Charles Dickens and the Inuit

Charles Dickens was one of England’s best-known and most-respected novelists of the mid-nineteenth century. His works are still widely read and studied in schools throughout the English-speaking world. But he didn’t think much of Inuit.

In 1854, John Rae returned to England with news of the fate of at least some of the men of the lost Franklin expedition. Rae reported what he had learned from Inuit, who had heard the information second-hand from other Inuit who had seen the bodies of some of the white men.

The following passage in Rae’s report attracted considerable attention: “Some of the bodies had been buried…; some were in a tent or tents; others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter; and several lay scattered about in different directions… From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource – cannibalism – as a means of prolonging existence…”

In a letter to the Times, he added: “Some of the corpses had been sadly mutilated, and had been stripped by those who had the misery to survive them, and who were found wrapped in two or three suits of clothes.”

Charles Dickens, who at the time was editor of a periodical called Household Words, took immediate objection to the suggestion that Englishmen would resort to cannibalism. He wrote, “…it is in the highest degree improbable that such men as the officers and crews of the two lost ships would, or could, in any extremity of hunger, alleviate the pains of starvation by this horrible means.”

Dickens thought that the Inuit reports which Rae had conveyed to the British authorities and the public showed only the “loose and unreliable nature of the Esquimaux representations (on which it would be necessary to receive with great caution, even the commonest and most natural occurrence.)” He referred again to the “improbabilities and incoherencies of the Esquimaux evidence.”

All this from a man who had never met an Inuk and never set foot in the Arctic. From the comfort of his desk in London he challenged the reliability of the interpreter whom Rae used, claiming, on the basis of no evidence at all, that he was “in all probability, imperfectly acquainted with the language he translated to the white man.”

Dickens claimed that “ninety-nine interpreters out of a hundred, whether savage, half-savage, or wholly civilised, interpreting to a person of superior station and attainments, will be under a strong temptation to exaggerate. This temptation will always be strongest, precisely where the person interpreted to is seen to be the most excited and impressed by what he hears; for, in proportion as he is moved, the interpreter’s importance is increased.”

Gestures also played a part in the information the Inuit communicated to Rae, and Dickens seized on that information. “The gesture described to us as often repeated – that of the informant setting his mouth to his own arm,” he wrote, “would quite as well describe a man having opened one of his veins, and drunk of the stream that flowed from it.”

He considered also the possibility that the bodies had been mutilated by bears or foxes, even by the ravages of scurvy, anything but the possibility that good and proper Englishmen would resort to “the last resource” – the euphemism often employed for cannibalism.

Finally Dickens considered the Inuit themselves: “Lastly, no man can, with any show of reason, undertake to affirm that this sad remnant of Franklin’s gallant band were not set upon by the Esquimaux themselves.” Savages, as Dickens considered the Inuit, were only respectful of white men when the white men were strong and in control. When they showed weakness, “the savage has changed and sprung upon him.”

He generalized about the character of those he considered savages: “We believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel; and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man – lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine-stricken, weak, frozen, helpless, and dying – has of the gentleness of Esquimaux nature.”

Dickens went on to analyze a number of cases where English explorers and adventurers had endured incredible hardship without resorting to cannibalism. He felt that “the vague babble of savages” which John Rae had reported should not be used to impugn the integrity of British officers and men. Dickens was wrong, of course, and in a subsequent issue of Household Words, John Rae himself wrote to defend the Inuit among whom he had travelled and whose words he had faithfully reported.

Ironically, when Dickens was buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, the inscription on his tomb read in part: “He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed.” But his sympathies definitely did not lie with the Inuit.

(To be continued next week)

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.