Dickens yielded to Forster over this since the chapter makes clear what
sort book American Notes is intended to be and what ft is not. It is not to
be statistical or political, nor will it describe individuals met by Dickens
nor give any account of his own personal reception in America. The reason for
this last omission, Dickens says is
'not because I am, or even was, insensible to that spontaneous
effusion of affection and generosity of heart, in a most
affectionate and generous-hearted people; but because I conceive
that it would ill become me to flourish matter necessarily invol
ving so much of my own praises, in the eyes of my unhappy readers'.
He realises, he says, that he will not please that 'numerous class of well-
intentioned persons prone to be dissatisfied with all accounts of the Republic
whose citizens they are, which are not couched in terms of exalted and extra
vagant praise', and he knows also that 'they who will be aptest to detect
malice, ill-will and all uncharitableness' in the book will be 'certain
native journalists, veracious and gentlemanly, who were at great pains to
prove to me during my stay there, that (my) welcome was utterly worthless'.
To the question, 'If you have been in any respect disappointed in America,
and are assured beforehand that the expression of your disappointment will
give offence to any class, why do you write at all he answers:
'I went there expecting greater things than I found, and resolved
as far as in me lay to do justice to the country, at the expense
of any (in my view) mistaken or prejudiced statements that might
have been made to its disparagement. Coming home with a corrected
and sobered judgement, I consider myself no less bound to do jus
tice to what, according to my best means of judgement, I found to
be the truth
Grand as this sounds, it is not perhaps altogether convincing. Dickens was,
as we have seen, committed to making a book of his travels whatever happened
to him in America and his reaching for such sounding cliché phrases here
as 'as far as in my lay' betray a certain uneasiness, I think. However,
there can be little doubt that this preface, if published, would have helped
the eager first readers of American Notes, on both sides of the Atlantic,
to arrive at a fairer judgement of the work.
To the modern reader, unaware of the context of its publication, it
must seem an unlikely book to have stirred up such excitement as it did.
Even most American readers today, Edgar Johnson comments, will find little
in it 'to rouse their ire'. Another modern American scholar has acclaimed
Dickens as 'a shrewd and thoughtful observer, especially in his account of
the phases of American life which had dangerous implications', adding 'his
pronouncements could easily be the text of many American critics of America
today (1946)'. But the American press of 1842 was, like General Cyrus
Choke, U.S.M., in chapter 21 of Chuzzlewit greatly heated (and) in
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