Note 10 to Chapter 6 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.
Harry Stone argues that Martin's being lionized in this way is a principal example of the fault of the American section: that Dickens is unable to maintain an adequate aesthetic distance because he is "too emotionally involved with his mount memories to modify and subdue them sufficiently for credibility" (p. 472). Though Stone's article traces interesting pattern. in Dickens's use of his letters and notes in the novel, I think that in this case he is dead wrong.
Last modified: 3 May 2001