Did you miss the 157th anniversary of The Great International Walking Match? What sets this event apart in literary and local history is the participation of the iconic English novelist, Charles Dickens, while in Newton, Massachusetts!
This is the little known story of the brief visit in 1868 of Charles Dickens to the small village of Newton Centre – not just once, but twice!
In November, 1867 Dickens arrived in Boston to begin his second American reading tour in twenty-five years. Over the course of the next five months, he would deliver some 76 readings. Dickens was now at the height of popularity and this promised to be a lucrative venture: By the time he sailed back to England, he had accumulated over two million dollars (in today’s money) in speaking fees.
Walking was Dickens’ one release from the rigors of writing, travel, and lecturing. “If I could not walk far and fast,” he confessed, “I think I should just explode and perish.” He once awoke in the middle of the night and walked the 30 miles from London to his country home at Gad’s Hill in Kent! Dickens’ passion for walking did not diminish with age. When 55 years old, and facing an exhausting tour schedule of 76 readings in about 150 days — at venues up and down the entire Northeast — he still made time to walk daily, averaging ten to twelve miles.
While on tour in Baltimore in early February, Dickens’ managers, George Dolby and James Osgood, came up with a plan to distract Dickens from his grueling lecture schedule. “An idea struck us,” wrote Dolby, “that a walking match between ourselves (Dolby and Osgood), to take place at the end of February, in Boston, would be a source of amusement to Mr. Dickens.”
Dickens enthusiastically embraced the idea, volunteering to draw up articles of an agreement, to act as an umpire and trainer, and to write a narrative of the event. Dickens billed the race as “The Great International Walking-Match,” since Dolby was English and Osgood American. Dickens also assigned names to all of the participants: “The Boston Bantam” (James Osgood); “The Man of Ross” (George Dolby); assisted by “Massachusetts Jemmy” (Jamie Fields); and “The Gad’s Hill Gasper” (Charles Dickens).
Some days before the scheduled race, Dickens and his publisher and co-umpire, Jamie Fields, laid out and walked the entire course to measure the distance. Essentially, it was a half-marathon, thirteen miles from start to finish with the sleepy village of Newton Centre being the turning point. Dickens later described this visit, “Six and a half miles from the start, lies the little village of Newton Centre with no refreshments in it, but a shop with five oranges and a bottle of (boot) blacking.” Obviously unimpressed, but hungry, he and Fields purchased the oranges and sat on a stoop outside, and devoured the fruit.
The appointed race day — Saturday, February 29, 1868 (a leap year) — dawned cold and icy. In his narrative, Dickens wrote, “The condition of the ground is something indescribable, from half-melted snow, running water, and sheets and blocks of ice. The two performers have not the faintest notion of the weight of the task they have undertaken.”
Starting at the foot of Beacon Hill, near the corner of Charles Street, the race was off. The start was quick. “They got away exactly together,” noted Dickens, “and at a spinning speed.” At four miles, still on Beacon Street, they accelerated, with Dickens urging them on, through a deep snowbank and up a steep hill.
Although a carriage followed and provided them with what were termed “creature comforts for the inner man,” Dickens initially refused to ride in it, waiting until the half-way point at Newton Centre to drop out of the match.
On the return leg of the race, “The Boston Bantam” (Osgood) took the advantage and kept it until he crossed the finish line in an impressive two hours and 48 minutes. Dolby came in at a respectable seven minutes behind.
That evening, Dickens hosted a lavish dinner at the Parker House Hotel for his companions and friends, which included such Boston literary luminaries as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. With his unique flair, Dickens regaled his guests with all of the details of the day’s competition.
Following his first tour in 1842, Dickens wrote about his impressions of the United States, some containing harsh criticism of its culture and values. He later tempered these remarks and, thankfully, all was forgiven. Yet Dickens always held a special fondness for Boston, often referring to it as “my American home” and calling it a “memorable and beloved spot.”
After his final lecture in Boston, Dickens departed for England on April 22, 1868, never to return. It is obvious that his Great International Walking-Match was a high point, providing an enjoyable and refreshing interlude to a long journey. Surely, this held a special place among the trunk full of new memories he took home, including, of course, his amusing anecdote about our own little village of Newton Centre, which predated the establishment of the current Patriots’ Day Marathon by almost thirty years!
Only two years after his return to England, on June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens succumbed to a stroke at age 58. He was laid to rest in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.
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Source: M.F. Sweetser, King’s Handbook of Newton, (Boston, MA., Moses King Corporation, 1889), pp. 271-272.
