excursus of Martin in America.
Dickens is arguing all the time; and, to do him justice, arguing very
well. These chapters are full not merely of exuberant satire on America
in the sense that Dotheboys Hall or Mr. Bumble's Workhouse are exuberant
satires on England. They are full also of sharp argument with America as
if the man who wrote expected retort and was prepared with rejoinder.
The rest of the book, like the rest of Dickens's books, possesses
humour. This part of the book, like hardly any of Dickens's books,
possesses wit. The republican gentleman who receives Martin on landing
is horrified on hearing an English servant speak of the employer as "the
master." "There are no masters in America," says the gentleman. "All
owners are they?" says Martin. This sort of verbal promptitude is out of
the ordinary scope of Dickens; but we find it frequently in this
particular part of _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Martin himself is constantly
breaking out into a controversial lucidity, which is elsewhere not at
all a part of his character. When they talk to him about the
institutions of America he asks sarcastically whether bowie knives and
swordsticks and revolvers are the institutions of America. All this (if
I may summarise) is expressive of one main fact. Being a satirist means
being a philosopher. Dickens was not always very philosophical; but he
had this permanent quality of the philosopher about him, that he always
remembered people by their opinions. Elijah Pogram was to him the man
who said that "his boastful answer to the tyrant and the despot was that
his bright home was the land of the settin' sun." Mr. Scadder and Mr.
Jefferson Brick were to him the men who said (in cooperation) that "the
libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood." And in these
chapters more than anywhere else he falls into the extreme habit of
satire, that of treating people as if there were nothing about them
except their opinions. It is therefore difficult to accept these pages
as pages in a novel, splendid as they are considered as pages in a
parody. I do not dispute that men have said and do say that "the
libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood," that "their
bright homes are the land of the settin' sun," that "they taunt that
lion," that "alone they dare him," or "that softly sleeps the calm ideal
in the whispering chambers of imagination." I have read too much
American journalism to deny that any of these sentences and any