Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe Author(S): Harry Stone Source: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol

Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe Author(s): Harry Stone Source: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Dec., 1957), pp. 188-202 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3044086 . Accessed: 18/07/2011 14:31

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http://www.jstor.org Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe

HARRY STONE

E ARLY IN I852, only a few days after the publicationof Uncle Tom's Cabin in book form, Harriet Beecher Stowe sent Charles Dickens a lavender-boundcopy of her novel and an accompanying letter. By this direct action Mrs. Stowe brought her controversial book to the early notice of England's foremost novelist. And in this simple manner a curious and revealing literary and personal relationship was quietly begun. Dickens continued that relationship by reading his presentation copy of Uncle Tom and answering Mrs. Stowe's letter. In his reply he said in part:

I have read your book with the deepestinterest and sympathy,and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generousfeeling which inspired it, and the admirablepower with which it is executed.If I might suggest a fault in what has so charmedme, it would be that you go too far and seek to prove too much.... I doubt there being any warrantfor making out the African race to be a great race.' Dickens maintained and clarified this mingled tone of praise and criticism in subsequent letters and conversations.In June, I852, he told Sara Jane Clarke, a young American visitor to Tavistock Harry Stone is an assistantprofessor of English, Northwestern University. 'Catherine Gilbertson, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York, 1937), p. i6o. This frag- mentary letter does not appear in any of the collected editions of Dickens' letters. The last sentence of this fragment, coming as it does after an ellipsis and out of context, is not dear. Perhaps here and in the next quotation Dickens was objecting to Mrs. Stowe's rapturouspredictions of an ideal Negro civilization to come. E i88 ] Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 1 89 House, that the story was one of great force and power, "but scarcely a work of art." "Uncle Tom," she reported, "evidently struck him as an impossible piece of ebony perfection ... and other African characters in the book as too highly seasoned with the virtues."She then quoted Dickens as saying, "'Mrs. Stowe hardly gives the Anglo-Saxon fair play. I liked what I saw of the colored people in the States. I found them singularly polite and amiable, and in some instances decidedly clever; but then,' he added, with a comical arching of his eyebrows, 'I have no prejudice against white people.'" But by mid-I852 Uncle Tom was selling furiously in England as well as in America, and Dickens found that he, like everyone else, was constantly talking and writing about Mrs. Stowe's novel. Oc- casionally he would adopt a tag from genial Uncle Tom and facetiously begin a letter with "'Peared to me (as Uncle Tom would say)."' and in later days he noted humorously that Uncle Tom had blossomed into the immortality of crockery and was depicted in that form as "receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism."'However, he also thought of Uncle Tom in more serious connections. He placed an article by Henry Morley and himself entitled "North American Slavery" in the opening pages of the Septemberi8, I852, issue of Household Words. In that article he commenced by referring to Mr. Stowe's book. He found Uncle Tom "a noble work," but one with many faults. In particularhe criticized its "overstrainedconclusions and violent extremes." But he went on to praise the book: [Uncle Tom is] full of high power, lofty humanity;the gentlest, sweetest, 2Undated clipping in the MassachusettsHistorical Society of an article in the New York Tribune, by "Grace Greenwood" (pseudonym of Sara Jane Clarke, later Mrs. L. K. Lippincott). Quoted in Edgar Johnson, CharlesDickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (New York, 1952), II, 754. 'The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter, The Nonesuch Dickens (Blooms- bury, 1938), II, 406 [hereafter referred to as NL]; letter dated August 5, i852. "'The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,"The Works of Charles Dickens, National Edition(London, 1907), XXVII,401 [hereafterreferred to as W]. 1go Nineteenth-Century Fiction and yet boldest, writing. Its authoress, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, is an honour to the time that has producedher, and will take her place among the best writers of fiction, inspired by the best and noblest purpose.Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, George Harris, and the other negroes with whom Mrs. Stowe has by this time made most of us acquainted,are, no doubt, rare specimensof slaves; but, the details of the slave system among which they live have been carefullycollected, and are represented,bright or black, fairly and with all due variety, so that they may be generally acceptedas remarkablepictures of the every day truth.5

But on September 13, a few days before the appearance of his Household Wordspraise of Uncle Tom's Cabin,Dickens found himself publicly linked to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom in a way which must have been most distasteful. Lord Denman, a good friend of Dickens, a tireless worker for legal reform and for abolition, and until i85o lord chief justice of England, suddenly attacked him and his writings in an article in the London Stand- ard.6Lord Denman's article, which reviewed Uncle Tom's Cabin and the first seven numbers of Bleak House, began as follows: "Mr. Dickens is perhaps the greatest favourite that the public ever had. Like other favourites, he is in some danger of being spoiled" (p. 3). This abrupt and pointedly personal opening was followed by stinging criticisms of Dickens and his writing: In one particularinstance, but the most importantof all at this crisis, he [Dickens] exerts his powers to obstructthe great cause of human improve- ment.. . . We do not say that he actuallydefends slaveryor the slave-trade; but he takes pains to discourage,by ridicule,the effort now making to put them down.... The disgusting picture of a woman [Mrs. Jellybyin Bleak House] who pretendszeal for the happinessof Africa, and is constantlyem- ployed in securinga life of misery to her own children,is a labouredwork of art in his presentexhibition.... if meant to representa class, we believe that no representationwas ever more false (p. 5).

'VI, i. This criticism by Dickens has not been reprinted heretofore. 6 This article, and the five which followed, were later reprintedin a pamphlet dedicated to Mrs. Stowe and entitled Uncle Tom's Cabin, Bleak House, Slavery and Slave Trade. Six articles by Lord Denman, Reprinted from the Standard... (London, I853). Future references to these articles are taken from the above pamphlet and are cited by page number within the text. It is perhaps significant to note (in the light of Dickens' subsequent reactions to Lord Denman's Uncle Tom-Bleak House juxtaposition) that other reviews of the period also compared Mrs. Stowe and Dickens. Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 191 But Lord Denman did not limit his attack on Bleak House to Dickens'portrait of Mrs. Jellyby.Apparently he was so angered by what he took to be Dickens'espousal of the slaveholder'scause that he denouncedDickens' larger purpose in Bleak House-the satirizationof Chanceryand the Englishlegal system-and termed it late and opportunistic: Near twenty years have elapsed since Boz first attractedpublic notice by his acutenessand ingenuity. During the whole of that time the abuses of Chancery were at their height, and were visible to every eye in ruinous houses, neglected farms, disorderedintellects, and broken hearts. Active exertionswere making to remove the monstrousevils of that Court, but we do not rememberin any one of the ten or twelve large volumes which bear his name, a single passagewhich points public attentionto them. But now the reformersappear to have gained their end, and we have great reasonto believethat the last head of the infernalhydra is severedfrom the body; and now first Mr. Dickens takes an active part in promoting Chanceryreform (PP. 3-4). These bitter words regardingDickens and Bleak House were in sharpcontrast to the extravagantpraise which Lord Denman heapedupon HarrietBeecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin.But he was not yet throughwith criticismor comparison.In his third Standardarticle (September 27, I852), he continuedboth the com- parisonand the attack,beginning that articlewith a sarcasticcom- mentaryon Dickens'praise of Uncle Tom's Cabinin Household Words.He then went on in the samevein: We are informedin "HouseholdWords," conducted by CharlesDickens, publishedon the i8th of Septemberlast, that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (with all its faults, and it is by no means free from the faults, of overstrainedconclusions and violent extremes) is a noble work," &c.Pity that the effect of a noble work, with so excellentan object,should be marredby such indiscreet intemperance!Mrs. Stowe might have learned a more judicious mode of treating a subject from the picturesof Mrs. Dombey and Carker,of Lady Dedlock and Joe [sic], of the Smallweeds-above all, of Mrs. and Miss Jellaby [sic]. Uncle Tom ought not to have come to his death by flogging. A railway collision, such as disposed convenientlyof Mr. Carker, would have been much more artistic. Sudden conversionsare peculiarlyrevolting to common sense. Did Mrs. Stowe never hear of Mr. Ralph Nickleby being 1 92 Nineteenth-Century Fiction called to repentanceby a black cloud, and Mr. Scrooge'sheart-hardened by a long life of avarice-being softenedby a Christmasdinner; and Mr. Antony [sic] Chuzzlewit renewing his youthful spirit and vigor, of his own mere motion, simply because his renovationwas required for the catastrophe? Such gentle gradationsof incident and character,so finely pencilled,nicely shaded, and delicatelycoloured, would have clothed her work with a har- monious air of probability,that is quite destroyedby her violent extremes and exaggeration(pp. I8-I9). Lord Denmanthen went on to attackthe whole positionof the Household Words article,and finally dismissedit as unrealistic and insincere.But he was still not readyto let the matterdrop. In his fourthStandard article (September 30, I852), he again turned to Dickens'comments on Uncle Tom'sCabin and againlashed out at them: He [the critic of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Household Words] smothersthe rival romancewith roses. He tells us of "an admirablebook, a noble work, the gentlest, sweetest, and yet boldest writing," and, having thus sum- marily dischargedthe debt of praise, he places Mrs. Stowe among the best writersof fiction, ascribingfaults to her which depriveher effortof all prac- tical utility-imputing the worst fault that a practicalwork can possess,the fault of "overstrainedconclusions and violent extremes"(pp. 25-26). LordDenman then madeit quite clearthat he did not agreewith Dickens'criticisms of Uncle Tom: If the "Household"critic had laid beforehis readersa single passagefrom "Uncle Tom's Cabin"in proof of his imputationthat Mrs. Stowe indulges in "violent extremes,"we are confident that all the violence would have been in the nature of the incidents related, all the extremity in the hard- heartedavarice of dealers,the capriciouscruelty of masters,and the extreme sufferingsof the oppressed,while the narrativeis wholly free from exaggeration(p. 27). In his fifth article (October[41, I852), Lord Denman,having disposed of Dickens and Bleak House, decided that Harriet BeecherStowe was trulyan authorwithout equal. She was by far the brighteststar in the literarysky. He then went on to extol her "graphicskill and patheticpower in which she has so far sur- passedall living writers"(pp. 28-29). Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 193 For a time Dickens did not reply to Lord Denman's repeated public attacks and did not comment upon his unflattering comparison of Bleak House and Uncle Tom's Cabin. But he could hardly fail to comment upon Uncle Tom itself, for the American novel was being read and discussed everywhere. "Of course," he wrote to the Duke of Devonshire on October 29, I852, "you have been reading Uncle Tom's Cabin? I don't know whether Uncle Tom is a little too celestial, or whether I am a little in the opposite direction; but, 'bating such things, it is an uncommonly fine book, and full of the highest power" (NL, II, 425). Three weeks later, in a letter written to his good friend Mrs. Watson, he gave a much more detailed critical evaluation of the literaryinfluences he found in the book, and of the work's strengths and weaknesses:

In the matter of Uncle Tom's Cabin, I partly though not entirely agree with Mr. James [? G. P. R. James]. No doubt a much lower art will serve for the handling of such a subject in fiction, than for a launch on the sea of imagina- tion without such a powerful bark; but there are many points in the book very admirably done. There is a certain St. Clair [sic], a New Orleans gentle- man, who seems to me to be conceived with great power and originality. If he had not "a Grecian outline of face," which I began to be a little tired of in my earliest infancy, I should think him unexceptionable. He has a sister too, a maiden lady from New England, in whose person the besetting weaknesses and prejudices of the Abolitionists themselves, on the subject of the blacks, are set forth in the liveliest and truest colours, and with the greatest boldness. She (I mean Mrs Stowe) is a leetle unscrupulous in the appropri- atin' way. I seem to see a writer with whom I am very intimate [i.e., Dickens himself] (and whom nobody can possibly admire more than myself) peeping very often through the thinness of the paper. Further I descry the ghost of Mary Barton, and the very palpable mirage of a scene in The Children of the Mist; but in spite of this, I consider the book a fine one, with a great and gallant purpose in it and worthy of its reputation (NL, II, 430-431).

However, in a letter written a month later, Dickens found it more difficult to maintain his easy attitude of praise and criticism when discussing Uncle Tom's Cabin. A letter to Mrs. Cropper, Lord Denman's daughter, demonstrates that Lord Denman's juxtaposition of Bleak House and Uncle Tom had rankled him, 194 Nineteenth-Century Fiction and thathe was becomingsomewhat weary of hearingMrs. Stowe praisedat his own expense.Lord Denman had sufferedan incapaci- tatingparalytic stroke on December2, i852, and shortlythereafter Mrs. Cropper,apparently in an attemptto excuseher father'sat- tacksupon his formerfriend, wrote Dickens a letterof explanation and apology.Dickens answered with the following wide-ranging and significantletter, a letter which has never beforebeen published: TAVISTOCK HOUSE Monday Twentieth December I852 MY DEAR MADAM I am much concerned to hear of Lord Denman's illness. He is one of the noblest spirits in the world, and I have ever held him in great honor and regard. I should not return your confidence in the spirit in which I most sincerely received it, if, after reading your last letter, I forbore to explain a few facts referring to the unfortunate subject of our correspondence, which may be interesting to you. Pray understand-I am sure you will-that I make no complaint whatever. I utterly remove Lord Denman from my mind as con- nected with any unconscious misrepresentations affecting myself, and, when I allude to them, only think of him as I have always known him. Mrs Jellyby gives offence merely because the word "Africa", is unfortu- nately associated with her wild Hobby. No kind of reference to slavery is made or intended, in that connexion. It must be obvious to anyone who reads about her. I have such strong reason to consider, as the best exercise of my faculties of observation can give me, that it is one of the main vices of this time to ride objects to Death through mud and mire, and to have a great deal of talking about them and not a great deal of doing-to neglect private duties 7 From the Benoliel collection of The Free Library of Philadelphia, reprinted here through the gracious permission of that library and its director, Mr. Emerson Greenaway, and by the kind consent of Mr. Henry Charles Dickens, who has also granted me permission to quote from the other unpublished letters which appear in this article. I also wish to thank Professor Ada B. Nisbet of the University of California at Los Angeles for calling my attention to this important letter. In connection with Lord Denman's stroke, it is worth noting that the DNB attributes Denman's seizure (and by implication his death) to his controversy with Dickens. Such an attribution is highly questionable. Denman had been forced to resign as Lord Chief Justice because of a series of incapacitating strokes-strokes which occurred more than three years before the Dickens controversy.Furthermore, Denman did not die until almost two years after the controversy.That his final paralyticstroke came a few months after his Standard articles is surely of no significance. At most the controversy is a reflection of Denman's deterioratinghealth, not a cause of it. Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 195 associated with no particularexcitement, for lifeless and soulless public hullabaloowith a great deal of excitement,and thus seriouslyto damagethe objectstaken up (often very good in themselves)and not least by associating them with Cant and Humbug in the minds of those reflectingpeople whose sympathiesit is most essential to enlist, before any good thing can be ad- vanced. I know this to be doing great harm. But, lest I should unintention- ally damage any existing cause, I invent the cause of emigrationto Africa. Which no one in reality is advocating.Which no one ever did, that ever I heardof. Which has as much to do, in any conceivableway with the unhappy Negro slave as with the stars. In the article on slavery in Household Words, there is this emphatic conclusion."Americans might so abolishslavery as to producewith little or no cost-probably with profit to themselves-results incomparablygreater than have been attainedby England with a vast expenditureof money. Our cousins are capable of great works, and a great work lies at their door. Heartily glad shall we be when they shall begin to leave off whipping their Negroes, and shall set steadilyto work to whip the Britishersin the resultsto be obtainedout of enlightenedefforts to give the slavefreedom both of mind and body. This victoryover ourselvesAmerica may win, and England shall be foremost in the celebrationof her triumph."-Will you look to the pamphlet republishedfrom the Standard,and see if you discoverthe least recognitionof such words as these?8 Why does that article (of which I wrote no part,but the high and genuine praiseof Mrs Stowe'sbook) argue the question so temperatelyand mildly? I have been in America,and know the Americansvery well. I may have been plainerand bolderamong them on this question-at all times steadilyrefus- ing, even in the slave districts,to compromiseit or gloss it in the least-than most English travellerswhile there. Of that, I say nothing. But the American slave owners are an extremelyproud and obstinaterace-I supposethe most obstinaterace on the face of the Earth. If I wanted to exhibit myself on this subject,I know perfectlywell that a few pagesof fiery declamationin House- hold Words would make their way (wafted by the Anti-SlaverySocieties) all over the civilised earth. But I want to help the wretched Slave. Now I am morally certain that when public attention has been called to him by pathetic pictures of his sufferingsand by the representationin deservedly black colors of his oppressors,the way to save him, is, then to step in with persuasionand argument and endeavourto reason with the holders, and shew them that it is best, even for themselves,to consider their duty of abolishingthe system. I can imagine nothing more hopeless than the idea, ' Lord Denman had quoted in his Standard article of September 27, 1852 (pp. 22-23) a portion of this passage, but then went on to say that the hope expressed therein was chimerical owing to its total reliance on educationeducation controlled by the slave- holders. 196 Nineteenth-Century Fiction while they are smarting under attack, of bullying or shaming them. You might as well fire pistols at the Alps. Furtherthan this, I apprehendthere will soon be a war in Europe. The only naturalalliance for England then, is with America.If the slaveryissue should then be so full of green wounds as to hold America aloof, I think I plainly see that the great man of our people will say, "we have thrown this great and powerful friend away for the sake of the Blacks"-and that the Blackswill for a long time afterwards have a very small share of popular sympathy.All these points I-take into considerationto the best of my ability, wrong or right. The pamphletcomplains of my callingMrs Stowe'sbook, a work of fiction. I believe I have done my part in presentingtruths under the guise, but I never heardmy bookscalled by any other name, and I never wrote that I was mortallyaggrieved or injured by their bearing that designation.To say of Mrs Stowe'sbook that it has "occasionaloverstrained conclusions and violent extremes",is a great offence. But I call it a very overstrainedconclusion and a very violent extreme,and a damagingabsurdity to the slave himself, to set up the Coloredrace as capableever of subduing the White. I pointed this out to Mrs Stowe herself,who repliedto me that she had not that intention. In her execution,however, I still think it to be there. But greatly admiring the book, and highly sympathizingwith its purpose,I enteredinto no details of objection but enthusiasticallycommended it. I have been assured on reasonablygood authority-Mrs Stowe's-that she was animated to that task by being a readerof mine. It is not very reasonable-do you think it is?-to turn it as an angry weapon againstme. The pamphlet,being angry with me on these wholly mistaken grounds, objectsthat I come in at the Death of Chanceryand might have attackedit before.The most seriousand patheticpoint I tried with all indignationand intensity to make, in my first book,(Pickwick) was the slow torture and death of a Chanceryprisoner. From that hour to this, if I have been set on anything, it has been on exhibiting the abusesof the Law. I have no right to say exactly four words of objection to Uncle Tom's Cabin (amidst the most ardentpraise of it) becauseI convertedMr Scrooge by a ChristmasDinner. It is as much a fact as the Docks at Liverpool-for there is the printed book which cannot be unprinted-that I convertedMr Scroogeby teaching him that a Christianheart can not be shut up in itself, but must live in the Past, the Present,and the Future,and must be a link of this great human chain, and must have sympathywith everything.Suppose I were to take it into my head to claim to have convertedMr Scroogeby a street door key, or a patent mangle, or an elephant,or a monkey, could I possibly,while the print and paperlasted, alter the fact in the least? Pray do not, therefore,be induced to supposethat I ever write merely to amuse, or without an object. I wish I were as clear of every offence before Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 197 Heaven, as I am of that. I may try to insinuate it into people's hearts some- times, in preference to knocking them down and breaking their heads with it (which I have observed them apt to resent; and then they fall upon the object and do it an injury) but I always have it. Without it, my pursuit-and the steadiness, patience, seclusion, regularity, hard work, and self-concentra- tion, it demands-would be utterly worthless to me. I should die at the oar, and could die a more contemptible and worthless death in no man's eyes than in my own. My Dear Madam Very faithfully yours CHARLES DICKENS Mrs Cropper. Dickens' irritation with Lord Denman's attack and his sense of its injustice are everywhere visible in this letter. Also visible is his growing feeling that Mrs. Stowe and her book were being ex- travagantly praised; that Uncle Tom had weaknesses which few were willing to point out; that the novel was being used "as an angry weapon" against him; and that "exactly four words of objection to Uncle Tom's Cabin (amidst the most ardent praise of it)" brought forth unmerited reprisals. Probably what Dickens wanted most was to forget about Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom, and the controversiallinking of his name and his work with hers. When Mrs. Cropper tried to make further amends by sending Dickens a statement of apology drawn up by her brother George, Dickens replied (January 21, I853) in a way calculated to close the subject permanently: I think it best on full consideration to send you the enclosed letter back without reading it. I have set forth to you the truth of the subject, and have utterly missed [dismissed?] Lord Denman's part in it from my mind. What he has written and what I have done, nothing can change. The only one thing in abeyance is the question whether injudicious partisanship will awaken reaction against the slave. That we shall all see for ourselves-too soon I think-and the perusal of your brother's letter could assist none of us. I say again, I have cleared my mind of Lord Denman's last opinion of me. I know I deserve his former and wiser judgment, and I cancel the rest for ever (NL, II, 445). But it was not quite so easy to exclude Harriet Beecher Stowe 198 Nineteenth-Century Fiction and Uncle Tom's Cabinfrom his mind. Scarcelya year after he receivedhis earlycopy of Uncle Tom from its obscureauthor, he was to meet that author, now the celebratedidol of two con- tinents and his ostensibleliterary equal. The meeting took place with unexpectedsuddenness in the MansionHouse at a lavish public banquetgiven to the judiciaryof England by the Lord Mayorof London. Mrs. Stowe and her husbandhad arrivedin Liverpoolin the middleof April,I853, and had beguna triumphal and tumultuousprogress through Scotland and England,a prog- ress which broughtthem, on May 2, to London.That very eve- ning, after a quickly arrangedinvitation, they found themselves, only a few hoursafter their arrival,at the Lord Mayor'sbanquet. And Mrs. Stowe to her delight, was seateddirectly across from CharlesDickens. She was favorablyimpressed. He looked sur- prisinglyyoung to her, and later, when she had talked to both Dickensand his wife, she decidedthat they were "peoplethat one could not know a little of without desiringto know more."' ThomasNoon Talfourdwas also presentat the Lord Mayor's dinner. After a numberof toasts had been drunk, he rose and proposeda toast to the literatureof England and America.He alludedto Dickensand Mrs. Stowe and explainedhow each had "employedfiction as a means of awakeningthe attentionof the respectivecountries to the condition of the oppressedand suf- fering classes."'"He continuedby referringmore specificallyto Dickens and finally proposed,"Mr. Charles Dickens and the Literatureof the Anglo-Saxons."Dickens rose to reply. He re- turned thanks and then, speakingof Mrs. Stowe, said that "in returningthanks, he could not forget he was in the presenceof a strangerwho was the authoressof a noble book, with a noble purpose.But he had no right to call her a stranger,for she would find a welcome in every English home."' He then went on to 'Harriet BeecherStowe, Sunny Memoriesof Foreign Lands (Boston, I856), I, 261, 266. 0Ibid., p. 264. I1ibid., p. xli. Although Dickens' subsequent remarks at the Lord Mayor's dinner are Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 199 discuss the Court of Chancery and replied humorously to some pointed allusions which the Vice Chancellor had made a few moments earlier in relation to Chancery and Bleak House. It is symptomatic of the wild enthusiasm of Harriet Beecher Stowe's reception in England that her most exhaustive biographer alludes to Dickens' flattering remarks as "the most restrained praise of herself and Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet was to hear publicly expressed in the course of her entire British visit.""2 But perhaps Dickens' "restrainedpraise" does more than under- line the universal frenzy of the enthusiasm with which Mrs. Stowe was greeted. Perhaps the restraintof his praise was another indica- tion that he had already begun to feel a slowly growing antipathy toward this petted American celebrity. Nevertheless, Dickens and Mrs. Stowe displayed at least token signs of mutual regard and attentiveness both before and after their meeting. Several months before the Lord Mayor's dinner, Catherine (Dickens' wife) had helped to draw up and had signed an antislavery appeal entitled "An Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women of Great Britain and Ireland to Their Sisters,the Women of the United States of America"-a document which finally at- tained 500,000 signatures and was sent in twenty-six massive leather-boundfolio volumes to Mrs. Stowe."3And shortly after the Lord Mayor's dinner, Dickens and his wife drove down to Wal- worth to call on Mrs. Stowe. What took place at this meeting has not been recorded, but it went smoothly enough so that Mrs. Stowe, before she left England, felt obliged to return the visit. However, she called when Dickens was ill and Catherine was busy attending him, and so had to depart without seeing either.14 included in some editions of his speeches, his allusions to Mrs. Stowe quoted above have always been omitted. Furthermore, all editions of the speeches incorrectly place the banquet on May I, I853. The correct date is May 2. "Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Phila- delphia, 1941), p. 364. t3Ibid., pp. 34I-343. Stowe, Sunny Memories, II, 142. 200 Nineteenth-Century Fiction Certainly, Dickens made no effort toward continuing any personal relationship with Mrs. Stowe. Perhaps he felt stirring of jeolousy when he thought of this rival literaryidol who was sweep- ing triumphantly through England and whose name was on every tongue; perhaps he was repelled by her severe and dedicated personality; perhaps he thought her art over-rated and over- praised; perhaps he subconsciously blamed her for Lord Den- man's scathing attacks upon him. In any case, his feelings toward her became even more hostile when, a year later, in I854, she published Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. In this book, which recordedher impressionsof her visit to England and the continent, she described, among other Dickensian items, her meeting with Catherine. I was presented to Mrs. Dickens and several other ladies. Mrs. Dickens is a good specimen of a truly English woman; tall, large, and well developed, with fine, healthy color, and an air of frankness, cheerfulness, and reliability. A friend whispered to me that she was as observing, and fond of humor, as her husband (I, 266). Dickens, already unhappy in his marriage,no doubt had reasons for differing with Mrs. Stowe's analysis of his wife's character, but he kept such reasons to himself when he wrote in amused irritation to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, and asked her to tell Catherine that she had been described in Sunny Memories and that "Mrs. Stowe is of the opinion that she is 'large,' I believe!" (NL, II, 570). But by now Dickens' irritation with Mrs. Stowe and her book was really much deeper and more pervasive than his letter to Georgina indicated. A few weeks later he dubbed her book "Moony Memories"and wrote about it with more caustic frankness to an American friend: Mrs. Stowe's letter was pleasant, but-may I whisper it?-I thought, a litde conceited in its affectation of humility. Her Moony Memories are very silly I am afraid. Some of the people remembered the most moonily are terrible humbugs-mortal, deadly incarnations of Cant and Quackery (NL, II, 575). Apparently Dickens' antipathy to Mrs. Stowe continued to Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe 201 grow, for although there is no published evidence of further clashes until I869, Dickens' attitude toward her by that year had developed into active and open dislike. In September, I869, James T. Fields, Dickens' good friend and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, published in his journal Mrs. Stowe's "The True Story of Lady Byron's Life." This long article presented in substantialdetail and to a large audience an analysis of Byron's marital life and the story of his allegedly incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Au- gusta Leigh. Dickens' reaction to these revelations bristled with violence and emotion. "Wish you had had nothing to do with the Byron matter," he wrote to Fields. "Wish Mrs. Stowe was in the pillory" (NL, 111,744). From his youth Dickens had set himself in stern-faced opposi- tion to those who dug irreverently into the private lives of great literary figures. He castigated the Ballantynes for challenging Lockhart'sinterpretation of Scott's financial dealings; he trembled lest scholars ferret out the secrets of Shakespeare'sdomestic life; he spoke with open disgust of the "unconsciouscoxcomb" Boswell and compared him to a loathsome jackal." In September, i86o while still in the guilt-laden turmoil of his own secretiveand pain- fully troubled private life, he decided to burn his twenty-year ac- cumulation of letters and papers-and so deliberately destroyed in a great Gad's Hill bonfire his vast and priceless literary correspondence (NL, III, I77). A few years later he gave his reasons for this act:

Daily seeing improper uses made of confidential letters in the addressing of them to a public audience that have no business with them, I made not long ago a great fire in my field at Gad's Hill, and burnt every letter I possessed. And now I always destroy every letter I receive not on absolute business, and my mind is so far at ease (NL, III, 4I6).

Consequently,when Mrs. Stowe published her sensationalByron

'- See, for example, K. J. Fielding, "A New Article by Dickens: Scott and His Pub- lisher," Dickensian, XLVI (June, 1950), 127; NL, II, 3I; NL, II, 84; "Some Particulars Concerning a Lion," Sketches by Boz, W, II, 443. 202 Nineteenth-Century Fiction story,the last remnantsof his regardfor her vanished.How could it be otherwise?Thinking abouther he could recall her sudden and challengingpopularity, her connectionwith Lord Denman's damagingattacks upon him and his art,her triumphantprogress through England, her unfemininecrusading vigor, her gossipy and "moony"references to Catherine'ssize and his youth. And now with her distastefulpublic exhumationof a great writer's personalsecrets, he could hardlyescape adding to the unpleasant pictureswhich alreadyclustered about her. In October,I869, he made his final recordedremarks about Mrs.Stowe. On the sixthof thatmonth he had writtenhis "pillory" letterto Fields,and on the eighteenthhe wrotethe actorMacready, "Mayyou be as disgustedwith Mrs. Stowe as I am! There is a strongarticle upon her posthumousscandal, in the currentQuar- terly.Her 'facts'are as the stockin tradeof the old chinashop was to the dancingbull."'" A few days laterhe was still frettingover Mrs. Stowe'sindiscretion. In the brief intervalsince his last two letterson her, he had come to the conclusionthat the pillorywas too mild a punishmentfor her crimes.Now, significantlyenough, he again thought of document-consumingbonfires, but he also had a more violentremedy: It seems to me that to knock Mrs. Beecher Stowe on the head, and con- fiscate everythingabout it [the Byron scandal] in a great internationalbon- fire to be simultaneouslylighted over the whole civilized earth, would be the only pleasantway of putting an end to the business(NL, III, 748). Seventeenyears had passedsince Mrs. Stowe'sbook had first restedin his hand.Now he no longerthought of the "highpower," the "lofty humanity"of Uncle Tom's Cabin; he no longer re- called that he had once felt that HarrietBeecher Stowe was "an honourto the time that [had] producedher." Uncle Tom'sCacbin, that "noble book, with a noble purpose"was forgotten. Only Dickens'irritation and indignationremained. 16 Unpublished letter in the Pierpont Morgan Library. I am grateful to Mrs. Madeline E. House for calling my attention to this reference and to the Morgan Library and its officersfor kindly granting me permission to publish it.