American Notes for General Circulation

by Dickens, Chales

  stiffen, and the brim of my bat to expand, beneath its quakery

  influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded

  themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of

  taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the Market Place, and of

  making a large fortune by speculations in corn, came over me

  involuntarily.

  Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, which

  is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and poured off,

  everywhere. The Waterworks, which are on a height near the city,

  are no less ornamental than useful, being tastefully laid out as a

  public garden, and kept in the best and neatest order. The river

  is dammed at this point, and forced by its own power into certain

  high tanks or reservoirs, whence the whole city, to the top stories

  of the houses, is supplied at a very trifling expense.

  There are various public institutions. Among them a most excellent

  Hospital - a quaker establishment, but not sectarian in the great

  benefits it confers; a quiet, quaint old Library, named after

  Franklin; a handsome Exchange and Post Office; and so forth. In

  connection with the quaker Hospital, there is a picture by West,

  which is exhibited for the benefit of the funds of the institution.

  The subject is, our Saviour healing the sick, and it is, perhaps,

  as favourable a specimen of the master as can be seen anywhere.

  Whether this be high or low praise, depends upon the reader's

  taste.

  In the same room, there is a very characteristic and life-like

  portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist.

  My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of its

  society, I greatly liked. Treating of its general characteristics,

  I should be disposed to say that it is more provincial than Boston

  or New York, and that there is afloat in the fair city, an

  assumption of taste and criticism, savouring rather of those

  genteel discussions upon the same themes, in connection with

  Shakspeare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in the Vicar

  of Wakefield. Near the city, is a most splendid unfinished marble

  structure for the Girard College, founded by a deceased gentleman

  of that name and of enormous wealth, which, if completed according

  to the original design, will be perhaps the richest edifice of

  modern times. But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and

  pending them the work has stopped; so that like many other great

  undertakings in America, even this is rather going to be done one

  of these days, than doing now.

  In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern

  Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of

  Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless

  solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel

  and wrong.

  In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and

  meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised

  this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen

  who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are

  doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the

  immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment,

  prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing

  at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon

  their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I

  am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible

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  endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom,

  and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature.

  I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the

  brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and

  because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye

  and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are

  not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can

  hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment

  which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated

  once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the power of saying

  'Yes' or 'No,' I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where

  the terms of imprisonment were short; but now, I solemnly declare,

  that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath

  the open sky by day, or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the

  consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no

  matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent

  cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree.

  I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially

  connected with its management, and passed the day in going from

  cell to cell, and talking with the inmates. Every facility was

  afforded me, that the utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was

  concealed or hidden from my view, and every piece of information

  that I sought, was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of

  the building cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent

  motives of all who are immediately concerned in the administration

  of the system, there can be no kind of question.

  Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a

  spacious garden. Entering it, by a wicket in the massive gate, we

  pursued the path before us to its other termination, and passed

  into a large chamber, from which seven long passages radiate. On

  either side of each, is a long, long row of low cell doors, with a

  certain number over every one. Above, a gallery of cells like

  those below, except that they have no narrow yard attached (as

  those in the ground tier have), and are somewhat smaller. The

  possession of two of these, is supposed to compensate for the

  absence of so much air and exercise as can be had in the dull strip

  attached to each of the others, in an hour's time every day; and

  therefore every prisoner in this upper story has two cells,

  adjoining and communicating with, each other.

  Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary

  passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful.

  Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's

  shuttle, or shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick walls

  and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general

  stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner

  who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in

  this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and

  the living world, he is led to the cell from which he never again

  comes forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has expired. He

  never hears of wife and children; home or friends; the life or

  death of any single creature. He sees the prison-officers, but

  with that exception he never looks upon a human countenance, or

  hears a human voice. He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in

  th
e slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to everything

  but torturing anxieties and horrible despair.

  His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, even to

  the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a number

  over his cell-door, and in a book of which the governor of the

  prison has one copy, and the moral instructor another: this is the

  index of his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no record

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  of his existence: and though he live to be in the same cell ten

  weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last

  hour, in which part of the building it is situated; what kind of

  men there are about him; whether in the long winter nights there

  are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great

  jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him and the

  nearest sharer in its solitary horrors.

  Every cell has double doors: the outer one of sturdy oak, the

  other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his

  food is handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and, under

  certain restrictions, has sometimes other books, provided for the

  purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate, and can, and

  basin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh

  water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure.

  During the day, his bedstead turns up against the wall, and leaves

  more space for him to work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel, is

  there; and there he labours, sleeps and wakes, and counts the

  seasons as they change, and grows old.

  The first man I saw, was seated at his loom, at work. He had been

  there six years, and was to remain, I think, three more. He had

  been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but even after his

  long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly

  dealt by. It was his second offence.

  He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, and

  answered freely to everything that was said to him, but always with

  a strange kind of pause first, and in a low, thoughtful voice. He

  wore a paper hat of his own making, and was pleased to have it

  noticed and commanded. He had very ingeniously manufactured a sort

  of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and ends; and his

  vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in

  this contrivance, he looked up at it with a great deal of pride,

  and said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he

  hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass beside it

  'would play music before long.' He had extracted some colours from

  the yarn with which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on

  the wall. One, of a female, over the door, he called 'The Lady of

  the Lake.'

  He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while away the time;

  but when I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip trembled,

  and could have counted the beating of his heart. I forget how it

  came about, but some allusion was made to his having a wife. He

  shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face with

  his hands.

  'But you are resigned now!' said one of the gentlemen after a short

  pause, during which he had resumed his former manner. He answered

  with a sigh that seemed quite reckless in its hopelessness, 'Oh

  yes, oh yes! I am resigned to it.' 'And are a better man, you

  think?' 'Well, I hope so: I'm sure I hope I may be.' 'And time

  goes pretty quickly?' 'Time is very long gentlemen, within these

  four walls!'

  He gazed about him - Heaven only knows how wearily! - as he said

  these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare

  as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed

  heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work again.

  In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years'

  imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With

  colours procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of

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  the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid out the few

  feet of ground, behind, with exquisite neatness, and had made a

  little bed in the centre, that looked, by-the-bye, like a grave.

  The taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most

  extraordinary; and yet a more dejected, heart-broken, wretched

  creature, it would be difficult to imagine. I never saw such a

  picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled

  for him; and when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he took one of

  the visitors aside, to ask, with his trembling hands nervously

  clutching at his coat to detain him, whether there was no hope of

  his dismal sentence being commuted, the spectacle was really too

  painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery

  that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this man.

  In a third cell, was a tall, strong black, a burglar, working at

  his proper trade of making screws and the like. His time was

  nearly out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but was

  notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for the number of his

  previous convictions. He entertained us with a long account of his

  achievements, which he narrated with such infinite relish, that he

  actually seemed to lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of

  stolen plate, and of old ladies whom he had watched as they sat at

  windows in silver spectacles (he had plainly had an eye to their

  metal even from the other side of the street) and had afterwards

  robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement, would have

  mingled with his professional recollections the most detestable

  cant; but I am very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the

  unmitigated hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the

  day on which he came into that prison, and that he never would

  commit another robbery as long as he lived.

  There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep

  rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in consequence, they

  called to him at the door to come out into the passage. He

  complied of course, and stood shading his haggard face in the

  unwonted sunlight of the great window, looking as wan and unearthly

  as if he had been summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit

  in his breast; and when the little creature, getting down upon the

  ground, stole back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept

  timidly after it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in

  what respect the man was the nobler animal of the two.

  There was an English thief, who had been there but a few days out

  of seven years: a villainous, low-browed, thin-lipped fellow, with

  a white face; who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who, but

  for the additional penalty, would have gladly stabbed me with his

  shoemaker's knife. There was another German who had entered the

  jail but yesterday, and wh
o started from his bed when we looked in,

  and pleaded, in his broken English, very hard for work. There was

  a poet, who after doing two days' work in every four-and-twenty

  hours, one for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses about

  ships (he was by trade a mariner), and 'the maddening wine-cup,'

  and his friends at home. There were very many of them. Some

  reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned very pale. Some

  two or three had prisoner nurses with them, for they were very

  sick; and one, a fat old negro whose leg had been taken off within

  the jail, had for his attendant a classical scholar and an

  accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner likewise. Sitting upon

  the stairs, engaged in some slight work, was a pretty coloured boy.

  'Is there no refuge for young criminals in Philadelphia, then?'

  said I. 'Yes, but only for white children.' Noble aristocracy in

  crime

  There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven years, and

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  who in a few months' time would be free. Eleven years of solitary

  confinement!

  'I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out.' What does he

  say? Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands, and pick the flesh

  upon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, every now and

  then, to those bare walls which have seen his head turn grey? It

  is a way he has sometimes.

  Does he never look men in the face, and does he always pluck at

  those hands of his, as though he were bent on parting skin and

  bone? It is his humour: nothing more.

  It is his humour too, to say that he does not look forward to going

  out; that he is not glad the time is drawing near; that he did look

  forward to it once, but that was very long ago; that he has lost

  all care for everything. It is his humour to be a helpless,

  crushed, and broken man. And, Heaven be his witness that he has

  his humour thoroughly gratified!

  There were three young women in adjoining cells, all convicted at

  the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. In the

  silence and solitude of their lives they had grown to be quite

  beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and might have moved the

  sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of sorrow which the

  contemplation of the men awakens. One was a young girl; not