New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-04-10
In the Steps of Dickens
America Nom and in the 4Os-An English Visitors Re
reading of Martin Chuzzlewit and American Notes
By Harold Spender
(From an article in The Fortnightlu Reviev)

familiar with his highly colored pic
lures of Americans, not so much spit
ting as emitting continuous streams Of
liquid into distant spittoons. We re-
member his doubtful humor about their
bad shooting at those receptacles. We
caught from him vision of the
Yankee as a, man who sat continually
with his feet on the mantelpiece chew
ing endless tobacco.
Now all this has gone like a bad
dream. The American of to-day spits
40 more than the European; the notice
that "spitting is. strictly prohibited" is
quite as common in American trafncars
as in British. True, the spittoon still
continues to occupy part of the floor
space in the American hotels-just as
it does in certain famous London clubs
and houses. But the American of TO-
day is quite as we'll behaved as any
European and considerably more
sober. True, in America there is more
equality of mutual courtesy, and per-
haps less Difference. There are fewer
who rise above the. general level of
fall below it.
In the same way, to any .one who has
to-day just returned from daily asso-
citation with American journalists and
public men, Dickens's sketches of those
types in the 4Os seem sngularly
remote. We all remember the editor
who met Martin Chuzzlewit at New
York, and on introducing him to his
war correspondent, Mr.. Jefferson Brick,
put this amiable question to Martin:
"Now let me ask you, sir, which of
Mr.. Bricks articles had become at that
time the most obnoxious to the British
Parliament and the Court Of St.
Jamess?"
Or the toast given by the war CORE
spondent himself:
81 will give you, sir, the Rowdy
Journal and its brethren; the we'll of
Truth, whose waters are black from
being composed of printers ink, but
are quite clear enough for my country
to behold the shadow of her Destiny
reflected in"
Now American journalists of TODAY
do not talk like that. The type has
changed and the style has changed
with the type.
The questions, indeed, which keep re-
curing the more one reads these pages
are: Was Dckens's picture ever true?
Did he give really faithful description
of the America Of 1912? Or was he
blinded by some remnant of deep ma
tional aversion, perhaps still traceable
to the War of independence and the
War of 1912? For, after all, only thirty
years had interviewed since the two
nations had been at war.
1t is now fifty years since Charles
Dickens returned from this second visit.
Unhappily, his life was too far spent
for him to place on permanent record
the changes in his impressions about
the American people. He was to pro-
duce no second novel on American life
which would unwrite the harsh iudg-
ments of Martin Chuzzlewit. That was
an unhappy accident. For it would have
been better for the relations between
the two countries il he could have built
up into one of his immortal novels the
various kindly Impressions of the Amer
lean folk which are now contained only
in his Biography and Letters. There
is nothing, for instance, in Martin
Chuzzlewit tor convey the judgment
everywhere recorded by Dickens in his