No doubt not news to big fans of his but I found this piece rather interesting. Really gives an insight into the "little history"which is so often under-reported.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17017791
QuoteOn his first visit to America in 1842, English novelist Charles Dickens was greeted like a modern rock star. But the trip soon turned sour, as Simon Watts reports.
On Valentine's Day, 1842, New York hosted one of the grandest events the city had ever seen - a ball in honour of the English novelist Charles Dickens.
Dickens was only 30, but works such as Oliver Twist and the Pickwick Papers had already made him the most famous writer in the world.
The cream of New York society hired the grandest venue in the city - the Park Theatre - and decorated it with wreaths and paintings in honour of the illustrious visitor.
There was even a bust of Dickens hanging from one of the theatre balconies, with an eagle appearing to soar over his head.
Dickens and his wife, Catherine, danced most of the night in the company of around 3,000 guests.
"If I should live to grow old," the novelist told a dinner the following night, "the scenes of this and other evenings will shine as brightly to my dull eyes 50 years hence as now".
But a visit which had started so well quickly turned into a bitter dispute, known as the "Quarrel with America".
As a committed social reformer, Dickens wanted to use his trip to find out if American democracy was an improvement on class-ridden Victorian England.
The novelist particularly enjoyed Boston, his first port of call.
His hosts watched in amazement as he charged through the snowy streets with delight, reading aloud the signs on the shops.
But little by little, the enthusiasm of his American fans began to overwhelm him.
When Dickens's boat made a stopover in Cleveland, he awoke to find a "party of gentlemen" staring through the cabin window as his wife lay in bed.
"If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude," Dickens complained in a letter.
"I can't drink a glass of water, without having 100 people looking down my throat when I open my mouth to swallow."
'Fellow animals'
The novelist was particularly irritated by Americans who tried to make money out of his fame.
In New York, the jewellers Tiffany's had made copies of a Dickens bust and an enterprising barber is said to have tried to sell locks of the writer's hair.
Then, there were the table manners of the Americans that Dickens was forced to share meals with as he travelled around the country.
In his travel book, American Notes, Dickens describes Mid-Westerners at dinner as "so many fellow animals", who "strip social sacraments of everything but the mere satisfaction of natural cravings".
"The longer Dickens rubbed shoulders with Americans, the more he realised that the Americans were simply not English enough," says Professor Jerome Meckier, author of Dickens: An Innocent Abroad.
"He began to find them overbearing, boastful, vulgar, uncivil, insensitive and above all acquisitive."
"Tobacco-tinctured saliva"
Dickens had scheduled a whole week in Washington to see if American politics lived up to his high hopes.
A scene from Martin Chuzzlewit, which was published in 1843-4 Martin Chuzzlewit was written after Charles Dickens returned to England from his North American trip
He visited the Capitol, met American politicians and attend President John Tyler's morning reception at the White House.
But by now Dickens was in such a foul mood that his enduring memory of the city was the tobacco-spitting he saw in the streets.
"Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva," Dickens fumed in American Notes. "The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone."
As for the politicians, Dickens concluded that, like everyone else in America, they were motivated by money, not ideals.
"I am disappointed," he wrote in a famous letter. "This is not the republic of my imagination."
Washington, Dickens blasted in American Notes, was the home of: "Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers".
Pirated editions
By this stage in the trip, Americans were as annoyed with Dickens as the novelist was with them.
In 1842, there were no international copyright laws so Americans could read Dickens's works for free in pirated editions.
Once Dickens saw how popular he was in the US, he realised he could virtually double his income if his American fans started paying a going rate for his work.
"I am the greatest loser alive by the present law," he complained in letters home.
Dickens raised the matter with his American audiences as tactfully as he could.
At literary dinners, he argued that that a copyright law would help American writers as much as him, and he stressed that he would "rather have the affectionate regard of my fellowmen as I would have heaps and mines of gold".
But the American press turned on Dickens, accusing him of mixing pleasure and business.
"We are mortified and grieved that he should have been guilty of such great indelicacy and impropriety," said the New York Courier and Enquirer, then the country's most popular paper.
"The entire press of the Union was predisposed to be his eulogist, but he urged those assembled (not just to) do honour to his genius, but to look after his purse also."
Dickens's visit to America ended with both sides accusing each other of being vulgar money-grabbers.
'Traitor'
On his return to England, Dickens published two books about his American trip.
As well as the scathing travel writing of American Notes, he satirised the country viciously in a section of Martin Chuzzlewit, his next major novel.
To the American press, the books were a libel on their country.
"We are all described as a filthy, gormandizing race," raged an article in the Courier and Enquirer, which was edited by James Watson Webb.
It described Dickens as a "low-bred scullion... who for more than half his life has lived in the stews of London".
Many of the friends Dickens had made in America, such as the novelist, Washington Irving, were also outraged and struggled to forgive him for ridiculing their country in print.
"Americans felt they'd welcomed Dickens into their country as a hero," says Prof Meckier, "and now there was a sense he was a traitor."
'Silver sunshine'
For some Dickens scholars, the "Quarrel With America" marks a significant shift in his work.
"Dickens had a traumatising experience in America," argues Prof Meckier. "He became less radical, less optimistic, and he downgraded his view of human nature."
Dickens expressed his darker world view in later novels such as David Copperfield and Bleak House.
But despite the "quarrel", these books sold as well as his early works. And it was the novelist's enduring popularity with American readers that eventually ended the dispute.
Towards the end of his life, Dickens began holding wildly popular public readings from works such as A Christmas Carol.
He sent a scout to assess if the American public would react as well as his fans in England, and after getting favourable reports, he returned to the US in 1867 and 1868.
Dickens needn't have worried about his reception.
"To say that his audience followed him with delight hardly expresses the interest with which they hung upon his every word," wrote the Boston Journal.
"It was not Dickens, but the creation of his genius, that seemed to live and talk before the spectators."
Almost all of Dickens's American critics were won over by his performances, and the quarrel was declared to be over.
"Dickens' second coming was needed to disperse every cloud and every doubt," said the New York Tribune, "and to place his name undimmed in the silver sunshine of American admiration". [/quote[
Not uppa class enough for ya, gov? :P
Dickens is the guy who did all those painting or magazine covers or WTF ever? He sounds like a twat.
And the streets aren't paved with gold. :weep:
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:19:53 PM
Dickens is the guy who did all those painting or magazine covers or WTF ever? He sounds like a twat.
?
The real problem was his huge hopes in America which he loved from a distance, and the lack of intellectual property protection in the US. He absolutely hated the lack of copyright in the US and that he never received any royalties - it was part of the reason for his tours, no-one else could do that.
But Dickens didn't just win over the Americans in his second trip in the 1860s, he was won over by them and made a speech in praise of the USA which he promised to include in all future editions of Martin Chuzzelwit and American Notes. He kept his promise.
Which I think sums Dickens up, like his response to an admirer pointing out the anti-semitism of Fagin. He changed the characterisation in future editions to remove a lot of the 'Jewishness'. He stopped performing him as a stereotype (Dickens' later performances of Fagin were far less 'Jewish' than most film versions). Then he wrote an overwhelmingly kind, nice and generous Jewish character in Our Mutual Friend who is, in fact, a moneylender just like Shylock. It's a very Dickensian response.
Quote from: garbon on February 13, 2012, 11:26:38 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:19:53 PM
Dickens is the guy who did all those painting or magazine covers or WTF ever? He sounds like a twat.
?
Never mind I was thinking of Norman Rockwell. Dickens still sounds like a twat though.
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:29:41 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 13, 2012, 11:26:38 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:19:53 PM
Dickens is the guy who did all those painting or magazine covers or WTF ever? He sounds like a twat.
?
Never mind I was thinking of Norman Rockwell. Dickens still sounds like a twat though.
:D
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:29:41 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 13, 2012, 11:26:38 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:19:53 PM
Dickens is the guy who did all those painting or magazine covers or WTF ever? He sounds like a twat.
?
Never mind I was thinking of Norman Rockwell. Dickens still sounds like a twat though.
He could be. He was incredibly cruel to his wife and not very sympathetic to his children. But in many other ways very kind and an extraordinary figure.
Quote"Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers".
:lol: That could be politics anywhere.
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 13, 2012, 11:30:53 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:29:41 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 13, 2012, 11:26:38 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on February 13, 2012, 11:19:53 PM
Dickens is the guy who did all those painting or magazine covers or WTF ever? He sounds like a twat.
?
Never mind I was thinking of Norman Rockwell. Dickens still sounds like a twat though.
He could be. He was incredibly cruel to his wife and not very sympathetic to his children. But in many other ways very kind and an extraordinary figure.
Interesting.
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 13, 2012, 11:29:21 PM
The real problem was his huge hopes in America which he loved from a distance, and the lack of intellectual property protection in the US. He absolutely hated the lack of copyright in the US and that he never received any royalties - it was part of the reason for his tours, no-one else could do that.
But Dickens didn't just win over the Americans in his second trip in the 1860s, he was won over by them and made a speech in praise of the USA which he promised to include in all future editions of Martin Chuzzelwit and American Notes. He kept his promise.
Which I think sums Dickens up, like his response to an admirer pointing out the anti-semitism of Fagin. He changed the characterisation in future editions to remove a lot of the 'Jewishness'. He stopped performing him as a stereotype (Dickens' later performances of Fagin were far less 'Jewish' than most film versions). Then he wrote an overwhelmingly kind, nice and generous Jewish character in Our Mutual Friend who is, in fact, a moneylender just like Shylock. It's a very Dickensian response.
But that doesn't make for a good "OMGSCANDAL!" headline now, does it?
Quote from: Valmy on February 13, 2012, 11:33:23 PM
Quote"Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers".
:lol: That could be politics anywhere.
Shit, glad not much has changed from polotics today.
He sounds like a whiny, malleable bitch.
Quote from: rufweed on February 14, 2012, 12:51:37 AM
He sounds like a whiny, malleable bitch.
Dickens the Marty of his day! :o
But with talent. :sleep:
His mistake was not coming to the South. there would've been less crowds and more englishness. And he could write about the plight of a plucky negro boy.
Yeah, no tobacco spitting yokels in Dixie.
Those were likely Southerners he saw at work on the streets of DC, after all. Well, if he can't stand that, maybe its for the best that he return to his dreary rain-soaked island and write about poor children.
Quote from: Lettow77 on February 14, 2012, 06:09:14 AM
His mistake was not coming to the South. there would've been less crowds and more englishness. And he could write about the plight of a plucky negro boy.
He considered it. There were plans to visit Charleston, for example. But he did go to a few Southern towns for example Richmond, Baltimore, St Louis. But he was strongly opposed to slavery - he devotes an entire chapter to it in American Notes.
But he also though of not going to the South at all. He liked the idea of being able to say that he accepted no mark of public respect where slavery was. He thought the land from Richmond to Fredericksburg was desolate and had the 'air of ruin and decay' that inevitably happens 'where slavery sits brooding'.
He also couldn't stand the system of lazy 'genteel' owners who 'could not bear a superior or brook an equal' and that 'recoils from honest service to an honest man but does not shrink from every trick, artifice and knavery in business'. So precisely the sort of bullshit you're peddling.
Having said that, he thought the Northerners were hypocrites too 'In truth, it must be acknowledged, that the free Americans, the very abolitionists themselves, are stout supporters of a slave system in act, whatever they may be in theory. In the free states of America the negro is no less forced down out of his just position as a man than when he works under the planter's whip. Even in an English drawing-room, the American who meets by chance a guest with negro blood marked in his forehead, feels like a cat upon whose domain some strange dog has intruded, and is not easily restrained by the rules of English courtesy from spitting. He also didn't think they'd have the fortitude to win the Civil War and that it had nothing really to do with slavery.
Edit: He did write about one black child too who was riding in the black carriage of a train in the South and cried all the way. Him and his mother had been separated from father and brother by a slave purchase. Dickens was very harsh on the owner '"the champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' who got out at each stop to check on his 'human cattle'.
In fairness though Dickens was a dreadful racist too.
Quote from: Lettow77 on February 14, 2012, 06:09:14 AM
His mistake was not coming to the South. there would've been less crowds and more englishness. And he could write about the plight of a plucky negro boy.
I thought you bought that league of the South stuff.
What does the league of the South have to do with poor, plucky negro boys?
I knew about dickens in the South and what he had to say. What he mistakenly thought was "an air of ruin and decay" was just Yukkuri run rampant.
What a damn shame this moral chap never visited India.
Quote from: Faeelin on February 14, 2012, 08:04:41 AM
What a damn shame this moral chap never visited India.
As I say he was very racist. He more or less called for genocide in response to the Indian mutiny. Though in fairness I think his son was in the colonial service at the time so there's a bit of the concerned father.
What's really interesting is the differences between Dickens and Wilkie Collins on India in their pieces after the mutiny.
Dickens is simply strident and deeply racist. Collins is more interested and subtle in an Orientalist way. You can also argue, pretty coherently, that in some ways The Moonstone's an anti-colonial novel.
I've not read it but I've heard good things about Jack Maggs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Maggs
Which, from what I gather, basically reworks Great Expectations, makes the Pip character a thinly veiled Dickens and is set in a 'realer' less suppressed Victorian world. So there's homosexuality, child prostitutes, illicit abortions and it upends Dickens's rather complacent colonial attitudes.
I'm on a binge at the minute (I've just ordered Claire Tomalin's new biography) and I think I'll get that later. I find Victorian pastiches really, weirdly enjoyable.
Quote from: Lettow77 on February 14, 2012, 07:13:58 AM
What does the league of the South have to do with poor, plucky negro boys?
I knew about dickens in the South and what he had to say. What he mistakenly thought was "an air of ruin and decay" was just Yukkuri run rampant.
As I understood their ideology, the South was primarily "Celtic" in nature as opposed to the "Germanic" Yankees. The English are certainly a "Germanic" people.
The South is both more english AND more celtic than the north.
But that "celtic vs germanic" stuff is quixotic racial nizzerdry and not to be taken seriously. the League of the South is too fragmented to actually have a coherent genesis of the conflict theory anyway- the best they can manage is all agreeing secession is delicious. The League of the South is a bunch of weird people, not an actual political party. It's a shame, as there are some intelligent professors and genuinely interesting types affiliated with it. (There are also pig disgusting amerifats who breathe through their mouths, but it can't be helped..)
quixotic racial nizzerdry :wub:
How absurd. And the funny thing is you go off idolizing the "Yankees of the East". Find in them the qualities you refuse to see in your countrymen. You are person who shall always be disappointed, Lettuce.
That's a grim and weighty sentence. I don't FEEL very disappointed, though. It's a beautiful and transient life, with fluffy things in it.
So much attention for a writer? Didn't they have sports back then?
Quote from: DGuller on February 14, 2012, 09:27:58 AM
So much attention for a writer? Didn't they have sports back then?
No football, no basketball, no baseball...it just doesn't seem like America.
Quote from: Valmy on February 14, 2012, 09:31:47 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 14, 2012, 09:27:58 AM
So much attention for a writer? Didn't they have sports back then?
No football, no basketball, no baseball...it just doesn't seem like America.
No wonder Dickens hated that America.
Quote from: Lettow77 on February 14, 2012, 09:17:45 AM
That's a grim and weighty sentence. I don't FEEL very disappointed, though. It's a beautiful and transient life, with fluffy things in it.
Also a poorly written sentence.
so, in his first visit, he came as a celebrity and was revolted by being treated like a celebrity? :P
Quote from: Valmy on February 14, 2012, 09:31:47 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 14, 2012, 09:27:58 AM
So much attention for a writer? Didn't they have sports back then?
No football, no basketball, no baseball...it just doesn't seem like America.
I think they had Baseball. Probably something like Rugby that was turning into football. The preferred sports were shooting, racing and punching people.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 14, 2012, 09:41:44 AM
I think they had Baseball. Probably something like Rugby that was turning into football. The preferred sports were shooting, racing and punching people.
Baseball was invented in the 1850s but good call on shooting, racing, and punching. Also dogfighting, bear baiting, and cock fighting was still popular. And duels.
The Irish. :)
There was the Catholic Beating Leagues. Both the North and the South had their own. They met for the championship each February in Baltimore.
You fuckers are gonna make me watch Gangs of New York again.
Always unwilling to take blame aren't you Ed, sheesh.
Quote from: PDH on February 14, 2012, 09:46:44 AM
There was the Catholic Beating Leagues. Both the North and the South had their own. They met for the championship each February in Baltimore.
We're not called Mobtown because of
la cosa nostra.
Quote from: katmai on February 14, 2012, 09:49:57 AM
Always unwilling to take blame aren't you Ed, sheesh.
Watching racist poors being run over by Union regiments: :wub:
Cameron Diaz: :mad:
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 14, 2012, 09:47:59 AM
You fuckers are gonna make me watch Gangs of New York again.
Never turn your back on a native.
Quote from: Valmy on February 14, 2012, 09:43:17 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 14, 2012, 09:41:44 AM
I think they had Baseball. Probably something like Rugby that was turning into football. The preferred sports were shooting, racing and punching people.
Baseball was invented in the 1850s but good call on shooting, racing, and punching. Also dogfighting, bear baiting, and cock fighting was still popular. And duels.
I don't think Baseball was actually "invented". It sort of evolved. People were playing something very similar to it in the US probably since the country was founded.
I know wagering on shooting matches and horse racing were extremely popular at the time. Horse racing only lost popularity in the 20th century.
Quote from: Ed Anger on February 14, 2012, 09:53:01 AM
Quote from: katmai on February 14, 2012, 09:49:57 AM
Always unwilling to take blame aren't you Ed, sheesh.
Watching racist poors being run over by Union regiments: :wub:
Cameron Diaz: :mad:
I did like that movie. Daniel Day Lewis stole the show. Really it should have focused on him and the decline of the Nativists.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 14, 2012, 11:21:59 AM
I don't think Baseball was actually "invented". It sort of evolved. People were playing something very similar to it in the US probably since the country was founded.
Obviously nobody sat down and invented it out of whole cloth but the game that was created in the 1850s had very important evolutionary differences (like the pitcher going from the least important to the most important person on the field, the number of players capped at 9 and so forth) that made it pretty different from the similar games we played previous.
I think re: the origins of baseball there's much in the dark, but the only clear thing is that it wasn't invented by Abner Doubleday (who was nowhere near the supposed "invention" but rather at West Point, IIRC).
It indeed evolved from some sort of "Rounders" and similar games, before becoming codified around the 1850-60s. There's actually pictures of ACW soldiers playing some form of base ball. It's funny that it has a bit of a pastoral flair these days when it mostly originated in the bustling cities of the 19th century.
I found this book rather enlightening:
http://www.amazon.com/Diamonds-Rough-Untold-History-Baseball/dp/0809232340
(If a bit dated, it was written in the late 80s)
Quote from: Valmy on February 14, 2012, 11:27:03 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 14, 2012, 11:21:59 AM
I don't think Baseball was actually "invented". It sort of evolved. People were playing something very similar to it in the US probably since the country was founded.
Obviously nobody sat down and invented it out of whole cloth but the game that was created in the 1850s had very important evolutionary differences (like the pitcher going from the least important to the most important person on the field, the number of players capped at 9 and so forth) that made it pretty different from the similar games we played previous.
There's a fantastic document on display in Cooperstown about banning "base ball" from around a town hall building in Massachusetts. It's dated 1791.
Quote from: Syt on February 14, 2012, 11:39:42 AM
It indeed evolved from some sort of "Rounders" and similar games, before becoming codified around the 1850-60s. There's actually pictures of ACW soldiers playing some form of base ball. It's funny that it has a bit of a pastoral flair these days when it mostly originated in the bustling cities of the 19th century.
Baseball was the real deal by the ACW. I forget which movie (I think either Glory or Gettysburg) had a brief scene that seemed to portray it pretty accurately as well. How awesome would it be to go back in time & witness baseball in its purest form?
Damnit, you guys got me thinking about baseball already. It's too early. I hadn't planned on thinking about it until-- erm, tonight actually :blush:
Yeah the ACW introduced (at least on a national level) two new obsessions to the United States: Baseball and coffee drinking. Soldiers would go to pretty absurd lengths to get their coffee fix.
Quote from: Lettow77 on February 14, 2012, 08:57:30 AM
The South is both more english AND more celtic than the north.
There weren't a whole lot of Polish and Italian factory workers in New York in 1840.