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 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=ucal. 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 California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 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 rela- tionship 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, NorthwesternUniversity. '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' sub- sequent 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 overstrainedcon- clusions 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.