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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. This week, we have an episode coming

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Speaker 1: up on the show that's connected to Charles Dickens, and

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Speaker 1: we specifically mentioned that he went on a tour of

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Speaker 1: the United States. He also went to Canada. On that tour,

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Speaker 1: he was really treated like a celebrity. He did not

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Speaker 1: come home with a lot of money to show for

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Speaker 1: any of it. And so since that came up in

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Speaker 1: this forthcoming new episode, we thought we would share the

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Speaker 1: previous episode that we conveniently already had about that tour.

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Speaker 1: And this episode is from previous host Sarah and Deblina

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Speaker 1: and originally published back in March of Enjoy Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Fair

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Speaker 1: Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck Reboarding and lately we've been

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Speaker 1: on a bit of a literary event covering everybody from

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Speaker 1: the new to Us on Men, travel writer evleet Chellaby

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Speaker 1: too old British literature friends like the Bronte's or the Brownings.

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Speaker 1: But there's one name that keeps popping up, and that's

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Speaker 1: Charles Dickens. And of course he's a natural when you're

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Speaker 1: already thinking about the likes of the Brontes because he's

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Speaker 1: a contemporary. There both staples of any literature class. But

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Speaker 1: Dickens also fits in with Chellaby, albeit in a lesser

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Speaker 1: known kind of way. He was also a travel writer,

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Speaker 1: and of course Dickens is best known for dramatizing the

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Speaker 1: cruel life of London slums and finding comedy in Victorian hypocrisy.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure most of you have read some Dickens along

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Speaker 1: the way. He also wrote essays, and he covered parliamentary

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Speaker 1: news and produced travelogs, including a very memorable account of

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Speaker 1: his first trip to the United States and Canada. And

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Speaker 1: since two thousand twelve marks the two anniversary of dickens birth,

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Speaker 1: will be focusing on a few aspects of his life

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Speaker 1: over the next couple of weeks. But this seems like

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Speaker 1: a natural place to start for one, and dickens first

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Speaker 1: American tour came early in his career, right when he

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Speaker 1: achieved great fame but not yet great wealth. Second, it

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Speaker 1: shook him up, both in his beliefs and in his writing.

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Speaker 1: America was not all he had hoped, and that disillusionment

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Speaker 1: is believed to have greatly affected his later most famous works.

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Speaker 1: And finally it gives us a peek at something which

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Speaker 1: in the forties was really just beginning in earnest celebrity

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Speaker 1: culture with all the barber sells your hair trim means

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Speaker 1: creepiness that's involved with that, and we'll that will explain

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Speaker 1: that a little more like a little tantalizing clue for

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Speaker 1: what lies ahead. But first we're going to give you

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Speaker 1: a brief background on Charles Dickens and today, I think

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Speaker 1: most people know about dickens childhood at the boot blacking factory,

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Speaker 1: this really deeply scarring period during which his father was

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Speaker 1: in debtors prison and little Charles had to go to

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Speaker 1: work and retrospectively, of course, it's a critical experience for

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Speaker 1: the man who went on to create characters like Joe

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Speaker 1: and Oliver Twist or Tiny Tim. Even though I find

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Speaker 1: this interesting, his general public and even his own kids

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Speaker 1: didn't know about that factory work or his father's prison

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Speaker 1: time until after Dickens's death. What made that period really

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Speaker 1: horrifying was that Dickens had come out of a comfortable home.

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Speaker 1: He was born in February seventh, eighteen twelve, and he

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Speaker 1: grew up in Chatham, his father working for the Navy payoffice.

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Speaker 1: His earlier years were heavy on games, magic lantern shows

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Speaker 1: and performances of comic songs with his sister, sometimes even

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Speaker 1: at a nearby tavern. He was educated, and he had

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Speaker 1: a large library at his disposal, filled with titles like

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Speaker 1: The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. So it

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Speaker 1: was a very happy, comfortable childhood. But as his father's

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Speaker 1: fortune decline, the family moved to Camden Town, London, gave

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Speaker 1: up educations for the children, I think except for dickens

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Speaker 1: older sister, who still had music lessons, and rock Bottom

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Speaker 1: finally came in eighteen twenty four with debtrous prison and

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Speaker 1: factory work for by then twelve year old Charles. And

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Speaker 1: he later wrote of this, of this time, in the

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Speaker 1: shock of such a huge change in his circumstances, quote,

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Speaker 1: I felt my early hopes of growing up to be

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Speaker 1: a learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast. So

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Speaker 1: after a spell, you know, about nine or ten months

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Speaker 1: working in the factory, he had continued to work there, unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: after his father got out of debtors prison. But after

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Speaker 1: the family got back on its feet again, Dickens had

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Speaker 1: a little bit more schooling, and at age fifteen he

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Speaker 1: went to work, this time as a solicitor's clerk. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't the most interesting work, but at least it gave

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Speaker 1: him a little bit of legal background, which influenced some

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Speaker 1: of his later novels. By eight though, he started picking

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Speaker 1: up extra work as a freelance journalist, and by eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty two he was taken on as a regular parliamentary reporter.

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Speaker 1: And Dickens certainly could have spent his whole career as

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Speaker 1: a journalist. He was popular, he was very good at it,

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Speaker 1: but he was really itching to write more than just

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Speaker 1: the news, and so he started publishing stories in eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty three, and right under the name Bows, which was

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Speaker 1: kind of um version of his brother's childhood nickname. He

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Speaker 1: started contributing these street sketches to his paper in eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty four. He had really been walking around London for

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Speaker 1: most of his life, so he knew all types of people,

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Speaker 1: He knew all neighborhoods, and he could paint them really

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Speaker 1: vividly in these newspaper sketches. And these popular vignettes caught

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Speaker 1: the attention of the booksellers Edward Chapman and William Hall,

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Speaker 1: who commissioned him to write text for a series of

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Speaker 1: illustrations done by a popular artist of the day. But

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Speaker 1: when the artist committed suicide shortly after the project started,

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Speaker 1: Dickens became the creative lead himself, shifting the focus to

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Speaker 1: the text portion of it. The result was the name

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Speaker 1: making Pickwick Papers, a smash hit that had a run

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Speaker 1: of forty thousand copies, and in his sudden success, Dickens

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Speaker 1: signed up for a multitude of projects and stepped up

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Speaker 1: as the editor of a new magazine. He'd also by

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Speaker 1: this point married Catherine Hogarth and started a family. His

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Speaker 1: hits came out one after another, serialized, of course, Oliver Twist,

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Nickleby the Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge, and

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Speaker 1: Dickens still has a reputation of being a shockingly prodigious writer,

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Speaker 1: some say maybe too much so, but even he was

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Speaker 1: getting worn down by doing so much work. So with

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Speaker 1: all of these post Pickwick promises wrapped up by the

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Speaker 1: early eighteen forties, he talked to his publishers and talked

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Speaker 1: them into giving him a lengthy sabbatical, paid in advance

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Speaker 1: on future work. But what was he going to do

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Speaker 1: with this really long vacation travel, of course, and Dickens

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Speaker 1: really only had one destination in mind. That was America,

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Speaker 1: Land of liberty, this nation unburdened by a bunch of

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Speaker 1: old world hang ups, or so Dickens hoped. He very

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Speaker 1: much hoped, as we're going to see later. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to see the Great Frontier. He wanted to see the

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Speaker 1: Democratic Experiment and Niagara Falls, all the things you can

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Speaker 1: kind of imagine somebody like Dickens wanting to to see

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Speaker 1: in person. But Dickens being Dickens, he also wanted to

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Speaker 1: see the fact drees and prisons and mad houses. Having

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Speaker 1: spent so much of his time investigating his own country's institutions,

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Speaker 1: he was really ready to see other examples around the world,

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Speaker 1: see what other people were up to. Katherine, of course,

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Speaker 1: wasn't too keen on leaving their four kids by this point,

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Speaker 1: eventually they had ten, but it was decided that they

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Speaker 1: would tour the United States in Canada for just six months,

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Speaker 1: still a pretty long time, but they would leave their

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Speaker 1: kids with the actor William McCready, who was a good

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Speaker 1: family friend, and to spice up the deal for the publishers,

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Speaker 1: who were of course paying in advance for this long sabbatical,

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Speaker 1: Dickens would still be working the whole time, and upon

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Speaker 1: his return he'd have a publishable notebook filled with all

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Speaker 1: of his travel impressions. Turned out to be a pretty

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Speaker 1: fateful decision. So January three, eighteen forty two, a twenty

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Speaker 1: nine year old Dickens left Liverpool in the steamship Britannia

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Speaker 1: with Catherine and her maid Anne Brown. It was about

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Speaker 1: the worst start you could possibly imagine, though they were seasick.

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Speaker 1: The cabin was so tiny and cramped the He joked

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Speaker 1: that their luggage had about as much of a chance

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Speaker 1: of fitting in the door as a giraffe had of

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Speaker 1: getting into a flower pot. And the weather was bad,

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Speaker 1: actually some of the worst weather that had been around

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Speaker 1: in years. It probably spent most of the trip thinking

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Speaker 1: that they were going to capsize, so not very fun.

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Speaker 1: They finally landed in Nova Scotia and then went right

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Speaker 1: on to Boston, which was the first stop of the trip,

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Speaker 1: and they got their January twenty two and really, at

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Speaker 1: first Dickens was in heaven. He supposedly would tear through

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Speaker 1: the Boston snow reading off shop signs. He just loved

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Speaker 1: everything he saw. But that elation didn't last very long,

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Speaker 1: and one problem was being Dickens, who was, of course

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Speaker 1: an incredibly famous and kind of surprisingly recognizable celebrity in

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Speaker 1: the United States. Though maybe it's not too surprising. Dickens

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Speaker 1: was known as an eccentric dresser, particularly in his youth.

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Speaker 1: One Massachusetts onlooker called him a genteel rowdy, so once

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Speaker 1: he got pointed out, maybe no, that's dickens um. As

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Speaker 1: little as half a century earlier, though, authors hadn't really

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Speaker 1: been very famous as individuals, at least at least not

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Speaker 1: in a stop and stare at them kind of way.

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Speaker 1: They were known mostly for their work, but with better

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Speaker 1: dissemination of news, more gossips spreading around, I mean, think

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Speaker 1: of our old very old by now Lord Byron episode,

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Speaker 1: these famous personalities, whether they were authors or actors or singers,

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Speaker 1: started to get as big as anything they were producing.

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Speaker 1: They started to become names and recognizable people. But for Dickens,

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Speaker 1: fame wasn't a very fun thing to acquire, no, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it involved fancy parties and meeting icons, but it also

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Speaker 1: involved a lot of the unpleasantness that we associate with

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Speaker 1: modern day celebrity culture which shocked Dickens and really disturbed him.

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Speaker 1: Crowds would follow him everywhere. He wrote, quote, if I

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Speaker 1: turned run into the street, I'm followed by a multitude.

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Speaker 1: And I can't drink a glass of water without having

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Speaker 1: one hundred people looking down my throat when I opened

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Speaker 1: my mouth to swallow. On a boat stop over near Cleveland,

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Speaker 1: he caught a quote party of gentlemen staring at his

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Speaker 1: sleeping wife through a cabin window. People on the docks

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Speaker 1: would actually rip handfuls of fur from his coat when

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Speaker 1: he came by. And then, I mean, if that's not

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Speaker 1: bad enough, there was this profit driven side of a

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Speaker 1: lot of the celebrity craze. To the Barbara we mentioned

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Speaker 1: who tried to sell his hair, Tiffany's and Company apparently

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Speaker 1: made copies of a Dickens bust and offered those up

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Speaker 1: for sale. I think this really bothered him, all of

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Speaker 1: this money making surrounding his name. And there's another aspect, though,

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Speaker 1: of this fame that really bothered Dickens, and that was

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Speaker 1: wherever he went, whether it was Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis Washington,

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Speaker 1: d C. Richmond, New York City, Louisville, he met throngs

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Speaker 1: of American fans who had obviously read and enjoyed his books. Okay,

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Speaker 1: that's a good thing. Presumably they've all been buying those books,

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Speaker 1: which was true. The only problem was that, due to

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Speaker 1: a lack of international copyright laws, Dickens knew he hadn't

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Speaker 1: made any money off of these many fans, since US

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Speaker 1: publishers could rip off his work. So, on the one hand,

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Speaker 1: he's seeing these busts of himself that people are trying

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Speaker 1: to sell, he's knowing he's not making any money for

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Speaker 1: the actual books that have made him so famous in

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Speaker 1: the first place. So he started peppering his speeches with

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Speaker 1: dissatisfaction about the laws. But he wasn't oblivious. He didn't

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Speaker 1: try to center his argument on his own personal finances. Instead,

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Speaker 1: he chose to focus on the fact that all writers,

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Speaker 1: Americans included, would benefit from a change, and that at

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Speaker 1: the end of the day, he'd quote rather have the

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Speaker 1: affectionate regard of my fellow men as I would have

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Speaker 1: heaps of gold, heaps and minds of gold. So he

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Speaker 1: tried to catch it in terms like I'm just looking

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Speaker 1: out for all writers, and gradually though that sort of

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Speaker 1: spin on his argument changed and got a little more intense,

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Speaker 1: and while many average Americans would have agreed with him

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Speaker 1: that there needed to be some kind of copyright changes,

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Speaker 1: the press really pounced on this copyright obsession and declared

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Speaker 1: it an indelicate, an improper avenue of public discussion, something

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Speaker 1: that an honored guest shouldn't be going around talking to

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Speaker 1: everybody about. And it was really the first strike in

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Speaker 1: what became known as dickens Quarrel with America, because as

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Speaker 1: the press escalated things, so did Dickens. Okay, but before

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Speaker 1: we get into more particulars about what really is going

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Speaker 1: to sound like the ultimate failed vacation, it's worth noting

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Speaker 1: that there were some high points to this. There were

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Speaker 1: some good times. Sometimes being a celebrated author meant parties

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned, and mingling with fellow famous people. On

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Speaker 1: Valentine's Day two, for example, Dickens was the guest of

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Speaker 1: honor at one of the biggest parties to that date

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Speaker 1: in New York City's Park Theater, which was, according to

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Speaker 1: Simon Watson BBC magazine, decorated with wreaths, paintings, and a

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Speaker 1: bust of Dickens with an eagle boring over his head,

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Speaker 1: which sounds a little strange and I can't help but

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Speaker 1: wonder if that had anything to do with Dickens request

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Speaker 1: in his will that no monuments being made of him

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Speaker 1: seeing that eagle flying over his head. And yeah, like

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Speaker 1: you just mentioned, he also did get to meet a

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Speaker 1: lot of fellow writers. He met Edgar Allan, Poe, Washington,

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Speaker 1: Irving Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beechristow, a lot of

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Speaker 1: folks who pop up in the podcast Alt Do. And

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Speaker 1: then he and Catherine had some fun too. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I know their later relationship is not characterized very well,

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Speaker 1: so we're going to talk about in another episode. But

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Speaker 1: during this time they seemed to have a pretty good time.

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Speaker 1: They acted in a play together. On the last leg

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Speaker 1: of their trip was which was a jaunt through Canada

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Speaker 1: that included a stop in Montreal. They really enjoyed that.

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Speaker 1: And then whenever he could, he broke away from all

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Speaker 1: of the hubbub, all of the fancier people who were

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Speaker 1: flocking around him to do what he liked to do most,

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Speaker 1: which was just wander tour all of these new towns

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Speaker 1: he was visiting. Yeah, he toured some of the worst neighborhoods.

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Speaker 1: In fact of New York City at the time that

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Speaker 1: was five points in the Bowery. He visited the mills

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Speaker 1: at Lowell, Massachusetts, and was impressed to find a model

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Speaker 1: industrial community, a place where the women workers only stayed

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Speaker 1: a few years. They lived in comfy boarding houses, and

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Speaker 1: they had access to things like lecture series, a house

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Speaker 1: run periodical, and pianos. So it was really different from

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Speaker 1: what he knew of similar situations in England. And I

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Speaker 1: think that's an important thing to consider when we get

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Speaker 1: to some of the later particulars in this episode that

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Speaker 1: he did see some he did compare some things in

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Speaker 1: the United States positively compared to what he saw in England.

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Speaker 1: He also toured prisons and insane asylums. It might seem

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Speaker 1: a little strange to us now to do that on

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Speaker 1: your vacation, but according to Natalie McKnight, a professor at

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Speaker 1: Boston University interviewed on the World, it wasn't that weird

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Speaker 1: for British writers to include investigative travel on their trips

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Speaker 1: to the US. There you go. Another major high point

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Speaker 1: for Dickens was a trip to the Perkins Institute, which

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Speaker 1: was well and is a School for the Blind in Massachusetts.

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Speaker 1: And I think it really speaks for dickins sincere interest

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Speaker 1: in social issues that the top items on his to

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Speaker 1: see in the United States list were Niagara Falls, as

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Speaker 1: we already mentioned, and then Laura Bridgeman, who was a

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Speaker 1: little girl who was deaf blind but had been educated

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Speaker 1: with language. And Bridgeman, who incidentally is believed to be

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Speaker 1: the first deaf blind person to be educated, had been

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Speaker 1: written about by Perkins director Dr Samuel Gridley. How and

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Speaker 1: uh he was the man who had also come up

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Speaker 1: with the system for teaching her language in the first place.

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Speaker 1: He had written this publication which proved pretty popular internationally,

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Speaker 1: and Dickens had heard of it. So Dickins was so

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Speaker 1: impressed by meeting Laura that he included quite a bit

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Speaker 1: of the meeting in his later published Notes on America.

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Speaker 1: And according to jan seymour Ford, who was a research

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Speaker 1: librarian at Perkins, schools for people with disabilities were really

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Speaker 1: just starting to, as she said, get traction during this time,

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Speaker 1: and dickens work helped spread the word a little bit

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Speaker 1: about what an institution like this could do for people

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Speaker 1: who had disabilities. Dickens work also led directly to the

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Speaker 1: education of none other than Helen Keller. Decades after Dickens visit,

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Speaker 1: Keller's parents read his American notes and came across the

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Speaker 1: story of Laura Bridgeman. They went to Perkins and were

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Speaker 1: connected with a graduate and teacher who was Anne Sullivan,

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Speaker 1: the miracle worker who taught Keller language. And this little

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Speaker 1: sub story here is just so interesting to me. It

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Speaker 1: makes me almost want to maybe do a future episode

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Speaker 1: on Helen Keller. But it wasn't, of course, all pleasant

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Speaker 1: trips like trips to Lottle trips to Perkins for Dickens.

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Speaker 1: He visited Washington, d C. In March and he met

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Speaker 1: President John Tyler. He toured the capital, but the trip

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Speaker 1: was kind of fine by the disregard for spittoons that

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Speaker 1: he witnessed in the nation's capital. He later wrote, Washington

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Speaker 1: maybe called the headquarters of tobacco tinctured saliva. The thing

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Speaker 1: itself is an exaggeration of nastiness which cannot be outdone.

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Speaker 1: And he went on to warn readers that if they

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Speaker 1: were gonna tour the capital, and I mean the capital building, um,

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Speaker 1: if in case they dropped anything, be careful not to

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Speaker 1: pick it up without a gloved hands because you were

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Speaker 1: probably gonna run into a bunch of tobaccos. But other

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Speaker 1: issues around the country involved what he saw as poor

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Speaker 1: table manners, overheated homes, arrogance, hypocrisy, and a tendency towards

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Speaker 1: violence that was illustrated by a gun fight between two

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Speaker 1: kids who were using real guns. So it kind of

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Speaker 1: ran the whole, from the whole ungloved hands to poor

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Speaker 1: table manners and went up from there. It's a verty.

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Speaker 1: It got more serious than that too. In Richmond he

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Speaker 1: saw slavery, which he was very outspoken against, and then

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Speaker 1: some of it was just disappointment. In St. Louis, for instance,

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Speaker 1: he was disappointed by a trip to see the looking

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Speaker 1: Glass Prairie, which is something he had really wanted to do,

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Speaker 1: go see the prairie. According to Professor Jerome Mechier, who's

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Speaker 1: the author of Dickens and Innocent Abroad, quote, the longer

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Speaker 1: Dickens rubbed shoulders with Americans, the more he realized that

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Speaker 1: the Americans were simply not English enough. And Dickens himself

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Speaker 1: wrote to his friend Greedy, he was taking care of

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Speaker 1: his kids. This is not the republic I came to see.

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Speaker 1: This is not the republic of my imagination, So those

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Speaker 1: are harsh words. But after he got home, Dickens did

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Speaker 1: one better. He started polishing up his travel journals and

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Speaker 1: he ended up publishing them as promised as American Notes

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Speaker 1: for general circulation. Then he stepped it up again. The

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Speaker 1: following year he started a new book called Martin Chuzzlewit,

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Speaker 1: and when the first issues weren't really selling that well,

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Speaker 1: he decided to pack off his hero to America and

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Speaker 1: included a lot of his own kind of experiences he

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Speaker 1: had seen in the Midwest. So both his travelogue and

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Speaker 1: his novel painted quite an unflattering picture of America. Seems

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Speaker 1: folks wouldn't have expected the man famous for tearing apart

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Speaker 1: hypocrisies of British life to be entirely kind, but in

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Speaker 1: fact they had new friends like Washington Irving were hurt,

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Speaker 1: even outraged. People in New York burned copies of Martin

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Speaker 1: Chuzzlewit papers denounced the American Notes. The trip very likely

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Speaker 1: changed Dickens to Some scholars see his work getting less

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Speaker 1: optimistic after his American journey, and I can kind of

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Speaker 1: see this from several different perspectives. One it does seem

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Speaker 1: like people overreacted quite a bit. The travel notes do

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Speaker 1: include kind of unfavorable comparisons to British things, you know,

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Speaker 1: where we were talking about the low um little factories

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Speaker 1: and how it's England that comes across as worse in

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Speaker 1: that situation. There's a lot of stuff like that. But um,

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Speaker 1: if people were overreacting a bit, well then maybe also

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Speaker 1: Dickens kind of had unrealistic expectations. If you go into

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Speaker 1: a trip and your expectations are that it will be

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Speaker 1: a land of innocent people where everything's perfect, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of a utopia, it seemed he was expecting, you're

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Speaker 1: probably going to be a little bit disappointed, especially people

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Speaker 1: are ripping fur out of your code. That's true. So

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Speaker 1: it's not that any of this really affected dickens popularity

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Speaker 1: as an author in the US. More than twenty years later, Dickens,

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Speaker 1: who by this point had multiple households to support and

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Speaker 1: that's just a hint for the next podcast we're going

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Speaker 1: to come up with, he decided it might be time

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Speaker 1: to revisit America, and this time as a part of

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Speaker 1: his Smash lecture series, in which he'd act rather than

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Speaker 1: read portions of his own works from a special gas

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Speaker 1: lit lecturn, so after sending a reconnaissance scout on ahead,

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Speaker 1: he arrived in Boston in mid November of eighteen sixty seven.

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Speaker 1: During his northeastern tour, quite a few things happened. He

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Speaker 1: met Mark Twain or Mark Twain saw and of course

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Speaker 1: Mark Twain is also known for his his public readings,

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Speaker 1: which were apparently just as good as Dickens, and a

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Speaker 1: twelve year old girl chatted with him on a train,

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Speaker 1: telling him that she'd read all his books but skipped

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Speaker 1: the quote lengthy and dull parts, and she in fact

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Speaker 1: grew up to write Rebecca of Sunny Book Farm, so

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Speaker 1: a popular children's book there. And then Dr Samuel Gridley

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Speaker 1: how of Perkins, who we mentioned, contacted Dickens about publishing

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Speaker 1: The Old Curiosity Shop in Braille, and Dickens actually not

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Speaker 1: only gave his approval, he put up one thousand, seven

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars to have two hundred fifty copies printed, which

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Speaker 1: were in turn distributed to all of the blind schools

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Speaker 1: in America, something I thought was pretty cool. The lectures

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Speaker 1: themselves were a huge hit. I mean, of course, that

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Speaker 1: was why he was back in the United States in

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Speaker 1: the first place. He made nineteen thousand pounds, and many

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Speaker 1: folks couldn't remember the first tour, so there weren't any

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Speaker 1: hard feelings there. And even the press took dickens return

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Speaker 1: as a sign of goodwill. For instance, the New York

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Speaker 1: Tribune wrote, dickens second coming was needed to disperse every

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Speaker 1: cloud and every doubt, and to place his name undimmed

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Speaker 1: and the silver sunshine of American admiration. Kind of an

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Speaker 1: overblown welcome welcome back Dickens, and Dickens himself felt differently too.

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Speaker 1: In his farewell speech, he spoke of the quote gigantic

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Speaker 1: changes he'd seen in the country, changes, moral changes, physical

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Speaker 1: changes in the amount of land subdued and people, changes

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Speaker 1: in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the

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Speaker 1: growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in

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Speaker 1: the graces and amenities of life, changes in the press,

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Speaker 1: without whose advancement, no advancement can take place anywhere. And

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Speaker 1: he asked that the statement be added to every copy

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Speaker 1: of American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewitt, and it still is

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Speaker 1: there today. Kind of I take it back. You guys

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Speaker 1: have mids some improvement. Good job, um, So I think

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Speaker 1: it was really interesting to learn about an author so

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Speaker 1: associated with England, were really so associated with London in

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Speaker 1: a different context, see him out of his element a

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Speaker 1: little bit. That was what appealed to me about this story. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think in a way, it's actually quite a testament

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Speaker 1: to travel itself, that you can go abroad and it

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Speaker 1: opens your eyes and you just see things in a

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Speaker 1: different way. I mean, he obviously didn't work out so

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Speaker 1: well the first time because he had a bad experience.

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Speaker 1: He was disappointed, and like you said, that was probably

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Speaker 1: equal parts his fault and you know, the fault of

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Speaker 1: what they saw exactly if people spitting tobacco on the floor.

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Speaker 1: But when he came back the next time, it seemed

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Speaker 1: like he sort of had a different point of view well,

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Speaker 1: and he had definitely learned kind of a lesson about

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Speaker 1: maybe being careful when you're traveling to keep some of

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Speaker 1: your opinions. Although it's kind of nice to have that, honesty,

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Speaker 1: I'm glad looking back on it now. Thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for joining us on the Saturday. If you have

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Speaker 1: heard an email address or a Facebook you are l

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00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of today's episode. Since

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00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:09,400
Speaker 1: it is from the archive that might be out of date,

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00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: now you can email us at history podcast at how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, and you can find us all

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00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,040
Speaker 1: over social media at missed in History. And you can

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