Source:Fleming-dickens/content
DISTINGUISHED foreigners as well as distinguished Americans visited Pittsburgh at various times; some of the latter, notably Henry Clay, several times. Charles Dickens came here in his young manhood, accompanied by his wife. This visit was during his first tour of America. He did not come to Pittsburgh on his second trip, in 1868.
We have but slight accounts of Dickens in Pittsburgh in our contemporary press of that day. However, our townsmen [sic], Mr. William Glyde Wilkins, former councilman, in his work, "Charles Dickens in America," has furnished all the story of the distinguished taveler that is available. Mr. Wilkins' book appeared in 1911. Had he or someone undertaken the task 30 years earlier he might have interviewed people who met Dickens here and thus been able to furnish more personal impressions of the great novelist. Mr. Wilkins has done very well, with full approbation of "his fellow-members of the Dickens Fellowship," to whom he has dedicated his work, and we may add, the approbation of the book-loving public in general.
When Dickens came first to America he was 30 years of age. He was commonly referred to under his pseudonym, "Boz." Of his many works the "Pickwick Papers," "Oliver Twist," "Old Curiosity Shop," "Barnaby Rudge" and the "Sketches" had been published in England and reprinted in the United States. Hence his fame was already wide and his visit was awaited with more than ordinary interest.
Dickens first landed in Boston, January 22, 1842. He sailed from New York on his homeward voyage June 7, 1842. He arrived in Pittsburgh Tuesday, March 29, at 9:30 p. m., and left here on the steamboat Messenger for Cincinnati, April 1, 1842. He and Mrs. Dickens, we conclude, remained three days here and probably enjoyed themselves as much as anywhere else. The couple traveled from Harrisburg via the Pennsylvania Canal, the quickest way. They left Harrisburg Friday, March 25, at 3 p. m., coming to Harrisburg from Baltimore, thence to York, Pa., by rail and from York to Harrisburg in "the big coach," which Mr. Dickens graphically describes in his "American Notes," a work that was not welcomed in the United States, and which was the source of much criticism.
From Harrisburg here the canal took him to the foot of the Alleghanies [sic] at Hollidaysburg, thence over the mountains by the "Allegheny Portage Rail Road" as the old publications printed the title of this unique road.
We find it described in the Western Farmers' Almanac for 1837—five years preceding Dickens' trip. In coming from Harrisburg to the eastern terminus of the Portage, Dickens passed over 172 miles of quiet water in which there were 18 dams, 33 aqueducts in which the canal was carried over as many streams or defiles beneath its level, and 111 locks, overcoming a rise of 748 feet, bringing the canal to the headwaters of the Juniata River at Hollidaysburg, the Frankstown branch of the river, to be geographically correct.
Remember, Altoona was born of the necessities of the railroad and did not exist when Dickens was hauled over the mountains. Altoona dates from 1849. Hollidaysburg goes back to 1768, to the settlement there of William and Adam Holliday.
Adam Holliday was farseeing. He remarked to his brother as he drove the first stake in the Holliday claim: "Whoever is alive 100 years hence will find here a considerable sized town."
This prophecy came true many years before 1868. Indeed, the glory of Hollidaysburg departed with the canal, for it took its start with the building of the canal, becoming, as we have seen, the head of canal navigation east of the mountains. It was a busy, bustling town as Dickens saw it. From the time the canal was opened all goods, both east and west, were transhipped [sic] to boats and cars. The basins at Hollidaysburg and Gaysport close by, presented a lively scene always.
In 1842 Hollidaysburg was not a county seat. Blair county, of which it has since been the capital, was formed from Huntingdon and Bedford counties in1 846. When Dickens was in this country in 1868, when Adam Holliday's century was up, he would have come to Pittsburgh via Altoona, seven miles north of his former stop.
Indeed Altoona people have been heard to refer to "our suburb Hollidaysburg, where our court house is." Dickens would have found the canal basins filled up and the boatmen's horns stilled, and he could have written some new American notes born of the surprises presented to his view. He could have described the Horse Shoe Curve and Allegrippus and the wonderful engineering of the road and thought as he whizzed down the mountain of the old day of the Portage Road and its planes.
He also could have recurred to statistics and been informed that in 1842 in the 103 miles of the Western division of the canal from Conemaugh to Pittsburgh, he had passed through 64 locks overcoming a rise of 471 feet and that on the division in 1842 there were 10 dams, among them the celebrated one, officially known as the South Fork reservoir, that overwhelmed Johnstown May 31, 1889. He could have counted 16 aqueducts, 61 culverts, 36 waste weirs, 157 bridges and one tunnel of about 900 feet in length cut through the solid rock.
These statistics are also to be found in the Almanac of 1837 referred to and it is the opinion of the writer that the tunnel was in Pittsburgh, passing under the present Gazette Times Building.
It is doubtful whether Mr. Dickens concerned himself about these material facts. He told us of those things that most impressed him. He probably inquired about many others as one would naturally, and if he wanted information about the Portage Road he would have been told as follows:
The Allegheny Portage Railroad is 37 miles in length. It crosses the Allegheny Mountains at Blair's Gap Summit, which is 1,172 feet above the water in the basin at Johnstown and 1,378 feet above the basin in Hollidaysburg. There are ten planes, five on each side of the summit; the cars are let down and pulled up by stationary steam power; there are seven viaducts on the road, one of which crosses the Conemaugh at the Horseshoe bend, and is the highest stone arch in the United States. It is a magnificent structure built entirely of cut stone, and the cars cross it at an elevation of 100 feet above the stream. There is a tunnel on this road 870 feet in length, passing through the hill at the Staple Bend of the Conemaugh.
We must not confuse this Horse Shoe Bend with the famous one east of the mountains. This Portage bend was on the western side and the viaduct was washed away in the great disaster of May 31, 1889, known as "the Johnstown Flood."
But we will let Dickens tell of his trip, first remembering to put the above description of the Portage Road back to 1837. Mr. Dickens tells of his journey to Pittsburgh briefly:
We had left Harrisburg on Friday; on Sunday morning we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by railroad. There are 10 inclined planes, five ascending and five descending; the carriages are dragged up the former and let slowly down the latter by means of stationary engines; the comparatively level spaces between being traversed sometimes by horse and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice; and, looking from the carriage window, the traveler gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however, only two carriages traveling together; and, while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers.
It was very pretty, traveling thus at a rapid pace along the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light and softness; catching glimpses through the tree tops of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homewards; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt sleeves, looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out tomorrow's work, and we riding onward, high above them, like a whirlwind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined and rattled down a steep pass, having no other moving power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine, released long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the sun that if had [sic] spread a pair of wings and soared away no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very businesslike manner when we reached the canal; and before we left the wharf went panting up this hill again with passengers who had waited our arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had come.
On the Monday evening furnace fires and clanking hammers on the banks of the canal warned us that we approached the termination of this part of our journey. After going through another dreamy place—a long aqueduct across the Allegheny River, which was stranger than the bridge at Harrisburg, being a vast low wooden chamber full of water—we emerged upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries and stairs which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, canal or ditch; and were at Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh is like Birmingham in England; at least, its townspeople say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, wagons, factories, public buildings and population, perhaps it may be. It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is famous for its iron works. Besides the prison to which I have already referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions. It is very beautifully situated on the Allegheny River, over which there are two bridges; and the villas of the wealthier citizens, sprinkled about the high grounds in the neighborhood, are pretty enough. We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As usual, it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad colonade [sic] to every story of the house.
Now that the great novelist has landed in Pittsburgh there can be found place for a description of the hotel at which he was quartered and some local history involved. Mr. Wilkins in a short newspaper article contemporary with his book's appearance, says regretfully, and one can share his regret when he had all the others:
"The writer has searched far and wide for a picture of the Old Exchange, but without success."
Dickens stopped at the Exchange Hotel, which old directories locate at the corner of St. Clair and Penn streets, or, as named today, at Penn avenue and Federal street, formerly old Sixth street. The Exchange was a good house, one of the best in the country. Dickens was impressed with the excellent hotels in America and bears witness to the fine entertainment afforded him in Pittsburgh. The directories also more definitely locate the Exchange as "near the Allegheny Bridge" and inform us that McKibben & Smith were the proprietors. The Hotel Anderson is now on the site and previous to the erection of the Anderson the old hotel that stood on this corner was called the St. Clair, and during our Civil War days it was kept by William C. Connolly, Sr., father of the late Col. William C. Connolly, for many years the Pittsburgh agent of the Associated Press.
Isaac Harris in his "General Business Director [sic] of the Cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, etc.," gives us descriptions of the Exchange Hotel and the Monongahela House under the heading, "The Splendid Buildings in Pittsburgh." He names several of these, but describes only the two hotels and the second Court House, then just completed.
Mr. Harris writes editorially:
We recently made a business trip to this extensive house, kept by McKibben & Smith, two experienced gentlemen who have long kept hotels. They moved into the Exchange Hotel on April 1, 1840, having first made a great many useful repairs and improvements, fresh papering, flooring, carpeting and furnishing this large establishment with an entire new stock of the very best furniture made by our Pittsburgh mechanics. We passed through it and found the bedrooms, chambers and parlors furnished and got up in the very best style, and the beds and bedding of the first order, clean and neat and the rooms large and airy. A new dining room for ladies is about to be made on the first floor, near the large dining room, which is also to receive a new finish. There are besides the large double reading room downstairs six parlors and from 70 to 80 double and single bedrooms, an excellent ice house, a good bathing house at Concert Hall, just opposite, established for the accommodation of the guests of the exchange, and large roomy stables, kept by J. and J. Mathews, near it. The Exchange Hotel, we are assured by the most respectable gentlemen who are boarding in it and by many respectable strangers and travelers, is kept in the very best manner, and one intelligent merchant who travels a good deal in the Eastern cities assured us it was hardly surpassed in the United States. The tables are excellent and richly provided with the best fare; the servants are attentive and accommodating, and 150 persons can be genteely [sic] accommodated in it. This large and spacious hotel was built by the late John McDonald, Esq., and lately purchased by Col. William Robinson for $45,000, who rented it to McKibben & Smith on a lease of $5,000 per annum. Those gentlemen relet the stables, stage and other offices, canal packet, barber shops, etc., for about $2,000 a year, thus reducing their rent to $3,000 a year. In order to do justice to our mechanics we notice those who furnished the principal items of furniture or did the work:
Here follows a list of old-time Pittsburgh firms, many long out of business: Woodwell, Liggett, McFadden, Curling Robertson & Co., Edmundson, Cordell, and others in their various lines of trade. The account concludes with the statement that "The tables are furnished with fine French china by Robinson Tyndale of Philadelphia, the knives and forks with the name of the Exchange and McKibben & Smith on them, imported by Logan and Kennedy of Pittsburgh," hardware dealers.
Mr. Harris gives a similar write-up of the old Monongahela House, a hostelry that went up in smoke five years later in the big fire. However, the Exchange stood for many years. We must admit that Editor Harris knew the value of the word "very" as a qualifier; also that he has given us much information of our leading hotels of an interesting period in our city's history. At times travel through Pittsburgh was heavy. Canal boats came and departed at all hours of the day and night, many tourists and travelers destined for Western points were obliged to remain a while in Pittsburgh and await a stage, or a boat if the river was in a navigable state. The fame of a good public house was a good asset, of that old-time quality sometimes yet referred to as good will, a salable quality also.
In sub-letting the various appendages of the hotel the proprietor is said to have relet the canal packet. This leaves us in doubt whether the house had its own special canal boat—hardly a business proposition—or whether the editor has left out the word office, the reading then "canal packet office," or it may have meant the privilege, sold to a firm of canal boatmen, for the canal travel of the guests. Doubtless the meaning, now ambiguous, was clear enough at the time. One canal boat would hardly pay on account of the infrequency of the trips it would have been able to make.
The concert hall opposite has frequently been confused with the later edifice of that name on Fifth street, now avenue, on the site of the old Avenue Theater—the building built in 1858 by the Odd Fellows and first known as Odd Fellows' Hall. This building was burned June 1, 1905. The Penn Street Concert Hall was the building in which the Mercy Hospital was opened January 1, 1847, and where it remained for 16 months previous to its removal to Stevenson street. There is no other mention of concert hall in the directory of 1840–41.
There is a picture of the Exchange Hotel extant and readily forthcoming for today's article. It was exhibited at the Carnegie Art Gallery collection of old Pittsburgh views and old Pittsburgh people in October and November, 1916, as part of the city charter centennial program of educational interest and under the auspices of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.
The picture is listed in the catalog issued at the time and under the head "Dinner Menu." It was used at a banquet tendered to William W. Irwin, a former mayor of Pittsburgh, March 30, 1840, on the occasion of the departure for Denmark of Mr. Irwin, who had been appointed United States minister to that country. The dinner was given in the Exchange Hotel exactly one year after Dickens was there.
Mr. Wilkins had recourse to the daily papers of Pittsburgh and found this in the Chronicle, then a morning paper:
"Boz in Pittsburgh—Charles Dickens and lady arrived in the city last night about 9:30 on his way to St. Louis, and took lodgings at the Exchange Hotel. We understand the managers have given him an invitation to visit the theater tonight."
And under the "List of Arrivals" at the principal hotels, in the same paper is given:
"Charles Dickens and Lady—England."
Mr. Wilkins notes that in the papers of the Western cities which Dickens visited the references to his visit are much briefer than in the Eastern papers. He explains this by the fact that for many years little attention was given to local news by papers in the West, as the towns were small and the townspeople were all familiar with local affairs, and desired the news from the East and abroad.
Mr. Wilkins further states that "Dicken's [sic] opinion as to the character of the Exchange" was not undeserved, as it was ranked by travelers of the day as above the average of Western hotels. In a book published in Baltimore in 1836, the author wrote that the hotel had 'genteel plateware and cutlery and good attendance' and that the 'servants do not wear wooden or iron-bound shoes,' from which fact this author observes that, 'guests may sleep undisturbed when late arrivals and their luggage make their appearance.'"
This author made the assertion that the hotel charged $1 50 per day while others charged $1 25. Mr. Wilkins attests also that another writer, doubtless Isaac Harris, spoke of the Exchange having fine cutlery with the name of the hotel stamped upon it and this he opines was an unusual thing in those days. Let us conclude tht [sic] the Exchange was a first-class hotel of its day. It was well advertised, to say the least.
While in Pittsburgh Mr. Dickens met an old friend, an English portrait painter, whom he refers to as "D. G." Dickens in a letter to John Forster states that he had not seen this man for 10 years and that he dined with him and Mrs. Dickens every evening of their stay here. Charles B. Scully, a prominent attorney of Pittsburgh of those years, kept a diary in which he recorded meeting the Dickenses and mentions one, D'Almaine, a portrait painter, as present when Mr. Scully was presented to the novelist and Mrs. Dickens. The name of the painter is to be found in Harris' directory of 1840–41. Mr. Scully said, in part:
Tuesday, March 29—At 12 noon a remarkable event, a thing I never expected, happened today. Went to the Exchange Hotel and was shown up to room No. 12, and, on announcing our name to Mr. Putnam and Mr. D'Almaine, was introduced to Mr. Charles Dickens, the greatest author of the age. He gave us a cordial handshake, I wished him welcome and he thanked me most politely. I then was introduced to Mrs. Dickens, who very easily and in a friendly manner reached out her hand. I took a seat beside her and spoke of her fortune in having such good weather. She said this was a remarkable country of ours and she was delighted with it. I told her she would admire its vastness when on the broad waters of the Ohio and Mississippi. She said she hoped she would not be too nervous, as she was alarmed at the dreadful accidents on our rivers from boiler explosions. I recommended her to take a boat with Evans' safety valves, and she said she would. She told me D'Almaine was an old friend of her husband's. I told her that Mr. Dickens had as many admirers of his literary productions here in proportion as in the East, although we showed it in a more plain and less extravagant way than our Eastern brethren, and were more democratic. She smiled very graciously.
Mr. Scully described Dickens as much like his portrait, with a full, thoughtful face, a round dark eye, large mouth, wavy hair and sparse whiskers, and said that he never saw an English woman like Mrs. Dickens; of a modest and diffident demeanor, fair hair, blue eyes and round features. Both were very pleasant in their appearance. Mr. Dickens stood while Mr. Scully was in the room and was very fidgety. He appeared to see everything that was going on; for instance, when Scully was speaking to Mrs. Dickens in a low tone of boats with safety valves, Mr. Dickens ran over to the window where Mr. Scully was sitting and asked, 'What is that you say of safety valves?' After a few minutes' conversation about boats Mr. Scully bowed and shook hands and left. Afterwards he returned to the 'Exchange' and serenaded Mr. Dickens.
Dickens left Pittsburgh the morning of April 1 for Cincinnati. The files of the Chronicle show two additional items. April 2 this one appeared:
Mr. Dickens and lady left our city yesterday on board the steamboat Messenger on his Westward trip. As Birney Marshall said he would be treated in the West, so he was treated in Pittsburgh. He was not bespattered with that fulsome praise with which he was bedaubed in the East, and which, we have not the least doubt, was as disagreeable to himself as it was sickening to all sensible men. In the words of the editor of the Louisville Gazette, we admired his genius and were prepared to greet him with warm and friendly hearts, to grasp him by the hand and give it a good republican shake; so we let him see us as we are, and if he chooses to "write us in a book" it will be no fault of ours if we are classed among the Dogberries who beset his first arrival. Many of our citizens called upon him and were delighted with the man whose writings had contributed so greatly to their enjoyment. We doubt not he was better pleased with the quiet hospitality of his reception in Pittsburgh than he would have been if we had got up a "Boz Ball," or any other "Gnome Fly" to welcome him.
April 4 the Chronicle man again had a Dickens item, to wit:
M. G. Searle, Esq., had the distinguished honor of attending the last distinguished visitors to our city—Mr. Charles Dickens and lady—on board the steamer Messenger, Capt. Baird. Mr. Searle is the regular agent for all respectable steamboats coming to and departing from Pittsburgh.
Francis Torrance, father of Francis J. Torrance, was clerk on the Messenger at this time.
We note first that the Chronicle was quite well satisfied with the treatment "Dickens and Lady" received in Pittsburgh. Our city then was distinctively Western in character—is yet. Secondly, we must take cognizance from all the foregoing that Pittsburgh gentility and respectability was always well up to the front and infer that it was a model town 75 years ago.
So Dickens came and went! He arrived in Cincinnati April 4, 1842. In his "American Notes" he writes:
We tarried here (Pittsburgh) three days. Our next point was Cincinnati, and as this was a steamboat journey, and Western steamboats usually blow up one or two weeks in the season, it was advisable to collect opinion in reference to the comparative safety of the vessels bound that way, then lying in the river. One called the Messenger was best recommended. She had been advertised to start positively every day for a fortnight or so, and had not gone yet, nor did her captain seem to have any very fixed intention on the subject.
It is consoling to know that the Messenger did not blow up. We are to remember also that Dickens and his wife parted, but that is another story, and not Pittsburgh history.
There were no files of The Gazette for 1842–43 in the Carnegie Library, and the extracts from the Chronicle are editorials.
