VI. Raising Dickens- Cleveland Style

People retired early in 1842; probably because there was precious little reason to postpone bedtime. Even the grogshops had closed their doors by midnight, and Cleveland was a dark patch on a black plateau as the sturdy steamship with the sturdy name, the Constitution,
groped for the Cuyahoga River opening and safe mooring in the early hours of April 25th.

Likely there were some curious Clevelanders about as the ship made to. Its arrival had been widely publicized, and the entire town was anxious to see, in person, the celebrated passenger it carried, young Charles Dickens, the English writer.

Dickens was on the final swing of his first American tour when the Constitution docked in Cleveland. He had arrived in Boston on January 24, and since had been touring the United States by stagecoach, canal boat, river packet, trains, horseback, and ship. His travels had taken him far into the western country-as far west as St. Louis. He had made his way back east by the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, debarking at Cincinnati. From the Queen City, he had traveled by coach northward through Ohio to Sandusky, where he had boarded the Constitution. It, hopefully, would take him to Buffalo, but not without pausing overnight in Cleveland.

The prospect of stopping in Cleveland did not please Boz.

Boz was angry, no doubt about it, and his attitude toward Cleveland could not be described as anything less than hostile.

During his brief stay in Sandusky, Dickens had picked up a copy of a Cleveland newspaper, the Plain Dealer, and his eyes had alighted upon an editorial in the publication which set his loyal British blood boiling. It was, in fact, a reprint from another newspaper, but Dickens either did not notice the credit line, or else he assumed-as he had a right to-that the very act of reprinting the piece was an editorial imprimatur.

The editorial advocated war with England to the death, and said that Britain must be “whipped again.” It promised Americans that within two years they would be singing “Yankee Doodle” in Hyde Park and “Hail, Columbia” in the courts of Westminster.

The editorial had appeared originally in an Alexandria, Virginia, newspaper, Index, and the editor at the publication, Jesse E. Dow, is assumed to have written the piece which so angered Dickens when he read it in the Plain Dealer.

“War With England” was the headline over the editorial, which said:

“We must confess we are astonished at the apparent apathy of Congress on the subject of a war with England….

“England must conquer the United States, or she must sink into the grave of nations. Statesmen and diplomats may dream of peace, but the enemy’s cannon will ere long arouse them with a thunder note, and then a war of extermination will commence in earnest….

“We pray not for war if we can have an honorable peace, but we cannot have such. The grasping after the wealth of the world by England has destroyed her earlier sympathies and fired the train of her ambition. A hypocrite in the vesture of the church, she preaches the gospel of the world at one moment and lays the world under contribution at the next by force of arms. A harlot in spotless robes of a vestal, she speaks of purity and virtue and then seduces her hearers with her blandishments and honied tones. She has tyrannized over every power of Europe and Asia. Her fleets have scoured the seas, and her flag floats over every wild crag of the ocean. Despised and feared by all, she sits like a surly mastiff in her island kennel thirsting for blood, yet afraid to leave her litter. Her gold conquered Napoleon-her rapacity has caused nearly every war for the last fifty years. She warred with her own colonies because we would not pay her debts, use her stamped hot pressed paper and drink her infernal tea. She hates France because of her manufactures and curses America for having the manliness to tell her to mind her own business. We are ready to war with England….

“Like Sir John Falstaff we can give reasons as plenty as blackberries for a war; and, feeling confident that we must have one, we are desirous of doing the business up handsomely at once, before our ardor cools or our countrymen become callous to insult and invasion.

“Our country teems with strong arms and stout hearts, burning for the fight. The war spirit is up among the people. The old drums of Louisburg, Havana, Bunkerhill, Saratoga, York-Town, New Orleans and an hundred other scenes of American glory are waiting for the signal. Our dark old battleships for the ‘beat to quarters.’ Then let our reformers, who are now so busy in saving wafers and sealing wax and who sell letter paper in the post office of the House of Representatives at $8 per ream, be up and doing. Congress of American Republicanism, stand to your arms-war is at hand. In less than fifteen days it may be upon us in all its horrors. Pass your militia bill; distribute your arms; authorize your President to grant commissions to privateers; call home your Whalemen; increase your navy; send your commercial agents around the world and bid the American hearts come home. Fight England, if fight you must, with a will to make a business of it, and my word for it, in less than three years the old Grid Iron and the stars will float triumphant over the seas. The people demand war! Our country is insulted and her glory is dimmed by the insolence of England. We should act as a man would act who has been insulted upon the walk. Thank God, the old blood of the Revolution is still trickling in our veins. We whipped England when we were in our infancy; we threshed her again when we arrived at the age of manhood; and with the blessing of God we can in a short time sing ‘Jefferson and Liberty’ in Hyde Park and ‘Hail Columbia’ in the scarlet halls of Westminster.”

In his American Notes, which Dickens published upon his return to England that year, the English author recalled both the editorial and his brief stop in Cleveland, writing:

“After calling at one or two flat places, with low dams stretching out into the lake, whereon were stumpy light-houses, like windmills without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch vignette, we came at midnight to Cleveland, where we lay all night, and until 9 o’clock next
morning.

“I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in the shape of a newspaper which was very strong indeed upon the subject of Lord Ashburton’s recent arrival at Washington to adjust the paints of dispute between the United States government and Great Britain-informing its readers that as America had ‘whipped’ England in her infancy, and whipped her again in her youth, so it was clearly necessary that she must whip her once again in her maturity; and pledging its credit to all True Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in the approaching negotiations, and sent the English Lord home again in double-quick time, they should, within two years, sing ‘Yankee Doodle in Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in the scarlet courts of Westminster.’ I found it a pretty town, and had the satisfaction of beholding the outside of the journal from which I have just quoted. I did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit who indited the paragraph in question, but I have no doubt he is a prodigious man in his way, and held in high repute by a select circle.”

Although he did not mention him by name, Dickens obviously was referring to the editor of the Plain Dealer, J. W. Gray, whose name appeared in the masthead of the newspaper. Gray appears to have taken a bad rap from Dickens, but even though he was not guilty of writing the anti-English editorial, he was just as bombastic and jingoistic in his editorials as was the anonymous author of the piece that offended Dickens. The same month-April-that Dickens arrived, Gray had written:

“The time is at hand when England- That power whose flag is now unfurled, Whose morning drum beats round the world– will be humbled; and He who guides the destinies of nations will take vengeance on this ‘Disturber of the peace.’’’

There was still another welcoming story in the Plain Dealer that month. It said: “‘Bozophobia’ is a new disease which has broken out in the eastern cities. The dandies, dandizettes and fools are running after Boz, alias Charles Dickens. The tickets for a ball recently given him in New York sold for $5 apiece!”

It didn’t help one bit, so far as the Dickens’ humor was concerned, that the ride across Lake Erie had been distressingly rough. The white-caps had made the Constitution yaw and pitch about, to everybody’s discomfort.

“It’s all very fine talking about Lake Erie,” Dickens wrote a friend, “but it won’t do for persons who are liable to seasickness. We were all sick. It’s almost as bad in that respect as the Atlantic. The waves are very short, and horribly constant.”

In the same letter, written at Niagara Falls on the English side the following day, April 26, Dickens described his brief visit to Cleveland.

“We lay all Sunday night, at a town (and a beautiful town too) called Cleveland; on Lake Erie. The people poured on board, in crowds, by six on Monday morning, to see me; and a party of ’gentlemen’ actually planted themselves before our little cabin, and stared in at the door and windows while I was washing, and Kate lay in bed. I was so incensed at this and at a certain newspaper published in that town which I had accidentally seen in Sandusky x x x, that when the mayor came on board to present himself to me, according to custom, I refused to see him, and bade Mr. Q tell him why and wherefor. His honor took it very cooly 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!”

The mayor in question was Dr. Joshua Mills, by all accounts a good physician, a fine mayor, and hail fellow well met-when he was met, that is. In any analysis of the Dickens’ visit, Dr. Mills emerges in a highly sympathetic light. Here he was, a simple man trying to perform a simple official function, that of welcoming a great literary celebrity to the city, only to be rudely rebuffed. Possibly he carried a key to the city, tucked away somewhere in his greatcoat, but there is no doubt that his head was swimming with the florid words of a grandiloquent greeting.

What should a mayor do under the circumstances? Most mayors would turn color in embarrassment, harrumph loudly, and stomp off deck and down the rickety gangplank-perhaps even lean out of the hansom waiting to carry them back to City Hall to shake a stick at the cabin of the rude Englishman.

Dr. Mills, clearly, was no ordinary municipal official. He was a doctor and he hardly could be expected to behave in a pattern traditional with politicians. Even so, his behavior was remarkable. Perhaps his medical knowledge had disciplined his temper-assuming his temper had been ired by Dickens’ refusal to be welcomed to the city. But the real clue to Dr. Mills, the man, was his simple, direct action in sitting down on the wharf and whittling a big stick down to the size of a cribbage peg.

It was, in a way, a kind of Dickensian situation itself, which had the highest elected official of the port city placidly whittling and covering the wharf with the fine shavings while the great author peeked out-wide-eyed, one would guess- at the scene.

Eventually, Mayor Mills did leave. So did the hundreds of people who had traveled to the dockside in the chill Cuyahoga Valley that April morning. When only a handful of the more determined sightseers still hung on, Dickens emerged from his cabin and even left the Constitution for a short “prowl” around the pretty little town in the company of a friend. Along the way, he sighted the building that housed the Plain Dealer, the offending journal, but he did nothing more than stare balefully at the structure before turning on his heels and returning to the ship. At nine o’clock that morning, the Constitution lifted anchor and steamed out of the river, carrying Charles Dickens away from an occasion of displeasure.

In mitigation of Dickens’ behavior toward the mayor and the people of Cleveland, there is the knowledge that, being close to the end of three months of arduous travel, be was fatigued and probably homesick. His trip from Columbus to Sandusky through the Ohio wilderness was mainly on a “corduroy road” made of tree trunks, and the jolting ride left a lasting impression.

“Good Heaven!” Dickens exclaimed in his description, “if you had only felt one of the least of the jolts with which the coach falls from log to log! It is like nothing but going up a steep flight of stairs in an omnibus.”

Count the bumps, throw in the hateful editorial, add a bit of mal de mer, consider the goofs who insisted on peeking into the Dickens’ cabin while he was trying to get dressed, and the author comes back into focus as a human being performing and reacting under considerable duress.

It was November of 1842 before the first copy of American Notes was received in Cleveland, and the Plain Dealer, which reprinted sections of the book, made this gratuitous observation:

“His [Dickens’] stay in this country was short, his time was mostly spent in barrooms, stage coaches and steamboats; and it is evident from his Notes that he has become acquainted only with such characteristics of our people as float on the surface, and has yet to learn our real characters. However, there is much in this work to amuse and instruct the American readers, although in every page we meet traces of a deep-seated English prejudice.”

A few weeks later, the following Plain Dealer editorial appeared:

BOZ IN CLEVELAND

Long will be remembered that bright morning in May [sic] when it was announced to the citizens of Cleveland that “the Dickens was among them”…

All the dignitaries from the shirtless loafer to his Honor the Mayor met the boat at the foot of Main street, where other famous men had disembarked…

When his “Notes of America” were first published, the would be great men of this little city ordered ten score copies by Hardin & Co.’s express to be brought with lightning speed. The books were opened and all of Cleveland that appeared was the following lines, the glory of which we take all to OUR HUMBLE SELF;

(At this point the Plain Dealer editorial reprinted Dickens’ commentary on Cleveland quoted earlier in these pages.)

That immortalizes us, that word “prodigious”! How slight the foundation often, on which rests the fabric of human greatness! But for a vagrant copy of The Plain Dealer and the careless penning of a paragraph which proved unpalatable to English taste we might have lived and died in comparative obscurity. But the above “note” has made us the subject of comment by all the Lords, Dukes, Marquises and Ministers of England!

Sluggish the spirit and base the lot of him who is content to plod through a dull life to a fameless grave!

The only thing Cleveland could cheer in the entire episode was Mayor Mills’ whittling performance. This was no small tiling, really, because Cleveland- like all cities everywhere- has had chief executives without even that minor skill to recommend them. Good whittlers, like good mayors, are awfully hard to find.