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How Lady Franklin led Charles Dickens to disgrace himself




In Lady Franklin’s Revenge, I devote 130 pages to showing not only how Lady Franklin orchestrated  the search for Sir John Franklin, but how she manipulated public opinion after explorer John Rae returned with the first news of the fate of her husband's expedition. In this excerpt, we find her getting Charles Dickens involved. . .
Late in 1854 . . . Lady Franklin launched an undeclared war on John Rae. His allegations of cannibalism threatened her husband's reputation, and so her own. They could not be allowed to stand. Rae's relics had convinced Jane that Franklin had died, but never would she accept the narrative
that came with them.
When the explorer paid her the obligatory courtesy call, still wearing his full Arctic beard, Jane told him to his face that he never should have accepted the word of "Esquimaux savages," none of whom claimed to have seen the dead bodies, all of whom were merely relaying the accounts of others. Rae refused to recant. He insisted that he knew the truth when he heard it, and that he had written his report not for publication, but for the Admiralty. Jane replied that he should never have committed such allegations to paper. And the explorer withdrew.
Eventually, John Rae would be vindicated. Down through the decades, researchers would contribute nuance and clarification. But none would repudiate the thrust of his initial report. Starting in Victoria Strait, a large party of final survivors had trekked south in a desperate attempt to reach the continental mainland. Many of them perished along the way, and the final survivors were driven to cannibalism. Such was the fate of the Franklin expedition.
In 1854, however, Jane Franklin refused to accept this reality. And she had no shortage of natural allies. These included the friends and relatives of men who had sailed with Franklin, and an array of eminent officers concerned with the reputation of the Royal Navy—men like James Clark Ross, John Richardson, and Francis Beaufort. But all of these, Jane realized, would be open to charges of special pleading.
The resourceful Lady Franklin wondered about Charles Dickens. Hadn't his father had some connection with the Royal Navy? Surely he could be induced to strike the right attitude? The forty-two-year-old author had already published such classics as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Bleak House. More importantly, he edited a twice-monthly newspaper called Household Words—potentially the perfect vehicle. Through her friend Carolina Boyle—formerly a maid of honour to Queen Adelaide, consort of King William IV—Jane communicated her wish that Dickens should visit her as soon as possible.
The desperately busy author dropped everything and, on November 19, 1854, turned up at her front door. No eyewitness account of their meeting has survived. But Jane Franklin wanted John Rae repudiated—especially his allegations of cannibalism—and the greatest literary champion of the age undertook to accomplish that task.
The next morning, Dickens scrawled a note to one W.H. Willis, a sometime assistant. While until now he had paid scant attention to the issue, Dickens observed, "I am rather strong on Voyages and Cannibalism, and might do an interesting little paper for the next No. of Household Words: on that part of Dr. Rae's report, taking the arguments against its probabilities. Can you get me a newspaper cutting containing his report? If not, will you have it copied for me and sent up to Tavistock House straight away?"
Taking his cue from Jane Franklin, Dickens proceeded to write a devastating two-part analysis entitled "The Lost Arctic Voyagers." He published Part 1 as the lead article on December 2, and Part 2 the following week. Acknowledging that Rae had a duty to report what he had heard, and so demonstrating his even-handedness, Dickens castigated the Admiralty for publishing his account without considering its effects. While exonerating Rae personally, he attacked that explorer's conclusions, contending that there was no reason whatsoever to believe "that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging existence."
Given that he could present no new evidence, Dickens argued by analogy and according to probabilities. He suggested that the remnants of "Franklin's gallant band" might well have been murdered by the Inuit: "It is impossible to form an estimate of the character of any race of savages, from their deferential behaviour to the white man while he is strong. . . 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 the Esquimaux nature."
Dickens offered much more along these lines. He criticized Rae for having taken "the word of a savage," and, confusing the Inuit with the Victorian stereotype of the African, argued, "Even the sight of cooked and dissevered human bodies among this or that tatoo'd tribe, is not proof. Such appropriate offerings to their barbarous, wide-mouthed, goggle-eyed gods, savages have been often seen and known to make."
With all the literary skill at his command, Dickens presented an argument that, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, can only be judged profoundly racist. In this instance, at least, the author failed to transcend the imperialism of his age. Time has proven his two-part essay to be a tour-de-force of obfuscation, self-deception, and wilful blindness. But late in 1854, it engulfed Rae like an avalanche. The explorer responded as best he could, but he had only truth on his side, and few writers in any time or place could have contended with Charles Dickens in full rhetorical flight. When the author was done, in the only realm that mattered—that of reputation—John Rae was deader than Jane Franklin's late husband.
Ken McGoogan
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Before turning mainly to books about arctic exploration and Canadian history, Ken McGoogan worked for two decades as a journalist at major dailies in Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal. He teaches creative nonfiction writing through the University of Toronto and in the MFA program at King’s College in Halifax. Ken served as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, has written recently for Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic, and Maclean’s, and sails with Adventure Canada as a resource historian. Based in Toronto, he has given talks and presentations across Canada, from Dawson City to Dartmouth, and in places as different as Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Hobart.