Charles Dickens made his first tour of the United States in 1842. He was greeted with great enthusiasm throughout his tour even though he would not publish his A Christmas Carol until the following year. Dickens at first reveled in the attention but soon the never-ending demand on his time began to wear on his enthusiasm. He complained in a letter to his friend John Forster “I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude“
Dickens wanted to see the American South and slavery and other places in the country. At the end of his tour, he came away from his American experience with a sense of disappointment. To his friend William Macready he wrote “this is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination” On returning to England Dickens began an account of his American trip which he completed in four months. Not only did Dickens attack slavery in American Notes, he also attacked the American press whom he blamed for the American public’s lack of general information. The response in America to some of his writings was decidedly tepid if not downright hostile.
In December of 1867, Charles Dickens made a second tour of the United States. On this tour, he opened in New York making amends for some of his comments from 1842. Dickens’ health was in decline, but the adulation he received and the outstanding profits made for an enjoyable trip overall. The trip to America was exhausting and Dickens’ health worsened. In 1868, he returned to England and resumed speaking engagements, but he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1869 followed by a fatal stroke in 1870.
Twenty years after Dickens’ tour of the United States in 1867, his son, Charles Dickens, Jr. made a tour of America in late 1887. On December 15, 1887, The Crawfordsville Star reported: Chas. Dickens, Jr., lectured before a light audience at Music Hall on Saturday evening. He was introduced by Gen. Lew Wallace and read a number of selections from the works of his father. That the audience was so good as it was is due to the energy displayed by the Junior class of Wabash College under whose auspices the lecturer appeared. Charles will have no return date in Crawfordsville.”
The Music Hall where Dickens spoke was located at the corner Green and Pike streets. It was the center for almost all of Crawfordsville’s large indoor gatherings, assemblies, commencements, and programs for several decades. In 1919, the building was sold, remodeled and became the Strand Theater.
Just why Dickens included Crawfordsville on his tour is not known. He gave programs in Indianapolis and in Terre Haute, so perhaps Wallace or an enterprising Wabash student attended one of these events and persuaded Dickens to add Crawfordsville to his tour schedule.
The lecture tour of Charles Dickens, Jr. was well received, but the “light audience” he spoke to in Crawfordsville was repeated at other stops and the tour failed to make the money that Dickens and the promoters hoped for. In fact, when Charles Dickens, Jr. died in 1896 at the age of 59, his estate was estimated at £17 5s. 3d. His widow and children lived for the rest of their lives in generally reduced circumstances.
