On Monday, February 14, 1842, “Boz,” as the 30-year-old author Charles Dickens was popularly called, was in New York City during his first trip to America. The reception thrown in his honor left the city as impressed with itself as it did the man of the hour.
“The agony is over,” former mayor Philip Hone wrote the following day. “ The “Boz” ball, the greatest affair in modern times, the tallest compliment ever paid to a little man, the fullest libation ever poured upon the altar of the muses, came off last evening in fine style; everything answered the public expectation, and no untoward circumstances occurred to make anybody sorry he went.”
And every New Yorker who was anybody did go, for the price of a $5 ticket.
Love Affair With Dickens
As befitting the theme of Valentine’s Day, 3,000 New Yorkers turned out at the Park Theatre near City Hall wearing their hearts conspicuously on their elegant sleeves. The fete was an unparalleled demonstration of affection, all for love of the author of the Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, the Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge.
A committee had been formed to arrange the numerous details, rules and regulations of the event. An awning was erected to extend from the front of the theater fully across the sidewalk. A superintendent was assigned to ensure the regularity of carriages arriving and departing, and against the irregularity of “carelessness, extra charges or otherwise.” The police force was beefed up for added security.
One newspaper described the affair as “one of the most magnificent that has ever been given in this city.”
The doors were thrown open at 7:30 and the theater nearly filled up in less than half an hour. Then, with the arrival of Charles Dickens and his wife at 9:00, the dancing and entertainments began.
Entertainment
The theater was specially re-adapted and ornamented for the event. Its lobbies, halls, saloons, boxes and green-rooms were festooned with wreaths, garlands, portraits and statues. A particular centerpiece was a bust of “Dickens, surmounted by an eagle holding a laurel wreath.” The twenty-five seats of the orchestra were covered with muslin and gold.
Dickens wore a black suit with a gray vest. Mrs. Dickens wore a dress of white dress of delicate Irish cotton, trimmed with deep-blue flowers that were echoed by a laurel of mazarine blue flowers around her head. The long ringlets of her hair danced freely with her pearl necklace and earrings. Mayor Robert Morris himself acted as personal liaison, and no doubt buffer, to those who sought introduction to the celebrity guest.
The entertainment included cotillions and waltzes. At intervals between the dances, a curtain, which was “painted like the frontispiece of the Pickwick papers,” rose to reveal a series of tableaux vivants at the back of the stage. Actors hired for the occasion struck attitudes representing familiar scenes from Dickens’ works.
Menu
The Committee ordained that an “ample supply of refreshments to be provided.” Hone, who was a principal of a 16-member subcommittee for the event, noted that this obviously critical component of the affair was “farmed out to [Thomas] Downing, the great man of oysters, who received $2,200.”
Even given the racial polemics of the time, that the catering commission for this high-profile event went to Downing, an African-American, was no surprise. Downing was one of the most celebrated caterers of any race in 19th-century New York. His culinary-based ingenuity had already won the city’s praises during the Great Fire of 1835.
Recalling that tragic conflagration years later, the New York Times recalled how—when the December weather “was so cold that the water thrown by the fire engines froze as it left the pipes”—Downing located some barrels of vinegar that were used successfully “to stay the progress of the flames.”
Downing’s talents likely warmed Dickens, too. When writing home to England of the tribute paid him in New York, Dickens attached a newspaper clipping from the Extra Boz Herald—a special edition—that elaborated on the sumptuous bill of fare:
50,000 oysters, 10,000 sandwiches, 40 hams, 76 tongues, 50 rounds of beef, 50 jellied turkeys 50 pairs of chickens and 25 of ducks; also “2,000 fried Mutton Chops—cold” and 12 Floating Swans, a new device”.
Lest one forget dessert, there were:
350 quarts of jelly and blanc mange, 300 quarts of ice cream, “300 pound of Mottoes”, “2,000 Kisses”, “25 Pyramids—one cost $30, and had the ‘Curiosity Shop’ on the top”, besides almonds, raisins, apples, oranges, cakes and “Ladies Fingers in thousands”.
And to wash all of that down, one chose from:
2 hogsheads of Lemonade, 60 gallons of tea, 1½ barrels of Port, 150 gallons of Madeira, unspecified quantities of Claret and coffee.
Lasting Impressions of New York
During the few weeks of his stay in New York, Dickens soaked up the city’s local color. He made a particular point of seeking out the unusual, sometimes unsanctioned, places of the city’s canvas. Boz visited the notorious Five Points slum, ventured into the aptly-named Tombs prison, and observed the “lounging, listless, madhouse air” of the State hospital for insane paupers on Blackwell’s (Roosevelt) Island, where he was “shocked that its governorship was a political appointment”.
Dickens voraciously documented his New York City visit in letters and notations. Many of his impressions would inform the social commentary of his subsequent work like an infusion of steeping tea.
Occasionally, Dickens’ commentary would leave a bitter aftertaste, like when he pressed for the establishment of international copyright laws to quell the mutual American and English piracy of published works. That would take a half-century longer to achieve. In the meantime, New Yorkers had the ecstasy of 2,000 Kisses left over from the Boz Ball to savor.
Sources:
Welcome to Charles Dickens—The Boz Ball.—To be given under the direction of a committee of Citzens of New York at the Park Theatre…, 1842.
New York Aurora, “ Account of the ‘Boz’ Ball”, N. Parker Willis,
New-York Evening Post, February 15, 1842.
The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume Three: 1842-1843, edited by Madeline House, Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, Oxford University Press, 1974.
The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-1851, 1910.
New York Times, obituary, “Thomas Downing”, April 12, 1866.
Eric K. Washington - Eric K. Washington is the author of Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem and contributed to the recent MTA-licensed guide book, New ...
