Journal of Victorian Culture

I would rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow men, than I would have heaps and mines of gold. But the two things do not seem to me incompatible.

– Dickens, Speech at Boston Dinner (1 February 1842) ¹

A touchstone of debate in modern cultural theory is the idea of a tension between the goals of commercial culture and those of a genuinely 'popular' culture consonant with the values and interests of the populace.² Speaking in America at the dawn of 'the first age of mass culture', Dickens, like notable recent commentators, did not see this tension as inevitable.³ He rightly assumed that a statement of belief in a model of culture that was both capitalist and communal would meet with approval in nineteenth-century America. At this stage of his first trip to the States of 1842, expectations were still high that there would be a perfect meeting of minds between Dickens, the literary superstar associated with democratic, populist values, and America, a New World founded on the principles of 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'. Before reaching the States, Dickens had written to the editor of the New York Knickerbocker Magazine of 'the glow into which I rise, when I think of the wonders that await us'.⁴ One leading article published during his stay explained that Dickens was a hero for the Americans because of the 'democratic genius' and 'idea of human equality' that they shared. America was a place 'where his popular tendencies' were 'not likely to be weakened', and his writings would 'hasten on the great crisis of the English Revolution (speed the hour!) far more effectively than any of the open assaults of Radicalism or Chartism'.⁵ But as has been well documented, Dickens and America became mutually dis-ffected during his first visit. Rather than confirming Dickens's radicalor egalitarian tendencies, America had the opposite effect: 'This is not the Republic of my imagination', he memorably wrote to Macready. [End Page 173] 'I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy'((22 March 1842); Letters: III, 156). To Forster, he famously announced:

I tremble for a radical coming here, unless he is a radical on principle,by reason and reflection, and from the sense of right. I fear that if hewere anything else, he would return home a tory … […] I do fear that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this country, in thefailure of its example to the earth.

((24 February 1842); Letters : III, 90)

Dickens's disillusionment with America has been explained in various ways. For Jerome Meckier, 'Dickens discovered his real selfin 1842', a self that was 'more English and Victorian after visiting America'.⁶ For Michael Slater, by contrast, 'Dickens was a natural American' who 'had just the same love/hate relationship with America as he had with the country of his birth'.⁷ In a related vein, David Parker argues that, 'For Dickens America was an unflattering glass'.⁸ Slaterand the editors of the Pilgrim edition of Dickens's Letters pinpointthe change in Dickens's attitude to America to the aftermath of the14 February 'Boz Ball' – an extravagant Ball in his honour in New York – after which, he was confined to his hotel room with illness for three days (15–17 February).⁹ During this time, he was able to reflect on attacks on him in the press for the ostentatious way in which he was being fêted and the public stance he had taken urging America to sign up to an international copyright agreement (the lack of which meant that Dickens's works could be reprinted without permission or payment in America). Mercenary motives were attributed to Dickens and it was even suggested in some quarters that the entire trip was motivated by a desire to promote a copyright agreement, accusations to which Dickens took great offence (Letters: III, x).

This article differs from existing readings by explaining Dickens's change of heart about America in terms that go beyond the auto-biographical, and in a...