and grossly intrusive.
As Dickens penetrated deeper into the country after leaving New
York he became more and more disgusted and offended by the Americans' table-
manners, their fondness for spitting in public, their endless talk about
money, their boastful patriotism, their condonement of violence in public
life and their worship of 'smartness' (shrewd and successful swindling).
In Philadelphia he was filled with horror by the high-minded inhumanity of
the solitary-confinement prison system, a horror which, years later, he
turned to great imaginative account in his portrayal of the ruined Dr.Manette
in A Tale of Two Cities. In Washington he saw 'Dishonest Faction in its most
depraved and most unblushing form' staring our from every corner of the House
of Representatives' assembly hall. In Virginia he was appalled by his glimpse
of slavery and its defenders. It was indeed not at all the Republic of his
imagination, not the Republic he had come to see. Even the very landscape
became a nightmare as he journeyed down the Mississippi or jolted over
'corduroy roads' in Virginia, Niagara Falls, alone, like Boston, lived up
to expectations, indeed surpassed them, but especially when viewed from
'the English side'
II
Thankfully back in England at the end of June 1842, Dickens set to
work on the travel book promised to his publishers. He had made no public
references to this projected work whilst in America, nor, apparently, even
mentioned it to his private friends there but that he would certainly write
such a book,following the well-established precedent created by earlier
British visitors, was confidently anticipated by his recent hosts. Speculation
about it was rife and many feared that it was bound to pass an unfavourable
verdict on their country. If they could have seen a letter written by
Mary Shelley to Clair Clairmont they would have felt still more anxious:
'Charles Dickens has just come home in a state of violent dislike of the
Americans - and means to devour them in his next work - he says they are
so frightfully dishonest'. As it was, the American Press was warned of
the sort of treatment they might expect by the appearance in the British
Press in July of a circular letter from Dickens on the subject of International
Copyright. In it he observed:
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