tricks of misrepresentation and slander. A report of an interview with
Dickens appeared in the Tribune which was, he telegraphed to Fields, 'totally
false'. It was, Dickens wrote in a folow-up letter, 'so absurdly unlike
me that I cannot suppose it to be even invented by anyone who ever heard
me exchange a word with mortal creature'. He was represented as saying,
among other things, that he 'could not be expected to have an interest in
the American people'. This 'falseness' he elaborately refuted in his letter
to Fielda but some public reassurance to America was also necessary.
An ideal opportunity was provided by the grand Farewell Banquet offered to
him in London on 2 November 1867 which would, of course, be very
extensively reported in America before his own arrival there. In his speech
Dickens observed that 'a vast entirely new generation' had arisen in America
since his previous visit, that the 'best known' of his own books had been
published since then (rather hard on Pickwick Papers and its three immediate
successors, this and the coming together of the new generation and the
books had resulted in his receiving 'an immense accumulation of letters'
inviting him to revisit America, 'all expressing in the same hearty, homely,
cordial, unaffected ay, a kind of personal interest in me'. His longing
to meet this 'multitude of new friends' was taking hism across the Atlantic
a second time as well as a natural desire to see for myself the astonishing
change and progress of a quarter of a century over there'. (This last reason
we may take with a pinch of salt, I think, but it was excellent for public
consumption). Dickens ended by nearly quoting the sentence about motes and
beams from his 1855 Christmas Story in which he character
ised the Americans as 'a kind, generous, large-hearted and great people',
adding 'In that faith I am going to see them again'. He was then able to
sit down confident that he had done more than enough to atone for Chuzzlewit
without any such abject grovelling as the New York Harald recommended.
In the event, the American Readings tour (2 December 1867 - 20 April 1868).
was a huge success, marred only by Dickens's persistent ill-health and by
recurrent troubles with the 'noble army of speculators' who, despite all
Dolby's vigilance, everywhere bought up tickets for resale at inflated prices.
He might have said, with Mercutio, 'I have caught an everlasting cold' for the
severe catarrh and racking cough that seized on him soon after his arrival
in Boston and never left him throuqhout the whole five-month trip; it was
impervious even to the 'Rockey Mountain Sneezer', a supposedly infallible cure,
compounded of brandy, rum and snow, pressed on Dickens by his New York landlord.
He endured agonies of sleeplessness and was eventually reduced to a diet con
sisting entirely of stimulants (rum, sherry, champagne, beef tea) and soup:
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