Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2260 page)

“When we reach Baltimore, we are in the regions of slavery. It exists there, in its least shocking and most mitigated form; but there it is. They whisper, here (they dare only whisper, you know, and that below their breaths), that on that place, and all through the South, there is a dull gloomy cloud on which the very word seems written. I shall be able to say, one of these days, that I accepted no public mark of respect in any place where slavery was; — and that’s something.

“The ladies of America are decidedly and unquestionably beautiful. Their complexions are not so good as those of Englishwomen; their beauty does not last so long; and their figures are very inferior. But they are most beautiful. I still reserve my opinion of the national character, — just whispering that 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 he were anything else, he would return home a Tory. . . . I say no more on that head for two months from this time, save that I do fear that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this country, in the failure of its example to the earth. The scenes that are passing in Congress now, all tending to the separation of the States, fill one with such a deep disgust that I dislike the very name of Washington (meaning the place, not the man), and am repelled by the mere thought of approaching it.”

“Twenty-seventh February. Sunday.

“There begins to be great consternation here, in reference to the Cunard packet which (we suppose) left Liverpool on the fourth. She has not yet arrived. We scarcely know what to do with ourselves in our extreme anxiety to get letters from home. I have really had serious thoughts of going back to Boston, alone, to be nearer news. We have determined to remain here until Tuesday afternoon, if she should not arrive before, and to send Mr. Q. and the luggage on to Philadelphia to-morrow morning. God grant she may not have gone down! but every ship that comes in brings intelligence of a terrible gale (which indeed was felt ashore here) on the night of the fourteenth; and the sea-captains swear (not without some prejudice, of course) that no steamer could have lived through it, supposing her to have been in its full fury. As there is no steam-packet to go to England, supposing the Caledonia not to arrive, we are obliged to send our letters by the Garrick ship, which sails early to-morrow morning. Consequently I must huddle this up, and dispatch it to the post-office with all speed. I have so much to say that I could fill quires of paper, which renders this sudden pull-up the more provoking.

“I have in my portmanteau a petition for an international copyright law, signed by all the best American writers, with Washington Irving at their head. They have requested me to hand it to Clay for presentation, and to back it with any remarks I may think proper to offer. So ‘Hoo-roar for the principle, as the money-lender said ven he vouldn’t renoo the bill.’

“God bless you. . . . You know what I would say about home and the darlings. A hundred times God bless you. . . . Fears are entertained for Lord Ashburton also. Nothing has been heard of him.”

A brief letter, sent me next day by the minister’s bag, was in effect a postscript to the foregoing, and expressed still more strongly the doubts and apprehensions his voyage out had impressed him with, and which, though he afterwards saw reason greatly to modify his misgivings, were not so strange at that time as they appear to us now:

“Carlton House, New York, February twenty-eighth, 1842. . . . The Caledonia, I grieve and regret to say, has not arrived. If she left England to her time, she has been four-and-twenty days at sea. There is no news of her; and on the nights of the fourteenth and eighteenth it blew a terrible gale, which almost justifies the worst suspicions. For myself, I have hardly any hope of her; having seen enough, in our passage out, to convince me that steaming across the ocean in heavy weather is as yet an experiment of the utmost hazard.

“As it was supposed that there would be no steamer whatever for England this month (since in ordinary course the Caledonia would have returned with the mails on the 2d of March), I hastily got the letters ready yesterday and sent them by the Garrick; which may perhaps be three weeks out, but is not very likely to be longer. But belonging to the Cunard company is a boat called the Unicorn, which in the summertime plies up the St. Lawrence, and brings passengers from Canada to join the British and North American steamers at Halifax. In the winter she lies at the last-mentioned place; from which news has come this morning that they have sent her on to Boston for the mails, and, rather than interrupt the communication, mean to dispatch her to England in lieu of the poor Caledonia. This in itself, by the way, is a daring deed; for she was originally built to run between Liverpool and Glasgow, and is no more designed for the Atlantic than a Calais packet-boat; though she once crossed it, in the summer season.

“You may judge, therefore, what the owners think of the probability of the Caledonia’s arrival. How slight an alteration in our plans would have made us passengers on board of her!

“It would be difficult to tell you, my dear fellow, what an impression this has made upon our minds, or with what intense anxiety and suspense we have been waiting for your letters from home. We were to have gone South to-day, but linger here until to-morrow afternoon (having sent the secretary and luggage forward) for one more chance of news. Love to dear Macready, and to dear Mac, and every one we care for. It’s useless to speak of the dear children. It seems now as though we should never hear of them. . . .

“P.S. Washington Irving is a
great
fellow. We have laughed most heartily together. He is just the man he ought to be. So is Doctor Channing, with whom I have had an interesting correspondence since I saw him last at Boston. Halleck is a merry little man. Bryant a sad one, and very reserved. Washington Allston the painter (who wrote
Monaldi
) is a fine specimen of a glorious old genius. Longfellow, whose volume of poems I have got for you, is a frank accomplished man as well as a fine writer, and will be in town ‘next fall.’ Tell Macready that I suspect prices here must have rather altered since his time. I paid our fortnight’s bill here, last night. We have dined out every day (except when I was laid up with a sore throat), and only had in all four bottles of wine. The bill was 70
l.
English!!!

“You will see, by my other letter, how we have been fêted and feasted; and how there is war to the knife about the international copyright; and how I
will
speak about it, and decline to be put down. . . .

“Oh for news from home! I think of your letters so full of heart and friendship, with perhaps a little scrawl of Charley’s or Mamey’s, lying at the bottom of the deep sea; and am as full of sorrow as if they had once been living creatures. — Well! they
may
come, yet.”

They did reach him, but not by the Caledonia. His fears as to that vessel were but too well founded. On the very day when she was due in Boston (the 18th of February) it was learned in London that she had undergone misadventure; that, her decks having been swept and her rudder torn away, though happily no lives were lost, she had returned disabled to Cork; and that the Acadia, having received her passengers and mails, was to sail with them from Liverpool next day.

Of the main subject of that letter written on the day preceding, — of the quite unpremeditated impulse, out of which sprang his advocacy of claims which he felt to be represented in his person, — of the injustice done by his entertainers to their guest in ascribing such advocacy to selfishness, — and of the graver wrong done by them to their own highest interests, nay, even to their commonest and most vulgar interests, in continuing to reject those claims, I will add nothing now to what all those years ago I laboured very hard to lay before many readers. It will be enough if I here print, from the authors’ letters I sent out to him by the next following mail, in compliance with his wish, this which follows from a very dear friend of his and mine. I fortunately had it transcribed before I posted it to him; Mr. Carlyle having in some haste written from “Templand, 26 March, 1842,” and taken no copy.

“We learn by the newspapers that you everywhere in America stir up the question of international copyright, and thereby awaken huge dissonance where all else were triumphant unison for you. I am asked my opinion of the matter, and requested to write it down in words.

“Several years ago, if memory err not, I was one of many English writers who, under the auspices of Miss Martineau, did already sign a petition to congress praying for an international copyright between the two Nations, — which properly are not two Nations, but one;
indivisible
by parliament, congress, or any kind of human law or diplomacy, being already
united
by Heaven’s Act of Parliament, and the everlasting law of Nature and Fact. To that opinion I still adhere, and am like to continue adhering.

“In discussion of the matter before any congress or parliament, manifold considerations and argumentations will necessarily arise; which to me are not interesting, nor essential for helping me to a decision. They respect the time and manner in which the thing should be; not at all whether the thing should be or not. In an ancient book, reverenced I should hope on both sides of the Ocean, it was thousands of years ago written down in the most decisive and explicit manner, ‘Thou
shalt not
steal.’ That thou belongest to a different ‘Nation,’ and canst steal without being certainly hanged for it, gives thee no permission to steal! Thou shalt
not
in anywise steal at all! So it is written down, for Nations and for Men, in the Law-Book of the Maker of this Universe. Nay, poor Jeremy Bentham and others step in here, and will demonstrate that it is actually our true convenience and expediency not to steal; which I for my share, on the great scale and on the small, and in all conceivable scales and shapes, do also firmly believe it to be. For example, if Nations abstained from stealing, what need were there of fighting, — with its butcherings and burnings, decidedly the most expensive thing in this world? How much more two Nations, which, as I said, are but one Nation; knit in a thousand ways by Nature and Practical Intercourse; indivisible brother elements of the same great Saxondom, to which in all honourable ways be long life!

“When Mr. Robert Roy M’Gregor lived in the district of Menteith on the Highland border two centuries ago, he for his part found it more convenient to supply himself with beef by stealing it alive from the adjacent glens, than by buying it killed in the Stirling butchers’ market. It was Mr. Roy’s plan of supplying himself with beef in those days, this of stealing it. In many a little ‘Congress’ in the district of Menteith, there was debating, doubt it not, and much specious argumentation this way and that, before they could ascertain that, really and truly, buying was the best way to get your beef; which, however, in the long run they did with one assent find it indisputably to be: and accordingly they hold by it to this day.”

This brave letter was an important service rendered at a critical time, and Dickens was very grateful for it. But, as time went on, he had other and higher causes for gratitude to its writer. Admiration of Carlyle increased in him with his years; and there was no one whom in later life he honoured so much, or had a more profound regard for.

CHAPTER XXI.

PHILADELPHIA, WASHINGTON, AND THE SOUTH.

1842.

At Philadelphia — Rule in Printing Letters — Promise as to Railroads — Experience of them — Railway-cars — Charcoal Stoves — Ladies’ Cars — Spittoons — Massachusetts and New York — Police-cells and Prisons — House of Detention and Inmates — Women and Boy Prisoners — Capital Punishment — A House of Correction — Four Hundred Single Cells — Comparison with English Prisons — Inns and Landlords — At Washington — Hotel Extortion — Philadelphia Penitentiary — The Solitary System — Solitary Prisoners — Talk with Inspectors — Bookseller Carey — Changes of Temperature — Henry Clay — Proposed Journeyings — Letters from England — Congress and Senate — Leading American Statesmen — The People of America — Englishmen “located” there — ”Surgit amari aliquid” — The Copyright Petition — At Richmond — Irving appointed to Spain — Experience of a Slave City — Incidents of Slave Life — Discussion with a Slaveholder — Feeling of South to England — Levees at Richmond — One more Banquet accepted — My Gift of
Shakspeare
— Home Letters and Fancies — Self-reproach of a Noble Nature — Washington Irving’s Leave-taking.

Dickens’s next letter was begun in the “United States Hotel, Philadelphia,” and bore date “Sunday, sixth March, 1842.” It treated of much dealt with afterwards at greater length in the
Notes
, but the freshness and vivacity of the first impressions in it have surprised me. I do not, however, print any passage here which has not its own interest independently of anything contained in that book. The rule will be continued, as in the portions of letters already given, of not transcribing anything before printed, or anything having even but a near resemblance to descriptions that appear in the
Notes
.