The only major American character to appear in Dickens's fiction after
Chuzzlewit is not at all like this, however. Captain Jorgan ('Silas Jonas
Joran, Salem. Massachusetts, United States') is the hero of the 1860 Christmas
Story, 'A Message from the Sea', written jointly by Dickens and Wil ki e Collins.
He is a shrewd yet kindly man, closely based on a much-admired original,
Captain Elisha Ely Morgan, to whom Dickens once wrote, 'Every short letter
from you comes to me like a wholesome breeze from the other side of the
Atlantic, giving me assurance that fine nature and sound hearts will never
die out of any land so lang as the rainbow shines'. R.B. Heilman calls
the fictional character 'rather a Hollywood synthesis' into which Dickens
tried 'to put the best virtues of Janathan and Uncle Sam' but, in fact,
Dickens, on first introducing Jorgan, at once undercuts any willingness to
ascribe his virtues to his nationality: 'He as an American born, was Captain
Jorgan - a New Englander - but he was a citizen of the world, and a combina
tion of most of the best qualities of most of its best countries'. Like
Mr. Bevan in Chuzzlewit he speaks in standard British English, except when
referring satirically to his fel low-countrymen 'One of old Parvis's fam'ly
I reckon', said the captain, 'kept a dry-goods store in New York city, and
realised a handsome competency by burning his house to ashes' and is,
to all intents and purposes, not American at all. As a counterbalance to
the Chuzzlewit Americans he'is about as effective as the saintly old Jew,
Riah, in Our Mutual Fried is in counterbalancing Fagin. Moreover, Riah
is clearly intended as an atonement to the Jewish people for the creation of
Fagin but Captain Jorgan is simply the product of Dickens's desire to pay
a graceful compliment to an admired acquaintance, who happened to be American,
rather than of any intention of recompense the American people for the
flaying he had given them in Chuzzlewit, a flaying that had made them, he
happily reported to Forster, 'stark staring raving mad1.
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