stems from Dickens's apparently inexhaustible ability to intensify,
and elaborate on, an essentially simple caricature.
Moreover the Dickens'ian American is portrayed in Chuzzlewit crops up from time
to time in Dickens's later writings, e.g. in the short story, 'To Be Read at Dusk'
(1852), where he mentions
'the American gentleman in the travellers' parlour of the
(Great St. Bernard) convent, who, sitting with his face
to the fire, had undertaken to realise to me the whole
progress of events which had led to the accumulation by the
Honorable Ananias Dodger of one of the^larqest accumulations
of dollars ever made in our country'.
And, just as he was always delighted to observe the living originals of his
great drolls running true to form - Mrs. Nickleby, sitting bodily before him,
and asking him if he really believed such a woman could exist, of Aderman
Cute absurdly denying the existence of Jacob's Island - so he was charmed to
find Americans living up to his Chuzzlewit caricature. Mr. Colman's naïve
ecstasies over the details of English aristocratic life, for example,
might have come straight from the pen of Martin's snobbish New York host,
Mr. Norris and, at the opera in Rome in 1853 Dickens derived much amusement from
watching the antics of some genially Chuzzlewittian Americans:
'All the seats are numbered arm-chairs, and you buy your
number at the pay-place, and to do it with the easiest
direction on the ticket itself. We were early, and the
four places of the Americans were on the next row behind us
- all together. After looking about them for some time,
and seeing the greater part of the seats empty (because
the audience generally wait in a caffè which is part of the
theatre), one of them said 'Waal I dunno - I expect we ain't
no call to set so nigh to one another neither - will you
scatter Kernel, will you scatter sir - Upon this the
Kernel 'scattered' some twenty benches off; and they dis
tributed themselves (for no earthly reason apparently but
to get rid of one another) all over the pit. As soon as
the overture began, in came the audience in a mass. Then
the people who had got the numbers into which they had 'scattered',
had to get them out; and as they understood nothing that was
said to them, and could make no reply but A-mercianiyou
may imagine the number of cocked hats it took to dislodge them.
At last they were all got back into their right places, except
one. About an hour afterward when Moses (Moses in Egypt was
the opera) was invoking the darkness, and there was a dead
silence all over the house, unwonted sounds of disturbance
broke out from a distant corner of the pit, and here and there
a beard got up to look. 'What is it neow, sir said one of
the Americans to another; 'some person seems to be getting
along, again streem'. 'Waal sir' he replied 'I dunno. But
I xpect 'tis the Kernel sir, a holdin on'. So it was. The
Kernel was ignominiously escorted back to his right place,
not in the least disconcerted, and in perfectly good spirits
and temper
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