Why Charles Dickens avoided Chicago

Charles Dickens made two visits to the United States, but they were very different in nature. He had been 30 years old in 1842 and was keen to discover as much as he could about the country and its people (he used this material most notably in his 1843 novel “Martin Chuzzlewit”). By the time of his return visit in 1867-8 he had written a large number of novels and stories, was hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and had discovered that he could make a good living by reading his works aloud to an adoring public.

His later visit was therefore a money-making trip, and he hoped to fit in as many readings as he could, in as many cities as he could reach. However, he was not in good health at this time in his life (he died in 1870), and one of the reasons for this was exhaustion brought on his many public performances in Britain. The original itinerary had to be cut back, and one of the cities to miss out was Chicago.

Why not Chicago?

The population of Chicago was not happy about being snubbed in this way, and they found his argument that “it was better that Chicago should go into fits than he should” to be a flimsy one. However, there was more to it than that.

Dickens had a younger brother, Augustus, who had settled in Chicago in 1858 but died there the year before Charles left London to start his tour. Augustus had caused Charles a considerable amount of trouble, and Charles had no wish, especially given his state of health, to have the past raked up again, which he thought was highly likely if he visited Chicago. He must therefore have been greatly relieved when told that he could leave that city off his itinerary.

Augustus Newnham Dickens

Augustus Dickens married Harriet Lovell, in London, in 1848. However, Harriet went blind two years later and Augustus refused to support her. When he left Britain for America he was accompanied by Bertha Phillips, the daughter of an Irish barrister. As far as the people of Chicago were concerned, there was a married couple in the city called Augustus and Bertha Dickens, they had three children, and Augustus was the brother of a famous British novelist.

The Chicago Dickenses were not well off, and Augustus had appealed to Charles for financial help, which Charles was not prepared to give, being highly critical of his brother’s conduct. When Augustus died from tuberculosis, aged 39, Bertha and the children were left in very poor circumstances.

Criticism of Charles Dickens

The Chicago Tribune got to hear about Charles Dickens’s refusal to help his relatives. They therefore ran a series of stories that accused Charles of gross hypocrisy in his “total want of consideration for the widow and children of his deceased brother”. Not only was Charles visiting America to make lots of money, but he would be doing so by reading from books that were full of instances of generosity being shown to the poor and needy by characters who were made aware of their social responsibilities. As far as they were concerned, Charles Dickens was the lowest of the low.

The Truth about Augustus and Bertha

However, what Charles Dickens knew, but the people of Chicago did not, was that Bertha was not the widow of Augustus at all. Indeed, Charles had been more than generous to Augustus’s real widow, Harriet, who was still living in England. Charles had no obligations to Bertha. He may have had a great deal of sympathy with her plight, but if he was seen to support her there was every chance that her status as an adulteress would be revealed. The kindest thing, therefore, was to stay well out of it.

As it happened, the truth did emerge, but not through any action by Charles Dickens. He had left America by the time that the Chicago Tribune ran its apology, and the consequence of that was exactly what Charles had feared, namely the exposure of Bertha.

The story had the worst possible ending because, with her past revealed for all to read, Bertha’s mental health collapsed. Her death in December 1868 appears to have been from a deliberate overdose of morphine.

So did Charles Dickens do the right thing?

At the root of the affair was a family in desperate need which could have been helped by a wealthy relative who chose not to, and he even took the opportunity to avoid seeing them when he could quite easily have done so. Charles could have insisted on not dropping Chicago from his list of venues, and he could even have used the income from his Chicago performance to help Bertha and her children. So was he being cowardly by staying away?

That could be argued, but, then again, the argument for not exposing Bertha was a strong one, as later events made tragically clear.

There was another reason for Charles’s decision, which was that it would have been an insult to Harriet, Augustus’s true widow, for Charles to support the woman who had been the cause of her distress in the first place by robbing her of her husband at a time when she had been in great need by virtue of going blind.

One can also sympathise with Charles who was just about the only member of his family who ever made any money. Charles was constantly being badgered by his siblings and his children for support, just as he had been in earlier life by his father. It is understandable that he had little desire to add another name to the list of people who were content to rely on him for hand-outs.

That said, there is evidence that Charles Dickens did actually do something to help Bertha, in the form of a secret annuity, but by the time this came into operation she was in such a poor state of health that it made little difference.

All in all, this was a difficulty that Charles Dickens could well have done without. The mess had been caused entirely by his feckless brother Augustus, who had abandoned his blind wife and fled to America. In the same circumstances, there can surely be few people who would not have followed the same line that Charles did, and been similarly reluctant to visit Chicago.

© John Welford