Dickens' Use of His American Experiences in Author(s): Harry Stone Source: PMLA, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Jun., 1957), pp. 464-478 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/460468 . Accessed: 18/07/2011 14:21

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http://www.jstor.org DICKENS' USE OF HIS AMERICAN EXPERIENCES IN MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT BY HARRY STONE ON 31 January 1842, shortly after Dickens arrived on his first visit to the United States, he wrote to his friend Thomas Mitton, "There is a great deal afloat here in the way of subjects for description. I keep my eyes open pretty wide, and hope to have done so to some purpose by the time I come home."' And certainly Dickens' observations were to "some purpose." The American visit produced a fine series of letters, a travel book, for GeneralCirculation (1842), and the famous American chapters of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44). These three basic sources-the letters on America, which were never intended for publication as such; the Notes, which represented Dickens' public statement of what he saw in America; and Chuzzlewit, the fictional re- creation of the America he found-form an extraordinary trilogy of materials made to order for the study of the relationship between fact and fiction. But strangely enough, despite the immensity of the Dickens bibliography, one hunts vainly for such a study. And yet, by analyzing the American chapters in Martin Chuzzlewit in the light of Dickens' letters from America and his American Notes, it is possible to achieve a better understanding of his artistic methods and limitations. One can see, for example, how Dickens the observer, the selector, worked, how he broke up some experiences and fused others together. One can watch impressions and images recur and reappear as the associations with which they are connected also recur and reappear. Finally, one can better understand the fictional difficulties and shortcomings in the American interlude of Martin Chuzzlewit; one can better explain a good many artistic lapses and seemingly wild exaggerations. Dickens looked forward to visiting America with feverish enthusiasm. A few months before setting forth on his journey, he wrote to his intimate friend, John Forster, "I am still haunted by visions of America, night and day. To miss this opportunity would be a sad thing. Kate [Dickens' wife] cries dismally if I mention the subject. But, God willing, I think it must be managed somehow!"2Dickens was convinced at this time that America was a land of hope and enlightenment, a land which would surely lead the world to a better and more perfect future. This emotional and optimistic view of the United States had its counterpart in the man-

1 The Letters of , ed. Walter Dexter, Nonesuch ed. (Bloomsbury, 1938), I, 381-hereafter referred to as NL and cited within the text. 2 John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J. W. T. Ley (London, 1928), p. 195- hereafterreferred to as CD and cited within the text. 464 Harry Stone 465 ner in which most Americans were prepared to receive the young Boz. Dickens was lionized in extravagant fashion. America greeted the thirty- year-old author with an abandon which surprised no one more than Dickens himself. For a short time after his arrival, he was pleased by what he saw, and flattered and overwhelmed by his reception; he was eager to travel widely in the country, mix with the people, and accept their expressions of homage. But his delight in American institutions, friendliness, literacy, and homage soon wore off. Little more than a month after his arrival, he was writing far from enthusiastic descriptions of what it was like to be the American literary lion of the century. Contemporary accounts show that he scarcely exaggerated when he wrote to Forster:

I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowherewhere I want to go, and see nothingthat I want to see. If I turninto the street,I am followedby a multitude. If I stay at home, the house becomes,with callers,like a fair. If I visit a public institution,with only one friend,the directorscome downincontinently, waylay me in the yard, and addressme in a long speech.I go to a party in the evening, and am so inclosedand hemmedabout by people,stand whereI will, that I am exhausted for want of air. I dine out, and have to talk about everything to everybody.I go to churchfor quiet, and thereis a violent rush to the neighbour- hood of the pew I sit in, and the clergymanpreaches at me. I take my seat in a railroadcar, and the very conductorwon't leave me alone.I get out at a station, and can't drinka glass of water,without having a hundredpeople looking down my throat when I open my mouth to swallow.Conceive what all this is! Then by every post, letters on letters arrive,all about nothing,and all demandingan immediateanswer. This man is offendedbecause I won't live in his house; and that man is thoroughlydisgusted because I won't go out more than four times in one evening.I have no rest or peace, and am in a perpetualworry. (CD, pp. 221-222)

By April, Dickens realized that his projected American travel book would not be a proper vehicle for the grossness and pomposity which he was now finding everywhere in the United States. "I do perceive," he wrote to Forster, "a perplexingly divided and subdivided duty, in the matter of the book of travels. Oh! the sublimated essence of comicality that I could distil, from the materials I have!" (CD, p. 270). But the disenchantment was to proceed even further. Two years later, while in the midst of Chuzzlewit, he wrote to Jane Welsh Carlyle, "I am quite serious when I say that it is impossible, following them [the Americans] in their own direction, to caricature that people. I lay down my pen in despair sometimes when I read what I have done, and find how it halts behind my own recollection" (NL, I, 564). Dickens' view of the United States, which changed from enthusiasm to disillusionment to active 466 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit" antagonism, was to have a profound effect upon his artistic re-creation of his American experiences. His changing reaction to the United States not only colored the mood in which he wrote about America, but power- fully molded his interpretation of the things he saw, and curiously dis- torted what he remembered when he came to write imaginatively of America and Americans. Scores of specific scenes and incidents which occur in Martin Chuzzlewit are also found in Dickens' letters and in American Notes. A brief sam- pling of how he used and re-used such materials will give some notion of the way his imaginative mind worked. For example, the most striking image in his description of the voyage to America occurs with increasing artistic sophistication in his letters, the Notes, and Chuzzlewit.After arriving in America, Dickens wrote Forster that he had decided to return home by packet ship rather than steamer. The reason he gave for this decision was the great danger of fire on board a steamer, for "if the funnel were blown overboard, the vessel must instantly be on fire, from stem to stern: to comprehend which consequence, you have only to understand that the funnel is more than 40 feet high, and that at night you see the solid fire two or three feet above its top. Imagine this swept down by a strong wind, and picture to yourself the amount of flame on deck" (CD, pp. 222-223). With Dickens safely back in England, the imminent fear had receded, and in its place he created the more powerful image of a ship glowing in the darkness with hidden fire and the possibility of sud- den death. Now he writes of "the gleaming forth of light from every crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to burst through any outlet, wild with its resistless power of death and ruin."3 In Chuzzlewit, the image becomes even more remote from the original source. The emphasis is taken away from the inner fires, although they are still mentioned. But the threat is now from the outside, from the sea; and the suggestion of death comes through association rather than direct statement: "Onward she [the ship] comes, with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep: as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below."4 There are many other examples of scenes which caught Dickens' attention and which he continued to depict and re-depict. In his letters, the Notes, and Chuzzlewit, one comes upon reiterated descriptions of

8 AmericanNotes for GeneralCirculation, National ed. (London,1907), Ch. ii, p. 12- hereafterreferred to as AN and cited within the text by chapterand page. 4 National ed. (London,1907), i, xv, 304-305-hereafter referredto as MC and cited within the text by volume,chapter, and page. Harry Stone 467

stormy Atlantic crossings, nights at sea, neat New England houses with "jalousie blinds," pigs grunting and rooting about in fashionable streets, and jolting American railroads with their ladies', gentlemen's, and Negroes' cars (the first preferred by Dickens and the fictional Martin because of its ban on smoking). However, the physical aspect of the American scene which impressed Dickens the most, if one is to judge by the number of descriptions which he devoted to it, was not the houses, or the pigs, or the railroads, but the thousands of miles of scenery which he passed through in trips by train, canal boat, and steamer. Dickens found a good deal to admire in American scenery. Niagara Falls he thought sublime, and both in his letters and American Notes he described the falls and the awed emotion with which he viewed them. He also found less spectacular scenes moving and beautiful. He pictured one such scene for Forster: The prettiest sight I have seen was yesterday,when we-on the heights of the mountain,and in a keen wind-looked down into a valley full of light and soft- ness: catchingglimpses of scatteredcabins; children running to the doors;dogs burstingout to bark;pigs scamperinghome, like so manyprodigal sons; families sitting out in their gardens;cows gazing upward, with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeveslooking on at their unfinishedhouses, and planning work for to-morrow;-and the train ridingon, high above them, like a storm. But I know this is beautiful-very-very beautiful!(CD, p. 250) Dickens must have been greatly impressed by the "valley full of light," for he copied the above description of it almost word for word into American Notes (x, pp. 180-181).5 But it is of crucial importance to note that neither Niagara nor the lovely valley appear in Chuzzlewit. Nor does Dickens recall other American scenes which had impressed him favorably and which he had earlier described for his friends. As the reality of what he saw receded in his mind, and as he plumbed his memory for fictional and satiric purposes, his distaste for things Ameri- can came more and more to dominate what he remembered and what he selected from that remembrance. Consequently, the scenery which forms the background of Chuzzlewitis not the thundering Niagara or the light-filled valley, but mile after gloomy mile of swampy decay and corruption. Nor was this decay to be found only in the Edenlike swamps of the American hinterland. In some respects at least, the scenery around and Baltimore was the prototype for the moldering vegetation of Eden. In American Notes Dickens describes the scenery between Boston and Lowell as a heap and tangle of trees and logs "half-hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to spongy chips. The very soil of the

In writingAmerican Notes, Dickens used his Americanletters to Forsterand others. 468 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit" earth is made up of minute fragments such as these; each pool of stag- nant water has its crust of vegetable rottenness; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks, and stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, and neglect" (iv, p. 74). In a letter to the painter, Maclise, dated at Baltimore, Dickens writes: "The railroads go through the low grounds and swamps, and it is all one eternal forest, with fallen trees mouldering away in stagnant water and decayed vegetable matter and heaps of timber in every aspect of decay and utter ruin" (NL, I,18). These details which his eye was so quick to record are just the ones which he re-creates fictionally when he speaks in Chuzzlewitof the land which Martin and Mark have bought. The swampy wasteland his characters have purchased is a "mere forest" of stunted trees about which grew "long rank grass, dank weeds, and frowzy underwood: not divisible into their separate kinds, but tangled all together in a heap; a jungle deep and dark, with neither earth nor water at its roots, but putrid matter, formed of the pulpy offal of the two, and of their own corruption" (I, xxiii, 466). Of course, Dickens had actually seen the vast stretches of apparently useless land which he described. He was being accurate and truthful when he pictured these wild tracts of crowded growth. But while he was accurate in what he described, by the time of Chuzzlewithe was far from representative in what he chose for description. Either through the winnowing of his memory or the one- sidedness of his fictional purpose, that which was lovely or graceful in the American scene was crowded out by that which was dark and de- caying. But Dickens' subjectively reshaping imagination not only shifted the mood and tone of his artistic re-creation, it also took remembered scenes and fused them into new and effective images. Sometimes it is possible to identify the original stimuli which later became art. In Chuzzlewit, for example, Dickens describes the scene from the canal boat as Martin and Mark move on toward Eden:"On they toiled through great solitudes, where the trees upon the banks grew thick and close; and floated in the stream; and held up shrivelled arms from out the river's depths; and slid down from the margin of the land, half growing, half decaying, in the miry water" (I, xxiii, 459). Here again the image of dense decay is emphasized, but it is combined with the images of overgrown solitudes and the arms of trees reaching out of the river. The two latter images, like the former, can be traced back to scenes which Dickens described much earlier in letters. These letters, dated 28 March and 3 April 1842, were written to Forster while Dickens himself was traveling on the canal en route to Pittsburgh. In the passage just quoted from Chuzzlewit, Dickens speaks of "great solitudes, where the trees upon the banks grew thick and close." In the letter of 3 April he had described "banks [which] Harry Stone 469 are for the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees" (CD, p. 254). Again in the passage from Chuzzlewit he writes of "trees [which] held up shrivelled arms from out the river's depths"; in the letter of 28 March he had spoken of a tree here and there which like "some charred and blackened giant rears two bare arms aloft, and seems to curse his enemies" (CD, p. 250).6 Dickens' imagination was also at work when he came to deal fictionally with American institutions and people. And here, too, one can see how his memory of what he had seen became darker and more critical with the passage of time and the distorting demands of . Of course, his change of attitude toward America was connected to personal dis- appointments, newspaper abuse, invasion of privacy, and the vexed question of an international copyright law. But these personal and political disappointments soon colored all that he saw in America and all that he remembered of what he had seen. It was not long before he found America to be a land where the majority exerted a heinous tyranny over all ideas and conduct, where newspapers were slanderous and irresponsible, where slavery flourished and slaves were mistreated; it was a land of disgusting spitting, sus- piciousness, dull conversation, personal dirtiness, low business ethics, materialism, ravenous feeding, political violence and lawlessness, and inordinate inquisitiveness. All of these tendencies and qualities are emphasized and underlined in Chuzzlewit and attacked over and over again. To a certain extent this emphasis is the natural outgrowth of the exaggerating effects of satiric portraiture, but in part it is the result of an emotionally conditioned memory which increasingly accentuated and vitalized that which was distasteful and vitiated that which was ad- mirable. In the novel, all the good Dickens saw is forgotten, all the people he admired are left out, all he sympathized with is repressed or excluded. The favorable impression of American traits and people which he recorded in his letters and in American Notes went the way of Niagara and the light-filled valley, and the typical American who emerged in Chuzzlewit was well fitted to reveal his crude nastiness in the swampy and decaying setting which Dickens had created for him. Of course, Dickens bowed slightly in the direction of the "good" American. Mr. Bevan is the "good" American of Chuzzlewit. But Mr. Bevan is so wooden and Anglicized a Dickensian mouthpiece that he serves as an additional indictment of America rather than as a believable symbol of America's basic soundness. Consequently, it is not Mr. Bevan, but vigorously portrayed American

' See also AN, xi, p. 188: the tree's "bleachedarms start out from the middle of the current,and seem to try to graspthe boat, and dragit underwater." 470 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit"

vulgarity which remains in the reader's mind. Chuzzlewitcontains hun- dreds of examples of the distorting selectivity (in part an outgrowth of Dickens' satiric method) which went into his increasingly somber picture of the United States. For example, although in American Notes he de- scribed a meal on board the canal boat as being eaten "somewhat ravenously" (x, p. 171), in another part of the same book he assured his readers that, "There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch of the meal. It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us; more orderly, and more polite" (ix, p. 153). However, by the time of Chuzzlewitall the eating is of the ravenous variety. When Martin and Mark are at their New York boarding house, Dickens informs us that "it was a solemn and an awful thing" to see how "great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun" (I, xvi, 334). And when his characters are on board the canal boat, he describes the company of passengers as they eat: "They were a very pleasant party. No man had spoken a word; every one had been intent, as usual, on his own private gorging; and the greater part of the company were decidedly dirty feeders" (II, xxxiv, 144). In a similar manner, other repulsive traits which Dickens found in the American character become of supreme importance in Chuzzlewit and, as a result of satiric exaggeration, are treated there as universal and unrelieved qualities of American life. Thus the heat of political campaigning which Dickens noted in his letters from America (CD, p. 251), is treated as ingrained lawlessness and rowdyism in Chuzzlewit (I, xvi, 315-316), and is finally exhibited most symbolically in that novel in the person of Hannibal Chollop. This "splendid sample of our na-tive raw material," as he was described by his American friends, was much esteemedfor his devotion to rationalLiberty; for the better propaga- tion whereofhe usually carrieda brace of revolvingpistols in his coat-pocket, with seven barrelsa-piece. He also carried,amongst other trinkets, a sword- stick, whichhe called his "Tickler";and a great knife, which (for he was a man of a pleasant turn of humour)he called "Ripper,"in allusionof its usefulness as a means of ventilatingthe stomachof any adversaryin a close contest. He had used these weaponswith distinguishedeffect in several instances, all duly chronicledin the newspapers;and was greatly beloved for the gallant manner in which he had "jobbedout" the eye of one gentleman,as he was in the act of knockingat his own street-door.(II, xxxiii, 124) Dickens also gave disproportionate emphasis to other American traits which he found distasteful. In each case, through unsympathetic selection and reiteration, and as a result of the demands of his satire, he made the trait appear sharper and more pervasive than it really was, but in each instance he developed the trait out of a substratum of fact which was sufficient to justify (at least in his own mind) the artistic Harry Stone 471

truthfulness and reality of his portrait. Thus, one small offshoot of the great American vice of vanity and boastfulness was the American proclivity for labeling almost every citizen of the United States as "one of the most remarkable men in the country." Sometimes this epithet was modified to "perhaps as remarkable a man as any in our country" (MC, I, xxi, 440), or some similar permutation, but it appears over and over again in Chuzzlewit. That this phrase was not merely invented by Dickens is attested to by George William Putnam, an American, and Dickens' private secretary while in the United States, who related in his reminiscences that at one reception "the Honorable R.C., then member of the Senate of Massachusetts, came. I had often heard his splendid pleading at the bar; and after he left I said to Mr. Dickens: 'That, sir, is one of the most remarkable men in our Country.' 'Good God! Mr. P.,' answered he, 'they are all so! I have scarcely met a man since my arrival who wasn't one of the most remarkable men in the country!' "7 The redoubtable Hannibal Chollop, of "Tickler" and "Ripper" fame, is also "one of the most remarkable men in the country" (MC, II, xxxiii, 124). In fact, Hannibal illustrates yet another American trait when he asks Martin upon meeting him, "How do you like our country, sir?" (II xxxiii, 123). This is also the question which Colonel Diver puts to Martin before he and Mark have disembarked from the ship which has brought them from England (I, xvi, 318). But it is not merely the ques- tion but questioningor inquisitiveness which is the American trait. After his initial question, the Colonel continues: "Whatis your name, sir?" Martin told him. "How old are you, sir?" Martin told him. "Whatis your profession,sir?" Martin told him that, also. "Whatis your destination,sir?" inquired the gentleman. "Really,"said Martin,laughing, "I can't satisfy you in that particular,for I don't know it myself." "Yes?"said the gentleman. "No," said Martin. (I, xvi, 319) There are other examples of how Dickens took unpleasant traits, emphasized them, embodied them in characters, and made them the central features of American personality and life-to the exclusion of the good which he had seen and recorded earlier. And yet, although his in- creasing emotional dissatisfaction with the United States influenced the 7 "FourMonths With CharlesDickens: During His First Visit to America(In 1842)," AtlanticMonthly, xxvi (Oct.-Nov. 1870),591. 472 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit" mounting bitterness of his succeeding portraits of America, and although in Chuzzlewithe was creating a satiric rather than a realistic portrait, he was careful to keep his modified memory of American experiences firmly in mind. Indeed, frequently the humorous or ironic incidents in Chuz- zlewit which seem to be the most outrageously impossible, are those which were founded most solidly upon fact. The truth of the matter is that throughout the American portions of Chuzzlewit, Dickens was having trouble in subduing the facts of his own experiences to fictional purposes. For instance, when Dickens had Martin question Colonel Diver acidly as to whether American newspapers made a practice of printing forged letters "solemnly purporting to have been written at recent periods by living men" (I, xvi, 326), he was allowing his own indignation to inter- fere with his art. The forgery references as they occur in the novel are confusing and unconvincing. These allusions become meaningful only when one realizes that Dickens was referring to the publication by the New York Chronicleafter his return to England of a forged and malicious letter supposedly written by himself-but such information forms no part of Chuzzlewit, and when Dickens relieved himself by introducing such references into his story, he only succeeded in puzzling his readers and weakening his novel. By the same token, the idea that youthful Martin Chuzzlewit, an obscure steerage passenger, could, once he ar- rived in America, be treated as a fascinating celebrity, a man of infinite sagacity, and the proper recipient of formal tributes and levees, is an absurdity which turns Dickens' indignation into farce and his realism into caricature. Dickens is here too emotionally involved with his recent memories to modify and subdue them sufficiently for credibility. As a result, the purest autobiography becomes the wildest fictional extrav- agance. Dickens' letters, for example, are filled with descriptions of the levees or formal receptions which soon became standard procedure at every town and every stop. He was constantly writing about the fatigue and strain of spending a number of hours each day shaking hands with five or six hundred people (NL, I, 411, 419). His secretary, Putnam, told of porters assigned to join arms and hold back the crowds, and of receptions lasting till midnight (pp. 479-480). But all of this becomes farcical and unbelievable when applied without modification to Martin. And Dickens does so apply it. Martin becomes a popular hero and the victim of a levee when the public learns that he has purchased a "lo-cation" in the Valley of Eden. Martin's levee follows the general pattern of those actually held by Dickens, but the circumstances leading up to the recep- tion are even more specifically autobiographical-and more unbelievable Harry Stone 473 in terms of fiction and of Martin. Captain Kedgick, the landlord of the hotel in which Martin is staying, informs him that he will have to hold a levee. When Martin demurs, the Captain tells him that he must "re- ceive," since a written notice has already been hung in the bar to that effect. The Captain then says, "You wouldn't be unpop'lar, I know ... Our citizens an't long of riling up, I tell you; and our Gazette could flay you like a wild cat" (I, xxii, 447). Martin angrily gives in and the levee proceeds. In an exactly similar way Dickens was forced to hold a levee in when one Colonel Florence had an item inserted in the Public Ledger saying that Dickens would be "gratified to shake hands with his friends between the hours of half-past ten and half-past eleven o'clock."8 At the specified hour the street in front of the hotel, as well as the hotel itself was filled with people. When Dickens inquired about the gathering crowd and was informed about what it had come for, he at first refused to hold the levee, but was persuaded when "the landlord of the house and others came and represented to him that his refusal would doubtless create a riot, and great injury would be done to the house by the enraged populace."9 And, fantastically enough, just as in Chuz- zlewit Captain Kedgick instigated the levee and then calmly officiated at the subsequent introductions and handshaking, so in actuality did Colonel Florence coolly perform the same services for the irate Dickens. Dickens inappropriately attaches to Martin many other autobio- graphical incidents. Thus, while in America, Dickens received "volumi- nous manuscripts . . .whose modest authors requested Mr. Dickens to read them carefully, and note any alterations or corrections he thought proper, and requesting that he superintend their publication in England, and receive a percentage on the sales." And he was constantly bothered by cranks and eccentrics who wrote and visited him. An Irish book- peddler insisted that he set him up in a bookstore, and when this was refused, wrote threatening letters. There were frequent visits from an old man who "had paraphrased the entire Book of Job and wanted to read it to Mr. Dickens and get his opinion of it"; and another gentleman brought him the Lord's Prayer written in twenty-four languages.10But Dickens had lost all sense of what was fitting when he made Martin spend his afternoons dealing with flood tides of similar letters and pro- posals. And while the following letter is a brilliant parody of many which Dickens must have received, it is ludicrous to believe that anyone would ever write to Martin thus:

8 WilliamGlyde Wilkins,Charles Dickens in America(London, 1911), p. 153. 9 "FourMonths," pp. 481-482. 10Ibid., pp. 480, 595, 481. 474 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit"

(Private.) No. 47, Bunker Hill Street, Monday Morning. SIR, I was raised in those interminable solitudes where our mighty Mississippi (or Father of Waters) rolls his turbid flood. I am young, and ardent. For there is a poetry in wildness, and every alligator basking in the slime is in himself an Epic, self-contained. I aspirate for fame. It is my yearning and my thirst. Are you, sir, aware of any member of Congress in England, who would under- take to pay my expenses to that country, and for six months after my arrival? There is something within me which gives me the assurance that this enlight- ened patronage would not be thrown away. In literature or art; the bar, the pulpit, or the stage; in one or other, if not all, I feel that I am certain to succeed. If too much engaged to write to any such yourself, please let me have a list of three or four of those most likely to respond, and I will address them through the Post Office. May I also ask you to favour me with any critical observations that have ever presented themselves to your reflective faculties, on "Cain: a Mystery," by the Right Honourable Lord Byron? I am, Sir, Your (forgive me if I add, soaringly), PUTNAM SMIF. P.S.-Address your answer to America Junior, Messrs. Hancock & Floby, Dry Goods Store, as above. (I, xxii, 444 445)

In a similar way, Dickens inappropriately transferred to Martin other features of his American trip. While in America he was constantly being studied and stared at. On one occasion, at six in the morning, a party of men gazed through the doors and windows of his steamer cabin while he was washing and Kate was lying in bed (NL, I, 442-443). In American Notes, he describes similar scenes: After dinner, we went down to the railroad again, and took our seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those men and boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, and were curious in foreigners, came (according to cus- tom) round the carriage in which I sat; let down all the windows; thrust in their heads and shoulders; hooked themselves on conveniently, by their elbows; and fell to comparing notes on the subject of my personal appearance, with as much indifference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much uncompromising information with reference to my own nose and eyes, and various impressions wrought by my mouth and chin on different minds, and how my head looks when it is viewed from behind, as on these occasions. Some gentlemen were only satisfied by exercising their sense of touch; and the boys (who are surprisingly precocious in America) were seldom satisfied, even by that, but would return to the charge over and over again. Many a budding president has walked into my room with his cap on his head and his hands in his pockets, and stared at me for two whole hours: occasionally refreshing himself with a tweak of his nose, Harry Stone 475 or a draughtfrom the water-jug;or by walking to the windowsand inviting other boys in the street below, to come up and do likewise:crying, "Here he is!" "Come on!" "Bring all your brothersl" with other hospitable entreaties of that nature.(viii, p. 134) This is all very well in relation to the dazzling Boz, but Dickens doggedly and unrealistically transfers it to the ordinary Martin: "Amateurs in the physiognomical and phrenological sciences roved about him [Martin] with watchful eyes and itching fingers, and sometimes one, more daring than the rest, made a mad grasp at the back of his head, and vanished in the crowd. They had him in all points of view: in front, in profile, three-quarter face, and behind. Those who were not professional or scientific, audibly exchanged opinions on his looks. New lights shone in upon him, in respect of his nose. Contradictory rumours were abroad on the subject of his hair" (MC, I, xxii, 449). This literal transference is damaging in more ways than one. When Dickens attaches unmodified autobiography to his hero, he makes his story unbelievable. Furthermore, when he is most scrupulously truthful with Martin, he is also most emotionally involved. For it is just when he is actively reliving his own experiences through Martin that reason- ableness of plot, consistency of characterization, and fictional verisimili- tude go to pieces. Control and artistry wither under the stress of personal hostility and emotional identification. Of course, Dickens often used direct experiences without becoming artistically dominated by them. There are innumerable concrete details and incidents which he specifi- cally noted in his letters and American Notes and which he later used easily and without strain in Chuzzlewit. In American Notes he described a woman and her child traveling aboard ship and about to be reunited with her husband; in Chuzzlewithe depicted the same scene (xii, p. 203; I, xv, 308). Martin experienced the identical lethargic "lassitude of sea- sickness" on the passage out, which Dickens suffered and described in American Notes (I, xv, 309; ii, pp. 14-15). On his own trip, Dickens sus- pected that one of his fellow passengers had run off with a publican's daughter and a miscellaneous collection of the publican's property; and Martin crossed the Atlantic with "an English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong-box besides the key" (CD, p. 202; I; xv, 313). The "awful gong" which called American travelers to public meals in the Notes was transformed to the "dismal gong" in Chuzzlewit (iii, p. 71; I, xxi, 430). Likewise, the constantly glowing American stoves and superheated American interiors were mentioned by Dickens in fact and fiction (CD, p. 231; I, xvi, 329). In both American Notes and Chuzzlewithe gave accounts of river-boat captains who lured passengers 476 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit" on board with promises of an early departure and then refused to sail for days or even weeks (x, p. 182; I, xxii, 456). Finally, as an example of many additional relationships which could be pointed out, there is the figure of the "magic circle." In both the Notes and Chuzzlewit he used this figure of speech to describe the area of clearance (wetly marked out) which was always accorded to an American who was seriously chewing and spitting (viii, p. 132; II, xxxiii, 123). But in more important ways as well, Dickens, when he was able to transfer his personal experiences to a character with whom he was not emotionally identified, handled those experiences with greater artistic effectiveness. Thus, Elijah Pogram, Dickens' fictional member of Congress, also "re-ceives" at exhausting public functions. But it is perfectly reasonable that the unwashed American lawmaker should take part in such activities, and one is convinced by the situation and accepts it as probable. With Pogram one accepts other autobiographical details which appear ludicrous when attached to Martin, and one notices that Dickens handles the Pogram transference with controlled artistry. Dickens, for example, presents an effective scene when he describes how "The ladies on the chairs looked at Elijah Pogram through their glasses, and said audibly, 'I wish he'd speak. Why don't he speak? Oh, do ask him to speak!' " (II, xxxiv, 149). Even fantastic bits of autobiography were artistically integrated by Dickens when he was able to treat them at a great enough aesthetic distance. When Pogram is introduced to "two literary ladies" who chatter in an absurdly rarified jargon and refer to themselves as "L. L.'s" (II, xxxiv, 151), Dickens is effectively transferring to the congressman a torture which he himself had under- gone. "What do you think," he wrote in an American letter, "of this incendiary card being left at my door last night? 'General G. sends com- pliments to Mr. Dickens, and called with two literary ladies. As the two L. L.'s are ambitious of the honour of a personal introduction to Mr. D., General G. requests the honour of an appointment for to- morrow.' I draw a veil over my sufferings. They are sacred" (NL, I, 408).1. However, what Dickens gained by transferring his own experi- ences to a character who was not identified with himself, was more than the reader's willingness to accept the fictional probability of the experi- ences. He also gained a disassociation from the real events which made it possible for him to treat them easily, unemotionally, and plastically. When he disciplined his emotions to the needs of his art, he wrote more

u In ChuzzlewitDickens withdraws the veil. The "L. L.'s" are transcendental, and they are anatomizedin Chuzzlewitbriefly but brilliantly.See Ch. xxxiv. Harry Stone 477 effectively than when he allowed his supercharged memories to guide his pen. But how did Dickens' peculiar personal involvement, fictional method, and emotionally-toned memory affect his overall handling of the Ameri. can scenes in Martin Chuzzlewit? First of all, these factors, as well as Dickens' satiric purpose, assured that much of what he had actually seen in America would be suppressed. And yet, paradoxically enough, one of the great faults of the American sections of Chuzzlewitis that too little is suppressed; the American scenes are too real, too truthful, too factual. While working on Chuzzlewit,Dickens wrote to Thomas Mitton, "I have the American episode in Chuzzlewit to work at; which takes me at least twice as long, every line of it, as [t]he ordinary current of the [ta]le."'2 Dickens' confession is significant, and the reason for his dif- ficulty is not far to seek. In the American sections of Chuzzlewithe was torn between forces which he was frequently unable to reconcile. He wanted to paint a picture of America which would embody the truth as he knew it, which would tell what had happened to him; but he also wanted to create a fiction, to build a work of art which would be un- trammeled and convincing. Unfortunately, he frequently failed to achieve this synthesis. He lost control of himself and his novel when his memory-jogged indignation caused him to transform fiction into emotional autobiography. Even at such times, his genius often saved him. Even when his characters acted unbelievably, and his plot was twisted into tortuous convolutions, his satire bit, his observations hit home, and his humor worked its magic. But he had not sufficiently sub- dued and tailored his effects to the overall demands of his story, and the novel as a whole suffered. Pogram was artistically superior to Martin (and a believable and effectively proportioned asset in the larger structure of the novel) because Pogram embodied Dickens' American experiences in an artistically disciplined manner, and Martin did not. But Dickens had still another difficulty to contend with when he tried to create a truthful portrait of America. He was unable to see America with the eyes of the immigrant, the settler, the visionary, or even the sympathetic traveler. Significantly, he did not send Martin to Amer- ica with the idea of having him settle there and build a new life, but with the avowed purpose of having him make money and return to England. Dickens had no realistic conception of America as a growing, expanding nation; and he was unable to translate correctly the most obvious signs of America's growth. He despised the rickety settlements along the Ohio because they were rickety settlements and aspired to be more. There

12Henry E. Huntington Lib. MS. HM17786. 478 Dickens' American Experiences in "Martin Chuzzlewit" was no belief in what they might become; there was no understanding of what the people who lived in those settlements were doing. For the com- mon, hard-working settler moving westward he had little more than pity. To Dickens the log cabin was a crude hut, not a transitory item of a pioneer society; the clearings and tree stumps were aesthetic blemishes, not new land ready for productive use; the earth was a mixture of decay and corruption, not rich organic matter fertile and yet to be plundered. Dickens looked carefully and described accurately, but he did so from a point of view which accentuated the blemishes of what he saw and in a context which limited the area of what he could see. Perhaps it was inevitable that Dickens should fail to understand America, that he should write about the new and sprawling republic from a point of view which narrowed and distorted much of what he saw. And yet, his increasingly hostile and somber conception of the United States did not prevent him from realizing that he was confronted with an artistic problem which transcended Chuzzlewit and his views of America: the problem of how to take emotionally charged autobiography and mold it into art. In subsequent novels, in and , for example, he solved this crucial problem. But those later solutions had as their prototype the painful testing ground of Chuzzlewit.For the frustrations and difficulties which Dickens struggled with when he attempted to transmute his American experiences into fiction eventually enabled him to push forward in later novels to a richer and more mature art.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Evanston, Ill.