
and parties—is very easily summed up. I have faith, and I wish to
diffuse faith in the existence—yes, of beautiful things, even in those
conditions of society, which are so degenerate, degraded, and forlorn,
that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could not be described
but by a strange and terrible reversal of the words of Scripture, “God
said, Let there be light, and there was none.” I take it that we are
born, and that we hold our sympathies, hopes, and energies, in trust for
the many, and not for the few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light
of disgust and contempt, before the view of others, all meanness,
falsehood, cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind. Above all,
that nothing is high, because it is in a high place; and that nothing is
low, because it is in a low one. This is the lesson taught us in the
great book of nature. This is the lesson which may be read, alike in the
bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of the poorest thing
that drags its tiny length upon the ground. This is the lesson ever
uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man, who tells us that there
are
“Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
Gentlemen, keeping these objects steadily before me, I am at no loss to
refer your favour and your generous hospitality back to the right source.
While I know, on the one hand, that if, instead of being what it is, this
were a land of tyranny and wrong, I should care very little for your
smiles or frowns, so I am sure upon the other, that if, instead of being
what I am, I were the greatest genius that ever trod the earth, and had
diverted myself for the oppression and degradation of mankind, you would
despise and reject me. I hope you will, whenever, through such means, I
give you the opportunity. Trust me, that, whenever you give me the like
occasion, I will return the compliment with interest.
Gentlemen, as I have no secrets from you, in the spirit of confidence you
have engendered between us, and as I have made a kind of compact with
myself that I never will, while I remain in America, omit an opportunity
of referring to a topic in which I and all others of my class on both
sides of the water are equally interested—equally interested, there is no
difference between us, I would beg leave to whisper in your ear two
words: _International Copyright_. I use them in no sordid sense, believe
me, and those who know me best, best know that. For myself, I would
rather that my children, coming after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by
the general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had
been of some use, than I would have them ride in their carriages, and
know by their banker’s books that he was rich. But I do not see, I
confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or why fame,
besides playing that delightful _reveil_ for which she is so justly
celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few notes of a different
kind from those with which she has hitherto contented herself.
It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose words
went to the heart of every man who heard him, that, if there had existed
any law in this respect, Scott might not have sunk beneath the mighty
pressure on his brain, but might have lived to add new creatures of his
fancy to the crowd which swarm about you in your summer walks, and gather
round your winter evening hearths.
As I listened to his words, there came back, fresh upon me, that touching
scene in the great man’s life, when he lay upon his couch, surrounded by
his family, and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river
he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself,
faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and body by his honourable
struggle, and hovering round him the phantoms of his own
imagination—Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb
Balderstone, Dominie Sampson—all the familiar throng—with cavaliers, and
Puritans, and Highland chiefs innumerable overflowing the chamber, and
fading away in the dim distance beyond. I pictured them, fresh from
traversing the world, and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow,
that, from all those lands into which they had carried gladness,
instruction, and delight for millions, they brought him not one friendly
hand to help to raise him from that sad, sad bed. No, nor brought him
from that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house
and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one grateful
dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave. Oh! if every man who goes
from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in Dryburgh Abbey, would
but remember this, and bring the recollection home!
Gentlemen, I thank you again, and once again, and many times to that.
You have given me a new reason for remembering this day, which is already
one of mark in my calendar, it being my birthday; and you have given
those who are nearest and dearest to me a new reason for recollecting it
with pride and interest. Heaven knows that, although I should grow ever
so gray, I shall need nothing to remind me of this epoch in my life. But
I am glad to think that from this time you are inseparably connected with
every recurrence of this day; and, that on its periodical return, I shall
always, in imagination, have the unfading pleasure of entertaining you as
my guests, in return for the gratification you have afforded me to-night.
V.
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 1842.
[At a dinner presided over by Washington Irving, when nearly eight
hundred of the most distinguished citizens of New York were present,
“Charles Dickens, the Literary Guest of the Nation,” having been
“proferred as a sentiment” by the Chairman, Mr. Dickens rose, and spoke
as follows:]
GENTLEMEN,—I don’t know how to thank you—I really don’t know how. You
would naturally suppose that my former experience would have given me
this power, and that the difficulties in my way would have been
diminished; but I assure you the fact is exactly the reverse, and I have
completely baulked the ancient proverb that “a rolling stone gathers no
moss;” and in my progress to this city I have collected such a weight of
obligations and acknowledgment—I have picked up such an enormous mass of
fresh moss at every point, and was so struck by the brilliant scenes of
Monday night, that I thought I could never by any possibility grow any
bigger. I have made, continually, new accumulations to such an extent
that I am compelled to stand still, and can roll no more!
Gentlemen, we learn from the authorities, that, when fairy stories, or
balls, or rolls of thread, stopped of their own accord—as I do not—it
presaged some great catastrophe near at hand. The precedent holds good in
this case. When I have remembered the short time I have before me to
spend in this land of mighty interests, and the poor opportunity I can at
best have of acquiring a knowledge of, and forming an acquaintance with
it, I have felt it almost a duty to decline the honours you so generously
heap upon me, and pass more quietly among you. For Argus himself, though
he had but one mouth for his hundred eyes, would have found the reception
of a public entertainment once a-week too much for his greatest activity;
and, as I would lose no scrap of the rich instruction and the delightful
knowledge which meet me on every hand, (and already I have gleaned a
great deal from your hospitals and common jails),—I have resolved to take
up my staff, and go my way rejoicing, and for the future to shake hands
with America, not at parties but at home; and, therefore, gentlemen, I
say to-night, with a full heart, and an honest purpose, and grateful
feelings, that I bear, and shall ever bear, a deep sense of your kind,
your affectionate and your noble greeting, which it is utterly impossible
to convey in words. No European sky without, and no cheerful home or
well-warmed room within shall ever shut out this land from my vision. I
shall often hear your words of welcome in my quiet room, and oftenest
when most quiet; and shall see your faces in the blazing fire. If I
should live to grow old, the scenes of this and other evenings will shine
as brightly to my dull eyes fifty years hence as now; and the honours you
bestow upon me shall be well remembered and paid back in my undying love,
and honest endeavours for the good of my race.
Gentlemen, one other word with reference to this first person singular,
and then I shall close. I came here in an open, honest, and confiding
spirit, if ever man did, and because I felt a deep sympathy in your land;
had I felt otherwise, I should have kept away. As I came here, and am
here, without the least admixture of one-hundredth part of one grain of
base alloy, without one feeling of unworthy reference to self in any
respect, I claim, in regard to the past, for the last time, my right in
reason, in truth, and in justice, to approach, as I have done on two
former occasions, a question of literary interest. I claim that justice
be done; and I prefer this claim as one who has a right to speak and be
heard. I have only to add that I shall be as true to you as you have
been to me. I recognize in your enthusiastic approval of the creatures
of my fancy, your enlightened care for the happiness of the many, your
tender regard for the afflicted, your sympathy for the downcast, your
plans for correcting and improving the bad, and for encouraging the good;
and to advance these great objects shall be, to the end of my life, my
earnest endeavour, to the extent of my humble ability. Having said thus
much with reference to myself, I shall have the pleasure of saying a few
words with reference to somebody else.
There is in this city a gentleman who, at the reception of one of my
books—I well remember it was the Old Curiosity Shop—wrote to me in
England a letter so generous, so affectionate, and so manly, that if I
had written the book under every circumstance of disappointment, of
discouragement, and difficulty, instead of the reverse, I should have
found in the receipt of that letter my best and most happy reward. I
answered him, {70} and he answered me, and so we kept shaking hands
autographically, as if no ocean rolled between us. I came here to this
city eager to see him, and [_laying his hand it upon Irving’s shoulder_]
here he sits! I need not tell you how happy and delighted I am to see
him here to-night in this capacity.
Washington Irving! Why, gentlemen, I don’t go upstairs to bed two nights
out of the seven—as a very creditable witness near at hand can testify—I
say I do not go to bed two nights out of the seven without taking
Washington Irving under my arm; and, when I don’t take him, I take his
own brother, Oliver Goldsmith. Washington Irving! Why, of whom but him
was I thinking the other day when I came up by the Hog’s Back, the Frying
Pan, Hell Gate, and all these places? Why, when, not long ago, I visited
Shakespeare’s birthplace, and went beneath the roof where he first saw
light, whose name but _his_ was pointed out to me upon the wall?
Washington Irving—Diedrich Knickerbocker—Geoffrey Crayon—why, where can
you go that they have not been there before? Is there an English farm—is
there an English stream, an English city, or an English country-seat,
where they have not been? Is there no Bracebridge Hall in existence?
Has it no ancient shades or quiet streets?
In bygone times, when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an old
oak chair, in a small parlour of the Boar’s Head, a little man with a red
nose, and an oilskin hat. When I came away he was sitting there
still!—not a man _like_ him, but the same man—with the nose of immortal
redness and the hat of an undying glaze! Crayon, while there, was on
terms of intimacy with a certain radical fellow, who used to go about,
with a hatful of newspapers, wofully out at elbows, and with a coat of
great antiquity. Why, gentlemen, I know that man—Tibbles the elder, and
he has not changed a hair; and, when I came away, he charged me to give
his best respects to Washington Irving!
Leaving the town and the rustic life of England—forgetting this man, if
we can—putting out of mind the country church-yard and the broken
heart—let us cross the water again, and ask who has associated himself
most closely with the Italian peasantry and the bandits of the Pyrenees?
When the traveller enters his little chamber beyond the Alps—listening to
the dim echoes of the long passages and spacious corridors—damp, and
gloomy, and cold—as he hears the tempest beating with fury against his
window, and gazes at the curtains, dark, and heavy, and covered with
mould—and when all the ghost-stories that ever were told come up before
him—amid all his thick-coming fancies, whom does he think of? Washington
Irving.
Go farther still: go to the Moorish Mountains, sparkling full in the
moonlight—go among the water-carriers and the village gossips, living
still as in days of old—and who has travelled among them before you, and
peopled the Alhambra and made eloquent its shadows? Who awakes there a
voice from every hill and in every cavern, and bids legends, which for
centuries have slept a dreamless sleep, or watched unwinkingly, start up
and pass before you in all their life and glory?
But leaving this again, who embarked with Columbus upon his gallant ship,
traversed with him the dark and mighty ocean, leaped upon the land and
planted there the flag of Spain, but this same man, now sitting by my
side? And being here at home again, who is a more fit companion for
money-diggers? and what pen but his has made Rip Van Winkle, playing at
nine-pins on that thundering afternoon, as much part and parcel of the
Catskill Mountains as any tree or crag that they can boast?
But these are topics familiar from my boyhood, and which I am apt to
pursue; and lest I should be tempted now to talk too long about them, I
will, in conclusion, give you a sentiment, most appropriate, I am sure,
in the presence of such writers as Bryant, Halleck, and—but I suppose I
must not mention the ladies here—