Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/30

 New York and Philadelphia to Washington and Richmond. Returning to Baltimore, he started for the west, and went by Pittsburg and Cincinnati to St. Louis. He returned to Cincinnati, and by the end of April was at the falls of Niagara. He spent a month in Canada, performing in some private theatricals at Montreal, and sailed for England about the end of May. The Americans received him with an enthusiasm which was at times overpowering, but which was soon mixed with less agreeable feelings. Dickens had come prepared to advocate international copyright, though he emphatically denied, in answer to an article by James Spedding in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for January 1843, that he had gone as a ‘missionary’ in that cause. His speeches on this subject met with little response, and the general opinion was in favour of continuing to steal. As a staunch abolitionist he was shocked by the sight of slavery, and disgusted by the general desire in the free states to suppress any discussion of the dangerous topic. To the average Englishman the problem seemed a simple question of elementary morality. Dickens’s judgment of America was in fact that of the average Englishman, whose radicalism increased his disappointment at the obvious weaknesses of the republic. He differed from ordinary observers only in the decisiveness of his utterances and in the astonishing vivacity of his impressions. The Americans were still provincial enough to fancy that the first impressions of a young novelist were really of importance. Their serious faults and the superficial roughness of the half-settled districts thoroughly disgusted him; and though he strove hard to do justice to their good qualities, it is clear that he returned disillusioned and heartily disliking the country. The feeling is still shown in his antipathy to the northern states during the war (Letters, ii. 203, 240). In the ‘American Notes,’ published in October 1842, he wrote under constraint upon some topics, but gave careful accounts of the excellent institutions, which are the terror of the ordinary tourist in America. Four large editions were sold by the end of the year, and the book produced a good deal of resentment. When Macready visited America in the autumn of 1843, Dickens refused to accompany him to Liverpool, thinking that the actor would be injured by any indications of friendship with the author of the ‘Notes’ and of ‘Martin Chuzzlewit.’ The first of the twenty monthly numbers of this novel appeared in January 1843. The book shows Dickens at his highest power. Whether it has done much to enforce its intended moral, that selfishness is a bad thing, may be doubted. But the humour and the tragic power are undeniable. Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp at once became recognised types of character, and the American scenes, revealing Dickens’s real impressions, are perhaps the most surprising proof of his unequalled power of seizing characteristics at a glance. Yet for some reason the sale was comparatively small, never exceeding twenty-three thousand copies, as against the seventy thousand of ‘Master Humphrey’s Clock.’

After Dickens’s return to England, his sister-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth, became, as she remained till his death, an inmate of his household. He made an excursion to Cornwall in the autumn of 1842 with Maclise, Stanfield, and Forster, in the highest spirits, ‘choking and gasping, and bursting the buckle off the back of his stock (with laughter) all the way.’ He spent his summers chiefly at Broadstairs, and took a leading part in many social gatherings and dinners to his friends. He showed also a lively interest in benevolent enterprises, especially in ragged schools. In this and similar work he was often associated with Miss Coutts, afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and in later years he gave much time to the management of a house for fallen women established by her in Shepherd’s Bush. He was always ready to throw himself heartily into any philanthropical movement, and rather slow to see any possibility of honest objection. His impatience of certain difficulties about the ragged schools raised by clergymen of the established church led him for a year or two to join the congregation of a unitarian minister, Mr. Edward Tagart. For the rest of his life his sympathies, we are told, were chiefly with the church of England, as the least sectarian of religious bodies, and he seems to have held that every dissenting minister was a Stiggins. It is curious that the favourite author of the middle classes should have been so hostile to their favourite form of belief.

The relatively small sale of ‘Chuzzlewit’ led to difficulties with his publishers. The ‘Christmas Carol,’ which appeared at Christmas 1843, was the first of five similar books which have been enormously popular, as none of his books give a more explicit statement of what he held to be the true gospel of the century. He was, however, greatly disappointed with the commercial results. Fifteen thousand copies were sold, and brought him only 726l., a result apparently due to the too costly form in which they were published. Dickens expressed a dissatisfaction, which resulted in a breach with Messrs. Chapman & Hall and an agreement with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, who were to advance