‘A Far Better Rest I Go To’: Dickens and the Undiscovered Country

On 2 November 1867, just a week before Charles Dickens was to embark on his last visit to the United States, his friends in London decided to host what was billed as a‘Farewell Banquet’ in his honour. The valedictory nature of the title and of the event were prescient, since the novelist’s death followed so soon after his return from America. With more than 450 guests in attendance, and another 100 looking on from the galleries, Charles Kent was surely correct in his estimation that ‘a Great Author certainly never had any more magnificent demonstration than that which was afforded Charles Dickens’:

At length the doors were thrown open, and the well-known faces of Dickens and Bulwer appeared at it. They were arm-in-arm. A cry rang through the room, handkerchiefs were waved on the floor and in the galleries... and the band struck up a full march. As Dickens passed up the aisle his cheeks were on fire, his eyes flamed. He glanced around the room, on whose walls all around were written in great gold letters the names of his works. Ahead he saw the English flag knit with the Stars and Stripes, and above them the word ‘Pickwick.’ There was a serious look on the face of Lord Lytton, and it seemed to me to say, ‘How gladly would I give up my title and my estates to have this enthusiasm surging up to me from the Anglo-Saxon heart.’ (Fielding, 369)