The Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1???-1928, 1911-11-26
DICKENS TOURS
ARE DESCRIBED
BY LANSDEN
Historian OF Cairo Writes For Bull.
letin About Father And
Sons Trips
CITY NOT AS in OLD DAYS
Hard Name, Seventy Years Ago,
Has Chung To The Town
Ever Since
CITY NOT AS IN OLD DAYS
BY JOHN M, LANsDEN.

American Notes." which seems to
have chung to the city i*e a Mes
sean garment, interests us very
much In the lecture tour OF Alfred
Tennyson Dickens, son of the au-
thor. If our city is remembered all
over our country and many other
parts of the world because of what
was written of 1t in 1872, we should
console ourselves with the reflection
that the present city is not the one
which the elder Dickens saw There
was much more here then than what
the Notes" represented: but 1t is
still true that what has come over
to us or down to us from that time is
little more than the name of the
place.
In The Bulletin of Thursday and
Saturday morning you speak of. East
ern newspapers saying that Dickens
came to the United States chiefly to
see Cairo. and in number of ac-
counts of his visit 1t Is stated that he
invested in Cairo bonds. and that the
failure of the enterprise and his con-
sequent loss had greatly embittered
him, and that he wrote as he did
about the place and the country be-
cause of his financial losses here
This is stated in Smiths Student
History of Illinois. fine work | may
here remark, and by DR.. John r
Snyder in the October number, 1910,
of the Journal of Illinois State His
torical Society.
In reading and writing about the
American Notes" not long since.
came upon nothing showing that the
author ever had any personal or
financial interest in the early Cairo
of which he wrote, and | shall be
very glad If the coming visit of his
son shall afford an opportunity to
ascertain whether his father had at
any time prior TO 1912 held any of
those Cairo City and Canal Company
bonds. or those ,Holbrook bonds
which were sold in London in 1888
and 1899 to the extent of one to two
million dollars. If he was so inter
ested in Cairo and lost on his Cairo
bonds, we should relax somewhat
for our basting lin the Notes and
in Chuzzlewit.
But we must not be too inquiI
tive of strangers The elder Dickens
complained of this when here almost
seventy years ago. He came back
twenty-five years afterward, and on
the eve of his return home he
smoothed over some OF the hard
things he had said about us before
He complimented us very much
about our having acquired greater
respect for the privacy of others and
were less inquisitive Let us not be
too attentive or too ELUSIVE and
cause the distinguished son of
most distinguished father to go
away with that tired feeling SO often
spoken of in the newspapers.
The view | have had and still
have is that Charles Dickens came to
America to make some money, di-
rectly and indirectly by
lecturing or reading, and indirectly
by aiding in the enactment of inter-
national copyright laws. His mar
velous books were being published
and sold here by the thousand and
he not getting cent, and this and
our Indifference about the matter so
nettled him that almost every para
graph he wrote about us had a sting
in IL. Some Of the stings went
pretty deep, ours in particular.
The elder Dickens was here but a
few hours on Saturday, April o.
1912, SO years, months and 81
days before November 80, 1911.
when that day and his son arrive.
On that morning the steamboat,
"The Fulton" on which he was a
passenger, tied up to our Ohio river
bank or wharf such as ii was, and
the distinguished passenger, no
doubt, walked up to the top OF the
leyee and from his elevation there
surveyed the then city of Cairo.
What he saw Is fairly well repre-
sented by the picture or map shown
al page SO of the History of Cairo
OF last year;
There was nothing In the plan
ming OF his western trip, from Balti-
more to Harrisburg. thence to Pitts
burg, thence to Cincinnati, thence to
Louisville. and thence to st. Louis
via Cairo, TO indicate his desire to
zee Cairo, in particular. His route
n of travel al that early day was neces-