March 28, 2012 • 27 mins
Charles Dickens is best known for chronicling life in London, but he also wrote about the United States - and not in a flattering light. When touring the U.S. and Canada with his wife, Dickens found many American customs repugnant. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Fairy Dowdy and I'm Delaney Chuck Rewarding, And lately
we've been on a bit of a literary event, covering
everybody from the new to US Ottoman travel writer Eveleia
(00:23):
Chellaby too old British literature friends like the Bronte's or
the Brownings. But there's one name that keeps popping up,
and that's Charles Dickens. And of course he's a natural
when you're already thinking about the likes of the Brontes
because he's a contemporary. They're both staples of any literature class.
But Dickens also fits in with Chellaby, albeit in a
(00:45):
lesser known kind of way. He was also a travel writer,
and of course Dickens is best known for dramatizing the
cruel life of London slums and finding comedy in Victorian hypocrisy.
I'm sure most of you have read some Dickens along
the way. He also wrote essays, and he covered parliamentary
news and produced travelogs, including a very memorable account of
(01:07):
his first trip to the United States and Canada and
since two thousand twelve marks the two anniversary of dickens birth,
will be focusing on a few aspects of his life
over the next couple of weeks, but this seems like
a natural place to start. For one, dickens first American
tour came early in his career, right when he achieved
great fame but not yet great wealth. Second, it shook
(01:29):
him up, both in his beliefs and in his writing.
America was not all he had hoped, and that disillusionment
is believed to have greatly affected his later most famous works.
And finally, it gives us a peek at something which
in the forties was really just beginning in earnest celebrity culture,
with all the barber sells your hair trimmings creepiness that's
(01:51):
involved with that. And we'll that will explain that a
little more, a little tantalizing clue for what lies ahead.
But first we're going to give you a brief background
on Charles Dickens. And today I think most people know
about dickens childhood at the bootblacking factory, this really deeply
scarring period during which his father was in debtors prison
and little Charles had to go to work and retrospectively,
(02:13):
of course, it's a critical experience for the man who
went on to create characters like Joe and Oliver Twist
or Tiny Tim. Even though I find this so interesting,
his general public and even his own kids didn't know
about that factory work or his father's prison time until
after Dickens's death. What made that period really horrifying was
that Dickens had come out of a comfortable home. He
(02:36):
was born February seven, eighteen twelve, and he grew up
in Chatham, his father working for the Navy Payoffice. His
earlier years were heavy on games, magic lantern shows and
performances of comic songs with his sister, sometimes even at
a nearby tavern. He was educated, and he had a
large library at his disposal, filled with titles like The
Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. So it was
(02:59):
a very happy, comfortable childhood. But as this father's fortune decline,
the family moved to Camden Town, London, gave up educations
for the children, I think except for dickens older sister,
who still had music lessons, and rock Bottom finally came
in eighteen twenty four with debtors prison and factory work
for by then twelve year old Charles, and he later
(03:20):
wrote of this, of this time in the shock of
such a huge change in his circumstances quote, I felt
my early hopes of growing up to be a learned
and distinguished man crushed in my breast. So after a spell,
you know, about nine or ten months working in the factory,
he had continued to work there. Unfortunately, after his father
got out of debtors prison. But after the family got
(03:43):
back on its feet again, Dickens had a little bit
more schooling and at age fifteen he went to work,
this time as a solicitor's clerk. It wasn't the most
interesting work, but at least it gave him a little
bit of legal background, which influenced some of his later novels.
By eight though, he's started picking up extra work as
a freelance journalist, and by eighteen thirty two he was
(04:04):
taken on as a regular parliamentary reporter. And Dickens certainly
could have spent his whole career as a journalist. He
was popular, he was very good at it, but he
was really itching to write more than just the news,
and so he started publishing stories in eighteen thirty three
and writing under the name Bows, which was kind of
a version of his brother's childhood nickname. He started contributing
(04:29):
these street sketches to his paper in eighteen thirty four.
He had really been walking around London for most of
his life, and he knew all types of people. He
knew all neighborhoods, and he could paint them really vividly
in these newspaper sketches. And these popular vignettes caught the
attention of the booksellers Edward Chapman and William Hall, who
commissioned him to write text for a series of illustrations
(04:51):
done by a popular artist of the day. But when
the artist committed suicide shortly after the project started, Dickens
became the creative lead himself, shifting the focus to the
text portion of it. The result was the name making
Pickwick Papers a smash hit that had a run of
forty thousand copies, and in his sudden success, Dickens signed
up for a multitude of projects and stepped up as
(05:12):
the editor of a new magazine. He'd also by this
point married Catherine Hogarth and started a family. His hits
came out one after another serialized, of course, Oliver Twist
Nicholas nickleby the Old Curiosity Shop in Barnaby Rudge, and
Dickens still has a reputation of being a shockingly prodigious writer,
some say maybe too much so, but even he was
(05:35):
getting worn down by doing so much work. So, with
all of these post Pickwick promises wrapped up by the
early eighteen forties, he talked to his publishers and talked
them into giving him a lengthy sabbatical, paid in advance
on future work. But what was he going to do
with this really long vacation travel? Of course, and Dickens
really only had one destination in mind. That was America,
(05:58):
Land of liberty, this action unburdened by a bunch of
old world hang ups, or so Dickens hoped. He very
much hoped, as we're going to see later. He wanted
to see the Great Frontier. He wanted to see the
Democratic Experiment and Niagara Falls, all the things you can
kind of imagine somebody like Dickens wanting to to see
in person. But Dickens being Dickens, he also wanted to
(06:20):
see the factories and prisons and mad houses. Having spent
so much of his time investigating his own country's institutions.
He was really ready to see other examples around the world,
see what other people were up to. Catherine, of course,
wasn't too keen on leaving their four kids at this point.
Eventually they had ten, but it was decided that they
(06:41):
would tour the United States in Canada for just six months,
still a pretty long time, but they would leave their
kids with the actor William McCready, who was a good
family friend, and to spice up the deal for the publishers,
who were of course paying in advance for the song sabbatical.
Dickens would still be working the whole time, and upon
his return he'd have a publishable notebook filled with all
(07:03):
of his travel impressions. Turned out to be a pretty
fateful decision. So January three, eight forty two, twenty nine
year old Dickens left Liverpool in the steamship Britannia with
Catherine and her maid Anne Brown. It was about the
worst start you could possibly imagine. Though they were seasick,
the cabin was so tiny and cramped that he joked
that their luggage had about as much of a chance
(07:24):
of fitting in the door as a giraffe had of
getting into a flower pot. And the weather was bad,
actually some of the worst weather that had been around
in years. It probably spent most of the trip thinking
that they were going to capsize them. Not very fun.
They finally landed in Nova Scotia and then went right
on to Boston, which was the first stop of the trip,
and they got their January and really, at first Dickens
(07:47):
was in heaven. He supposedly would tear through the Boston snow,
reading off shops, nines. He just loved everything he saw.
But that elation didn't last very long. And one problem
was being Dickens, who was, of course an incredibly famous
and kind of surprisingly recognizable celebrity in the United States,
(08:07):
though maybe it's not too surprising. Dickens was known as
an eccentric dresser, particularly in his youth. One Massachusetts onlooker
called him a genteel rowdy, but once he got pointed out,
maybe you know, that's dickens um. As little as half
a century earlier, though authors hadn't really been very famous
as individuals, at least at least not in a stop
(08:30):
and stare at them kind of way. They were known
mostly for their work but with better dissemination of news,
more gossips spreading around. I mean, think of our old
very old by now Lord Byron episode. These famous personalities,
whether they were authors or actors or singers, started to
get as big as anything they were producing. They started
to become names and recognizable people. But for Dickens, fain
(08:54):
wasn't a very fun thing to acquire. No. I mean,
it involved fancy parties and meeting icons, but it also
involved a lot of the unpleasantness that we associate with
modern day celebrity culture, which shocked Dickens and really disturbed him.
Crowds would follow him everywhere. He wrote, quote, if I
turned into the street, I'm followed by a multitude, and
(09:16):
I can't drink a glass of water without having one
hundred people looking down my throat when I opened my
mouth to swallow. On a boat stop over near Cleveland,
he caught a quote party of gentlemen staring at his
sleeping wife through a cabin window. People on the docks
would actually rip handfuls of fur from his coat when
he came by. And then, I mean, if that's not
(09:37):
bad enough, there was this profit driven side of a
lot of the celebrity craze to the barbera re mentioned
who tried to sell his hair. Tiffany's and Company apparently
made copies of a Dickens bust and offered those up
for sale. I think this really bothered him, all of
this money making surrounding his name. And there's another aspect, though,
(09:58):
of this fame that really their Dickens. And that was
wherever he went, whether it was Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis Washington,
d C, Richmond, New York City, Louisville, he met throngs
of American fans who had obviously read and enjoyed his books. Okay,
that's a good thing. Presumably they've all been buying those books,
which was true. The only problem was that, due to
(10:19):
a lack of international copyright laws, Dickens knew he hadn't
made any money off of these many fans, since the
US publishers could rip off his work. So, on the
one hand, he's seeing these busts of himself that people
are trying to sell. He's knowing he's not making any
money for the actual books that have made him so
famous in the first place. So he started peppering his
(10:40):
speeches with dissatisfaction about the laws, but he wasn't oblivious.
He didn't try to center his argument on his own
personal finances. Instead, he chose to focus on the fact
that all writers, Americans included, would benefit from a change,
and that at the end of the day, he'd quote
rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow men as
I would have heaps of gold, heaps and minds of gold.
(11:03):
So we tried to catch it in terms like I'm
just looking out for all writers, and gradually, though that
sort of spin on, his argument changed and got a
little more intense, and well, many average Americans would have
agreed with him that there needed to be some kind
of copyright changes. The press really pounced on this copyright
obsession and declared it an indelicate, an improper avenue of
(11:27):
public discussion, something that an honored guest shouldn't be going
around talking to everybody about. And it was really the
first strike in what became known as dickens quarrel with America.
Because there's the press escalated things, so did Dickens. Okay,
but before we get into more particulars about what really
is going to sound like the ultimate failed vacation It's
(11:48):
worth noting that there were some high points to this.
There were some good times, sometimes being celebrated author meant
parties as we mentioned, and mingling with fellow famous people.
On Valentine's Day two, for example, Bold Dickens was the
guest of honor at one of the biggest parties to
that date in New York City's Park Theater, which was,
according to Simon Watson BBC magazine, decorated with wreaths, paintings
(12:11):
and a bust of Dickens with an eagle soaring over
his head, which sounds a little strange and I can't
help but wonder if that had anything to do with
Dickens request in his will that no monuments being made
of him seeing that eagle flying over his head. And
like you just mentioned, he also did get to meet
a lot of fellow writers. He met Edgar Allan, Poe, Washington,
(12:33):
Irving Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beetrice Stow, a lot
of folks who pop up in the podcast to what
I do. And then he and Catherine had some fun too.
I mean, I know their later relationship is not characterized
very well. So we're going to talk about in another episode,
but during this time they seemed to have a pretty
good time. They acted in a play together. On the
last leg of their trip was which was a jaunt
(12:56):
through Canada that included a stop in Montreal they really
enjoyed at And then whenever he could, he broke away
from all of the hubbub, all of the fan fier
people who were flocking around him to do what he
liked to do most, which was just wander tour all
of these new towns he was visiting. Yeah, he toured
some of the worst neighborhoods in fact of New York
(13:16):
City at the time. That was five Points in the Bowery.
He visited the mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, and was impressed
to find a model industrial community, a place where the
women workers only stayed a few years. They lived in
comfy boarding houses, and they had access to things like
lecture series, a house run periodical, and pianos. So it
(13:37):
was really different from what he knew of similar situations
in England, and I think that's an important thing to
consider when we get to some of the later particulars
in this episode that he did see. Um he did
compare some things in the United States positively compared to
what he saw in England. He also toured prisons and
insane asylums. It might seem a little strange to us
(13:58):
now to do that on your vacation, but according to
Natalie McKnight, a professor at Boston University interviewed on the World,
it wasn't that weird for British writers to include investigative
travel on their trips to the US. And there you go.
Another major high point for Dickens was a trip to
the Perkins Institute, which was well and is a school
for the blind in Massachusetts. And I think it really
(14:20):
speaks for dickins sincere interest in social issues that the
top items on his to see in the United States
list were Niagara Falls, as we already mentioned, and then
Laura Bridgeman, who was a little girl who was deaf
blind but had been educated with language. And Bridgeman, who
incidentally is believed to be the first death blind person
(14:41):
to be educated, had been written about by Perkins director
Dr Samuel Gridley. How and uh he was the man
who had also come up with the system for teaching
her language in the first place. He had written this
publication which proved pretty popular internationally, and Dickens had heard
of it. So Dickens was so in pressed by meeting
Laura that he included quite a bit of the meeting
(15:04):
in his later published Notes on America. And according to
jan seymour Ford, who was a research librarian at Perkins,
schools for people with disabilities were really just starting to,
as she said, get traction during this time, and dickens
work helped spread the word a little bit about what
an institution like this could do for people who had disabilities.
(15:25):
Dickens work also led directly to the education of none
other than Helen Keller. Decades after Dickens visit, Keller's parents
read his American Notes and came across the story of
Laura Bridgeman. They went to Perkins and were connected with
a graduate and teacher who was Ann Sullivan, the miracle
worker who taught Keller language. And this little sub story
(15:45):
here was just so interesting to me. It makes me
almost want to maybe do a future upset on Helen Keller.
But it wasn't, of course, all pleasant trips like trips
to little trips to Perkins for Dickens. He visited Washington,
d C. In March and he met President John Tyler.
He toured the capital, but the trip was kind of
defined by the disregard for spittoons that he witnessed in
(16:09):
the nation's capital. He later wrote, Washington maybe called the
headquarters of tobacco tinctured saliva. The thing itself is an
exaggeration of nastiness which cannot be outdone. And he went
on to Warren readers that if they were gonna tour
the capital, and I mean the capital building, um, if
in case they dropped anything, be careful not to pick
(16:32):
it up without a gloved hands, because you were probably
gonna run into a bunch of tobaccos. That other issues
around the country involved what he saw as poor table manners,
overheated homes, arrogance, hypocrisy, and a tendency towards violence that
was illustrated by a gun fight between two kids who
were using real guns. So it kind of ran the
(16:53):
whole rage from the whole ungloved hands to poor table
manner and went up from there. It got more serious
than that too. In Richmond he saw slavery, which he
was very outspoken against, and then some of it was
just disappointment. In St. Louis, for instance, he was disappointed
by a trip to see the Looking Glass Prairie, which
(17:15):
is something he had really wanted to do, go see
the prairie. According to Professor Jerome Mechier, who's the author
of Dickens and Innocent Abroad quote, the longer Dickens rubbed
shoulders with Americans, the more he realized that the Americans
were simply not English enough. And Dickens himself wrote to
his friend McCready he was taking care of his kids.
This is not the republic I came to see. This
(17:37):
is not the Republic of my imagination. So those are
harsh words. But after he got home, Dickens did one better.
He started polishing up his travel journals and he ended
up publishing them as promised as American Notes for general circulation.
Then he stepped it up again. The following year he
(17:57):
started a new book called Martin Chuzzlewood, and when the
first issues weren't really selling that well, he decided to
pack off his Hero to America and included a lot
of his own kind of experiences he had seen in
the Midwest. So both his travelogue and his novel painted
quite an unflattering picture of America, seems folks wouldn't have
(18:18):
expected the man famous for tearing apart hypocrisies of British
life to be entirely kind, But in fact they had
new friends like Washington Irving were hurt, even outraged. People
in New York burned copies of Martin Chuzzlewit papers denounced
the American notes. The trip very likely changed Dickens to
Some scholars see his work getting less optimistic after his
(18:42):
American journey. And I can kind of see this from
several different perspectives. One, it does seem like people overreacted
quite a bit. The travel notes do include kind of
unfavorable comparisons to British things, you know, where we were
talking about the low um little factories and how it's
England that comes across as worse in that situation. There's
(19:04):
a lot of stuff like that. But um, if people
were overreacting a bit, well then maybe also Dickens kind
of had unrealistic expectations. If you go into a trip
and your expectations are that it will be a land
of innocent people where everything's perfect, you know, kind of
a utopia themed he was expecting, you're probably going to
be a little bit disappointed. Especially people are ripping fur
(19:26):
out of your coat. And that's true, So it's not
that any of this really affected dickens popularity as an
author in the US. More than twenty years later, Dickens,
who by this point had multiple households to support, and
that's just a hint for the next podcast we're going
to come up with, he decided it might be time
to revisit America, and this time as a part of
his Smash lecture series, in which he'd act rather than
(19:49):
read portions of his own works from a special gas
lit lecture. So, after sending a reconnaissance scout on ahead,
he arrived in Boston in mid November of eighteen sixty seven.
During his with Eastern tour, quite a few things happened.
He met Mark Twain, remark Twain saw him, and of
course Mark Twain is also known for his his public readings,
(20:10):
which were apparently just as good as Dickens, and a
twelve year old girl chatted with him on a train,
telling him that she'd read all his books but skipped
to the quote lengthy and dull parts, and she, in fact,
he grew up to write Rebecca of Sunny Book Farms.
They were a popular children's book there, and then Dr
Samuel Gridley how of Perkins, who we mentioned, contacted Dickens
(20:32):
about publishing The Old Curiosity Shop in Braille, and Dickens
actually not only gave his approval, he put up one thousand,
seven hundred dollars to have two hundred fifty copies printed,
which were in turn distributed to all of the blind
schools in America, something I thought was pretty cool. The
lectures themselves were a huge hit. I mean, of course,
that was why he was back in the United States
(20:54):
in the first place. He made nineteen thousand pounds, and
many folks couldn't remember the first tour, so there weren't
any hard feelings there. And even the press took dickens
return as a sign of goodwill. For instance, the New
York Tribune wrote, dickens second coming was needed to disperse
every cloud and every doubt, and to place his name
(21:15):
undimmed and the silver sunshine of American admiration. Kind of
an overblown welcome welcome back Dickens, and Dickens himself felt
differently too. In his farewell speech, he spoke of the
quote gigantic changes he'd seen in the country, changes, moral changes,
physical changes in the amount of land subdued and people,
(21:35):
changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in
the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes
in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the press,
without whose advancement, no advancement can take place anywhere. And
he asked that the statement be added to every copy
of American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewitt, And it still is
there today. Kind of, I take it back, you guys
(21:57):
have mid some improvement xt job um. So, I think
it was really interesting to learn about an author so
associated with England, or really so associated with London in
a different context, see him out of his element a
little bit. That was what appealed to me about this story. Yeah,
I think in a way it's actually quite a testament
(22:17):
to travel itself, that you can go abroad and it
opens your eyes and you just see things in a
different way. I mean, he obviously didn't work out so
well the first time because he had a bad experience.
He was disappointed, and like you said, that was probably
equal parts his fault and you know, the fault of
what he saw exactly, of people spitting tobacco on the floor.
(22:38):
But when he came back the next time, it seems
like he sort of had a different point of view well,
and he had definitely learned kind of a lesson about
maybe being careful when you're traveling to keep some of
your opinions. Although it's kind of nice to have that honesty.
I'm glad looking back on it now. Well, it's interesting
(22:58):
that we're doing this to podcast now because just this
week we got a letter and kind of a little
gift from a listener that was related to Dickens. We
heard from listener Tory, and she wanted to share with
us what she does while she listens to the podcast.
And she makes these really cool book scarves. And I
didn't even know what a book scarf was before I
got the she invented it. She I guess maybe she
(23:21):
invented it. She makes these scarves that actually have screenprinting
done on them, and they have the words like passages
from books on them. And she sent us one that
was from Jane Eyre and one that was from a
Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens because she's heard us
to drop his name all the time. I'm always mentioning
(23:44):
at the podcast, So I'll just read a little bit
of this, she said. For quite some time now, I
wanted to share with you my own I listen while
I response, and in doing so, I hope to strike
a likewise joyous chord with you. Two is a token
of thanks and gratitude for your hard work. In order
or to do so, I thought it would be best
to show you what I do while I listen, and
your last podcast, Growing Up Bronte instantly confirmed my decision
(24:07):
to do so. I am extremely fortunate to be able
to combine my passions for classical literature, history, fashion design,
and the art of silk screening by producing a unique
product of my own imagining, the book scars that you
have now here. Hence I listen while I'm constantly moving
my hands as a screenprint, cut pin, and so fabric.
(24:28):
I have thus included two of my finished designs, and
we mentioned to you what those are. So thank you
very much, Tori. These are cool. We're just trying to
figure out how to wear them. I saw the picture,
so you did. You did see the picture. It requires
a double wrapping. Maybe if we if we can get
it looking really good, we'll post the pictures or something
that sounds like a plan, So yeah, thank you, Tori.
(24:49):
And then another Dickens coincidence from this week. I was
reading all sorts of material about Dickens and I came
across the quote regarding his se trip to America. Um.
An article said that he was quote a noted in
Biber and mythologist of some repute. And like, I share
(25:10):
this with Deblina earlier, and you pointed out that noted Imbiber,
So sounds pretty good, you know, not quite like fancy
he drank a lot. But UM, I thought it was
such a strange coincidence because the day before another one
of our listeners, listener Rose, had treated me to a
mythology class where I learned a lot about the history
(25:30):
of cocktails in general. It was really fun and um
kind of almost an extension of our historic alcohol episode, um,
extending more into the golden age of cocktails, you know,
pre prohibition. And so I thought that was such a
nice compliment to all of this Dickens research. So, if
(25:50):
you'd like to share with us any Dickens related stories
or maybe Dickens related projects that you work on, drinks
that you make that our Dickens or not Dickens related,
you think we might enjoy or be interested in. Feel
free to write us or at History Podcast at Discovery
dot com. You can also find us on Facebook and
on Twitter at Myston History. And we have an article
(26:11):
which I think Dickens himself probably would have been interested in.
It's called Can Travel Change You? I would say it
change Dickens a bit. I would say so, um, but
I don't know how you guys feel about that. You
can check it out for yourselves. It's called again, can
Travel Change You? And you can find it by searching
on our home page at www dot housetop works dot com.
(26:35):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join house Stop Work staff as we
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Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Fairy Dowdy and I'm Delaney Chuck Rewarding, And lately
we've been on a bit of a literary event, covering
everybody from the new to US Ottoman travel writer Eveleia
(00:23):
Chellaby too old British literature friends like the Bronte's or
the Brownings. But there's one name that keeps popping up,
and that's Charles Dickens. And of course he's a natural
when you're already thinking about the likes of the Brontes
because he's a contemporary. They're both staples of any literature class.
But Dickens also fits in with Chellaby, albeit in a
(00:45):
lesser known kind of way. He was also a travel writer,
and of course Dickens is best known for dramatizing the
cruel life of London slums and finding comedy in Victorian hypocrisy.
I'm sure most of you have read some Dickens along
the way. He also wrote essays, and he covered parliamentary
news and produced travelogs, including a very memorable account of
(01:07):
his first trip to the United States and Canada and
since two thousand twelve marks the two anniversary of dickens birth,
will be focusing on a few aspects of his life
over the next couple of weeks, but this seems like
a natural place to start. For one, dickens first American
tour came early in his career, right when he achieved
great fame but not yet great wealth. Second, it shook
(01:29):
him up, both in his beliefs and in his writing.
America was not all he had hoped, and that disillusionment
is believed to have greatly affected his later most famous works.
And finally, it gives us a peek at something which
in the forties was really just beginning in earnest celebrity culture,
with all the barber sells your hair trimmings creepiness that's
(01:51):
involved with that. And we'll that will explain that a
little more, a little tantalizing clue for what lies ahead.
But first we're going to give you a brief background
on Charles Dickens. And today I think most people know
about dickens childhood at the bootblacking factory, this really deeply
scarring period during which his father was in debtors prison
and little Charles had to go to work and retrospectively,
(02:13):
of course, it's a critical experience for the man who
went on to create characters like Joe and Oliver Twist
or Tiny Tim. Even though I find this so interesting,
his general public and even his own kids didn't know
about that factory work or his father's prison time until
after Dickens's death. What made that period really horrifying was
that Dickens had come out of a comfortable home. He
(02:36):
was born February seven, eighteen twelve, and he grew up
in Chatham, his father working for the Navy Payoffice. His
earlier years were heavy on games, magic lantern shows and
performances of comic songs with his sister, sometimes even at
a nearby tavern. He was educated, and he had a
large library at his disposal, filled with titles like The
Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. So it was
(02:59):
a very happy, comfortable childhood. But as this father's fortune decline,
the family moved to Camden Town, London, gave up educations
for the children, I think except for dickens older sister,
who still had music lessons, and rock Bottom finally came
in eighteen twenty four with debtors prison and factory work
for by then twelve year old Charles, and he later
(03:20):
wrote of this, of this time in the shock of
such a huge change in his circumstances quote, I felt
my early hopes of growing up to be a learned
and distinguished man crushed in my breast. So after a spell,
you know, about nine or ten months working in the factory,
he had continued to work there. Unfortunately, after his father
got out of debtors prison. But after the family got
(03:43):
back on its feet again, Dickens had a little bit
more schooling and at age fifteen he went to work,
this time as a solicitor's clerk. It wasn't the most
interesting work, but at least it gave him a little
bit of legal background, which influenced some of his later novels.
By eight though, he's started picking up extra work as
a freelance journalist, and by eighteen thirty two he was
(04:04):
taken on as a regular parliamentary reporter. And Dickens certainly
could have spent his whole career as a journalist. He
was popular, he was very good at it, but he
was really itching to write more than just the news,
and so he started publishing stories in eighteen thirty three
and writing under the name Bows, which was kind of
a version of his brother's childhood nickname. He started contributing
(04:29):
these street sketches to his paper in eighteen thirty four.
He had really been walking around London for most of
his life, and he knew all types of people. He
knew all neighborhoods, and he could paint them really vividly
in these newspaper sketches. And these popular vignettes caught the
attention of the booksellers Edward Chapman and William Hall, who
commissioned him to write text for a series of illustrations
(04:51):
done by a popular artist of the day. But when
the artist committed suicide shortly after the project started, Dickens
became the creative lead himself, shifting the focus to the
text portion of it. The result was the name making
Pickwick Papers a smash hit that had a run of
forty thousand copies, and in his sudden success, Dickens signed
up for a multitude of projects and stepped up as
(05:12):
the editor of a new magazine. He'd also by this
point married Catherine Hogarth and started a family. His hits
came out one after another serialized, of course, Oliver Twist
Nicholas nickleby the Old Curiosity Shop in Barnaby Rudge, and
Dickens still has a reputation of being a shockingly prodigious writer,
some say maybe too much so, but even he was
(05:35):
getting worn down by doing so much work. So, with
all of these post Pickwick promises wrapped up by the
early eighteen forties, he talked to his publishers and talked
them into giving him a lengthy sabbatical, paid in advance
on future work. But what was he going to do
with this really long vacation travel? Of course, and Dickens
really only had one destination in mind. That was America,
(05:58):
Land of liberty, this action unburdened by a bunch of
old world hang ups, or so Dickens hoped. He very
much hoped, as we're going to see later. He wanted
to see the Great Frontier. He wanted to see the
Democratic Experiment and Niagara Falls, all the things you can
kind of imagine somebody like Dickens wanting to to see
in person. But Dickens being Dickens, he also wanted to
(06:20):
see the factories and prisons and mad houses. Having spent
so much of his time investigating his own country's institutions.
He was really ready to see other examples around the world,
see what other people were up to. Catherine, of course,
wasn't too keen on leaving their four kids at this point.
Eventually they had ten, but it was decided that they
(06:41):
would tour the United States in Canada for just six months,
still a pretty long time, but they would leave their
kids with the actor William McCready, who was a good
family friend, and to spice up the deal for the publishers,
who were of course paying in advance for the song sabbatical.
Dickens would still be working the whole time, and upon
his return he'd have a publishable notebook filled with all
(07:03):
of his travel impressions. Turned out to be a pretty
fateful decision. So January three, eight forty two, twenty nine
year old Dickens left Liverpool in the steamship Britannia with
Catherine and her maid Anne Brown. It was about the
worst start you could possibly imagine. Though they were seasick,
the cabin was so tiny and cramped that he joked
that their luggage had about as much of a chance
(07:24):
of fitting in the door as a giraffe had of
getting into a flower pot. And the weather was bad,
actually some of the worst weather that had been around
in years. It probably spent most of the trip thinking
that they were going to capsize them. Not very fun.
They finally landed in Nova Scotia and then went right
on to Boston, which was the first stop of the trip,
and they got their January and really, at first Dickens
(07:47):
was in heaven. He supposedly would tear through the Boston snow,
reading off shops, nines. He just loved everything he saw.
But that elation didn't last very long. And one problem
was being Dickens, who was, of course an incredibly famous
and kind of surprisingly recognizable celebrity in the United States,
(08:07):
though maybe it's not too surprising. Dickens was known as
an eccentric dresser, particularly in his youth. One Massachusetts onlooker
called him a genteel rowdy, but once he got pointed out,
maybe you know, that's dickens um. As little as half
a century earlier, though authors hadn't really been very famous
as individuals, at least at least not in a stop
(08:30):
and stare at them kind of way. They were known
mostly for their work but with better dissemination of news,
more gossips spreading around. I mean, think of our old
very old by now Lord Byron episode. These famous personalities,
whether they were authors or actors or singers, started to
get as big as anything they were producing. They started
to become names and recognizable people. But for Dickens, fain
(08:54):
wasn't a very fun thing to acquire. No. I mean,
it involved fancy parties and meeting icons, but it also
involved a lot of the unpleasantness that we associate with
modern day celebrity culture, which shocked Dickens and really disturbed him.
Crowds would follow him everywhere. He wrote, quote, if I
turned into the street, I'm followed by a multitude, and
(09:16):
I can't drink a glass of water without having one
hundred people looking down my throat when I opened my
mouth to swallow. On a boat stop over near Cleveland,
he caught a quote party of gentlemen staring at his
sleeping wife through a cabin window. People on the docks
would actually rip handfuls of fur from his coat when
he came by. And then, I mean, if that's not
(09:37):
bad enough, there was this profit driven side of a
lot of the celebrity craze to the barbera re mentioned
who tried to sell his hair. Tiffany's and Company apparently
made copies of a Dickens bust and offered those up
for sale. I think this really bothered him, all of
this money making surrounding his name. And there's another aspect, though,
(09:58):
of this fame that really their Dickens. And that was
wherever he went, whether it was Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis Washington,
d C, Richmond, New York City, Louisville, he met throngs
of American fans who had obviously read and enjoyed his books. Okay,
that's a good thing. Presumably they've all been buying those books,
which was true. The only problem was that, due to
(10:19):
a lack of international copyright laws, Dickens knew he hadn't
made any money off of these many fans, since the
US publishers could rip off his work. So, on the
one hand, he's seeing these busts of himself that people
are trying to sell. He's knowing he's not making any
money for the actual books that have made him so
famous in the first place. So he started peppering his
(10:40):
speeches with dissatisfaction about the laws, but he wasn't oblivious.
He didn't try to center his argument on his own
personal finances. Instead, he chose to focus on the fact
that all writers, Americans included, would benefit from a change,
and that at the end of the day, he'd quote
rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow men as
I would have heaps of gold, heaps and minds of gold.
(11:03):
So we tried to catch it in terms like I'm
just looking out for all writers, and gradually, though that
sort of spin on, his argument changed and got a
little more intense, and well, many average Americans would have
agreed with him that there needed to be some kind
of copyright changes. The press really pounced on this copyright
obsession and declared it an indelicate, an improper avenue of
(11:27):
public discussion, something that an honored guest shouldn't be going
around talking to everybody about. And it was really the
first strike in what became known as dickens quarrel with America.
Because there's the press escalated things, so did Dickens. Okay,
but before we get into more particulars about what really
is going to sound like the ultimate failed vacation It's
(11:48):
worth noting that there were some high points to this.
There were some good times, sometimes being celebrated author meant
parties as we mentioned, and mingling with fellow famous people.
On Valentine's Day two, for example, Bold Dickens was the
guest of honor at one of the biggest parties to
that date in New York City's Park Theater, which was,
according to Simon Watson BBC magazine, decorated with wreaths, paintings
(12:11):
and a bust of Dickens with an eagle soaring over
his head, which sounds a little strange and I can't
help but wonder if that had anything to do with
Dickens request in his will that no monuments being made
of him seeing that eagle flying over his head. And
like you just mentioned, he also did get to meet
a lot of fellow writers. He met Edgar Allan, Poe, Washington,
(12:33):
Irving Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beetrice Stow, a lot
of folks who pop up in the podcast to what
I do. And then he and Catherine had some fun too.
I mean, I know their later relationship is not characterized
very well. So we're going to talk about in another episode,
but during this time they seemed to have a pretty
good time. They acted in a play together. On the
last leg of their trip was which was a jaunt
(12:56):
through Canada that included a stop in Montreal they really
enjoyed at And then whenever he could, he broke away
from all of the hubbub, all of the fan fier
people who were flocking around him to do what he
liked to do most, which was just wander tour all
of these new towns he was visiting. Yeah, he toured
some of the worst neighborhoods in fact of New York
(13:16):
City at the time. That was five Points in the Bowery.
He visited the mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, and was impressed
to find a model industrial community, a place where the
women workers only stayed a few years. They lived in
comfy boarding houses, and they had access to things like
lecture series, a house run periodical, and pianos. So it
(13:37):
was really different from what he knew of similar situations
in England, and I think that's an important thing to
consider when we get to some of the later particulars
in this episode that he did see. Um he did
compare some things in the United States positively compared to
what he saw in England. He also toured prisons and
insane asylums. It might seem a little strange to us
(13:58):
now to do that on your vacation, but according to
Natalie McKnight, a professor at Boston University interviewed on the World,
it wasn't that weird for British writers to include investigative
travel on their trips to the US. And there you go.
Another major high point for Dickens was a trip to
the Perkins Institute, which was well and is a school
for the blind in Massachusetts. And I think it really
(14:20):
speaks for dickins sincere interest in social issues that the
top items on his to see in the United States
list were Niagara Falls, as we already mentioned, and then
Laura Bridgeman, who was a little girl who was deaf
blind but had been educated with language. And Bridgeman, who
incidentally is believed to be the first death blind person
(14:41):
to be educated, had been written about by Perkins director
Dr Samuel Gridley. How and uh he was the man
who had also come up with the system for teaching
her language in the first place. He had written this
publication which proved pretty popular internationally, and Dickens had heard
of it. So Dickens was so in pressed by meeting
Laura that he included quite a bit of the meeting
(15:04):
in his later published Notes on America. And according to
jan seymour Ford, who was a research librarian at Perkins,
schools for people with disabilities were really just starting to,
as she said, get traction during this time, and dickens
work helped spread the word a little bit about what
an institution like this could do for people who had disabilities.
(15:25):
Dickens work also led directly to the education of none
other than Helen Keller. Decades after Dickens visit, Keller's parents
read his American Notes and came across the story of
Laura Bridgeman. They went to Perkins and were connected with
a graduate and teacher who was Ann Sullivan, the miracle
worker who taught Keller language. And this little sub story
(15:45):
here was just so interesting to me. It makes me
almost want to maybe do a future upset on Helen Keller.
But it wasn't, of course, all pleasant trips like trips
to little trips to Perkins for Dickens. He visited Washington,
d C. In March and he met President John Tyler.
He toured the capital, but the trip was kind of
defined by the disregard for spittoons that he witnessed in
(16:09):
the nation's capital. He later wrote, Washington maybe called the
headquarters of tobacco tinctured saliva. The thing itself is an
exaggeration of nastiness which cannot be outdone. And he went
on to Warren readers that if they were gonna tour
the capital, and I mean the capital building, um, if
in case they dropped anything, be careful not to pick
(16:32):
it up without a gloved hands, because you were probably
gonna run into a bunch of tobaccos. That other issues
around the country involved what he saw as poor table manners,
overheated homes, arrogance, hypocrisy, and a tendency towards violence that
was illustrated by a gun fight between two kids who
were using real guns. So it kind of ran the
(16:53):
whole rage from the whole ungloved hands to poor table
manner and went up from there. It got more serious
than that too. In Richmond he saw slavery, which he
was very outspoken against, and then some of it was
just disappointment. In St. Louis, for instance, he was disappointed
by a trip to see the Looking Glass Prairie, which
(17:15):
is something he had really wanted to do, go see
the prairie. According to Professor Jerome Mechier, who's the author
of Dickens and Innocent Abroad quote, the longer Dickens rubbed
shoulders with Americans, the more he realized that the Americans
were simply not English enough. And Dickens himself wrote to
his friend McCready he was taking care of his kids.
This is not the republic I came to see. This
(17:37):
is not the Republic of my imagination. So those are
harsh words. But after he got home, Dickens did one better.
He started polishing up his travel journals and he ended
up publishing them as promised as American Notes for general circulation.
Then he stepped it up again. The following year he
(17:57):
started a new book called Martin Chuzzlewood, and when the
first issues weren't really selling that well, he decided to
pack off his Hero to America and included a lot
of his own kind of experiences he had seen in
the Midwest. So both his travelogue and his novel painted
quite an unflattering picture of America, seems folks wouldn't have
(18:18):
expected the man famous for tearing apart hypocrisies of British
life to be entirely kind, But in fact they had
new friends like Washington Irving were hurt, even outraged. People
in New York burned copies of Martin Chuzzlewit papers denounced
the American notes. The trip very likely changed Dickens to
Some scholars see his work getting less optimistic after his
(18:42):
American journey. And I can kind of see this from
several different perspectives. One, it does seem like people overreacted
quite a bit. The travel notes do include kind of
unfavorable comparisons to British things, you know, where we were
talking about the low um little factories and how it's
England that comes across as worse in that situation. There's
(19:04):
a lot of stuff like that. But um, if people
were overreacting a bit, well then maybe also Dickens kind
of had unrealistic expectations. If you go into a trip
and your expectations are that it will be a land
of innocent people where everything's perfect, you know, kind of
a utopia themed he was expecting, you're probably going to
be a little bit disappointed. Especially people are ripping fur
(19:26):
out of your coat. And that's true, So it's not
that any of this really affected dickens popularity as an
author in the US. More than twenty years later, Dickens,
who by this point had multiple households to support, and
that's just a hint for the next podcast we're going
to come up with, he decided it might be time
to revisit America, and this time as a part of
his Smash lecture series, in which he'd act rather than
(19:49):
read portions of his own works from a special gas
lit lecture. So, after sending a reconnaissance scout on ahead,
he arrived in Boston in mid November of eighteen sixty seven.
During his with Eastern tour, quite a few things happened.
He met Mark Twain, remark Twain saw him, and of
course Mark Twain is also known for his his public readings,
(20:10):
which were apparently just as good as Dickens, and a
twelve year old girl chatted with him on a train,
telling him that she'd read all his books but skipped
to the quote lengthy and dull parts, and she, in fact,
he grew up to write Rebecca of Sunny Book Farms.
They were a popular children's book there, and then Dr
Samuel Gridley how of Perkins, who we mentioned, contacted Dickens
(20:32):
about publishing The Old Curiosity Shop in Braille, and Dickens
actually not only gave his approval, he put up one thousand,
seven hundred dollars to have two hundred fifty copies printed,
which were in turn distributed to all of the blind
schools in America, something I thought was pretty cool. The
lectures themselves were a huge hit. I mean, of course,
that was why he was back in the United States
(20:54):
in the first place. He made nineteen thousand pounds, and
many folks couldn't remember the first tour, so there weren't
any hard feelings there. And even the press took dickens
return as a sign of goodwill. For instance, the New
York Tribune wrote, dickens second coming was needed to disperse
every cloud and every doubt, and to place his name
(21:15):
undimmed and the silver sunshine of American admiration. Kind of
an overblown welcome welcome back Dickens, and Dickens himself felt
differently too. In his farewell speech, he spoke of the
quote gigantic changes he'd seen in the country, changes, moral changes,
physical changes in the amount of land subdued and people,
(21:35):
changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in
the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes
in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the press,
without whose advancement, no advancement can take place anywhere. And
he asked that the statement be added to every copy
of American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewitt, And it still is
there today. Kind of, I take it back, you guys
(21:57):
have mid some improvement xt job um. So, I think
it was really interesting to learn about an author so
associated with England, or really so associated with London in
a different context, see him out of his element a
little bit. That was what appealed to me about this story. Yeah,
I think in a way it's actually quite a testament
(22:17):
to travel itself, that you can go abroad and it
opens your eyes and you just see things in a
different way. I mean, he obviously didn't work out so
well the first time because he had a bad experience.
He was disappointed, and like you said, that was probably
equal parts his fault and you know, the fault of
what he saw exactly, of people spitting tobacco on the floor.
(22:38):
But when he came back the next time, it seems
like he sort of had a different point of view well,
and he had definitely learned kind of a lesson about
maybe being careful when you're traveling to keep some of
your opinions. Although it's kind of nice to have that honesty.
I'm glad looking back on it now. Well, it's interesting
(22:58):
that we're doing this to podcast now because just this
week we got a letter and kind of a little
gift from a listener that was related to Dickens. We
heard from listener Tory, and she wanted to share with
us what she does while she listens to the podcast.
And she makes these really cool book scarves. And I
didn't even know what a book scarf was before I
got the she invented it. She I guess maybe she
(23:21):
invented it. She makes these scarves that actually have screenprinting
done on them, and they have the words like passages
from books on them. And she sent us one that
was from Jane Eyre and one that was from a
Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens because she's heard us
to drop his name all the time. I'm always mentioning
(23:44):
at the podcast, So I'll just read a little bit
of this, she said. For quite some time now, I
wanted to share with you my own I listen while
I response, and in doing so, I hope to strike
a likewise joyous chord with you. Two is a token
of thanks and gratitude for your hard work. In order
or to do so, I thought it would be best
to show you what I do while I listen, and
your last podcast, Growing Up Bronte instantly confirmed my decision
(24:07):
to do so. I am extremely fortunate to be able
to combine my passions for classical literature, history, fashion design,
and the art of silk screening by producing a unique
product of my own imagining, the book scars that you
have now here. Hence I listen while I'm constantly moving
my hands as a screenprint, cut pin, and so fabric.
(24:28):
I have thus included two of my finished designs, and
we mentioned to you what those are. So thank you
very much, Tori. These are cool. We're just trying to
figure out how to wear them. I saw the picture,
so you did. You did see the picture. It requires
a double wrapping. Maybe if we if we can get
it looking really good, we'll post the pictures or something
that sounds like a plan, So yeah, thank you, Tori.
(24:49):
And then another Dickens coincidence from this week. I was
reading all sorts of material about Dickens and I came
across the quote regarding his se trip to America. Um.
An article said that he was quote a noted in
Biber and mythologist of some repute. And like, I share
(25:10):
this with Deblina earlier, and you pointed out that noted Imbiber,
So sounds pretty good, you know, not quite like fancy
he drank a lot. But UM, I thought it was
such a strange coincidence because the day before another one
of our listeners, listener Rose, had treated me to a
mythology class where I learned a lot about the history
(25:30):
of cocktails in general. It was really fun and um
kind of almost an extension of our historic alcohol episode, um,
extending more into the golden age of cocktails, you know,
pre prohibition. And so I thought that was such a
nice compliment to all of this Dickens research. So, if
(25:50):
you'd like to share with us any Dickens related stories
or maybe Dickens related projects that you work on, drinks
that you make that our Dickens or not Dickens related,
you think we might enjoy or be interested in. Feel
free to write us or at History Podcast at Discovery
dot com. You can also find us on Facebook and
on Twitter at Myston History. And we have an article
(26:11):
which I think Dickens himself probably would have been interested in.
It's called Can Travel Change You? I would say it
change Dickens a bit. I would say so, um, but
I don't know how you guys feel about that. You
can check it out for yourselves. It's called again, can
Travel Change You? And you can find it by searching
on our home page at www dot housetop works dot com.
(26:35):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join house Stop Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
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