Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
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American Notes for General Circulation
by Charles Dickens
October, 1996 [Etext #675]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of American Notes, by Charles Dickens
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American Notes for General Circulation by Charles Dickens
Scanned and proofed by David Price
Page 4
Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
American Notes for General Circulation
PREFACE TO THE FIRST CHEAP EDITION OF "AMERICAN NOTES"
IT is nearly eight years since this book was first published. I
present it, unaltered, in the Cheap Edition; and such of my
opinions as it expresses, are quite unaltered too.
My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the
influences and tendencies which I distrust in America, have any
existence not in my imagination. They can examine for themselves
whether there has been anything in the public career of that
country during these past eight years, or whether there is anything
in its present position, at home or abroad, which suggests that
those influences and tendencies really do exist. As they find the
fact, they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wronggoing
in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge
that I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing,
they will consider me altogether mistaken.
Prejudiced, I never have been otherwise than in favour of the
United States. No visitor can ever have set foot on those shores,
with a stronger faith in the Republic than I had, when I landed in
America.
I purposely abstain from extending these observations to any
length. I have nothing to defend, or to explain away. The truth
is the truth; and neither childish absurdities, nor unscrupulous
contradictions, can make it otherwise. The earth would still move
round the sun, though the whole Catholic Church said No.
I have many friends in America, and feel a grateful interest in the
country. To represent me as viewing it with ill-nature, animosity,
or partisanship, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is
always a very easy one; and which I have disregarded for eight
years, and could disregard for eighty more.
LONDON, JUNE 22, 1850.
PREFACE TO THE "CHARLES DICKENS" EDITION OF "AMERICAN NOTES"
MY readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the
influences and tendencies which I distrusted in America, had, at
that time, any existence but in my imagination. They can examine
for themselves whether there has been anything in the public career
of that country since, at home or abroad, which suggests that those
Page 5
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bsp; Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
influences and tendencies really did exist. As they find the fact,
they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-going,
in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that
I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such indications,
they will consider me altogether mistaken - but not wilfully.
Prejudiced, I am not, and never have been, otherwise than in favour
of the United States. I have many friends in America, I feel a
grateful interest in the country, I hope and believe it will
successfully work out a problem of the highest importance to the
whole human race. To represent me as viewing AMERICA with illnature,
coldness, or animosity, is merely to do a very foolish
thing: which is always a very easy one.
CHAPTER I - GOING AWAY
I SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths
comical astonishment, with which, on the morning of the third of
January eighteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and
put my head into, a 'state-room' on board the Britannia steampacket,
twelve hundred tons burthen per register, bound for Halifax
and Boston, and carrying Her Majesty's mails.
That this state-room had been specially engaged for 'Charles
Dickens, Esquire, and Lady,' was rendered sufficiently clear even
to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing the
fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin
mattress, spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible
shelf. But that this was the state-room concerning which Charles
Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences
for at least four months preceding: that this could by any
possibility be that small snug chamber of the imagination, which
Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy strong upon
him, had always foretold would contain at least one little sofa,
and which his lady, with a modest yet most magnificent sense of its
limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not hold more
than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight
(portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to
say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a
flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless,
and profoundly preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or
connection with, those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous