Early in 1842 Dickens and his wife made a journey to America, leaving their children in the care of a friend. Shortly after arriving in the United States he wrote to a friend, “I can give you no conception of my welcome here. There was never a king or emperor upon the earth so cheered and followed by crowds, and entertained in public at splendid balls and dinners, and waited on by public bodies and deputations of all kinds;” and again, “In every town where we stay, though it be only for a day, we hold a regular levee or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an average with five or six hundred people.”
Dickens had come prepared to like America and Americans—and in many ways he did like them. But in other ways he was disappointed. He ventured to object, in various speeches, to the pirating, in America, of English literature, and fierce were the denunciations which this course drew upon him. Having fancied that in the republic of America he might have at least free speech on a matter which so closely concerned him, Dickens resented this treatment, and the Americans resented his resentment. However, it was with the kindliest feelings toward the many friends he had made in the United States, and with the most out-spoken admiration for many American institutions that he left for England. The publication of his American Notes and of Martin Chuzzlewit did not tend to reconcile Americans to Dickens; but there seems to have been no falling off in the sale of his books in this country.
Dickens’s life, like the lives of most literary men, was not particularly eventful. It was, however, a constantly busy life. Book followed book in rapid succession, and still their popularity grew. Sometimes in London, sometimes in Italy or Rome or Switzerland, he created those wonderful characters of his which will live as long as the English language. The first of the Christmas books, A Christmas Carol, appeared in 1843, and henceforward one of the things to which people looked forward at Yuletide was the publication of a new Dickens Christmas story.
One diversion—if diversion it can be called—Dickens allowed himself not infrequently, and enjoyed most thoroughly. This was the production, sometimes before a selected audience, sometimes in public, of plays, in which Dickens himself usually took the chief part. Often these plays were given not only in London, but in various parts of the country, as benefits for poor authors or actors, or for the widows and families of such; and always they were astonishingly successful. It is reported that an old stage prompter or property man said one time to Dickens “Lor, Mr. Dickens! If it hadn’t been for them books, what an actor you would have made.”
Naturally, a man of Dickens’s eminence had as his friends and acquaintances many of the foremost men of his time, and a most affectionate and delightful friend he was. His letters fall no whit below the best of his writing in his novels in their power of observation, their brightness, their humorous manner of expression.
In 1849 was begun the publication of David Copperfield, Dickens’s own favorite among his novels. It contains, as has already been said, much that is autobiographical, and one of the most interesting facts in connection with this phase of it is that there really was, in Dickens’s young days, a “Dora” whom he worshiped. Years later he met her again, and what his feelings on that occasion must have been may be imagined when we know that this Dora-grown-older was the original of “Flora” in Little Dorrit.
The things that Dickens, writing constantly and copiously, found time to do are wonderful. One of the matters in which he took great interest and an active part was the children’s theatricals. These were held each year during the Christmas holiday season at Dickens’s home, and while his children and their friends were the principal actors, Dickens superintended the whole, introduced three-quarters of the fun, and played grown-up parts, adopting as his stage title the “Modern Garrick.”
Though the story of these crowded years is quickly told, the years were far from being uneventful in their passing. Occasional sojourns, either with his family or with friends, in France and in Italy always made Dickens but the more glad to be in his beloved London, where he seemed most in his element and where his genius had freest play. This does not mean that he did not enjoy France and Italy, or appreciate their beauties, but simply that he was always an Englishman—a city Englishman. His observations, however, on what he saw in traveling were always most acute and entertaining.
His account of his well-nigh unsuccessful attempt to find the house of Mr. Lowther, English chargé d’affaires at Naples, with whom he had been invited to dine, may be quoted here to show his power of humorous description:
“We had an exceedingly pleasant dinner of eight, preparatory to which I was near having the ridiculous adventure of not being able to find the house and coming back dinnerless. I went in an open carriage from the hotel in all state, and the coachman, to my surprise, pulled up at the end of the Chiaja.