Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit
by Charles Dickens
PREFACE
What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions,
is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight,
perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings
non-existent to a short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself
whether there may occasionally be a difference of this kind between
some writers and some readers; whether it is ALWAYS the writer
who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader
whose eye for colour is a little dull?
On this head of exaggeration I have a positive experience, more
curious than the speculation I have just set down. It is this:
I have never touched a character precisely from the life, but some
counterpart of that character has incredulously asked me: "Now
really, did I ever really, see one like it?"
All the Pecksniff family upon earth are quite agreed, I believe,
that Mr. Pecksniff is an exaggeration, and that no such character
ever existed. I will not offer any plea on his behalf to so
powerful and genteel a body, but will make a remark on the
character of Jonas Chuzzlewit.
I conceive that the sordid coarseness and brutality of Jonas
would be unnatural, if there had been nothing in his early
education, and in the precept and example always before him,
to engender and develop the vices that make him odious. But,
so born and so bred, admired for that which made him hateful,
and justified from his cradle in cunning, treachery, and avarice;
I claim him as the legitimate issue of the father upon whom those
vices are seen to recoil. And I submit that their recoil upon
that old man, in his unhonoured age, is not a mere piece of
poetical justice, but is the extreme exposition of a direct truth.
I make this comment, and solicit the reader's attention to it in
his or her consideration of this tale, because nothing is more
common in real life than a want of profitable reflection on the
causes of many vices and crimes that awaken the general horror.
What is substantially true of families in this respect, is true
of a whole commonwealth. As we sow, we reap. Let the reader go
into the children's side of any prison in England, or, I grieve
to add, of many workhouses, and judge whether those are monsters
who disgrace our streets, people our hulks and penitentiaries, and
overcrowd our penal colonies, or are creatures whom we have
deliberately suffered to be bred for misery and ruin.
The American portion of this story is in no other respect a
caricature than as it is an exhibition, for the most part (Mr.
Bevan expected), of a ludicrous side, ONLY, of the American
character--of that side which was, four-and-twenty years ago,
from its nature, the most obtrusive, and the most likely to be
seen by such travellers as Young Martin and Mark Tapley. As I
had never, in writing fiction, had any disposition to soften what
is ridiculous or wrong at home, so I then hoped that the
good-humored people of the United States would not be generally
disposed to quarrel with me for carrying the same usage abroad.
I am happy to believe that my confidence in that great nation was
not misplaced.
When this book was first published, I was given to understand, by
some authorities, that the Watertoast Association and eloquence
were beyond all bounds of belief. Therefore I record the fact
that all that portion of Martin Chuzzlewit's experiences is a
literal paraphrase of some reports of public proceedings in the
United States (especially of the proceedings of a certain Brandywine
Association), which were printed in the Times Newspaper in June
and July, 1843--at about the time when I was engaged in writing
those parts of the book; and which remain on the file of the Times
Newspaper, of course.
In all my writings, I hope I have taken every available opportunity
of showing the want of sanitary improvements in the neglected
dwellings of the poor. Mrs. Sarah Gamp was, four-and-twenty years
ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in
sickness. The hospitals of London were, in many respects, noble
Institutions; in others, very defective. I think it not the least
among the instances of their mismanagement, that Mrs. Betsey Prig
was a fair specimen of a Hospital Nurse; and that the Hospitals,
with their means and funds, should have left it to private humanity
and enterprise, to enter on an attempt to improve that class of
persons--since, greatly improved through the agency of good women.
POSTSCRIPT
At a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday the 18th of April, 1868,
in the city of New York, by two hundred representatives of the Press
of the United States of America, I made the following observations,
among others:--
"So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that I
might have been contented with troubling you no further from my
present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth
charge myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion,
whatsoever and wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense
of my second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony
to the national generosity and magnanimity. Also, to declare how
astounded I have been by the amazing changes I have seen around me
on every side--changes moral, changes physical, changes in the
amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast
new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of
recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes
in the Press, without whose advancement no advancement can take
place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose
that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me,
and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to
correct when I was here first. And this brings me to a point on
which I have, ever since I landed in the United States last November,
observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it,
but in reference to which I will, with your good leave, take you
into my confidence now. Even the Press, being human, may be
sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have
in one or two rare instances observed its information to be not
strictly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have, now
and again, been more surprised by printed news that I have read of
myself, than by any printed news that I have ever read in my present
state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance with which
I have for some months past been collecting materials for, and
hammering away at, a new book on America has much astonished me;
seeing that all that time my declaration has been perfectly well
known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that no
consideration on earth would induce me to write one. But what
I have intended, what I have resolved upon (and this is the
confidence I seek to place in you), is, on my return to England,
in my own person, in my own Journal, to bear, for the behoof of my
countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country
as I have hinted at to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have
been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been
received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper,
hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for
the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation
here and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live,
and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books,
I shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of
those two books of mine in which I have referred to America.
And this I will do and cause to be done, not in mere love and
thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of plain justice
and honour."
I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay
upon them, and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness.
So long as this book shall last, I hope that they will form a part
of it, and will be fairly read as inseparable from my experiences
and impressions of America.
CHARLES DICKENS.
May, 1868.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTORY, CONCERNING THE PEDIGREE OF THE CHUZZLEWIT FAMILY
As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can
possibly sympathize with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first
assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great
satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line
from Adam and Eve; and was, in the very earliest times, closely
connected with the agricultural interest. If it should ever be
urged by grudging and malicious persons, that a Chuzzlewit, in any
period of the family history, displayed an overweening amount of
family pride, surely the weakness will be considered not only
pardonable but laudable, when the immense superiority of the house
to the rest of mankind, in respect of this its ancient origin, is
taken into account.
It is remarkable that as there was, in the oldest family of which we
have any record, a murderer and a vagabond, so we never fail to
meet, in the records of all old families, with innumerable
repetitions of the same phase of character. Indeed, it may be laid
down as a general principle, that the more extended the ancestry,
the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient
days those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement with a
promising means of repairing shattered fortunes, were at once the
ennobling pursuit and the healthful recreation of the Quality of
this land.
Consequently, it is a source of inexpressible comfort and happiness
to find, that in various periods of our history, the Chuzzlewits
were actively connected with divers slaughterous conspiracies and
bloody frays. It is further recorded of them, that being clad from
head to heel in steel of proof, they did on many occasions lead
their leather-jerkined soldiers to the death with invincible
courage, and afterwards return home gracefully to their relations
and friends.
There can be no doubt that at least one Chuzzlewit came over with
William the Conqueror. It does not appear that this illustrious
ancestor 'came over' that monarch, to employ the vulgar phrase, at
any subsequent period; inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have
been ever greatly distinguished by the possession of landed estate.
And it is well known that for the bestowal of that kind of property
upon his favourites, the liberality and gratitude of the Norman were
as remarkable as those virtues are usually found to be in great men
when they give away what belongs to other people.
Perhaps in this place the history may pause to congratulate itself
upon the enormous amount of bravery, wisdom, eloquence, virtue,
gentle birth, and true nobility, that appears to have come into
England with the Norman Invasion: an amount which the genealogy of
every ancient family lends its aid to swell, and which would beyond
all question have been found to be just as great, and to the full as
prolific in giving birth to long lines of chivalrous descendants,
boastful of their origin, even though William the Conqueror had been
William the Conquered; a change of circumstances which, it is quite
certain, would have made no manner of difference in this respect.
There was unquestionably a Chuzzlewit in the Gunpowder Plot, if
indeed the arch-traitor, Fawkes himself, were not a scion of this
remarkable stock; as he might easily have been, supposing another
Chuzzlewit to have emigrated to Spain in the previous generation,
and there intermarried with a Spanish lady, by whom he had issue,
one olive-complexioned son. This probable conjecture is
strengthened, if not absolutely confirmed, by a fact which cannot
fail to be interesting to those who are curious in tracing the
progress of hereditary tastes through the lives of their unconscious
inheritors. It is a notable circumstance that in these later times,
many Chuzzlewits, being unsuccessful in other pursuits, have,
without the smallest rational hope of enriching themselves, or any
conceivable reason, set up as coal-merchants; and have, month after
month, continued gloomily to watch a small stock of coals, without
in any one instance negotiating with a purchaser. The remarkable
similarity between this course of proceeding and that adopted by
their Great Ancestor beneath the vaults of the Parliament House at
Westminster, is too obvious and too full of interest, to stand in
need of comment.
It is also clearly proved by the oral traditions of the Family, that
there existed, at some one period of its history which is not
distinctly stated, a matron of such destructive principles, and so
familiarized to the use and composition of inflammatory and
combustible engines, that she was called 'The Match Maker;' by which
nickname and byword she is recognized in the Family legends to this
day. Surely there can be no reasonable doubt that this was the
Spanish lady, the mother of Chuzzlewit Fawkes.
But there is one other piece of evidence, bearing immediate
reference to their close connection with this memorable event in
English History, which must carry conviction, even to a mind (if
such a mind there be) remaining unconvinced by these presumptive
proofs.
There was, within a few years, in the possession of a highly
respectable and in every way credible and unimpeachable member of
the Chuzzlewit Family (for his bitterest enemy never dared to hint
at his being otherwise than a wealthy man), a dark lantern of
undoubted antiquity; rendered still more interesting by being, in
shape and pattern, extremely like such as are in use at the present
day. Now this gentleman, since deceased, was at all times ready to
make oath, and did again and again set forth upon his solemn
asseveration, that he had frequently heard his grandmother say, when
contemplating this venerable relic, 'Aye, aye! This was carried by
my fourth son on the fifth of November, when he was a Guy Fawkes.'
These remarkable words wrought (as well they might) a strong
impression on his mind, and he was in the habit of repeating them
very often. The just interpretation which they bear, and the
conclusion to which they lead, are triumphant and irresistible. The
old lady, naturally strong-minded, was nevertheless frail and
fading; she was notoriously subject to that confusion of ideas, or,
to say the least, of speech, to which age and garrulity are liable.
The slight, the very slight, confusion apparent in these expressions
is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye, aye,'
quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is
necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, 'Aye, aye!
This lantern was carried by my forefather'--not fourth son, which is
preposterous--'on the fifth of November. And HE was Guy Fawkes.'
Here we have a remark at once consistent, clear, natural, and in
strict accordance with the character of the speaker. Indeed the
anecdote is so plainly susceptible of this meaning and no other,
that it would be hardly worth recording in its original state, were
it not a proof of what may be (and very often is) affected not only
in historical prose but in imaginative poetry, by the exercise of a
little ingenious labour on the part of a commentator.
It has been said that there is no instance, in modern times, of a
Chuzzlewit having been found on terms of intimacy with the Great.
But here again the sneering detractors who weave such miserable
figments from their malicious brains, are stricken dumb by evidence.
For letters are yet in the possession of various branches of the
family, from which it distinctly appears, being stated in so many
words, that one Diggory Chuzzlewit was in the habit of perpetually
dining with Duke Humphrey. So constantly was he a guest at that
nobleman's table, indeed; and so unceasingly were His Grace's
hospitality and companionship forced, as it were, upon him; that we
find him uneasy, and full of constraint and reluctance; writing his
friends to the effect that if they fail to do so and so by bearer,
he will have no choice but to dine again with Duke Humphrey; and
expressing himself in a very marked and extraordinary manner as one
surfeited of High Life and Gracious Company.
It has been rumoured, and it is needless to say the rumour
originated in the same base quarters, that a certain male
Chuzzlewit, whose birth must be admitted to be involved in some
obscurity, was of very mean and low descent. How stands the proof?
When the son of that individual, to whom the secret of his father's
birth was supposed to have been communicated by his father in his
lifetime, lay upon his deathbed, this question was put to him in a
distinct, solemn, and formal way: 'Toby Chuzzlewit, who was your
grandfather?' To which he, with his last breath, no less distinctly,
solemnly, and formally replied: and his words were taken down at the
time, and signed by six witnesses, each with his name and address in
full: 'The Lord No Zoo.' It may be said--it HAS been said, for human
wickedness has no limits--that there is no Lord of that name, and
that among the titles which have become extinct, none at all
resembling this, in sound even, is to be discovered. But what is
the irresistible inference? Rejecting a theory broached by some
well-meaning but mistaken persons, that this Mr Toby Chuzzlewit's
grandfather, to judge from his name, must surely have been a
Mandarin (which is wholly insupportable, for there is no pretence of
his grandmother ever having been out of this country, or of any
Mandarin having been in it within some years of his father's birth;
except those in the tea-shops, which cannot for a moment be regarded
as having any bearing on the question, one way or other), rejecting
this hypothesis, is it not manifest that Mr Toby Chuzzlewit had
either received the name imperfectly from his father, or that he had
forgotten it, or that he had mispronounced it? and that even at the
recent period in question, the Chuzzlewits were connected by a bend
sinister, or kind of heraldic over-the-left, with some unknown noble
and illustrious House?
From documentary evidence, yet preserved in the family, the fact is
clearly established that in the comparatively modern days of the
Diggory Chuzzlewit before mentioned, one of its members had attained
to very great wealth and influence. Throughout such fragments of
his correspondence as have escaped the ravages of the moths (who, in
right of their extensive absorption of the contents of deeds and
papers, may be called the general registers of the Insect World), we
find him making constant reference to an uncle, in respect of whom
he would seem to have entertained great expectations, as he was in
the habit of seeking to propitiate his favour by presents of plate,
jewels, books, watches, and other valuable articles. Thus, he
writes on one occasion to his brother in reference to a gravy-spoon,
the brother's property, which he (Diggory) would appear to have
borrowed or otherwise possessed himself of: 'Do not be angry, I have
parted with it--to my uncle.' On another occasion he expresses
himself in a similar manner with regard to a child's mug which had
been entrusted to him to get repaired. On another occasion he says,
'I have bestowed upon that irresistible uncle of mine everything I
ever possessed.' And that he was in the habit of paying long and
constant visits to this gentleman at his mansion, if, indeed, he did
not wholly reside there, is manifest from the following sentence:
'With the exception of the suit of clothes I carry about with me,
the whole of my wearing apparel is at present at my uncle's.' This
gentleman's patronage and influence must have been very extensive,
for his nephew writes, 'His interest is too high'--'It is too much'
--'It is tremendous'--and the like. Still it does not appear (which
is strange) to have procured for him any lucrative post at court or
elsewhere, or to have conferred upon him any other distinction than
that which was necessarily included in the countenance of so great a
man, and the being invited by him to certain entertainment's, so
splendid and costly in their nature, that he calls them 'Golden
Balls.'
It is needless to multiply instances of the high and lofty station,
and the vast importance of the Chuzzlewits, at different periods.
If it came within the scope of reasonable probability that further
proofs were required, they might be heaped upon each other until
they formed an Alps of testimony, beneath which the boldest
scepticism should be crushed and beaten flat. As a goodly tumulus
is already collected, and decently battened up above the Family
grave, the present chapter is content to leave it as it is: merely
adding, by way of a final spadeful, that many Chuzzlewits, both male
and female, are proved to demonstration, on the faith of letters
written by their own mothers, to have had chiselled noses,
undeniable chins, forms that might have served the sculptor for a
model, exquisitely-turned limbs and polished foreheads of so
transparent a texture that the blue veins might be seen branching
off in various directions, like so many roads on an ethereal map.
This fact in itself, though it had been a solitary one, would have
utterly settled and clenched the business in hand; for it is well
known, on the authority of all the books which treat of such
matters, that every one of these phenomena, but especially that of
the chiselling, are invariably peculiar to, and only make themselves
apparent in, persons of the very best condition.
This history having, to its own perfect satisfaction, (and,
consequently, to the full contentment of all its readers,) proved
the Chuzzlewits to have had an origin, and to have been at one time
or other of an importance which cannot fail to render them highly
improving and acceptable acquaintance to all right-minded
individuals, may now proceed in earnest with its task. And having
shown that they must have had, by reason of their ancient birth, a
pretty large share in the foundation and increase of the human
family, it will one day become its province to submit, that such of
its members as shall be introduced in these pages, have still many
counterparts and prototypes in the Great World about us. At present
it contents itself with remarking, in a general way, on this head:
Firstly, that it may be safely asserted, and yet without implying
any direct participation in the Manboddo doctrine touching the
probability of the human race having once been monkeys, that men do
play very strange and extraordinary tricks. Secondly, and yet
without trenching on the Blumenbach theory as to the descendants of
Adam having a vast number of qualities which belong more
particularly to swine than to any other class of animals in the
creation, that some men certainly are remarkable for taking uncommon
good care of themselves.
