March 15th

True to her word, Libbie sent me extracts from several of her husband’s letters, but with them, just a very brief accompanying note. “Dear Miss Kellogg, These letters tell about the last weeks of my husband’s life, but as he shared the weather and the hardships with your father, I thought you might like to know about them. LBC.”

I decided that for the end section of my essay, I would intersperse my father’s dispatches with the letters from General Custer.

Miss Marble announced that those who had not yet done a class presentation showing the progress of their essays would be expected to be ready today. Obviously in an hour lesson not everyone can be called upon, so I rather hoped I would not be. We had had presentations by Josephine on Sacagawea, from Albertina about Harriet Beecher Stowe, and from Cora Sue.

When the time came, I was lucky, as Miss Marble decided it was time for a boy to take the stage. Thomas had to tell us what he knew about Charles Dickens.

He started out by saying that he wanted to do a different picture of Charles Dickens from the one that was normally known by people who read his books. So he wanted to give Charles Dickens, as seen from America and as he saw Americans.

On January 3, 1842, Charles Dickens, when he was just about 30, sailed from Liverpool on the steamship Britannia bound for America. Dickens was at the height of his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic and, securing a year off from writing, determined to visit America to see for himself this haven for the oppressed which had supposedly righted all the wrongs of the Old World.

The voyage out, accompanied by his wife, Kate, and her maid, Anne Brown, proved to be one of the stormiest in years and his cabin aboard the Britannia proved to be so small that Dickens quipped that their portmanteaux could "no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be forced into a flowerpot".

Here is what he writes about trying to administer brandy to his wife and her maid to calm their nerves due to the violent seas on the journey.

"They, and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better occurring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured a tumblerful without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa -- a fixture, extending entirely across the cabin -- where they clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned.

"When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to administer it, with many consolatory expressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other end! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I suppose I dodged them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, without reaching them once; and, by the time I did catch them, the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a tea-spoonful."

Here is what one newspaper has to say about his visit to their town.

Worchester Egis (Massachusetts)
February 5, 1842

A reporter for the Worchester Egis met Dickens at a reception at the Governor's mansion and logged this detailed description of Dickens:

We found a middle-sized person in a brown frock coat, a red figured vest, somewhat of the flash order, and a fancy scarf cravat, that concealed the collar and was fastened to the bosom in rather voluptuous folds by a double pin and chain. His proportions were well-rounded, and filled the dress suit he wore.

We will close this off-hand description without going more minutely into the anatomy of Mr. Dickens, by saying that he wears a gold watch guard over his vest, and a shaggy greatcoat of bear or buffalo skin that would excite the admiration of a Kentucky huntsman.

We believe that it is well understood that he draws his characters and incidents less from imagination than upon observation. His writing bears slight evidence of reading, and he seldom if ever quotes from books. His wonderful perceptions, his acute sensibility, and his graphic fancy, furnish the means by which his fame has been created.

The early maturity of his genius and reputation have but few parallels. May he long live to edify and amuse the world, and to receive the reward of praise and emolument which is his just due.

In keeping with Dickens fascination for the unusual, visits to prisons, hospitals for the insane, reform schools, and schools for blind, deaf, and dumb children were high on his list of places to visit in almost every city he toured.

He also toured factories, the industrial mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, a Shaker village in New York, and a prairie in Illinois. While in Washington he attended sessions of Congress, toured the White House, and met President Tyler.

In the White House, as just about everywhere he went in America, Dickens was appalled at the American male passion for chewing tobacco. He gives this account of a visit to the Capital building:

"Both Houses are handsomely carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon with which every honourable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being described.

"I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account.

"It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to see so many honourable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough, too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair, with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient "plug" with his penknife, and, when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place."

Mr. Dickens wanted to see the South and observe slavery first hand. He was revolted by what he saw in Richmond, both by the condition of the slaves themselves and by the white's attitudes towards slavery. In American Notes, the book written after he returned to England describing his American visit, he wrote scathingly about the institution of slavery, citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves horribly disfigured by their cruel masters.