VISIONS OF AMERICA: BRITISH WRTERS REFLECT

 

America, the colony their countrymen lost, was a land of wonder for many English writers and, for those who could make it over the Atlantic, a visit was a rite of passage throughout the 19^th century into the early 1900s.

At best, most left with conflicting views of the republic and their own takes have since been scrutinized as reflections of their own biases or a limited understanding of a nation forming. Perhaps the most shocking came from Charles Dickens after his 1842 trip which brought him from New York down the Eastern seaboard and then as far as Illinois. His trip from January to June produced American Notes for General Circulation (a likely jab at the US dollar), a travelogue detailing his journey ad his thoughts, and a strange passage in the middle of his Martin Chuzzlewit set in America.

Dickens had long idealized the new world as stripped of the classism and control from royalty. He ended the last issue of his literary journal Master Humphrey’s Clock talking excitedly about his upcoming journey to the land of his dreams.

To be sure, Dickens found things to admire once in America. He fell in love with Boston, deeming it an ideal the rest of the country should aspire to, and was fascinated by the works being done at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind.

It is no hyperbole, however, to consider the rest of his visit a nightmare. On certain issues he cannot be blamed. A nation he had long idolized as a land of freedom had not yet undone the shackles of slavery. So horrified was Dickens at the institution that he initially refused to speak south of the Mason-Dixie line, changing his mind only after being won over by persuasive Southern charm.

On other issues, however, Dickens demonstrates either a lack of understanding of international laws or the biases of a Victorian gentleman against the free-spirit of a developing nation as it was pushing westward.

Dickens’s first real quarrel was with United States copyright laws, or lack thereof. In the end, it was how well received his work and himself as a person had become in the United States that repelled Dickens. His work had become so popular across the pond from his homeland that, due to technicalities in international copyright laws, unauthorized editions of his works were being circulated. Enraged, Dickens went on a war bath throughout the cities he visited calling for tighter copyright laws.

This was only one aspect of fandom that dismayed Dickens. Though initially flattered, he eventually became suffocated by the idolatry bestowed upon him by the masses and the unrelenting attention. This was an early critique of the culture of celebrity but it also, for Dickens, wandered into condemnations of materialism and over consumption.

To Dickens these problems were inescapable aspects of individualism which led to violence and corruption, which became increasingly apparent to him as he charted toward the as yet unsettled prairies and Mid-Western woodlands were the law was limited and sanitation was unchecked.

There was validity to a lot of what Dickens would observe but there was also an obtuse understanding of a nation in growth, in which expansion (territorial and technological) were part of the national pride and identity. In a sense, the very thing that Dickens believed were America’s virtues were precisely what repelled him.

Perhaps it was a combination of two belligerencies, an author visiting without separating idealization with reality and a nation still finding its way. Be that as it may, on his second visit in 1868, with slavery abolished, copyright laws changed and the areas west of the Mississippi significantly more developed, Dickens left with a much higher appreciation for America.

Toward the latter half of the 19^th century more English writers both visited and even lived in the United States for a brief period of time and the responses were more nuanced. After leaving India, Rudyard Kipling settled for some time in Vermont, an area he grew to love and in which he wrote some of his most famous works. H.G. Wells also took up residence in the States and remained neutral.

By the first decade of the 20th century, America had changed and changed rapidly, with population booms (due to the mass wave of immigration), urbanization transformed the landscape and the connections within the landscape and it was indeed becoming a nation of many tongues and high energy by the time Henry James began writing The American Scene. James is an interesting case as he was born in New York  but had spent the majority of his life in Europe before settling in England in 1898. The writings that would become The American Scene when published in book form in 1907, were written during his 10 month visit of his home country spanning 1904-5 after living abroad for twenty-five years.

Obviously, in that span of time James was destined to find a very different country than he had left, New York City alone becoming a hodgepodge of cultures and ethnicities. Due to the new ease of travel, James was able to visit a lot more of the country than Dickens was, ending his trip once he made it across the country to Los Angeles. The American Scene, however, covered only his stay in the east. A planned second volume covering his wanderings to the Golden Coast was never completed.

James’s memories of his American boyhood may have been as much a hinderance to his objectivity as Dickens’s idealization. Perhaps seeing so, his brother William, who had now settled by New Hampshire’s White Mountains, warned his James against the trip when he got word of it. Nonetheless, James was undeterred and his brother’s home by Chocorua was to be the start of his trip.

The American Scene can be a slog to read, but it is an intriguing take sparking varied responses. James himself seems conflicted and even in contradiction about how he found his homeland, a sentiment undoubtedly changed by the life he created for himself abroad.

He waxed romantically about fall in New England and unexpectedly had a very pleasant time in Baltimore but New York, as the epicenter of the changing country, shocked him, as did parts of New England.

His visit to Charleston opened his eyes to the “feminization” of the South after the war and wondered what the legacy of the former Confederate States would be as they tried to find themselves again. Identity became the core point of contention in the Northeast as well. Two experiences recounted show the impression the changing face of the eastern cities had on him, one involved attending a theater production in which a group of foreigners joins him in the audience in which he laments not only their manner of consuming candy but how cheaply it is dispersed once in America when in their country it is surely a luxury. The criticism here seems to be not so much about the foreign custom but about the materialism and devaluing of goods that happen when the American mindset is taken on.

On the next instance, while looking for the famed House of the Seven Gables in Salem, James asks an Italian national for directions to the landmark only to be answered with confusion. At first James is put off by the ignorance but, not unlike his encounter in the theater, he expresses it as an American rather than Italian problem. Having visited Italy extensively, James reveled in its art and passion for culture, concluding with the question, then, of what happens to Italians (and other immigrants) when once in America.

James perhaps was blinded by his own experiences in Europe, coming from an affluent New York family and being able to traverse Europe before building a literary life in England. There is also a distinction to be made between an established artist visiting America and immigrants arriving here with little mastery of the language to build a better life.

America has remained a curious place for many artists. Not surprisingly, for a nation of so many cultures, tongues, aspects opinions are seldom neutral and even less seldom unconflicted. But its this very enigmatic nature of our land that keeps it a point of fascination for brilliant minds.