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Charles Dickens

Madeline House, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Mary Tillotson (eds), The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 3: 1842–1843

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To W. C. MACREADY, 22 MARCH 1842†

MS Morgan Library. Address: W. C. Macready Esquire | 5 Clarence Terrace | York Gate Regents Park | London | England.

Baltimore. Twenty Second March 1842.

My Dear Friend.

I beg your pardon—but you were speaking of rash leaps at hasty conclusions. Are you quite sure you designed that remark for me? Have you not, in the hurry of correspondence, slipped a paragraph into my letter, which belongs of right to somebody else?2 When did you ever know me leap at a wrong conclusion? I pause for a reply.3 Pray Sir did you ever find me admiring Mr. Bryden?4 On the contrary, did you never hear of my protesting through good, better, and best report, that he was not an open or a candid man and would one day beyond all doubt displease you by not being so. I pause again for a reply.

Are you quite sure, Mr. Macready,—and I address myself to you with the sternness of a man in the pit—are you quite sure Sir, that you do not view America through the pleasant mirage which often surrounds a thing that has been, but not a thing that is. Are you quite sure that when you were here,5 you relished it as well as you do now, when you look back upon it. The early spring birds, Mr. Macready, do sing in the groves, that you were very often not over well pleased with many of the new Country's social aspects. Are the birds6 to be trusted? Again I pause for a reply.

My dear Macready, I desire to be so honest and just to those who have sopg 156 enthusiastically and earnestly welcomed me, that I burned the last letter I wrote to you1—even to you to whom I would speak as to myself—rather than let it come with anything that might seem like an ill-considered word of disappointment. I preferred that you should think me neglectful (if you could imagine anything so wild) rather than I should do wrong in this respect.—Still it is of no use. I am disappointed. This is not the Republic I came to see. This is not the Republic of my imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal Monarchy—even with its sickening accompaniments of Court Circulars, and Kings of Prussia2—to such a Government as this. aIn every respect but that of National Education,3 the Country disappoints me.a The more I think of its youth and strength, the poorer and more trifling in a thousand respects, it appears in my eyes. In everything of which it has made a boast—excepting its education of the people, and its care for poor children4—it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon. And England, even England, bad and faulty as the old land is, and miserable as millions of her people are, rises in the comparison. bStrike down the established church,5 and I would take her to my heart for better or worse, and reject this new love without a pang or moment's hesitation.b

You live here, Macready, as I have sometimes heard you imagining! You! Loving you with all my heart and soul, cand knowing what your dispositionpg 157 really is,c I would not condemn you to a year's residence on this side of the Atlantic, for any money.1 Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country ever knew,—if that be its standard, here it is. But I speak of Bancroft, and am advised to be silent on that subject, for he is "a black sheep—a democrat".2 I speak of Bryant, and am entreated to be more careful—for the same reason.3 I speak of International copyright, and am implored not to ruin myself outright. I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties—slave upholders and abolitionists; Whigs, Tyler Whigs, and Democrats, shower down upon her4 a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!"5—"Yes, but she told us of some of our faults,6 and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults. Don't split on thatpg 158 rock, Mr. Dickens, don't write about America—we are so very suspicious."1— Freedom of opinion! Macready, if I had been born here, and had written my books in this country,—producing them with no stamp of approval from any other land—it is my solemn belief that I should have lived and died, poor, unnoticed, and "a black sheep"2—to boot. I never was more convinced of anything than I am of that.

The people are affectionate, generous, open-hearted, hospitable, enthusiastic, good humoured, polite to women, frank and cordial to all strangers; anxious to oblige; far less prejudiced than they have been described to be; frequently polished and refined, very seldom rude or disagreeable. I have made a great many friends here, even in public conveyances, whom I have been truly sorry to part from. In the towns, I have formed perfect attachments. I have seen none of that greediness and indecorum on which travellers have laid so much emphasis. I have returned frankness with frankness—met questions not intended to be rude, with answers meant to be satisfactory—and have not spoken to one man, woman, or child of any degree, who has not grown positively affectionate before we parted. In the respects3 of not being left alone, and of being horribly disgusted by tobacco chewing and tobacco spittle, I have suffered considerably. The sight of Slavery in Virginia; the hatred of British feeling upon that subject; and the miserable hints of the impotent indignation of the South, have pained me very much—on the last head, of course, I have felt nothing but a mingled pity and amusement; on the others, sheer distress. But however much I like the ingredients of this great dish, I cannot but come back to the point from which I started, and say that the dish itself goes against the grain with me, and that I don't like it.

You know that I am, truly, a Liberal. I believe I have as little Pride as most men; and I am conscious of not the smallest annoyance from being hail fellow well met, with everybody. I have not had greater pleasure in the company of any set of men among the thousands whom I have received (I hold a regular Levee every day, you know, which is duly heralded and proclaimed in the Newspapers) than in that of the Carmen of Hertford,4 who presented themselvespg 159 in a body in their blue frocks, among a crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and bad me welcome through their spokesmen. They had all read my books, and all perfectly understood them. It is not these things I have in my mind when I say that the man who comes to this Country a Radical and goes home again with his old opinions unchanged, must be a Radical on reason, sympathy, and reflection, and one who has so well considered the subject, that he has no chance of wavering.1

We have been to Boston, Worcester, Hertford, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Fredericksburgh, Richmond, and back to Washington again. The premature heat of the weather (it was 80 yesterday in the shade) and Clay's advice—how you would like Clay!2—made me determine not to go to Charleston; but having got to Richmond, I think I should have turned back, under any circumstances. We remain at Baltimore for two days, of which this is one. Then we go to Harrisburgh. Then by the Canal boat and the Railroad over the Alleghany Mountains, to Pittsburgh. Then down the Ohio to Cincinnati; then to Louisville, and then to St. Louis. I have been invited to a public entertainment in every town I have entered, and have refused them; but I have excepted St. Louis, as the farthest point of my travels. My friends there have passed some resolutions which Forster has, and will shew you. From St. Louis we cross to Chicago, traversing immense prairies. Thence by the lakes and Detroit to Buffalo, and so to Niagara. A run into Canada follows of course, and then—let me write the blessed word in capitals—we turn towards HOME.3

Kate has written to Mrs. Macready,4 and it is useless for me to thank you my dearest friend, or her, for your care of our dear children, which is our constant theme of discourse. Forster has gladdened our hearts with his account of the triumph of Acis and Galatea,5—and I am anxiously looking for news of the Tragedy.6—Forrest breakfasted with us at Richmond last Saturday—he was acting there, and I invited him—and he spoke very gratefully and very like a man, of your kindness to him when he was in London.7

pg 160David Colden is as good a fellow as ever lived; and I am deeply in love with his wife. Indeed we have received the greatest and most earnest and zealous kindness from the whole family, and quite love them all. Do you remember one Greenhow,1 whom you invited to pass some days with you at the hotel on the Kaatskill Mountains?2 He is translator to the State Office at Washington—has a very pretty wife3—and a little girl of five years old. We dined with them, and had a very pleasant day. The President invited me to dinner, but I couldn't stay for it. I had a private audience, however, and we attended the Public drawing room besides.

Now don't you rush at the quick conclusion, that I have rushed at a quick conclusion. Pray be upon your guard. If you can by any process estimate the extent of my affectionate regard for you, and the rush I shall make when I reach London to take you by your true right hand, I don't object. But let me entreat you to be very careful how you come down upon the sharp-sighted Individual who pens these words, which you seem to me to have done in what Willmott wod. call "one of Mr. Macready's rushes"—As my pen is getting past its work I have taken a new one to say, that I am ever, My Dear Macready your faithful friend.

CD.

Notes Settings

Notes
Editor’s Note
2 Presumably CD was commenting on Macready's letter to him of 30 Jan (written while Forster was writing on his behalf to The Times: see Diaries, II, 155)—at last received at Washington on 13 Mar (To Forster, 15 Mar). Macready's next letter reached CD at Pittsburgh on 1 Apr.
Editor’s Note
3 Brutus to Plebeians, Julius Caesar, III, ii, 34.
Editor’s Note
4 i.e. Brydone, Macready's business-manager (see Vol. ii, p. 72n). For Macready's enraged outburst of 2 Jan 42 at Brydone's inefficiency, see Diaries, II, 153.
Editor’s Note
5 On an eight-months' tour 1826–7.
Editor’s Note
6 No doubt the Coldens, who had seen much of Macready at the time.
Editor’s Note
1 Probably on 27 Feb—the day CD wrote to his other English friends.
Editor’s Note
Editor’s Note
aa bb Omitted in MDGH and subsequent editions.
Editor’s Note
3 An exception made in most other English travellers' criticisms. See for instance Lord Morpeth, Travels in America, 1851, p. 23: "It would be uncandid if I did not state that the universality of the instruction, and the excellence of what fell under my own observation, presented to my mind some mortifying points of contrast with what we have hitherto effected at home." In Chuzzlewit (Ch. 17) the good Mr Bevan replies to Martin's question about American education: "Pretty well on that head, … still no mighty matter to boast of … We shine out brightly in comparison with England, certainly, but hers is a very extreme case." To a more conservative mind such as Lyell's, America's universal education was "the only good result" tending to counterbalance the evils of universal suffrage (Travels in North America, I, 120).
Editor’s Note
4 CD had visited five institutions which cared for poor children. In Boston he had seen the Perkins Institution (see To Felton, 1 Sep, fn); the Boylston school for neglected and indigent boys, who "appeared exceedingly well-taught, and not better taught than fed"; the House of Reformation for Juvenile Offenders, designed to be "a place of purification and improvement, not of demoralisation and corruption"; and the orphans' and young children's section of the House of Industry, where—for the very small children—Lilliputian stairs fitted "their tiny strides", the seats looked like "articles of furniture for a pauper doll's-house", and CD imagined to himself how the English Poor Law Commissioners would laugh at "the notion of these seats having arms and backs" (American Notes, Ch. 3). In New York he visited the Refuge for the Destitute, an institution to reclaim youthful offenders, black and white, and teach them trades (op. cit., Ch. 6).
Editor’s Note
5 Macready would have understood what CD meant. On 20 Aug 40 he recorded in his diary: "Talked much with Dickens, whose views on politics and religion seem very much to square with mine" (Diaries, ii, 75). To both, the English Church had become politically, through its dependence on the State, a bastion of reactionary Toryism and bigotry—from which Mac-ready disassociated himself, "being, or professing to be, a Christian" (op. cit., II, 223).
Editor’s Note
cc Added over a caret in same ink as final paragraph of letter; clearly an afterthought.
Editor’s Note
1 During his second American tour (Sep 43–Oct 44) Macready did not change his mind about the country. He had disliked both the style and matter of American Notes, and on 12 Mar 44 (while at Mobile, Alabama) wrote: "Dickens's misjudgment is as clear to me as the noon-day sun, and much is to be said in explanation and excuse, but Dickens is a man who fills such a place in the world's opinion, the people cannot think that he ought to need an excuse—alas ! the greatest man is but a man!" (Diaries, II, 266).
Editor’s Note
2 As a leading Democrat, Bancroft was strongly opposed by his own friends and relations in Boston—virtually all Whigs: e.g. by his brother-in-law, Governor John Davis, and by his old friend Edward Everett, who cut him during the 1839 Governorship election (R. B. Nye, George Bancroft, Brahmin Rebel, New York, 1945, p. 121).
Editor’s Note
3 As editor of the New York Evening Post since 1829, Bryant had consistently supported the Democrats.
Editor’s Note
4 This word is bracketed in the MS in pencil, and "me" substituted for it in MDGH. The passages omitted from the letter are similarly bracketed.
Editor’s Note
5 Harriet Martineau had arrived in the country, she wrote, with "a strong disposition to admire democratic institutions", and the aim of seeing how far the Americans "lived up to … their own theory" as laid down in the Declaration of Rights. She was greatly struck by the absence of poverty, of illiteracy, of "all servility" (no "badge of menial service [was] to be met with … except in the houses of the foreign ambassadors at Washington"). The "stout-souled, full-grown, original men" who formed the Senate inspired "a deep, involuntary respect" in her (cf. To Fonblanque, 12 Mar and fn). She praised "the provisions made for every class of unfortunates"; "by a happy coincidence of outward plenty with liberal institutions", there was "a smaller amount of crime … than [had] ever been known in any society". She was delighted with the kindliness she had found in American private life; and, unlike most other travellers, approved of the freedom of manners of the many American children whose parents had made them "friends from the very beginning". Finally, she proclaimed that, whatever evils remained, the means of remedy were in the hands of the whole people—who had "the glorious certainty that time and exertion [would] infallibly secure all wisely desired objects." (Society in America, I, x, 27; III, 54, 144, 168, 259, 297–8; Retrospect of Western Travel, I, 301–2.) All this must have much appealed to CD when reading her books before his visit.
Editor’s Note
6 Naturally the outstanding fault in Harriet Martineau's eyes was the American tolerance of slavery, that "deadly sin against their own principles", with its accompanying horrors. "Fear of opinion" (an American characteristic she deplored above all others), fanned by an infamous newspaper press, often took the form "of an almost insane dread of responsibility", keeping many good men out of public life. She protested at the violence which broke out against Abolitionists : "mobbing" was the act not of paupers—for there were no paupers in the States—but of "gentlemen", who habitually escaped prosecution. On the "degradation" of American women she had much to say: "While woman's intellect is confined, her morals crushed, her health ruined, her weaknesses encouraged, … she is told that her lot is cast in the paradise of women: and there is … much boasting of the 'chivalrous' treatment she enjoys. That is to say,—she has the best place in stage-coaches" (a passage Marryat quoted with approval: Diary in America, Part Second, II, 21). Spitting, bragging and smart dealing she dealt with lightly. Summing up, she posed the questions: whether the kindness of the American people generally was attributable to their republicanism; and "how far their republicanism [was] answerable for their greatest fault,—their deficiency of moral independence." (Society in America, I, 147, 160, 164, 180; II, 108 ff.; III, 106, 300.)
Editor’s Note
1 Cf. Forster in the Foreign Quarterly Review, Oct 42 (xxx, 213): "The ruling maxim of the life of Mr. Sampson Brass's father, Suspect Every Body, is now the dominant fashion of the Republic". And see Marryat: "Defamation … is a disease which pervades the land; which renders every man suspicious and cautious of his neighbour" (Diary in America, Part Second, I, 181). With his usual Tory bias, Marryat saw this state of affairs as a natural result of "a free and enlightened people governing themselves" (op. cit., i, 186).
Editor’s Note
2 To Harriet Martineau's mind, if a real "native genius" had appeared in America, he would have won his way; and piracy of English books could not be held responsible for the lack of first class work (Society in America, iii, 217–18).
Editor’s Note
3 "In respect of" written first; then "the" squeezed in before "respect" and an "s" added.
Editor’s Note
4 No report mentioning these has been found.
Editor’s Note
1 i.e. someone like Harriet Martineau.
Editor’s Note
2 Macready had already met him, in 1827. Meeting him again in 1844 in New Orleans, he found him "most kind, urbane and cheerful", though naturally lacking "the vivacity and great animal spirits" of 17 years before (Diaries, ii, 261).
Editor’s Note
3 Written in large Gothic capitals.
Editor’s Note
4 Née Catherine Frances Atkins (1805–52): see Vol. ii, p. 149n.
Editor’s Note
5 An opera adapted from Handel's serenata (libretto by Gay), which Mac- ready had produced at Drury Lane on 5 Feb, with notable scenery by Stanfield. In a letter to Frederic Tennyson of 6 Feb, Edward FitzGerald described it: "the drop scene rises, and there is the sea-shore, a long curling bay: the sea heaving under the moon, and breaking upon the beach, and rolling the surf down—the stage! This is really capitally done" (Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, ed. W. A. Wright, 1894, I, 102–3). Marston recorded that when the curtain rose the sea "was ecstatically applauded … as though it had been a distinguished actor" (Our Recent Actors, 1888, i, 63). Macready had recorded in his diary the night before: "have never seen anything of the kind in my life so perfectly beautiful. … At the conclusion was called for and most enthusiastically received … Too much excited to think of sleeping" (Diaries, II, 157).
Editor’s Note
6 Gerald Griffin's Gisippus, produced 23 Feb, which CD and others had heard Macready read on 17 Oct 40 (see Vol. ii, p. 138 and n).
Editor’s Note
7 On first meeting Forrest in Oct 36 Macready recorded: "Liked him much—a noble appearance, and a manly, mild, and interesting demeanour" (Diaries, I, 349), and he went out of his way to welcome and entertain him—though Forrest's performing at Covent Garden parallel roles to his own at Drury Lane piqued and worried him; and he suffered similar annoyance during his own American tour of 1843–4. For their later relations, culminating in the violent riots in Astor Place, New York, in 1849, see Diaries, II, and A. S. Downer, The Eminent Tragedian, 1966, Ch. 7.
Editor’s Note
1 Robert Greenhow (1800–54; DAB), translator to the State Department 1828–50; especially proficient in French and Spanish. Published The History and Present Condition of Tripoli, 1835, and The History of Oregon and California, 1844.
Editor’s Note
2 Spelt thus in the 18th century and in Rip Van Winkle, but "Catskill" in maps since the 1830s; in New York State, c. 100 miles north of New York.
Editor’s Note
3 Née Rose O'Neale, of Maryland (d. 1864). Imprisoned Aug 61—May 62 as a secret agent of the Confederate Govt, she described her experiences in My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington, 1863.
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