Ohio History Journal

BOZ REPORTS ON OHIO

 

By ROBERT PRICE

 

On Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of April, 1842, Charles

Dickens writing from America to John Forster in London began

his letter with the heading: "Niagara Falls!!! (upon the English

Side)."¹ Then, very suggestively, he drew ten dashes under-

neath the word English!2

Dickens' first tour of the United States, then just about com-

pleted, had not been altogether pleasant.   The typical British

attitude of the time toward people and things in the States had

probably set him off to a bad start; an unpleasant controversy

over international copyrights had added complications; while nu-

merous annoying adventures with "the tobacco-spittle we have

wallowed in, the strange customs we have complied with, the

packing cases in which we have travelled"³ during his swing

through East, South, and West had convinced him that any spot

outside the boundaries of the United States would be a welcome

refuge.

"Oh! the sublimated essence of comicality that I could distil,

from the materials I have!"4 he wrote to Forster now as he

looked back upon his experiences since first boarding the packet

Britannia at Liverpool on January third.

That he did distil much, his readers were to discover the fol-

lowing October when American Notes was published; and the

process of distillation becomes for Ohioans of a hundred years

afterward a very interesting thing, for although the mass of ad-

denda and apocrypha that have accumulated on the Dickens trip

since 1842 has long suggested that the American Notes did not

tell all, the extent to which the factual reporter in Dickens was in-

 

1 Charles Dickens to John  Forster, Niagara Falls, April 26, 1842, The Letters of

Charles Dickens, in The Nonesuch Dickens (Bloomsbury, 1938), 1, 441. All references

in this article are to this edition.

2 John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (London, 1899), I, 285.

3 To Henry Austin, May 1, 1842, Letters.

4 April 26, 1842, ibid.

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fluenced by the literary artist and emotionalist has been left until

the recent publication of the complete Dickens Letters for final

judgment.⁵

Readers know now that the final hook departed radically

from much in Dickens' original recording of his impressions.

Nearly half, for example, of Dickens' famous account of his

stagecoach journey from Cincinnati to Sandusky, long a favorite

item with Ohioans, was not part of the author's notes made on

the trip but was added weeks later largely, apparently, for em-

bellishment.

Dickens did not keep a regularly posted notebook during his

tour. The body of the American Notes was eventually compiled

from letters which he wrote to John Forster and others in England

during the course of the trip.⁶ Thirty years later when Forster

was preparing a biography of Dickens, he too drew upon these

letters but, unfortunately, instead of always copying out the long

excerpts which he quoted, often merely mounted Dickens' orig-

inals in his manuscript. Today Forster's manuscript and with it

many of Dickens' letters seem to have been lost.⁷

For the period of the American trip, Forster in this biography

usually quoted only those portions of the correspondence which

Dickens himself had not covered with a fair degree of fullness in

the American Notes. The result is that for many of Dickens'

American experiences the original memoranda (when they were

in the form of letters to Forster) no longer exist, and parallel

accounts do exist only when Dickens departed so seriously from

the material recorded in his letters that Forster felt duty bound to

print the original in the biography.

Parallel data are most nearly complete for the closing weeks

of the tour, the period of the visit to Ohio, Dickens having here

deviated most markedly from his original accounts in the letters.

For earlier weeks in the States, Dickens found as he worked at

his book the following summer that he could merely copy his

original impressions almost intact. In fact, he even complained to

5 The Nonesuch Dickens.

6 Cf. letter to Thomas Mitton, April 4, 1842, Letters: "Forster has the best journal

I have had time to keep in these conveyances, of our adventures."

7 Ibid., 1, viii.

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OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942                       197

Forster that "the subjects at the beginning of the book are of that

kind that I can't dash at them. And now and then they fret me

in consequence. When I come to Washington, I am all right. The

solitary prison at Philadelphia is a good subject though; I forgot

that for the moment."⁸

On the other hand, as he relived his reactions toward Ameri-

can life experienced in New York, Philadelphia and Washington,

over the mountains and down the Ohio to the prairies, back to

Ohio and across it in stagecoaches to the Lake, and finally to Buf-

falo, the Falls and Canada, his account, in spite of notes, took on

a momentum of its own which toward the end became in a large

degree its own law. The result was some of the finest writing in

the American Notes--but it was correspondingly less accurate

reporting.

A glance at some of the more significant changes in the Ohio

material is ample proof. The first immediately obvious alterations

consist, as one would expect, of tactful omissions and tonings

down. Actual names and personalities nearly all dropped out--as,

for instance, the name of Judge Timothy Walker, who entertained

the Dickens party in Cincinnati.9

The travelers consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, their

woman companion, Mrs. Anne Cornelius, and Dickens' secretary,

George W. Putnam, whom he had engaged in Boston, had arrived

in Cincinnati from Pittsburgh, Monday morning, April fourth, on

the steamer Messenger.10 They were stopping for a couple of

days en route down the river to St. Louis for a glimpse of the

prairies. At 8:30 they came ashore and drove to the Broadway

House. Before they could issue a "not at home," two judges of

 

8 July 18, 1842. Cf. letter to Forster, September 16, 1842: "The Philadelphia

chapter I think very good, but I am sorry to say it has not made as much in print

as I hoped," Letters.

9 To Forster, April 15, 1842, ibid.

10 The present article makes no attempt to retell the story of Dickens' visit to

Ohio already available in many printed accounts. See especially Charles Dickens,

American Notes (London, 1842), and Letters, I; Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, I;

Harlan Hatcher, The Buckeye Country (New York, 1940); Archer Butler Hulbert,

Historic Highways of America (Cleveland), XII (1904); William T. Martin, History

of Franklin County (Columbus, 1858); Basil Meek, The Twentieth Century History of

Sandusky County, Ohio (Chicago, 1910); Hewson L. Peeke, "Charles Dickens in

Ohio in 1842," Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly, XXVIII (1919),

72-81; Charles Sumner Van Tassel, Charles Dickens' 1842 Visit to Ohio (n.p., 1937);

William Clyde Wilkins, Charles Dickens in America (New York, 1911); and many

articles in various Ohio newspapers from 1842 to the present.

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the city called on behalf of the townspeople to know when Dickens

would receive. Arrangements were made at once to see the town

and for a ball the next evening.

Dickens eventually described the city quite favorably. Judge

Walker he liked. "I saw a good deal of Walker in Cincinnati. I

like him very much," he wrote to C. C. Felton of Cambridge.11

Dickens, however, did not publish his original account of the ball

--which included his comments to Forster that he had been intro-

duced "to at least one hundred and fifty first-rate bores, separately

and singly," and had been "required to sit down by the greater

part of them and talk."¹²

Neither did he mention that three weeks later after returning

to Cincinnati and then crossing Ohio to the Lake, he had refused,

because of a fit of anger over a newspaper editorial, to receive

Cleveland's mayor, Dr. Joshua Mills, who came on board the

steamer Constitution to greet him.l³

Deleted too were some of Dickens' more violent descriptive

statements. His note, for example, that during his half hour levee

at the Neil House in Columbus, the people pressed in dressed and

acting exactly like the chorus in "God Save the Queen"! Dickens

had said:

They wear their clothes, precisely as the chorus people do; and stand--

supposing Kate and me to be in the centre of the stage, with our backs to

the footlights--just as the company would, on the first night of the season.

They shake hands exactly after the manner of the guests at a ball at the

Adelphi or the Haymarket; receive any facetiousness on my part, as if there

were a stage direction "all laugh"; and have rather more difficulty in "get-

ting off" than the last gentlemen, in white pantaloons, polished boots and

berlins, usually displayed under the most trying circumstances.14

He omitted also his remark describing his concern at having

to spend a night in the wild-appearing Indian town of Upper

Sandusky with f750 in gold on his person: for no more than the

middle one of those figures (£5), he said, there were "not a few

men in the West who would murder their fathers."15

 

11 April 29, 1842, Letters.

12 April 15, 1842, ibid.

13 To Forster, April 26, 1842, ibid.

14 To Forster, April 24, 1842, ibid.

15 Ibid.

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OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942                  199

 

Missing too is a choice collection of epithets recorded at San-

dusky against Ohioans generally:

"invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive"

"entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity of enjoyment"

"I am quite serious when I say that I have not heard a hearty laugh

these six weeks, except my own; nor have I seen a merry face on any

shoulders but a blackman's."

"Lounging listlessly about, idling in bar-rooms; smoking; spitting; and

lalling on the pavement in rocking-chairs . . ."

"I don't think the national shrewdness extends beyond the Yankees;

that is, the Eastern men. The rest are heavy, dull, and ignorant."16

Dickens could find little indeed to praise in these Westerners.

Earlier when writing to Forster he had said of Congress that in

both houses there were "some very noble specimens, too, out of

the West. Splendid men to look at."¹⁷ But rewriting his de-

scription the next summer, having actually visited trans-Appala-

chian America, he decided to omit "out of the West"!

There are other small omissions of the same sort, either for

tact or to emphasize a final point of view. Perhaps they are not

so serious, historically considered, as certain other alterations

which suggest deliberate playing with fact or, at least, interpola-

tions.

A dozen pages of the American Notes were devoted to the

journey from Cincinnati to Columbus on Wednesday and Thurs-

day, April 20 and 21.18 Dickens commented upon the beautiful

country, the promise of abundant harvest, the young corn like a

crop of walking sticks, the green wheat among a labyrinth of

stumps, worm fences, and neat farms reminding him of Kent.

Nothing is definitely localized. It is a charming description, one

that has long been a favorite of Ohioans, although it contains very

little but generalities. Practically all of it, the record shows, was

missing from the original description written down for Forster on

the Sunday immediately following the trip, while Dickens was

waiting over at Sandusky for a steamer.¹⁹ Much of it seems to

have been created the next summer out of literary whole cloth.

 

16 Ibid.

17 To Forster, April 26, 1842, ibid.

18 The Nonesuch Dickens, 187-198.

19 April 24, 1842, Letters.

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Most colorful of all these descriptive bits are the humorous

sketches supposedly chronicling the changing of horses, the stops

at a couple of typical taverns, the crude manners of natives, etc.

The writing reveals the true Dickens at his finest, but it also

reveals no identifiable Ohio. A student of Ohio lore would, of

course, like to localize the tavern scenes at Lebanon where a

vigorous local legend has grown big through the century, but

that legend has never been accepted within the canon.²⁰

One of the most conspicuous of the interpolations in this sec-

tion can be traced to a precise date of origin. It is the remarkable

"Brown Hat" and "Straw Hat" conversation, a supposed occur-

rence during the Cincinnati to Columbus leg of the trip and the

anecdote which in the book epitomizes the absurdities Dickens had

been noting in American speech.²¹ These oddities had been amus-

ing Dickens ever since his first contacts with railway passengers

in New England, and there is no hint whatever in his original

letters that he had any reason for attaching the conversation

specifically to Ohio. As a matter of fact, the sketch was not part

of the original description of Ohio sent to Forster, but was written

out in a later letter of May third.²² During his rest at Niagara,

Dickens seems to have composed several such descriptions and

sketches, seemingly for distribution at appropriate places to en-

liven the coming book. "One of the most amusing phrases in use

all through the country," he wrote to Forster, "for its constant

repetition, and adaptation in every emergency, is 'Yes, Sir.' Let

me give you a specimen." Then followed the sketch which even-

tually graced the account of the trip to Columbus.

The stage from Columbus to Tiffin running only three times

a week and Friday, April 22, 1842, being an off-day, it was

necessary for Dickens to hire an exclusive "Extra" in the form of

a four-horse coach. According to the American Notes, they were

off at 6:30 (at 7, said Dickens in his letter to Forster) and in fine

spirits. The turnpike company was sending along an agent on the

box to insure the success of the trip, and R. B. Cowles, proprietor

 

20 See Frank Jerome Riley, "The Town That Poisoned Dickens," Esquire (Chicago)

XII  (1939), 72, 267-270.

21 The Nonesuch Dickens, 189-191.

22 May  3, 1842, Letters.

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OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE, 1942               201

 

at the Neil House, had packed a large hamper of eatables. The

arrangement for reaching Tiffin cost $40.

Dickens' printed statement of his journey to the Lake can be

accepted as probably true to actualities, for he noted down the

details at Sandusky while they were fresh in mind, and the book

version followed his original impressions carefully. It is the best

literary record at hand of a stage trip over corduroy roads through

central and northern Ohio of this period. All evidence indicates

that the jolts, twists and hazardous swaying which Dickens de-

scribed in exciting detail was anything but exaggerations. The

first part of the road immediately out of Columbus was not bad,

but farther this particular turnpike was one of the most notoriously

unsatisfactory pieces of road at the time, a common matter of com-

plaint. The line had been operated for a number of years by the

Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike Company. It was a clay and

mud pike with only the crudest of improvements, chiefly corduroy.

People protested grievously at paying tolls on such a road, and

the act incorporating the company was finally repealed by the

legislature on February 28, 1843.23

The physical tortures as the journey progressed are sug-

gested by one incident which Dickens for some reason chose to

omit from his book, but which he had related in a letter to Henry

Austin from Niagara.²⁴ Mrs. Dickens was the particular suf-

ferer:

Once in going over a coaching road which is made by throwing trunks

of trees into a marsh, she very nearly had her head broken off. It was a

very hot day, she was lying in a languishing manner with her neck upon

the open window. Bang--crash! It's a little on one side to this hour.

Putnam recorded of this ride that he finally tied two hand-

kerchiefs to the doorposts of the coach, the ends of which Mrs.

Dickens wound around her wrists and hands in an effort to break

the violence of the jolts.²⁵

Ohio whittlers, however, received one of the most interesting

bits of revision in the whole American Notes. Dickens had be-

 

23 William T. Martin, History of Franklin County (Columbus, 1858), 70-72.

24 May 1, 1842, Letters.

25 Wilkins, Charles Dickens, 228.

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202    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

come highly conscious of the Westerner's propensity for whittling.

If the local tradition is true, this consciousness had been sharp-

ened during his stop in Columbus, by a joke played upon him by

a group of whittling socialites.²⁶ Yet his notes to Forster men-

tioned whittling only in connection with his account of the Cleve-

land mayor. Mayor Mills, when he found that Dickens refused

to honor the call by coming out of his cabin, took the matter quite

coolly, Dickens reported to Forster, and "retired to the top of the

wharf, with a big stick and a whittling knife, with which he worked

so lustily (staring at the closed door of our cabin all the time)

that long before the boat left, the big stick was no bigger than a

cribbage peg!"27

When the Cleveland mayor along with other personalities

dropped out of the narrative the following summer, the whittling

touch was too precious to discard completely. Accordingly, an-

other whittler popped up (though he had not been mentioned

anywhere in Dickens' version written from America) conveniently

enough during the boatride from Sandusky to Cleveland. The

boat, says the American Notes, was a 500-ton vessel with high-

pressure engines, which made Dickens feel as if he were taking

"lodgings on the first floor of a powder mill." It bore a cargo of

flour, several barrels of which were carried on deck. The cap-

tain's custom whenever he came up for some conversation or to

introduce a friend was to straddle one of these barrels like Bacchus

on a keg of wine and begin to whittle. Pulling a great clasp-knife

out of his pocket, wrote Dickens, he would "whittle it as he

talked, by paring the thin slices off the edges. He whittled with

such industry and hearty good-will, that but for his being called

away very soon, it must have disappeared bodily, and left noth-

ing in its place but grist and shavings."

Perhaps these whittlers were all real--socialites, mayor, and

barrel-straddling captain--but we'll never be quite sure now. Our

doubts will, of course, merely pay compliment to the consummate

skill of Boz in distilling the "essence of comicality."

 

26 Osman C. Hooper, "Literary Landmarks of Columbus," Columbus Dispatch,

Aug. 4, 1938.

27 April 26, 1842; also the letter to David C. Colden, April 29, 1842, Letters.

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