In February 12, 1842, after a triumphal three-week stay in Boston and gala receptions and dinners in Worcester, Springfield, and Hartford, Charles Dickens—universally known by his pseudonym, “Boz”—landed at South Street in lower Manhattan on the packet New York from New Haven. When he stepped off the boat with his wife, Catherine (Kate), Dickens was greeted by a throng of cheering admirers, whom the New York Herald described as “perfectly whirlwindish . . . a promiscuous assemblage of bipeds that covered the dock as barnacles a ship's bottom.” The paper crowed: “At last Boz breathes the balmy atmosphere of the Queen City of the Empire State.”
The New York that Dickens first saw and described was a city of “confused heaps of buildings,” with here and there a spire or steeple looking down upon the herd below; and, in the foreground, a forest of ships' masts, cheery with flapping sails and wavy flags. Crossing from among them were steam ferryboats laden with people, coaches, horses, wagons, baskets, and boxes, crossed and recrossed by other ferryboats—all traveling to and fro and never idle. As Dickens approached, the “hum and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, the barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels” all sounded in his ears.
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