Chuzzlewit, Chapters 16 - 17

[Kim]

This is some of what I found on when and why Dickens sent young Martin to America, but so far I haven't found anything on where he would have been if Dickens wouldn't have shipped him over here. I'm still looking though. :-)

"Despite the weaknesses of the episodic, picaresque plot, Martin Chuzzlewit is saved by its author's sense of the theatrical. Dickens uses the novel as a fantastic stage which teems with action and rings with voices of all classes and conditions. He builds from crisis to crisis in the manner of contemporary melodrama, maintaining interest by tantalizing the reader towards the end of each monthly instalment (part). Deftly he brings on new characters and settings to re- engage the reader just when interest seems to flag. For example, with the sales of the green-covered, 32-page fifth instalment falling, in the last chapter of the sixth monthly number (June 1843) Dickens adopted the radical expedient of sending his youthful protagonist not merely to London as Fielding had done in Tom Jones , but to America. The book's picaresque technique provides him with a large canvas and plenty of opportunity for farce, melodrama, and social criticism."

"So any one who has enjoyed the stories of Dickens as they should be enjoyed has a nameless feeling that this one story is sad and almost sodden. Dickens himself had this feeling, though his breezy vanity forbade him to express it in so many words. In spite of Pecksniff, in spite of Mrs. Gamp, in spite of the yet greater Bailey, the story went lumberingly and even lifelessly; he found the sales falling off; he fancied his popularity waning, and by a sudden impulse most inartistic and yet most artistic, he dragged in the episode of Martin's visit to America, which is the blazing jewel and the sudden redemption of the book. He wrote it at an uneasy and unhappy period of his life; when he had ceased wandering in America, but could not cease wandering altogether; when he had lost his original routine of work which was violent but regular, and had not yet settled down to the full enjoyment of his success and his later years."--Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The following is from The Life of Charles Dickensby John Forster:

"Behold finally the title of the new book," was the first note I had from Dickens (12th of November) after our return; "don't lose it, for I have no copy." Title and even story had been undetermined while we travelled, from the lingering wish he still had to begin it among those Cornish scenes; but this intention had now been finally abandoned, and the reader lost nothing by his substitution for the lighthouse or mine in Cornwall, of the Wiltshire-village forge on the windy autumn evening which opens the tale of Martin Chuzzlewit. Into that name he finally settled, but only after much deliberation, as a mention of his changes will show. Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied from its first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback, and Sweezlewag, to those of Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig, and Chuzzlewig; nor was Chuzzlewit chosen at last until after more hesitation and discussion. What he had sent me in his letter as finally adopted, ran thus: "The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewig, his family, friends, and enemies. Comprising all his wills and his ways. With an historical record of what he did and what he didn't. The whole forming a complete key to the house of Chuzzlewig." All which latter portion of the title was of course dropped as the work became modified, in its progress, by changes at first not contemplated; but as early as the third number he sent me the plan of "old Martin's plot to degrade and punish Pecksniff," and the difficulties he encountered in departing from other portions of his scheme were such as to render him, in his subsequent stories, more bent upon constructive care at the outset, and adherence as far as might be to any design he had formed.

The first number, which appeared in January 1843, had not been quite finished when he wrote to me on the 8th of December: "The Chuzzlewit copy makes so much more than I supposed, that the number is nearly done. Thank God!" Beginning so hurriedly as at last he did, altering his course at the opening and seeing little as yet of the main track of his design, perhaps no story was ever begun by him with stronger heart or confidence. Illness kept me to my rooms for some days, and he was so eager to try the effect of Pecksniff and Pinch that he came down with the ink hardly dry on the last slip to read the manuscript to me. Well did Sydney Smith, in writing to say how very much the number had pleased him, foresee the promise there was in those characters. "Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable—quite first-rate painting, such as no one but yourself can execute!" And let me here at once remark that the notion of taking Pecksniff for a type of character was really the origin of the book; the design being to show, more or less by every person introduced, the number and variety of humours and vices that have their root in selfishness.

I soon after joined him at a cottage he rented in Finchley; and here, walking and talking in the green lanes as the midsummer months were coming on, his introduction of Mrs. Gamp, and the uses to which he should apply that remarkable personage, first occurred to him. In his preface to the book he speaks of her as a fair representation, at the time it was published, of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness: but he might have added that the rich were no better off, for Mrs. Gamp's original was in reality a person hired by a most distinguished friend of his own, a lady, to take charge of an invalid very dear to her; and the common habit of this nurse in the sick room, among other Gampish peculiarities, was to rub her nose along the top of the tall fender. Whether or not, on that first mention of her, I had any doubts whether such a character could be made a central figure in his story, I do not now remember; but if there were any at the time, they did not outlive the contents of the packet which introduced her to me in the flesh a few weeks after our return. "Tell me," he wrote from Yorkshire, where he had been meanwhile passing pleasant holiday with a friend, "what you think of Mrs. Gamp? You'll not find it easy to get through the hundreds of misprints in her conversation, but I want your opinion at once. I think you know already something of mine. I mean to make a mark with her."

It was the work of such odd moments of leisure as were left him out of the time taken up by two numbers of his Chuzzlewit; and though begun with but the special design of adding something to the Chuzzlewit balance, I can testify to the accuracy of his own account of what befell him in its composition, with what a strange mastery it seized him for itself, how he wept over it, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself to an extraordinary degree, and how he walked thinking of it fifteen and twenty miles about the black streets of London, many and many a night after all sober folks had gone to bed. And when it was done, as he told our friend Mr. Felton in America, he let himself loose like a madman.

Chuzzlewit had fallen short of all the expectations formed of it in regard to sale. By much the most masterly of his writings hitherto, the public had rallied to it in far less numbers than to any of its predecessors. The primary cause of this, there is little doubt, had been the change to weekly issues in the form of publication of his last two stories; for into everything in this world mere habit enters more largely than we are apt to suppose. Nor had the temporary withdrawal to America been favourable to an immediate resumption by his readers of their old and intimate relations. This also is to be added, that the excitement by which a popular reputation is kept up to the highest selling mark, will always be subject to lulls too capricious for explanation. But whatever the causes, here[64] was the undeniable fact of a grave depreciation of sale in his writings, unaccompanied by any falling off either in themselves or in the writer's reputation. It was very temporary; but it was present, and to be dealt with accordingly. The forty and fifty thousand purchasers of Pickwick and Nickleby, the sixty and seventy thousand of the early numbers of the enterprize in which the Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge appeared, had fallen to little over twenty thousand. They rose somewhat on Martin's ominous announcement, at the end of the fourth number, that he'd go to America; but though it was believed that this resolve, which Dickens adopted as suddenly as his hero, might increase the number of his readers, that reason influenced him less than the challenge to make good his Notes which every mail had been bringing him from unsparing assailants beyond the Atlantic. The substantial effect of the American episode upon the sale was yet by no means great. A couple of thousand additional purchasers were added, but the highest number at any time reached before the story closed was twenty-three thousand. Its sale, since, has ranked next after Pickwick and Copperfield.

In construction and conduct of story Martin Chuzzlewit is defective, character and description constituting[75] the chief part of its strength. But what it lost as a story by the American episode it gained in the other direction; young Martin, by happy use of a bitter experience, casting off his slough of selfishness in the poisonous swamp of Eden. Dickens often confessed, however, the difficulty it had been to him to have to deal with this gap in the main course of his narrative; and I will give an instance from a letter he wrote to me when engaged upon the number in which Jonas brings his wife to her miserable home. "I write in haste" (28th of July 1843), "for I have been at work all day; and, it being against the grain with me to go back to America when my interest is strong in the other parts of the tale, have got on but slowly."

[Hilary]

Thanks for this excellent research, Kim!

[Tristram]

Kim,

thanks for adding these two extracts here! I did not know that Dickens's decision to introduce America as a new scene of action did not really boost sales the way the author might have expected and hoped.

I would have to disagree with Chesterton's judgement that the story is "sad and almost sodden". In my eyes, or rather to my taste, its scenes of family quarrels, of one scoundrel trying to outwit another scoundrel really have a haunting quality, and characters such as Pecksniff, Tigg, Bailey and, above all, Mrs. Gamp are so brilliantly drawn that I do not care a mite about the story-line. This book has a lot of atmosphere and is anything but sodden.

Strangely enough, it is the American scenes that I do not particularly take to and that I read with less interest than the scenes "at home", and it is all too clear that Dickens must have felt the same way.

[Tristram]

A few days ago I noticed a funny detail about one of the illustrations that I kept forgetting posting here. But now the moment has come:

If you have a look at the illustration in Chapter 16, which shows Martin and the venerable Mssrs. Diver and Brick together in the office, you will see a shelf above Martin. On the shelf there is a heap of papers and on top of that a book called "Slang Dic.". As if that were not funny enough, on the book there are two labelled bottles, one of the reading "INK", the other one, most aptly, "POISON".

Phiz seems to have had quite a sense of humour.

[Hilary]

I must check those out, Tristram. Well observed. I love that sort of ingenious detail.

[Peter]

Kim wrote: "This is some of what I found on when and why Dickens sent young Martin to America, but so far I haven't found anything on where he would have been if Dickens wouldn't have shipped him over here. I'..."

Kim

Thanks for the info. Your posting clears up many questions I had.

[Everyman]

Tristram wrote: "Strangely enough, it is the American scenes that I do not particularly take to and that I read with less interest than the scenes "at home", and it is all too clear that Dickens must have felt the same way. "

Not strange at all. I find the American scenes so broadly overdrawn as to be almost silly.

[Miss Amelia]

Tristram wrote: "To give my 2 pence on the America chapters here, I'd say that Dickens really must have had it in for the U.S. Maybe one of the reasons he was so bitter about the United States, where he actually re..."

I agree with you, Tristram. "Message mongering" (by the way, what a great phrase!) seems to be the only reason for the Norris family's existence in the narrative (at this point, at least). I was prepared for Dickens to be highly critical of 19th century American hypocrisy -specifically regarding the juxtaposition of so much liberty rhetoric occurring alongside institutuionalized slavery. But he lost me, to an extent, when he named the Norrises as abolitionists. That seems a bit much. Like he's saying, "even her abolitionists are nothing more than racists and elitists!", and I find that just a bit over-the-top.

[Tristram]

Hi Amelia,

maybe there were people who regarded themselves as Abolitionists and yet had certain prejudices with regard to Afro-Americans, but still the Norrises seemed to me less like real people but more like some paperboard characters Dickens introduced - or should I rather say, squeezed - into his novel for the sole reason of making a point (of whatever truthfulness).

Another example of this forced-ness is Dickens's continuously insisting on Americans' bad table manners; this point will be growing worse and worse in the course of the novel. As far as I am concerned this is very threadbare satire: Surely there cannot be a whole nation of people, regardless of their social position, that excels and revels in bad manners.

[Miss Amelia]

Yes, I agree. To be sure, there were plenty of people who opposed slavery as an institution while being shamelessly racist, but their arguments (from what I've studied) were more political and economical in nature, rather than from a moral or even humane basis. When I hear 'abolitionists,' I think of people who oppose slavery because of its basic nature of inequality, like John Greenleaf Whittier or the Beechers, to name a few. The fact that Dickens specifically labeled the Norrises as "abolitionists" therefore really soured me on a point that I otherwise would have conceded to him (that is, the hypocrisy of 19th century America).

To me, it is so obvious that Dickens is just bitter because of the US's lack of copyright laws and that's the real reason behind his indignation.

[Tristram]

Amelia, the pragmatic idealist wrote: "To me, it is so obvious that Dickens is just bitter because of the US's lack of copyright laws and that's the real reason behind his indignation. "

I am sure that this is a major motive behind his sweeping criticism. There was also some reference to the Sovereign Default and Repudiation,when eight states and the territory of Florida defaulted on certain interest payments, thus bilking foreign investors of their money; this happens later in the novel, and maybe Dickens was also affected by it?

Nevertheless I would also concede to Dickens that he might have been disappointed at the contrast between American ideals and American reality. It will probably have been a mixture of a personal grudge and a more intellectual view of the U.S.'s shortcomings at the time.

[Kim]

Tristram wrote: "Another example of this forced-ness is Dickens's continuously insisting on Americans' bad table manners; this point will be growing worse and worse in the course of the novel."

I'm not sure about the whole country, but I know that no one in my family knows why we get more than one fork in some restaurants or which one to use, and I'm the only one that knows which side of the plate the fork goes on. I only know that because in school I was taught fork and left both have the same number of letters so they go together. I was also taught this little line: "The spoon and knife had a fight so the fork left." This however, could have been switched around in my opinion so was no real help. As for other table manners, I'll have to pay more attention at our next big family dinner. :-}

[Tristram]

Kim wrote: "Tristram wrote: "Another example of this forced-ness is Dickens's continuously insisting on Americans' bad table manners; this point will be growing worse and worse in the course of the novel."

I'..."

I would always put the knife on the right side - if only for practical reasons because most people are right-handed and cutting up meat often requieres more strength (of hand and character) than using a fork. That's at least how I manage not to mix up cutlery positions.

[Everyman]

Kim wrote: " I'm the only one that knows which side of the plate the fork goes on.."

Since this is a novel set in both England and America, it may be of interest to note the different way in which English and Americans use the knife and fork, at least in formal settings.

I know this because I was, of course, brought up in the American practice of using the fork in the right hand when not cutting something (meat, fish, etc.) when the fork is held in the left hand to cut, then the knife is put down and the fork is transferred to the right hand to eat the piece.

But as soon as I got to school in England, at age 11, I was slapped down for this practice. In England, the fork is retained in the left hand at all times. Almost every bite involves both the fork and knife, so both are active most of the time. The fork never changes hands.

Actually, it's a much more practical way to eat, so even when I came back home I kept that way of eating, and still do to this day.

Another thing that one must be careful about when dining in England (and maybe on the continent, I don't know). When you place the knife and fork in parallel on the plate, that is a signal to the waiter to come and take your plate away. I discovered this when I was going across on the Queen Elizabeth (this time at age 17), and tried a dish I didn't like, and wanted the waiter to come take it away, but though I sat there not touching it for several minutes, nothing happened. (One doesn't signal for waiters in the dining room of the Queen Elizabeth, or at least didn't in the 1960s.) Eventually I noticed other diners at the table placing their knife and fork in parallel, did that, and zip, there went the plate. But you have to careful not to place them there inadvertently while you're talking to a neighbor, because if you do, your plate is likely to disappear with the rest of the meal you were looking forward to!

[Everyman]

Tristram wrote: "cutting up meat often requieres more strength (of hand and character)"

More character?????? Please expound!

[Tristram]

Everyman wrote: "Tristram wrote: "cutting up meat often requieres more strength (of hand and character)"

More character?????? Please expound!"

If you are in a restaurant in France, you will understand what I mean. For either they roast your steak until it looks like a flattened-out piece of coal, or they hardly roast it at all so that the blood comes out if you touch your steak with a knife.

[Hilary]

Haha Tristram! Love your reasoning.

[Tristram]

Everyman wrote: "Kim wrote: " I'm the only one that knows which side of the plate the fork goes on.."

Since this is a novel set in both England and America, it may be of interest to note the different way in which..."

Aaaahh, table manners ........

In Germany, if you want to signify that the plate and what is on it are no longer of any interest to you, you place knife and fork on your table in a way that they both, if they were hands of a clock, show 5 o'clock. When you are just pausing, you put them crosswise on your plate.

If you want to use your fork correctly you are supposed to pierce your food with the prongs of the fork, and bring it to your mouth while the lower side of the fork is supposed to be upwards. This makes it nigh impossible to eat peas or rice, but then most people do not do it "correctly" any more.

[Tristram]

Hilary wrote: "Haha Tristram! Love your reasoning."

My French friends still think I am a vegetarian ;-)

[Hilary]

Love it!! :P

[Kim]

Tristram wrote: "Hilary wrote: "Haha Tristram! Love your reasoning."

My French friends still think I am a vegetarian ;-)"

I'll take the bloody meat over the burnt meat if those are my two choices. And now you and Everyman have me wondering what signal we give to our waiters/waitresses when we are finished with our plates, I have no idea, I can't think of anything we do to let them know. Of course I usually eat at McDonald's so I don't have this problem. :-}

[Kim]

Everyman wrote: "In England, the fork is retained in the left hand at all times. Almost every bite involves both the fork and knife, so both are active most of the time. The fork never changes hands."

That sounds very hard to do, I'll have to try it tomorrow when we eat. I hope I'm making something easy to eat.

[Everyman]

Kim wrote: "Everyman have me wondering what signal we give to our waiters/waitresses when we are finished with our plates, I have no idea, I can't think of anything we do to let them know. ."

We wave at them to try to draw their attention from their texting their boy or girl friends. Eventually, if we're lucky, they amble over to the next table and ask what they want, because all they saw out of the corner of their cell-phone dedicated eye was some vague movement in that direction, so they guessed (wrong, as it turns out) who wanted them. Finding out it's the wrong table, they head back to the texting station, totally ignoring your bleats for attention.

[Tristram]

Kim wrote: "Tristram wrote: "Hilary wrote: "Haha Tristram! Love your reasoning."

My French friends still think I am a vegetarian ;-)"

I'll take the bloody meat over the burnt meat if those are my two choice..."

Like you, I'd prefer the bloody meat over the burnt provided it is beef.

Everyman gave a good description of modern-day reality but when I dine at a place where the staff has not yet deteriorated into the state of mental, or otherwise, teenage-dom, I normally just look at the waiter or waitress after I have finished and give them a melancholy shadow of a smile, letting my eyes wander to the empty plate, and that is all there is to it.

[Hilary]

Oh so wicked, Everyman, haha. I can just imagine your Nadgett-like expression, Tristram. Btw Kim, it's not that hard to use both utensils together, though I fall into American/British/Irish etiquette when it suits me. I like to know the rules and break them!

[Kim]

Everyman wrote: "We wave at them to try to draw their attention from their texting their boy or girl friends.."

You made me laugh with that one. It is so true, every where we go it seems like everyone else is on their cell phones texting. Just yesterday we were having dinner with our son-in-law's teenage son and his girlfriend, and although we were having very nice conversations some of the time it would totally stop even in the middle of a sentence at times so they could answer a text and then reply. It was so annoying.

[Everyman]

Kim wrote: " Just yesterday we were having dinner with our son-in-law's teenage son and his girlfriend, and although we were having very nice conversations some of the time it would totally stop even in the middle of a sentence at times so they could answer a text and then reply. It was so annoying. "

You need to learn that practice which is becoming popular with some dinner groups. At the start of dinner everybody puts their cell phone in the middle of the table, and the first person who picks their up pays for dinner for all. Doctors on emergency call are exempted IF they hang up as soon as finding out that it's not an emergency call, but other than that, NO EXCEPTIONS.

[Tristram]

Everyman wrote: "You need to learn that practice which is becoming popular with some dinner groups. At the start of dinner everybody puts their cell phone in the middle of the table, and the first person who picks their up pays for dinner for all. Doctors on emergency call are exempted IF they hang up as soon as finding out that it's not an emergency call, but other than that, NO EXCEPTIONS."

This is one of the cleverest suggestions that have ever been made in the Pickwick Club! Of course, I hate to admit that.

[Hilary]

That's a great idea, Everyman. I have yet to see it in practice, but oh how I would love to. Even better, I could leave my phone at home, order the most expensive thing on the menu and pray that someone just can't resist that phone call.

[Kim]

Tristram wrote: "This is one of the cleverest suggestions that have ever been made in the Pickwick Club! Of course, I hate to admit that."

I also hate to admit that, so I'm glad you did it first, now I don't have to.

[Everyman]

Kim wrote: "Just yesterday we were having dinner with our son-in-law's teenage son and his girlfriend, and although we were having very nice conversations some of the time it would totally stop even in the middle of a sentence at times so they could answer a text and then reply."

[Hilary]

Fabulous!!!