WILLIAM CHAMBERS IN AMERICA, 1853
by W. H. G. ARMYTAGE
University of Sheffield
"America through British
eyes" has thrown up an enormous
amount of comment and historical
writing since the times of Mrs.
Trollope and the waspish Captain Basil
Hall. The recent reissue
of an anthology bearing that title1
affords an excuse for adding
yet a few more pages to that subject by
calling attention to a work
which is very often ignored when the
subject is being studied.
It is a commonplace that accounts of
American travels,
written by British authors, were often
oblique criticisms of the
British as well as the American way of
life;2 that the growth of
English Liberalism was fortified by
reassuring examples of the
working of democracy across the
Atlantic. America replaced the
continent as the place for the Grand
Tour--undertaken by any
young man who wished to make a name for
himself in affairs in
England. Sometimes, however, these
books were deeper com-
parisons which made their readers
think. Of such a class, it
is submitted, was the work of a
fifty-four year old publisher--
William Chambers.
(i)
William Chambers was the type of person
who would have
succeeded in any social milieu. Born in
1800, his success story-
apprentice to a bookseller, publisher
of his own books with a
hand press, founder of a journal which
bore his name-spanned
1 Allan Nevins, ed., America Through
British Eyes (New York, 1948) was
first issued as American Social
History as Recorded by British Travellers a quarter
of a century before. Nevins selects as
typical examples of British writing on this
subject during the years 1840-70, James
Silk Buckingham, Charles Lyell, Alexander
Mackay, W. H. Russell, Edward Dicey, and
Anthony Trollope.
2 For
earlier accounts, see J. L. Mesick, The English Traveller in America
(New York, 1922), and J. F. McDermott,
"A Note on Mrs. Trollope," Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, XLV (1936), 369n. See also
W. H. G.
Armytage, "James Stuart's Journey
up the River Mississippi in 1830," Mid-America,
XX (1949), 92-100.
139
140 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
the emergence of a new urban class in
Great Britain.3 With his
brother Robert (whose biography he
ultimately wrote) he planned
and launched many literary enterprises
for the rapidly expanding
literate public, which culminated in
the issue of the famous
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, which is world famous to this day.
These works were specifically directed
to popular education as
some of their titles show: Chambers's
Information for the People,
Chambers's Miscellany of Useful and
Entertaining Trades, and
many other works with similar titles
issued from their house in
Edinburgh, found ready buyers in the
mechanics institutes and
mechanics libraries which grew rapidly
in the thirties, forties,
and fifties. To this growth, William
Chambers himself con-
tributed in a more direct manner: he
presented a public library
to Peebles (his home town), where the
Chambers Institution
remains to this day.
The American reader will notice a
curious similarity (only
in a much more minor and subdued key)
between Chambers'
progress and that of Benjamin Franklin.
Indeed, the Philadelphia
printer was something of an exemplar to
the poor boy from
Peebles, and he confessed that
"the exciting autobiography of the
Philadelphia printer, who from toiling
at the press, rose to be
the companion of kings" had its
effect on his imagination. It
stimulated the desire he felt to cross
the Atlantic and "see the
country which had been the theatre of
so many interesting events,
and latterly the scene of so many
social developments."4
So, in September 1853, William Chambers
sailed from
Liverpool on the Cunarder America bound
for Boston via
Halifax.
(ii)
The itinerary of his three months' tour
commenced by a
short visit to Nova Scotia. He was at
once impressed by its
3 For details of his life, see the Dictionary
of National Biography, X, 27; also
his own Memoir of Richard Chambers,
with Autobiographical Reminiscences of
William Chambers (3d ed., New York, 1873); Cambridge History of
English Litera-
ture (14 vols., New York and London, 1907-17), XII, 425;
XIV, 159, 533, 612. The
British Museum catalog shows his industry.
4 William Chambers, Things As They
Are in America (London and Edin-
burgh, 1854), 1.
William Chambers in America 141
woodenness--as he called it--and
apostrophized, "How neat,
how beautiful!"
I thought I had never seen anything so
pretty. No dingy brick, with
a canopy of smoke, as in London; no
dull grey walls incrusted with the
soot of centuries, as in the older
parts of Edinburgh; but all smart, fresh,
new, and seen through an atmosphere as
clear as crystal.
That was Halifax on his first morning!
Later, he went to an
agricultural fete. Opened by the Hon.
William Young (speaker
of the house of assembly and son of the
East Lothian farming
pioneer), it gave Chambers an
opportunity to question a "number
of people of respectability and
influence" on the prospects which
faced intending immigrants. His
considered judgment was that
"the only complaint against it
[Halifax] was the general want of
that spirit of commercial adventure so
strongly evinced in the
States."
There was a want of other things too.
He examined the
schools, and though he was presented
with a complimentary and
undeserved address by the managers of
one large school for poor
children, he came to the conclusion
that too many children were
educated by begged money rather than by
rates. Nor did the
proliferation of the scarlet uniforms
of the military please him.
He commented:
The sight of English soldiers on this
side of the Atlantic is not very
intelligible to the traveller who sees
neither disaffection to be kept down,
nor a foreign enemy threatening; nor,
when he reflects on the enormous
expense at which the apparatus of force
must necessarily be maintained,
does this military system seem
consonant with justice to the mother-
country, which enjoys nothing in return
but the honour of calling Nova
Scotia one of her dependencies.
The fierce partisan spirit which
prevented the building of a
railway to the interior, made him
"feel a degree of pity for the
people, who were the victims of such
strange complications"; for
the lack of efficient railway communication
was, as he pointed
out, enabling Portland to become the
port for a large section of
Canada.
So it was an odd stage coach, slung on
two thick belts of
142 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
leather, that carried him to see the
rest of Nova Scotia. Traveling
over the bad roads in this was
"ludicrous and painful," but he
got to Windsor, where he found the
college in a state of extreme
decay," having only fourteen
students. Things were better in the
hired caleche which he took to see the
rest of the province. Corn-
wallis, with its enclosed "dike
land," seemed to him an ideal
place in which to settle--farms ran
from £30 to £50 an acre for
fine land, and from £3 to £10 for that
of lesser quality. In
leaving, he by no means subscribed to
the theory that the Nova
Scotians were behind the rest of the
world, nor, in his opinion,
should they be spoken of as "blue
noses." "The wonder is not
that they have done so little," he
remarked, "but so much."
Catching the Canada steamship from
Halifax to Boston (a
journey which took him thirty hours),
he came up by railway to
Montreal. A veteran fellow Scot told
him of the changes in
language of the past thirty years.
"Montreal possesses an anima-
tion and hopefulness which could
scarcely have been predicated
from its past history or the mixed and
antagonistic elements in
its population," wrote Chambers.
But though education in Mont-
real was adequate, in lower Canada
generally it was "on a lament-
ably imperfect footing." He
continued:
Although there is a school law
applicable to the province, such is
the general ignorance of letters that
many local commissioners of educa-
tion are said to be unable to read or
write; and as the rating for schools is
under popular control, the habitants
find it more agreeable to let their
children grow up uninstructed than vote
means for their education.
In western Canada, however, things were
very different.
After a brief trip to Quebec, Chambers
went on to Niagara and
then back to Toronto. Of the province
of Ontario generally, he
was
necessarily impressed with the
conviction that it is destined to be a
Mediterranean, around which a great people are to
cluster and to
flourish. Nor did a nearer acquaintance with the
western part of the
state of New York on the one side, or the eastern
section of Canada West
on the other, lessen this impression.
A week's stay in Toronto itself
reinforced him in his opinions.
William Chambers in America 143
He was most impressed by their liberal
provision for education:
three thousand common schools which
were largely sustained on
locally assessed rates. Its bookshops
and attractions for people
of taste and leisure put it on a par
with Boston and Philadelphia.
Like a true Scot, he noticed his
countrymen everywhere. The
Peerless (the
Toronto-Lewiston regular ship) had Captain Dick as
part owner and captain, while Chambers
was entertained by the
Hon. Adam Ferguson, an immigrant who
came out in 1833.
Ferguson "spoke with
confidence" on the subject of emigration
from Scotland, pointing out the many
ways in which poor men
could improve themselves by emigration.
J. B. Ewart, also a
farmer, corroborated this. But perhaps
strangest of all was the
Scot who came over from Galt to invite
this distinguished stranger
to inspect the small township that
could support two newspapers
with only a population of little over
two thousand. A similar
reunion of old fellow countrymen took
place at London.
Chambers drew the moral from what he
had seen. The
prosperity of the farmers (he notes
that there was a great export
trade in flour and that farmers were
everywhere paying off their
mortgages) and the demand for fresh
railways (which "was so
great that it would absorb all who
offer themselves for years to
come") both impressed him till he
wondered "how, with such
allurements, there is not a more
general migration from England."
(iii)
He landed once more in the United
States at Sandusky, and
moved along the shore to Cleveland.
There he saw
a scene of prodigious confusion. . . .
Some hundreds of Germans and
Irish of both sexes were seen
bivouacked beside vast piles of trunks and
bags. Some had lost sight of their
baggage, and ran frantically about
looking for it everywhere, at the risk
of being run over by locomotives.
In proportion as the cars filled, the
hubbub gradually lessened; and at
length, the train set off with its
immense freight of passengers, most of
whom were in quest of a home in the New
World.
Chambers took the train from Cleveland
to Cincinnati, where he
settled at the Burnet House ("more
like a palace than a house of
public entertainment").
144 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
Chambers was much impressed with the
Queen City of the
West, and to it he devoted several
pages of enthusiastic descrip-
tion and appraisal. He saw so many
German signs that he thought
he was in Hamburg. "Ohio has been
strangely neglected by
settlers from Great Britain," he
remarked. The number of Scotch
was "singularly small, being only
771." The town itself he re-
garded as one of the wonders of the New
World, with its immense
periphery of demand and trade.
Satisfying this demand led to
the erection of factory-mills
"very far beyond my previous notions
of what can be done by machinery."
As an example of the scale of such
enterprises, he instanced
the furniture trade. The results of
this and other manufactures
he saw stacked up on the quay, destined
for places as far afield
as California itself. He continued:
I was struck with the originality of
many of the mechanical con-
trivances which came under my notice in
Cincinnati. Under the enlight-
enment of universal education, and the
impulse of a great and growing
demand, the American mind would seem
ever on the rack of invention to
discover fresh applications of
inanimate power. Almost everywhere may
be seen something new in the arts. As
regards carpentry machinery, one
of the heads of an establishment said,
with some confidence, that the
Americans were fifty years in advance
of Great Britain. Possibly this was
too bold an assertion; but it must be
admitted that all kinds of American
cutting tools are of a superior
description, and it is very desirable that
they should be examined in a candid
spirit by English manufacturers.
Taking his own lesson to heart, he then
described a new flour mill
which would enable an English farmer to
grind his own wheat
as finely dressed as if it came from a
professional miller. Surely it
would be worth while for English
agricultural societies to procure
specimens of these mills, as well as of
farm implements generally, from
America-a little of the money usually
devoted to the overfattening of
oxen would not, I think, be ill
employed for such a purpose.
As in industrial and other economic
enterprise, so in the
educational sphere did he commend the
practice of Ohio in
general and Cincinnati in particular.
To quote again:
Where free education exists in England,
it is a charity: here, it is a
right. The natural fruit of a system so
exceedingly bounteous, is an
William Chambers in America 145
educated population, possessing tastes
and aspirations which seek a
solacement in literature from the
materialities of everyday life. I do not
know when I ever saw a town of its size
so well provided as Cincinnati
with publishers, libraries, and reading
rooms.
This was a famous publisher writing!
He retraced his steps to Cleveland,
adding this rider to his
eulogy of Ohio:
I would take leave to remind intending
emigrants, that for fertility
of soil and geniality of climate, they
will find few places within a
moderate distance which can match this
exceedingly fine state. For its
crops of Indian corn and wheat, its
wool, beef, and pork, it enjoys a wide
celebrity; and, as has been seen, its
southern and picturesque frontier,
with an Italian climate, yields a
much-admired variety of wines. In the
more cleared parts of the state, land,
of course, sells at a comparatively
high price--say at from thirty to fifty
dollars per acre; and therefore
this is not a district for the
settlement of a humble class of emigrants who
look to the immediate acquisition of
property.
Leaving, he passed to New York, where
he stayed at the
Astor House, to which he was
enthusiastically converted. "An
American hotel is not a house," he
concluded, "it is a whole
town." With its minute and
specialized services, it was a triumph
of organization for mass living. But
what he did not like was the
insanitary condition of the town:
The mire was ankle deep in Broadway,
and the more narrow busi-
ness streets were barely passable. The
thing was really droll. All along the
footpavements there stood, night and
day, as if fixtures, boxes, buckets,
lidless flourbarrels, baskets, decayed
tea chests, rusty iron pans, and
earthenware jars full of coal ashes.
There they rested, some close to the
houses, some leaning over into the gutter, some on the
doorsteps, some
knocked over and spilt, and to get
forward, you required to take constant
care not to fall over them.
Nor did he like the insecurity of human
life in New York.
He quoted an article on
"Rowdies" from the New York Herald
which acknowledged that the city had "the
worst police in the
world." He also called attention
to the existence of "a sink of
vice and misery resembling the more
squalid and dissolute parts
of Liverpool or Glasgow." This
"cryptogamia of society, flour.
146 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
ishing in dark holes and corners"
was the wreckage cast ashore
on the great American continent: an
unusually high proportion
of one in seven of the population.
But even though America presented such
a checkered social
face, he was moved to make these
comments on the American
Crystal Palace:
I wished that England had not been
satisfied with deputing two or
three commissioners to attend the
opening of the Exhibition, but that
whole companies of mechanics had come
to admire and be instructed.
Altogether, the Exhibition afforded a
striking specimen of native skill and
resources; and a conviction was left on
the mind, that to treat either that
skill or these resources with
indifference, would be impolitic.
Not even the financial failure of the
Exhibition and the proposal
to keep it under the permanent control
of the mighty Barnum
made him alter his opinion that it
would greatly benefit the
United States in the matter of taste.
The report of his journey throughout
the rest of the country
--to Boston, Lowell, Providence,
Washington, Richmond, and
Philadelphia--serves as a thread to
link his comments on the
general social life of America. So, to
avoid the catalogic enum-
eration of his observations in these
places, we will now turn to
considering these appraisals and his
intentional contrasts with
similar attitudes and institutions in
England.
(iv)
He saw much to criticize in the
American way of life. Com-
ment in this case was more in the
nature of sharpshooting than a
sustained barrage of criticism. On
slavery, he was not so much
appalled by the conditions under which
the slaves lived as by the
curious racial opaqueness manifested
both by the northern and
the southern states on the Negro
question. He attended a slave
sale, and though he recorded a wife
being sold apart from her
husband, he also remarked on the fact
that she soon recovered
her spirits. Another common feature of
the American scene was
the open piracy of works of literature.
In New York he saw a
firm which was exclusively devoted to pirating the Household
William Chambers in America 147
Words of Charles Dickens. Just after he had congratulated
him-
self that his own Chambers's Journal
was exempt from such
enterprise, it also fell into pirates'
hands. "The Americans," he
commented, "have done themselves
no great honour in so long
postponing the enactment of an
international copyright treaty--a
subject legislated upon years ago by
Great Britain." A third blot
on the inviting surface of American
life was the abuse of the
system of franking letters and the
inefficient post system. Here,
too, British practice was held up as an
object lesson.
In the so-called amenities of
nineteenth century life, he
found that American practice in the
matter of heating houses and
building railways was also open to
serious criticism:
O those terribly suffocating
apartments, with the streams of warm
air rushing out of gratings from some
unimaginable hot cavern beneath--
siroccos of the desert led, as a matter
of fancy, into drawing rooms--
languor-promoting and cheek-blanching
gales--enemies to health and
longevity! How the ordinary duties of
life are carried on in these hot-
houses, I cannot understand.... That
such a practice is the main cause
of a want of rosy colour in the
complexion, and that appearance of pre-
mature old age in many persons of both
sexes, is past a doubt; though
I am not aware that the subject has met
with attention from physiologists.
On American railways his criticism was
not tempered with respect:
There is much recklessness in the
management, and a general in-
difference to regularity or safety.
Candidly considered, the American rail-
way-system has many imperfections. Its
rude arrangements, including the
plan of making no distinction in the
classes of travellers, would never
pass muster in Europe.
Yet respect is the cardinal feature of
the book. It underlies
all his criticisms and buttresses his
main theme: the liberalizing
of Great Britain. America was the
backcloth against which his
pleas for a press free from a stamp
tax, an educational system
free from sectarian dominance, a
political machine free from the
dominance of a particular class, and an
open avenue of oppor-
tunity to everyone, could be more
effective.
Naturally, as a publisher of popular
books, he was greatly
impressed by the free, cheap press. To
quote:
In nothing, perhaps, is there such a
contrast between Great Britain
and America, as in the facilities for disseminating
newspapers. In the
148 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
former country, newspapers can hardly be
said to reach the hands of
rural labourers. We could, indeed, point
out several counties in England
which cannot support so much as a single
weekly paper; but depend for
intelligence on a few prints posted from
a distance-such prints afford-
ing no local information and throwing no
light whatever on the peculiar,
and it may be unfortunate, political and
social circumstances in which
the people of these counties are placed.
On the other hand, such is the
saliency of thought, such the freedom of
action, in the United States, that
a town has hardly time to get into shape
before its newspaper is started;
and as one always leads to two, we have
soon a pair of journals firing
away at each other, and keeping the
neighbourhood in amusement, if not
in a reasonable amount of intelligence.
Similarly, the American system of
rate-aided education evoked
his admiration:
The Americans-and I may add, the
Canadians-have got com-
pletely the start of the people of Great
Britain, who indeed, in this respect,
are behind the English Puritans of the
seventeenth century-behind even
John Knox, a century earlier. While
generation after generation in Eng-
land is passing away imperfectly
instructed for the present, and as im-
perfectly prepared for a future state of
existence, our American brethren,
unimpeded by obstructions of any kind,
have shot far ahead, and are
carrying the triumphs of free and
universal education to limits scarcely
so much as dreamed of in this country.
In this opinion, Chambers was supported
by the opinions of
George Wallis and Joseph Whitworth, who
reported to the British
government, after visiting the New York
exhibition, that where
sound and systematic education had been
longest, and in all
probability most perfectly carried out,
the greatest manufactur-
ing developments were to be found.
He was particularly impressed by the
technological zest ex-
hibited by the Americans. In his own
line, printing and publish-
ing, he was much impressed by the
machinery of the firm of
Harpers and opined that the thirty-four
steam presses "were
producing the finest kind of work, such
as is still effected only
by hand labour in England, into which
country the inventor,
Adams of Boston, would doubtless be
doing a service to introduce
them."
But most important of all was the
general atmosphere in
America. This reoccurs throughout his
journey:
William Chambers in America 149
The sentiment of hope is observed
to enjoy a vigourous existence in
America [he wrote after visiting a
factory at Lowell]. Prepared by educa-
tion, the way is open to all; and so
easily is an independent position
gained, that none need sink down in
despair, or become tipplers in mere
desperation and vacuity of thought. Even
in working at cotton mills,
hope has its aspirations in a way not
permitted by the customs of
England.
It was this sentiment of hope which he
recurred to in his
favorable description of America as
"a field for the reception
of emigrants":
From all that came under my notice, I am
bound to recommend it as
a new home to all whose hearts and hands
are disposed to labour, and
who, for the sake of future prospects,
as regards themselves and families,
are willing to make a present sacrifice.
. . . In America, everything con-
tributes to stimulate his higher
emotions. The sentiment of hope is
stimulated to an extraordinary degree.
His enthusiasm for things American
prompted certain of
his friends to suggest that he should
himself settle in New York.
"Though coming rather late in the
day," he confessed "the idea
was not without its allurements."
If one of the most responsible
publishers of mid-Victorian Britain
thought this, how much more
were his readers likely to entertain
the same sentiments. Catering
as he did to the lower middle class and
working class reader, his
work should be considered in any
estimate of forces stimulating
migration towards the poor man's
utopia, as well as helping to
strengthen the firm determination of
such classes in England to
win similar privileges in their own
country if they could not
migrate to the land where such
privileges prevailed.