Dickens's England (40 page)

Charles Dickens,
American Notes
(1842)

A MODEL

Mr Chollop was, of course, one of the most remarkable men in the country; but he really was a notorious person besides. He was usually described by his friends in the South and West as ‘a splendid sample of our native raw material, sir,' and was much esteemed for his devotion to rational Liberty; for the better propagation whereof he usually carried a brace of revolving-pistols in his pocket . . .

He always introduced himself to strangers as a worshipper of Freedom; was the consistent advocate of lynch law, and slavery; and invariably recommended, both in print and speech, the ‘tarring and feathering' of any unpopular person who differed from himself. He called this ‘planting the standard of civilization in the wilder gardens of My country'.

There is little doubt that Chollop would have planted this standard in Eden [Cairo, Illinois] at Mark's expense, in return for his plainness of speech (for the genuine freedom is dumb save when she vaunts herself), but for the utter desolation and decay prevailing in the settlement, and his own approaching departure from it. As it was, he contented himself with showing Mark one of the revolving-pistols . . .

‘Afore I go,' he said sternly, ‘I have got a leetle word to say to you. You are darnation 'cute, you are.'

Mark thanked him for the compliment.

‘But you are much too 'cute to last. I can't con-ceive of any spotted Painter [panther] in the bush, as ever was so riddled through and through as you will be, I bet.'

‘What for?' asked Mark.

‘We must be cracked up, sir,' retorted Chollop, in a tone of menace. ‘You are not now in A despotic land. We are a model to the airth, and must be jist cracked up, I tell you.'

‘What, I speak too free, do I?' cried Mark.

‘I have drawed upon A man, and fired upon A man for less,' said Chollop, frowning. ‘I have knowed strong men obleeged to make themselves uncommon skase for less. I have knowed men Lynched for less, and beaten into punkin'-sarse [pumpkin sauce] for less, by an enlightened people. We are the intellect and virtue of the airth, the cream of human natur, and the flower Of moral force. Our backs is easy ris. We must be cracked up, or they rises, and we snarls. We shows our teeth, I tell you, fierce. You'd better crack us up, you had!'

Charles Dickens,
Martin Chuzzlewit
(1843)

BY THE BANKS OF THE OHIO

A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than others; and then there is usually a green island, covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe for passengers, at some small town or village (I ought to say city, every place is a city here); but the banks are for the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, which, hereabouts, are already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or trace of human footstep; nor is anything seen to move about them but the blue jay, whose colour is so bright, and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthy butchers' blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared; the felled trees lying yet upon the soil; and the log-house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his axe or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. . . .

Evening slowly steals upon the landscape and changes it before me, when we stop to set some emigrants ashore.

Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All their worldly goods are a bag, a large chest and an old chair: one old, high-backed, rush-bottomed chair: a solitary settler in itself. They are rowed ashore in the boat, while the vessel stands a little off awaiting its return, the water being shallow. They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on the summit of which are a few log cabins, attainable only by a long winding path. It is growing dusk; but the sun is very red, and shines in the water and on some of the tree-tops, like fire.

The men get out of the boat first; help out the women; take out the bag, the chest, the chair; bid the rowers ‘goodbye'; and shove the boat off for them. At the first plash of the oars in the water, the oldest woman of the party sits down in the old chair, close to the water's edge, without speaking a word. None of the others sit down, though the chest is large enough for many seats. They all stand where they landed, as if stricken into stone; and look after the boat. So they remain, quite still and silent: the old woman and her old chair, in the centre; the bag and chest upon the shore, without anybody heeding them; all eyes fixed upon the boat. It comes alongside, is made fast, the men jump on board, the engine is put in motion, and we go hoarsely on again. There they stand yet, without the motion of a hand. I can see them through my glass, when, in the distance and increasing darkness, they are mere specks to the eye: lingering there still: the old woman in the old chair, and all the rest about her: not stirring in the least degree. And thus I slowly lose them.

Charles Dickens,
American Notes
(1842)

A PROVINCIAL IN ROME

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up on English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort . . . The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world; all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.

George Eliot,
Middlemarch
(1872)

ITALY AND ART

‘In Italy is she really,' said Flora, ‘with the grapes and figs growing everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organ-boys come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder being so young and bringing their white mice with them most humane, and is she really in that favoured land with nothing but blue about her and dying gladiators and Belvederes though Mr F. himself did not believe for his objection when in spirits was that the images could not be true there being no medium between expensive quantities of linen badly got up and all in creases and none whatever, which certainly does not seem probable though perhaps in consequence of the extremes of rich and poor which may account for it.'

Charles Dickens,
Little Dorrit
(1857)

THE CHURCH ON WHICH THE SUN NEVER SETS

From Greenland's icy mountains,

From India's coral strand,

Where Afric's sunny fountains

Roll down the golden sand,

From many an ancient river,

From many a palmy plain,

They call us to deliver

Their land from error's chain.

What though the spicy breezes

Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,

Though every prospect pleases

And only man is vile,

In vain with lavish kindness

The gifts of God are strown,

The heathen in his blindness

Bows down to wood and stone.

Can we, whose souls are lighted

With wisdom from on high,

Can we to men benighted

The lamp of life deny?

Salvation! Oh, salvation!

The joyful sound proclaim,

Till each remotest nation

Has learnt Messiah's name.

Waft, waft, ye winds, His story,

And you, ye waters, roll,

Till like a sea of glory,

He spreads from pole to pole;

Till o'er our ransomed nature

The Lamb for sinners slain,

Redeemer, King, Creator,

In bliss returns to reign.

Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta (1819)

THE BIBLE AND BUSINESS

Sending the Gospel to the heathen must, if this view be correct, include much more than is implied in the usual picture of the missionary, namely, a man going about with a Bible under his arm. The promotion of commerce ought to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than anything else, demolishes that sense of isolation which heathenism engenders, and makes the tribes feel themselves mutually dependent on, and mutually beneficial to each other. . . . My observations on this subject make me extremely desirous to promote the preparation of the raw materials of European manufacture in Africa, for by that means we may not only put a stop to the slave-trade, but introduce the negro family into the body corporate of nations, no member of which can suffer without the others suffering with it. Success in this, in both Eastern and Western Africa, would lead, in the course of time, to a much larger diffusion of the blessings of civilization than efforts exclusively spiritual and educational confined to any one small tribe.

David Livingstone,
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
(1857)

ARAB SLAVERS' PROPERTY

I once saw a party of twelve who had been slaves in their own country – Lunda or Londa [in Angola], of which Cazembe is chief or general. They were loaded with large, heavy wooden yokes, which are forked trees about three inches in diameter and seven or eight feet long. The neck is inserted in the fork, and an iron bar driven in across from one end of the fork to the other, and riveted; the other end is tied at night to a tree or to the ceiling of a hut, and the neck being firm in the fork, the slave is held off from loosing it. It is excessively troublesome to the wearer; and when marching, two yokes are tied together by their free ends, and loads put on the slaves' heads besides. Women, having in addition to the yoke and load a child on the back, have said to me in passing, ‘They are killing me; if they would take off the yoke I could manage the load and child, but I shall die with three loads.' One who spoke thus did die, and the poor little girl, her child, perished of starvation. I interceded for some; but, when unyoked, off they bounded into the long grass, and I was gently blamed for not caring to preserve the owner's property. After a day's march under a broiling vertical sun, with yokes and heavy loads, the strongest are exhausted. The party of twelve above mentioned were sitting singing and laughing. ‘Hallo!' said I, ‘these fellows take to it kindly; this must be the class for whom philosophers say slavery is the natural state,' and I went and asked the cause of their mirth. I had to ask the aid of their owner as to the meaning of the word
rukha,
which usually means to fly or to leap. They were using it to express the idea of haunting, as a ghost, and inflicting disease and death; and the song was, ‘Yes, we are going away to Manga (abroad, or white man's land) with yokes on our necks; but we shall have no yokes in death, and we shall return to haunt and kill you.' . . . In accordance with African belief, they had no doubt of being soon able, by ghost power, to kill . . .

David Livingstone,
Letter
(1872)

AFRICAN MEMORIES

To very many here, perhaps, African names have no interest, but to those who have travelled in Africa each name brings a recollection – each word has a distinct meaning; sometimes the recollections are pleasing, sometimes bitter. If I mention Ujiji, that little port in the Tanganyika almost hidden by palm groves, with the restless plangent surf rolling over the sandy beach, it is recalled as vividly to my mind as if I stood on that hilltop looking down upon it, and where, a few minutes later, I met the illustrious Livingstone. If I think of Unyanyembe, naturally I recollect the fretful, peevish and impatient life I led there, until I summoned courage, collected my men, and marched to the south to see Livingstone or to die. If I think of Ukonongo, recollections of our rapid marches, of famine, of hot suns, of surprises of enemies, and mutiny among my men, of feeding upon wild fruit, and of a desperate rush into a jungle. If I think of Ukawendi, I see a glorious land of lovely valleys, and green mountains, and forests of tall trees; the march under their twilight shades, and the exuberant chant of my people as we gaily tramped towards the north. If I think of Southern Urinza, I see mountains of haematite of iron – I see enormous masses of disintegrated rock, great chasms, deep ravines, a bleakness and desolation as of death. If I think of the Malagarazi, I can see the river, with its fatal reptiles and snorting hippopotami; I can see the salt plains stretching on either side; and if I think of Ulsha, recollections of the many trials we underwent, of the turbulent, contumacious villages, the preparations for battle, the alarm, and the happy escape, culminating in the happy meeting with Livingstone. There, in that open square, surrounded by hundreds of curious natives, stands the worn-out, pale-faced, grey-bearded and bent form of my great companion. There stand the sullen-eyed Arabs in their snowy dresses, girdled, stroking their long beards, wondering why I came. There stand the Wajiji, children of the Tanganyika, side by side with the Wanyamwezi, with the fierce and turbulent Warundi, with Livingstone and myself in the centre. Yes, I note it all, with the sunlight falling softly on the picturesque scene. I hear the low murmur of the surf, the rustling of the palm branches. I note the hush that has crept over the multitude as we clasp hands.