Charles Dickens and the American Civil War Author(s): John O. Waller Source: Studies in Philology, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul., 1960), pp. 535-548 Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173318 . Accessed: 18/07/2011 09:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uncpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of North Carolina Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in Philology. http://www.jstor.org CHARLES DICKENS AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR By JOHN 0. WALLER Students of Charles Dickens' life and ideas have largely neg- lected the story of his attitude toward the American Civil War. His most thorough biographer states that he "had no sympathy with either side,"1 but such an appraisal overlooks too much. As the hard-working editor of a popular weekly magazine, Dickens could not easily remain neutral toward a war which had quickly aroused a bitter debate in England. We shall see that for the first year after secession Dickens' policy was pro-Northern but thereafter was pro-Southern; and I think that we can trace the decisive influence in his personal and editorial changeover. Of course, Dickens' attitude toward the Civil War was related to the often-rehearsed story of his long-standing emotional aversion to the United States: how he visited this country in 1842, was feted lavishly as well as endlessly gawked at wherever he went, involved himself in a controversy with the American press over international copyright, became disenchanted with many things Americaln, returned to England to write a mildly uncomplimentary book, American Notes for General Circulation, for which he was merci- lessly assailed in America and unfavorably reviewed in England, wrote a devastating counterblast into parts of Martin Chuzzlewit, was disappointed in the sales of this novel, was wounded in his pride as an analyst, and was ever afterward angry at the United States and quick to defend his earlier analyses of it. Robert B. Heilman has pointed out his life-long sensitiveness about attacks on his American books.2 Ada B. Nisbet writes, "Being Dickens, he never accepted or forgot the criticism of the American Notes, nor did he ever forgive America for having been the cause of his humiliation." 3 It would be misleading, however, to suggest that Dickens spent 1 Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (New York, 1952), II, 1002. 2 " The New World in Dickens' Writings," The Trollopian, Number 3 (September, 1946), pp. 32-38. "The Mystery of Martin Chuzzlewit," Essays Critical and Historical: Dedicated to Lily B. Campbell (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950), p. 214. 535 536 Charles Dickens and the American Civil War the rest of his life in a prolonged anti-American crusade. Among his manifold preoccupations, America held a small enough place. The quality of his comments, not the quantity, affirms his life-long grievance. In fact, Dickens personally published but one article commenting on the American Civil War, and that piece, " The Young Man from the Country," printed in his magazine, All the Year Round, consisted only of several controversial passages lifted verbatim from his American Notes, following which Dickens underlined his moral: "The foregoing was written in the year eighteen hundred and forty-two. It rests with the reader to decide whether it has received any confirmation, or assumed any colour of truth, in or about the year eighteen hundred and sixty-two." The article itself was neutral enough, implying disfavor toward both sides, and making the war seem most interesting as a vindication of Dickens' books. Dickens liked this article so well that he referred to it several months later in a footnote to an article by another writer.5 But Dickens' one piece by no means represents the performance of All the Year Round, which during the war years offered no fewer than twenty-five colorful articles about the war. Recent scholarship has revealed Dickens' editorial methods, which were so thorough that they almost tax belief.6 Dickens never relaxed his personal supervision of every weekly issue. His sub-editor, W. H. Wills, would work over manuscripts first, but had to send the material which he liked to Dickens, wherever Dickens might happen to be. Then Dickens would go through each manuscript with minute care, revising the writing, correcting the punctuation, adding character- istic Dickensian touches, until his writers were often unjustly taunted with being mere slavish imitators of their master.7 Gerald Grubb quotes Dickens' son that " Nothing was considered too small, no detail was too petty, for his personal attention," and 4AYR, VI (March 1, 1862), 540-42. 5AYR, VIII (November 1, 1862), 175n. 6 The most thorough study of this topic has been by Gerald Giles Grubb. See his articles, "Dickens' Editorial Methods," SP, XL (January, 1943), 79-100; "Dickens' Influence as an Editor," SP, XLII (October, 1945), 811- 23; and " The Editorial Policies of Charles Dickens," PMLA, LVIII (December, 1943), 1110-24. 7 George Augustus Sala, Things I Have Seen and People I Have Known (London, 1894), I, 78-79; Percy Fitzgerald, Recreations of a Literary Man (London, 1883), pp. 29-59, John 0. Waller 537 adds that Dickens continued this sort of editorial vigilance for the remainder of his life, except for his second trip to the United States in 1867-68.8 Furthermore, Dickens supervised the political sentiments as well as the writing. We have his own announcement to that effect, issued during the middle of the Civil War. Charles Reade had published in All the Year Round a serialized novel Very Hard Cash, in which he had attacked the Commissioners in Lunacy, which body included Dickens' close friend John Forster.9 Wishing to dissociate himself from Reade's opinions, Dickens spelled out his policy: The statements and opinions of this Journal, generally are, of course, to be received as the statements and opinions of its Conductor. But this is not so, in the case of a work of fiction first published in these pages as a serial story, with the name of an eminent writer attached to it. When one of my literary brothers does me the honour to undertake such a task, I hold that he executes it on his own personal responsibility, and for the sustainment of his own reputation; and I do not consider myself at liberty to exercise that control over his text which I claim as to other contri- butors.10 It would seem, then, that Dickens' magazines, All the Year Round and its predecessorHousehold Words, are legitimate, though largely neglected, sources for Dickens' broad political beliefs. All the Year Round did not pretend to any continuous com- mentary on news events, although it sensibly tailored its material to its readers' current interests. The most arresting items concern- ing the Civil War were not expository or argumentative articles, such as appeared in the conventional literary reviews, but anony- mous first-person, " true adventure " narratives, in which stock American characters were put through melodramatic paces and left to illustrate the state of American affairs. With all their apparent enormities, these pieces have a surface verisimilitude that must have been convincing to many English readers. There were also several summaries, with selected anecdotes, of books by English and European travelers returned from the United States. All in all, the emphasis was heavily narrative. 'SP, XL (January, 1943), 79, 83, quoting Charles Dickens, Jr., " Dickens as Editor," The Critic, XII (August 17, 1889), 81. 9 [John Camden Hotten,] Charles Dickens, The Story of His Life (London, ca. 1870), pp. 271-72. 10 AYR, X (December 26, 1863), 419. 538 Charles Dickens and the American Civil War - The policy of All the Year Round concerning the Civil War underwent a decided change in the late winter of 1861. Articles appearing after Lincoln's election and before December, 1861, if not positively pro-Northern, leave an unfavorable impression of the South by emphasizing the evils of slavery and the arrogance of the Southern "King Cotton" policy. But articles appearing after December, 1861, leave an impression uniformly unfavorable to the North and frequently praise the South. On December 29, 1860, appeared a summary-reviewof A Journey Into the Back Country by Frederick L. Olmsted, which described the least lovely aspects of slavery in one of the then least cultured of Southern areas, the Lower Mississippi Valley. The South was threatening the Union because its candidate was defeated and it favored extension of slavery. The article pictured unhospitable plantation owners, profligate pampered son1sof planters, cruel over- seers flogging their slaves, and dirty Southern cities with pigs running in public parks.