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Dickens on American Slavery: A Carlylean Slant
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Because Dickens nourished an uncompromising contempt for every kind of tyranny, it was inevitable that he should denounce American slavery, whose essential barbarity he observed on his first trip to the New World in 1842. From that time until the conclusion of his second visit to the United States in 1868, a period of roughly twenty-six years, he focused his attention, at intervals, on the issues which grew out of the system. Curiously, though his reactions to America have been subjects for detailed consideration, his continuing interest in the problems posed by our institution of slavery has never received, to my knowledge, any extensive treatment. It seems appropriate, therefore, to give some attention to a matter with which he was occupied for a considerable period. It will be the twofold purpose of the following study (1) to examine in chronological order Dickens' statements on slavery as they appear in his published letters, American Notes, and his principal periodicals, Household Words and All the Year Round; and (2) to suggest that at certain points, especially in later years, his thinking on the subject bears some striking resemblances to that of Carlyle.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952
References
1 The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J. W. T. Ley (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1928), pp. 227, 839, 328; Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ed. Alexander Carlyle (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1923), p. 240; New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ed. Alexander Carlyle (London: John Lane, 1904), ii, 205. For the latest treatment of the personal relationships between Dickens and Carlyle see Mildred G. Christian, “Carlyle's Influence on the Social Theory of Dickens,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, i-ii (March-June 1947), 27-35, 11-26.
2 See his letter to W. C. Macready, 4 Oct. 1855. See also “To Working Men,” Household Words, x (7 Oct. 1854), 169-170; his speech to the Administrative Reform Association, 27 June 1855; and his letter to Joseph Paxton, 1 March 1857. For my summary of the fundamental differences between Carlyle and Dickens I am indebted to Professor Edgar Johnson, who made some helpful suggestions during the preparation of this paper.
3 The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1938), iii, 348. All subsequent references to Dickens' letters will be to the same edition.
4 For instance, Dickens would hardly have endorsed Carlyle's injunction to the “Black Quashee” of Jamaica: “You are not ‘slaves’ now; nor do I wish, if it can be avoided, to see you slaves again: but decidedly you will have to be servants to those that are born lords of you,—servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you.”—“Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” Fraser's Magazine, xl (Dec. 1849), 676-677.
5 The Gadshill Edition, ed. Andrew Lang (London: Chapman and Hall, 1898), p. 135. Further references to American Notes will be to this edition.
6 It was G. W. Putnam, secretary to Dickens on his first trip to America, who called the novelist's attention to the manner in which slave labor had exhausted the soil. See “Four Months with Charles Dickens,” Atlantic Monthly, xxvi (Nov. 1870), 592.
7 Part of the material for this chapter, such as the advertisements for the runaway slaves, was taken directly from a pamphlet published by the American Anti-Slavery Society at New York in 1839. Entitled American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses and printed anonymously, it was known to be the work of Theodore D. Weld, adviser to the abolitionist group in Congress at the time of Dickens' visit. Dickens chose about one-fourth of the advertisements of his source, omitting the dates and names of the newspapers and advertisers. That he owned a copy of this pamphlet is borne out by its being listed in the sale catalogue of his library. See Louise H. Johnson, “The Source of the Chapter on Slavery in Dickens's American Notes,” AL, xiv (Jan. 1943), 427-430.
8 Since Past and Present, to which I shall refer in pointing out this similarity, was actually published a year later than American Notes, it cannot be argued that Dickens, at this point, drew some of his fundamental assumptions from Carlyle. But the close correspondence in the ideas of the two men at this early date undoubtedly made Dickens more receptive later to Carlyle's views on slavery.
9 Edwin Mims ed. (New York: Scribner's, 1918), pp. 208-209. All further references to Past and Present will be to the same edition.
10 Vol. vi, No. 130. For confirmation of Dickens' collaboration with Morley on this unsigned article I am indebted to Mr. John F. Lehmann, who consulted the Office Book of Household Words for me.
11 The Coldens had shown Dickens many kindnesses on his first trip to America.
12 As early as 1846 Dickens had expressed his hatred of war in The Battle of Life. See especially Part the First.
13 Vol. vi, No. 139. Unfortunately, for All the Year Round there is no record of contributors' names such as was kept in the Office Book of Household Words. Walter Dexter, using as evidence a letter from Dickens to W. H. Wills, dated 1 Dec. 1861, believes that “American Disunion” was written by Henry Morley, who, it will be remembered, had collaborated with Dickens on “North American Slavery” for Household Words, Sept. 1852. See the Nonesuch Letters, iii, 263, n. 1.
14 Dickens and de Cerjat, a Swiss who had married an Englishwoman, enjoyed excursions together at Lausanne. Their correspondence continued until the latter's death in 1869.
15 Fanny Kemble married Pierce Butler, a Southerner; this may have been her mother, Mrs. Charles Kemble, or a relative.
16 “Parliaments,” in Latter-Day Pamphlets (London: Chapman and Hall, 1850), p. 212.