“I am sick to death of the life I have been leading here—worn out in mind and body—and quite weary and distressed.” —Charles Dickens, during his first visit to New York
COMING TO AMERICA
In 1842, New Yorkers were thrilled to hear that English author Charles Dickens was about to visit their city. Dickens was a superstar by then—his novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and Barnaby Rudge crusaded for the poor and the oppressed, making him the most read author in the United States. Americans wanted to go all out for Dickens, and as the nation’s wealthiest city, New Yorkers felt sure they could wow him. They also hoped the author’s next work would teach the world how modern and cosmopolitan New York was. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way.
On January 22, 1842, Charles Dickens arrived in Boston, where cheering crowds lined the streets. Artists, literati, and city officials all vied for his attention, and Dickens basked in the adulation. But the longer he stayed, the more Dickens found to criticize. For one thing, the thrill of having a nation in love with him got old fast. Without bodyguards or an entourage, Dickens had to face the jostling crowds on his own. He visited New York from February 12 to March 5 and during that stay, he wrote, “I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude. If I stay at home, the house becomes, with callers, like a fair…I am so enclosed and hemmed about with people…I am exhausted.”
Aside from being mobbed by adoring New Yorkers, Dickens also had problems with the city’s publishers and newspapers. Although his books were bestsellers in the States, Dickens never saw a cent of their sales profit because American publishers (based mainly in New York) simply reprinted his books without paying him any royalties. Dickens tried to rally support for establishing a fair international copyright law, but the American publishers wouldn’t budge—they used free copy from England to save money. Even some Dickens fans resented his ideas, declaring that foreign guests shouldn’t lecture Americans on what laws to pass.
From 1929 to 1932, Staten Island had an NFL team: the Stapletons.
While Dickens struggled with too much fame and the theft of his royalties, New Yorkers continued to try to impress him. On February 14, in the Park Theatre (on what is now Park Row), 3,000 of the wealthiest New Yorkers gathered to honor Dickens at the Boz Ball. (“Boz” was the pseudonym under which many of Dickens’s early works were published.) The theater glittered with lights, and decorations included flowers, drapery, and a large portrait of Dickens. The dancing throng was entertained in between sets with tableaux, life-size scenes from Dickens novels that included live models posing as characters. The Dickens-crazed crowd guzzled down champagne, 38,000 oysters, 10,000 sandwiches, 2,000 mutton chops, and 300 quarts of ice cream. New Yorkers lucky enough to attend the Boz Ball were overwhelmed by its glamour and fondly called it “the party of the decade.”
But the guest of honor wasn’t so thrilled. He wrote that he and his wife, Kate, were “paraded all ’round the enormous ballroom twice for the gratification of the many-headed. That done, we began to dance—Heaven knows how we did it, for there was no room.” Dickens felt he’d been made into a moneymaking spectacle—Boz Ball tickets sold for $5 at a time when most events charged 25¢. So when theater management tried to sell even more tickets by throwing a second, cheaper Boz Ball a few days later, Dickens told them he was too sick to attend. In fact, he refused to be “honored” with any more public receptions during his trip.
THE “OTHER” NEW YORK
If New York’s high society failed to notice Dickens’s frustrations while he was in the city, they got an eyeful of his dissatisfaction when he published the book American Notes later that year. An entire chapter was devoted to New York, which Dickens described as dirty. He also emphasized the city’s unique garbage collectors—pigs that strolled through the city, eating up the refuse. It wasn’t quite the image cosmopolitan New York had hoped for. There were compliments to the city—Dickens really enjoyed the excitement of Broadway—but some of them were backhanded…like finding the fire department “admirable (as indeed it should be, having constant practice).”
Last Republican presidential candidate to carry NYC: Calvin Coolidge (1924).
As an author who crusaded for social justice, Dickens also spent a lot of time discussing the suffering and downtrodden in New York. He exposed the misery of the insane asylums on what is now Roosevelt Island, where inmates suffered in bleak, unsympathetic conditions. He introduced readers to the “dismal” horrors in the Tombs prison, where he found convicts as young as 10 years old. Dickens also exposed America’s wealthiest city as the site of one of the nation’s worst slums. He describes the Five Points’ “hideous tenements, which take their name from robbery and murder: all that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.”
New York fared no better in Dickens’s next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, published in installments from 1843 to 1844. When the hero Martin arrives in New York, he finds it riddled with rogues and fools. Dickens’s New York characters lack compassion, especially for slaves, and the book featured a fictional newspaper called “The New York Sewer.”
THE PRODIGAL AUTHOR RETURNS
The rest of America didn’t fare much better in Dickens’s writings than New York did, and the nation’s bad feelings toward the author festered for some years. But in 1867, Dickens decided to return to New York on a reading tour.
This time, he and the city got along famously. Five thousand New Yorkers stood in a mile-long line for tickets to Steinway Hall, where Dickens gave 22 readings…making about $3,000 per performance (more than $200,000 in today’s money). He enjoyed sleighing in Central Park and eating at fine restaurants. During his last dinner at Delmonico’s in April 1868, a grateful Dickens promised to put a postscript on every new edition of American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, apologizing for his unkind descriptions of the States. Dickens told New Yorkers that he’d missed much of the greatness of the city during his first visit—and now he praised it with “love and thankfulness.”
To read excerpts of Dickens’s descriptions of New York City
in the 1840s, turn to page 119 and 331.
A New York egg cream contains neither eggs nor cream—it’s a chocolate soda with milk.