Transcribed from the 1913 Chapman & Hall, Ltd. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Emigrants]
AMERICAN NOTES
FOR
GENERAL CIRCULATION
AND
PICTURES FROM ITALY {1}
BY
CHARLES DICKENS
* * * * *
WITH 8 ILLUSTRATIONS BY
MARCUS STONE, R.A.
* * * * *
LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
1913
* * * * *
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO
THOSE FRIENDS OF MINE
IN AMERICA
WHO, GIVING ME A WELCOME I MUST EVER
GRATEFULLY AND PROUDLY REMEMBER,
LEFT MY JUDGEMENT
FREE;
AND WHO, LOVING THEIR COUNTRY, CAN BEAR
THE TRUTH, WHEN IT IS TOLD GOOD
HUMOUREDLY, AND IN A
KIND SPIRIT.
* * * * *
PREFACE TO THE FIRST CHEAP EDITION OF “AMERICAN NOTES”
IT is nearly eight years since this book was first published. I present
it, unaltered, in the Cheap Edition; and such of my opinions as it
expresses, are quite unaltered too.
My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the
influences and tendencies which I distrust in America, have any existence
not in my imagination. They can examine for themselves whether there has
been anything in the public career of that country during these past
eight years, or whether there is anything in its present position, at
home or abroad, which suggests that those influences and tendencies
really do exist. As they find the fact, they will judge me. If they
discern any evidences of wrong-going in any direction that I have
indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If
they discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken.
Prejudiced, I never have been otherwise than in favour of the United
States. No visitor can ever have set foot on those shores, with a
stronger faith in the Republic than I had, when I landed in America.
I purposely abstain from extending these observations to any length. I
have nothing to defend, or to explain away. The truth is the truth; and
neither childish absurdities, nor unscrupulous contradictions, can make
it otherwise. The earth would still move round the sun, though the whole
Catholic Church said No.
I have many friends in America, and feel a grateful interest in the
country. To represent me as viewing it with ill-nature, animosity, or
partisanship, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a
very easy one; and which I have disregarded for eight years, and could
disregard for eighty more.
LONDON, _June_ 22, 1850.
PREFACE TO THE “CHARLES DICKENS” EDITION OF “AMERICAN NOTES”
MY readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the
influences and tendencies which I distrusted in America, had, at that
time, any existence but in my imagination. They can examine for
themselves whether there has been anything in the public career of that
country since, at home or abroad, which suggests that those influences
and tendencies really did exist. As they find the fact, they will judge
me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-going, in any direction that
I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I
wrote. If they discern no such indications, they will consider me
altogether mistaken—but not wilfully.
Prejudiced, I am not, and never have been, otherwise than in favour of
the United States. I have many friends in America, I feel a grateful
interest in the country, I hope and believe it will successfully work out
a problem of the highest importance to the whole human race. To
represent me as viewing AMERICA with ill-nature, coldness, or animosity,
is merely to do a very foolish thing: which is always a very easy one.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION OF “AMERICAN NOTES” v
PREFACE TO THE FIRST CHEAP EDITION OF “AMERICAN NOTES” vii
PREFACE TO THE “CHARLES DICKENS” EDITION OF “AMERICAN NOTES” ix
AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION
CHAPTER I
Going Away 3
CHAPTER II
The Passage out 10
CHAPTER III
Boston 22
CHAPTER IV
An American Railroad. Lowell and its Factory System 52
CHAPTER V
Worcester. The Connecticut River. Hartford. New Haven. To 60
New York
CHAPTER VI
New York 67
CHAPTER VII
Philadelphia, and its Solitary Prison 81
CHAPTER VIII
Washington. The Legislature. And the President’s House 94
CHAPTER IX
A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. Virginia Road, and a 107
Black Driver. Richmond. Baltimore. The Harrisburg Mail,
and a Glimpse of the City. A Canal Boat
CHAPTER X
Some further Account of the Canal Boat, its Domestic Economy, 121
and its Passengers. Journey to Pittsburg across the
Alleghany Mountains. Pittsburg
CHAPTER XI
From Pittsburg to Cincinnati in a Western Steamboat. 130
Cincinnati
CHAPTER XII
From Cincinnati to Louisville in another Western Steamboat; 137
and from Louisville to St. Louis in another. St. Louis
CHAPTER XIII
A Jaunt to the Looking-glass Prairie and back 147
CHAPTER XIV
Return to Cincinnati. A Stage-coach Ride from that City to 153
Columbus, and thence to Sandusky. So, by Lake Erie, to the
Falls of Niagara
CHAPTER XV
In Canada; Toronto; Kingston; Montreal; Quebec; St. John’s. 167
In the United States again; Lebanon; The Shaker Village; West
Point
CHAPTER XVI
The Passage Home 182
CHAPTER XVII
Slavery 189
CHAPTER XVIII
Concluding Remarks 202
Postscript 210
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
EMIGRANTS _Marcus Stone_, _R.A._ _Frontispiece_
THE SOLITARY PRISONER 90
BLACK AND WHITE 112
THE LITTLE WIFE 144
CHAPTER I
GOING AWAY
I SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths comical
astonishment, with which, on the morning of the third of January
eighteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and put my head
into, a ‘state-room’ on board the Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred
tons burthen per register, bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her
Majesty’s mails.
That this state-room had been specially engaged for ‘Charles Dickens,
Esquire, and Lady,’ was rendered sufficiently clear even to my scared
intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing the fact, which was
pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress, spread like a
surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf. But that this was the
state-room concerning which Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held
daily and nightly conferences for at least four months preceding: that
this could by any possibility be that small snug chamber of the
imagination, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy
strong upon him, had always foretold would contain at least one little
sofa, and which his lady, with a modest yet most magnificent sense of its
limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not hold more than
two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus
which could now no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away,
than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this
utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous
box, had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste and
pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a masterly hand,
in the highly varnished lithographic plan hanging up in the agent’s
counting-house in the city of London: that this room of state, in short,
could be anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the
captain’s, invented and put in practice for the better relish and
enjoyment of the real state-room presently to be disclosed:—these were
truths which I really could not, for the moment, bring my mind at all to
bear upon or comprehend. And I sat down upon a kind of horsehair slab,
or perch, of which there were two within; and looked, without any
expression of countenance whatever, at some friends who had come on board
with us, and who were crushing their faces into all manner of shapes by
endeavouring to squeeze them through the small doorway.
We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming below, which, but
that we were the most sanguine people living, might have prepared us for
the worst. The imaginative artist to whom I have already made allusion,
has depicted in the same great work, a chamber of almost interminable
perspective, furnished, as Mr. Robins would say, in a style of more than
Eastern splendour, and filled (but not inconveniently so) with groups of
ladies and gentlemen, in the very highest state of enjoyment and
vivacity. Before descending into the bowels of the ship, we had passed
from the deck into a long narrow apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse
with windows in the sides; having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at
which three or four chilly stewards were warming their hands; while on
either side, extending down its whole dreary length, was a long, long
table, over each of which a rack, fixed to the low roof, and stuck full
of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted dismally at rolling seas and
heavy weather. I had not at that time seen the ideal presentment of this
chamber which has since gratified me so much, but I observed that one of
our friends who had made the arrangements for our voyage, turned pale on
entering, retreated on the friend behind him, smote his forehead
involuntarily, and said below his breath, ‘Impossible! it cannot be!’ or
words to that effect. He recovered himself however by a great effort,
and after a preparatory cough or two, cried, with a ghastly smile which
is still before me, looking at the same time round the walls, ‘Ha! the
breakfast-room, steward—eh?’ We all foresaw what the answer must be: we
knew the agony he suffered. He had often spoken of _the saloon_; had
taken in and lived upon the pictorial idea; had usually given us to
understand, at home, that to form a just conception of it, it would be
necessary to multiply the size and furniture of an ordinary drawing-room
by seven, and then fall short of the reality. When the man in reply
avowed the truth; the blunt, remorseless, naked truth; ‘This is the
saloon, sir’—he actually reeled beneath the blow.
In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose between their else
daily communication the formidable barrier of many thousand miles of
stormy space, and who were for that reason anxious to cast no other
cloud, not even the passing shadow of a moment’s disappointment or
discomfiture, upon the short interval of happy companionship that yet
remained to them—in persons so situated, the natural transition from
these first surprises was obviously into peals of hearty laughter, and I
can report that I, for one, being still seated upon the slab or perch
before mentioned, roared outright until the vessel rang again. Thus, in
less than two minutes after coming upon it for the first time, we all by
common consent agreed that this state-room was the pleasantest and most
facetious and capital contrivance possible; and that to have had it one
inch larger, would have been quite a disagreeable and deplorable state of
things. And with this; and with showing how,—by very nearly closing the
door, and twining in and out like serpents, and by counting the little
washing slab as standing-room,—we could manage to insinuate four people
into it, all at one time; and entreating each other to observe how very
airy it was (in dock), and how there was a beautiful port-hole which
could be kept open all day (weather permitting), and how there was quite
a large bull’s-eye just over the looking-glass which would render shaving
a perfectly easy and delightful process (when the ship didn’t roll too
much); we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion that it was
rather spacious than otherwise: though I do verily believe that,
deducting the two berths, one above the other, than which nothing smaller
for sleeping in was ever made except coffins, it was no bigger than one
of those hackney cabriolets which have the door behind, and shoot their
fares out, like sacks of coals, upon the pavement.
Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of all parties,
concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the fire in the ladies’
cabin—just to try the effect. It was rather dark, certainly; but
somebody said, ‘of course it would be light, at sea,’ a proposition to
which we all assented; echoing ‘of course, of course;’ though it would be
exceedingly difficult to say why we thought so. I remember, too, when we
had discovered and exhausted another topic of consolation in the
circumstance of this ladies’ cabin adjoining our state-room, and the
consequently immense feasibility of sitting there at all times and
seasons, and had fallen into a momentary silence, leaning our faces on
our hands and looking at the fire, one of our party said, with the solemn
air of a man who had made a discovery, ‘What a relish mulled claret will
have down here!’ which appeared to strike us all most forcibly; as though
there were something spicy and high-flavoured in cabins, which
essentially improved that composition, and rendered it quite incapable of
perfection anywhere else.
There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing clean sheets
and table-cloths from the very entrails of the sofas, and from unexpected
lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made one’s head ache to see
them opened one after another, and rendered it quite a distracting
circumstance to follow her proceedings, and to find that every nook and
corner and individual piece of furniture was something else besides what
it pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and place of secret
stowage, whose ostensible purpose was its least useful one.
God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of January
voyages! God bless her for her clear recollection of the companion
passage of last year, when nobody was ill, and everybody dancing from
morning to night, and it was ‘a run’ of twelve days, and a piece of the
purest frolic, and delight, and jollity! All happiness be with her for
her bright face and her pleasant Scotch tongue, which had sounds of old
Home in it for my fellow-traveller; and for her predictions of fair winds
and fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn’t be half so fond of her); and
for the ten thousand small fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which,
without piecing them elaborately together, and patching them up into
shape and form and case and pointed application, she nevertheless did
plainly show that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near
and close at hand to their little children left upon the other; and that
what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey, was, to those who were
in the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and whistled at! Light be
her heart, and gay her merry eyes, for years!
The state-room had grown pretty fast; but by this time it had expanded
into something quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay-window to view the
sea from. So we went upon deck again in high spirits; and there,
everything was in such a state of bustle and active preparation, that the
blood quickened its pace, and whirled through one’s veins on that clear
frosty morning with involuntary mirthfulness. For every gallant ship was
riding slowly up and down, and every little boat was splashing noisily in
the water; and knots of people stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind
of ‘dread delight’ on the far-famed fast American steamer; and one party
of men were ‘taking in the milk,’ or, in other words, getting the cow on
board; and another were filling the icehouses to the very throat with
fresh provisions; with butchers’-meat and garden-stuff, pale
sucking-pigs, calves’ heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultry
out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes and busy with oakum
yarns; and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold; and the
purser’s head was barely visible as it loomed in a state, of exquisite
perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers’ luggage; and
there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of
anybody, but preparations for this mighty voyage. This, with the bright
cold sun, the bracing air, the crisply-curling water, the thin white
crust of morning ice upon the decks which crackled with a sharp and
cheerful sound beneath the lightest tread, was irresistible. And when,
again upon the shore, we turned and saw from the vessel’s mast her name
signalled in flags of joyous colours, and fluttering by their side the
beautiful American banner with its stars and stripes,—the long three
thousand miles and more, and, longer still, the six whole months of
absence, so dwindled and faded, that the ship had gone out and come home
again, and it was broad spring already in the Coburg Dock at Liverpool.
I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance, whether Turtle, and
cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and Claret, and all the slight et
cetera usually included in an unlimited order for a good
dinner—especially when it is left to the liberal construction of my
faultless friend, Mr. Radley, of the Adelphi Hotel—are peculiarly
calculated to suffer a sea-change; or whether a plain mutton-chop, and a
glass or two of sherry, would be less likely of conversion into foreign
and disconcerting material. My own opinion is, that whether one is
discreet or indiscreet in these particulars, on the eve of a sea-voyage,
is a matter of little consequence; and that, to use a common phrase, ‘it
comes to very much the same thing in the end.’ Be this as it may, I
know that the dinner of that day was undeniably perfect; that it
comprehended all these items, and a great many more; and that we all did
ample justice to it. And I know too, that, bating a certain tacit
avoidance of any allusion to to-morrow; such as may be supposed to
prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys, and a sensitive prisoner who is
to be hanged next morning; we got on very well, and, all things
considered, were merry enough.
When the morning—_the_ morning—came, and we met at breakfast, it was
curious to see how eager we all were to prevent a moment’s pause in the
conversation, and how astoundingly gay everybody was: the forced spirits
of each member of the little party having as much likeness to his natural
mirth, as hot-house peas at five guineas the quart, resemble in flavour
the growth of the dews, and air, and rain of Heaven. But as one o’clock,
the hour for going aboard, drew near, this volubility dwindled away by
little and little, despite the most persevering efforts to the contrary,
until at last, the matter being now quite desperate, we threw off all
disguise; openly speculated upon where we should be this time to-morrow,
this time next day, and so forth; and entrusted a vast number of messages
to those who intended returning to town that night, which were to be
delivered at home and elsewhere without fail, within the very shortest
possible space of time after the arrival of the railway train at Euston
Square. And commissions and remembrances do so crowd upon one at such a
time, that we were still busied with this employment when we found
ourselves fused, as it were, into a dense conglomeration of passengers
and passengers’ friends and passengers’ luggage, all jumbled together on
the deck of a small steamboat, and panting and snorting off to the
packet, which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and was now
lying at her moorings in the river.
And there she is! all eyes are turned to where she lies, dimly
discernible through the gathering fog of the early winter afternoon;
every finger is pointed in the same direction; and murmurs of interest
and admiration—as ‘How beautiful she looks!’ ‘How trim she is!’—are heard
on every side. Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on one side and his
hands in his pockets, who has dispensed so much consolation by inquiring
with a yawn of another gentleman whether he is ‘going across’—as if it
were a ferry—even he condescends to look that way, and nod his head, as
who should say, ‘No mistake about _that_:’ and not even the sage Lord
Burleigh in his nod, included half so much as this lazy gentleman of
might who has made the passage (as everybody on board has found out
already; it’s impossible to say how) thirteen times without a single
accident! There is another passenger very much wrapped-up, who has been
frowned down by the rest, and morally trampled upon and crushed, for
presuming to inquire with a timid interest how long it is since the poor
President went down. He is standing close to the lazy gentleman, and
says with a faint smile that he believes She is a very strong Ship; to
which the lazy gentleman, looking first in his questioner’s eye and then
very hard in the wind’s, answers unexpectedly and ominously, that She
need be. Upon this the lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the
popular estimation, and the passengers, with looks of defiance, whisper
to each other that he is an ass, and an impostor, and clearly don’t know
anything at all about it.
But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose huge red funnel is
smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious intentions.
Packing-cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes, are already passed
from hand to hand, and hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The
officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway handing the passengers up
the side, and hurrying the men. In five minutes’ time, the little
steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run by its
late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be met
with by the dozen in every nook and corner: swarming down below with
their own baggage, and stumbling over other people’s; disposing
themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating a most horrible
confusion by having to turn out again; madly bent upon opening locked
doors, and on forcing a passage into all kinds of out-of-the-way places
where there is no thoroughfare; sending wild stewards, with elfin hair,
to and fro upon the breezy decks on unintelligible errands, impossible of
execution: and in short, creating the most extraordinary and bewildering
tumult. In the midst of all this, the lazy gentleman, who seems to have
no luggage of any kind—not so much as a friend, even—lounges up and down
the hurricane deck, coolly puffing a cigar; and, as this unconcerned
demeanour again exalts him in the opinion of those who have leisure to
observe his proceedings, every time he looks up at the masts, or down at
the decks, or over the side, they look there too, as wondering whether he
sees anything wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he should, he will
have the goodness to mention it.
What have we here? The captain’s boat! and yonder the captain himself.
Now, by all our hopes and wishes, the very man he ought to be! A
well-made, tight-built, dapper little fellow; with a ruddy face, which is
a letter of invitation to shake him by both hands at once; and with a
clear, blue honest eye, that it does one good to see one’s sparkling
image in. ‘Ring the bell!’ ‘Ding, ding, ding!’ the very bell is in a
hurry. ‘Now for the shore—who’s for the shore?’—‘These gentlemen, I am
sorry to say.’ They are away, and never said, Good b’ye. Ah now they
wave it from the little boat. ‘Good b’ye! Good b’ye!’ Three cheers from
them; three more from us; three more from them: and they are gone.
To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a hundred times! This waiting
for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If we could have gone off in
the midst of that last burst, we should have started triumphantly: but to
lie here, two hours and more in the damp fog, neither staying at home nor
going abroad, is letting one gradually down into the very depths of
dulness and low spirits. A speck in the mist, at last! That’s
something. It is the boat we wait for! That’s more to the purpose. The
captain appears on the paddle-box with his speaking trumpet; the officers
take their stations; all hands are on the alert; the flagging hopes of
the passengers revive; the cooks pause in their savoury work, and look
out with faces full of interest. The boat comes alongside; the bags are
dragged in anyhow, and flung down for the moment anywhere. Three cheers
more: and as the first one rings upon our ears, the vessel throbs like a
strong giant that has just received the breath of life; the two great
wheels turn fiercely round for the first time; and the noble ship, with
wind and tide astern, breaks proudly through the lashed and roaming
water.