Boz is coming to America. We hope he will not make a fool of himself here, like a majority of his distinguished countrymen who preceded him.
The Sun got out an extra on the day when Dickens landed, but it was not in honour of Boz, but rather because of the arrival of the Britannia with a budget of foreign news. Buried in a mass of Continental paragraphs was this one:
Among the passengers are Mr. Charles Dickens, the celebrated author, and his lady.
The ship-news man never even thought to ask Dickens how he liked America. But society was waiting for Boz, and he was tossed about on a lively sea of receptions and dinners. The Sun presently thought that the young author was being exploited overmuch:
Mr. Dickens, we have no doubt, is a very respectable gentleman, and we know that he is a very clever and agreeable author. He has written several books that have put the reading world in most excellent good humor. In this way he has done much to promote the general happiness of mankind, and honestly deserves their gratitude.
Having crossed the water for the purpose of traveling in America, where his works have been extensively read and admired, he is, of course, received and treated with marked civility, attention, and respect. We should be ashamed of our countrymen if it were otherwise. During his stay at Boston the citizens gave him a public dinner. At New Haven he received a similar token of kind regard. In this city a ball has been given him. All these attentions were right and proper, and as far as we can learn they have been uniformly conducted in a gentlemanly and respectable manner, becoming alike to the characters of those who gave and him who received them.
But a few penny-catchers of the press are determined to make money out of Boz. The shop-windows are stuffed with lithograph likenesses of him, which resemble the original just about as much as he resembles a horse. His own wife would not recognize them in any other way than by the word “Boz” written under them.
Then a corps of sneaking reporters, most of them fresh from London, are pursuing him like a pack of hounds at his heels to catch every wink of his eye, every motion of his hands, and every word that he speaks, to be dished up with all conceivable embellishments by pen and pencil, and published in extras, pamphlets, and handbills. To make all this trash sell well in the market, the greatest possible hurrah must be made by the papers interested in the speculations, and therefore the whole American people are basely caricatured by them, and represented as one vast mob following Dickens from place to place, and striving even to touch the hem of his garment.
That our readers at a distance may not be induced to suppose that the good people of New York are befooling themselves in this way, we beg leave to assure them that all these absurd reports are ridiculous caricatures, hatched from the prolific brains of a few reckless reporters for a few unprincipled papers. They do in truth make as great fools of themselves as they represent the public to be generally. But beyond their narrow and contemptible circle we are happy to know that Mr. Dickens is treated with that manly and sincere respect which is so justly his due, and which must convince him that he is amongst a warm-hearted people, who know both how to respect their guest and themselves.
When Dickens sailed for home, in June, the Sun bade him bon voyage with but a paragraph. It was more than a year afterward that it came to him again; and meanwhile he had trodden on the toes of America: