Domestic Manners of the Americans

By Frances Trollope and Sara Wheeler

In 1832, three years before Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America, the English novelist Frances Trollope released Domestic Manners of the Americans, an eye-opening record of her travels in the young republic. Expecting a utopia of “justice and liberty for all,” she is shocked to discover the contradictions at the heart of the American character. Funny and fearless, Trollope’s biting critique became an international sensation. Yet, as Mark Twain remarked, "She was merely telling the truth and this indignant nation knew it.”

Today, Domestic Manners of the Americans remains a prophetic diagnosis of America and a masterpiece of nineteenth-century travel writing. Now published as an eBook with an introduction by acclaimed travel author Sara Wheeler, this classic work offers modern American readers a fascinating reintroduction to themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Restless Books
• Release date: Jun 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632060044

Frances Trollope

Frances Milton Trollope (1779 – 1863) was an English novelist and writer whose first book, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), caused an international sensation upon its publication. Trollope’s more than 100 books include strong social novels, such as the first anti-slavery novel, Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw (1836), which influenced Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe; the first industrial novel, Michael Armstrong: Factory Boy; and The Vicar of Wrexhill, which took on the corruption of the church of England; as well as two anti-Catholic novels, The Abbess and Father Eustace. Between 1839 and 1855 Trollope published her Widow Barnaby trilogy of novels, and her other travel books include Belgium and Western Germany in 1833, Paris and the Parisians in 1835, and Vienna and the Austrians. Her first and third sons, Thomas Adolphus and Anthony, also became writers; Anthony Trollope was influenced by his mother's work and became renowned for his social novels.

Book preview

Introduction

Sara Wheeler

"A t every table d’hôte , a British subaltern wrote home from New York, on board every steamboat, in every stagecoach, and in all societies, the first question was, ‘Have you read Mrs Trollope?’ The year was 1832. The more [her book] was abused, the soldier continued, the more rapidly did the printers issue new editions." In Britain this sensational volume — Domestic Manners of the Americans —whizzed through multiple reprints within weeks, and when the author’s son Anthony submitted his first novel, his roguish publisher placed advertisements naming the author MRS Trollope.

* * * * * * *

Who was she? She was born Frances Milton in Bristol in the west of England a third of the way through the long reign of George III, the monarch known as The King Who Lost America. Her father was a parson and her grandfather a distiller. As a young woman Fanny moved to London to work as her brother’s housekeeper, and when she was thirty she married Thomas Trollope, a choleric barrister prone to reckless schemes. During the first decade of their marriage the couple produced seven children and regularly leaped over the back wall of their house in Bloomsbury’s Keppel Street in order to escape a creditor. When Thomas’ law practice petered out, the family abandoned London for Harrow-on-the-Hill five miles outside the city, first renting a farmhouse, then leasing land on which to build a larger home where Thomas was to set up as a gentleman farmer. The project, Anthony said, was to be the grave of all his father’s hopes, ambitions and prosperity. He is a good, honourable man, Fanny confided to a friend, but his temper is dreadful – every year increases his irritability, and also its lamentable effects upon the children. Two of those seven children died in infancy. Through every tragedy, the undiminished Fanny held the family together.

A progressive radical in those days, Fanny knew many of the freethinkers floating round the capital in the 1820s, and the Harrow farmhouse was a refuge for itinerant liberals. When the toga-wearing social reformer Fanny Wright appeared to recruit candidates to join her Tennessee commune, Thomas had just moved his family into a semi-derelict outbuilding and installed tenants in the main farmhouse. At breaking point, his wife made the dramatic decision to throw in her lot with Wright and travel to the Wolf River commune – and this at a time when America was, according to the author of this book, hardly better known than Fairy Land. As for the children: twelve-year-old Anthony and seventeen-year-old Tom were to stay in England, while the other three were America-bound —the feckless sixteen-year-old Henry, Cecilia, who was eleven, and Emily, nine. Two servants agreed to the trip, and so did Auguste-Jean-Jacques Hervieu, a thirty-five-year-old French artist with a heroic moustache and republican views unappreciated by the authorities of his homeland. This is the starting point of our narrative.

The middle-aged Fanny who pitched up in New Orleans at the end of 1827 was short and stumpy with a wide, toad-like face, and her protruding blue-grey eyes held a gaze with masculine authority. Her waist had thickened and she had lost the taut curves of her youth, with the result that her torso resembled a tube. There was something of the grotesque about her, or at least of the rackety Regency. She dressed badly, and cut a comic figure: one American observer noted that she walked with those Colossian strides unattainable by any but Englishwomen.

Trollope and her group left Louisiana on a paddle steamer bound for Tennessee. There were no other women on board. The other passengers cleaned their teeth at table with pocket knives, and, on hearing an English accent, were quick to dismiss the tired formality of the Old World, favoring praise of the egalitarianism that replaced it west of the Atlantic. It was Fanny’s first experience of chronic social uncertainty, and she took note.

The commune had descended into an unsanitary shambles. Fanny and her battered group departed in a hurry, shortly catching another steamer, this time to Cincinnati, where most of the action of Domestic Manners unfolds. In three decades it had grown into the first real inland American city. Dockyards built steamboats, mills ground flour and fifty-four foundries cast iron, while the firm of Read and Watson crafted clocks with mechanical wooden parts, there being a shortage of brass. The city marked the frontier —a potent concept in the national psyche. Many of its citizens raised and exported pigs, and as a result East coasters knew Cincinnati as Porkopolis, if they knew it at all. When Fanny enquired about garbage collection, her new landlord, addressing her as Old Woman, revealed that it was the job of the pigs roaming freely through the streets. In this and other respects Trollope found American society crude. The ‘simple’ manner of living in Western America, she writes in a paragraph from Domestic Manners that sums up her attitude,

was more distasteful to me from its levelling effects on the manners of the people, than from the personal privations that it rendered necessary; and yet, till I was without them, I was in no degree aware of the many pleasurable sensations derived from the little elegancies and refinements enjoyed by the middle classes in Europe . . . All animal wants are supplied profusely in Cincinnati, and at a very easy rate; but alas! these go but a little way in the history of a day’s enjoyment. The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is so remarkable, that I was constantly endeavouring to account for it.

Neighbors were keen to voice an opinion. The English could not speak English; Britons were fake democrats, pretending to save the world but pursuing their own interests; Americans had a more refined linguistic sensibility. A man reputed to be a scholar told Trollope, Shakespeare, madam, is obscene, and, thank God, we are sufficiently advanced to have found it out. She said of her adopted countrymen, They have no warmth or enthusiasm about any subject other than their own emancipation, thereby failing to understand that the War of Independence had been defined in part by the appeal of a separate American identity. She had no sense of historical perspective.

In short, convinced that the fabled American equality levelled people downwards, Trollope made the issue the central theme of Domestic Manners. She put sloppy behavior down to the universal pursuit of money that left no time for refinement (John James Audubon said the same thing in Cincinnati when engaged in jobbing work there a decade before Trollope arrived). Complaining that she never heard that most un-American phrase, ‘I thank you’, Fanny concluded that in the United States only getting ahead mattered. In addition, collective blindness to the double standards within a society supposedly composed of equals also sent her into paroxysms of fury: while not a slave state, Ohio bordered one, and advertisements for runaway slaves filled the papers. Fanny hated slavery and equality with similar passion. She was appalled when shopgirls behaved as if they were on her social level, and like many European visitors noted with distaste that servants shared their employer’s dining table. To someone raised in the stratified society of late Georgian England, dining alongside one’s servant was like running naked through the streets.

Sharp-eyed readers will observe in this book that Trollope was similarly allergic to the separation of church and state. How very modern she is in that regard. The Established Church is a bulwark against superstition, she argued. Americans considered freedom of religion one of the most enlightened principles of the Constitution. But Fanny saw choice leading to fanaticism. Already sure she heartily disliked Jefferson (the feeling would have been reciprocated), she now grew critical of his erection of a wall between church and state – an action that still sees him demonized by the deranged Right today.

Thomas Trollope and his son and namesake, known as Tom, arrived in Cincinnati in September 1828. Back at home the domestic treasury was in terminal decline, but in the Ohio forest buckeyes flamed, and when cold winds blew in from the plains, the family took up drawing-room dramas, or wrapped up for skating and moonlit sleigh rides. The pages describing this period are among the most joyful in Domestic Manners. Fanny threw a party, inviting a hundred guests and installing a small orchestra. The hosts staged The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Henry, suitably drunk as Falstaff, went on with a pillow up his shirt. Looking back at those Cincinnati days, Tom wrote in old age, I have to say that I liked Americans.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati prospered. In March 1829, the first vessel breasted the Miami Canal from the Queen City to Dayton, instantly expanding the market for pork products. The availability of disposable income gave Fanny an idea. (For all her complaints about American fondness for cash above beauty, she found herself in permanent pursuit of lucre.) She had noted a public appetite for spectacle —the newspapers constantly advertised performances by pirouetting dogs or trapeze artists. Having approached Joseph Dorfeuille, the curator of Cincinnati’s under-used Western Museum, and drawing on shows she had enjoyed in European pleasure gardens, Trollope sketched out a series of talking panoramas in which actors appeared as living exhibits. It was a brilliant concept. The shows were so successful that the flummoxed Dorfeuille had to install an electric fence to keep back the crowds. One show ran for thirty-nine years, pulling in the public long after the population of the city had tripled and tripled again. As for Fanny – she had cash at last.

The denizens of Cincinnati loved the shows almost as much as they enjoyed arguing over a presidential election during the Trollopian residency in which Andrew Jackson was fighting it out for the second time against incumbent John Quincy Adams. Fanny was amused to discover that Americans thought they had invented the democratic process. No doubt you don’t do it quite as openly over there, a neighbor remarked to her during the hustings. The episode almost forms a comic interlude in this book.

Encouraged by success at the museum, Trollope conceived a far more ambitious scheme, this time for a cultural entertainment center where the sexes could mingle as they did in London’s Vauxhall Gardens. This time she designed a three-storey edifice she called, as there was to be retail space, a Bazaar. Fanny’s creation, replete with rotundas, arabesques, columns and battlements, reflected the Regency love of the flamboyant and exotic. But in England the style had evolved organically. On the American frontier, according to one resident, the Bazaar could scarcely have been more out of place had it been tossed on the earth by some volcano in the moon.

The project bankrupted her. Trollope’s Folly, as locals dubbed it, revealed a lack of commercial acumen, the worst crime in frontier America. Now Fanny and her group were destitute, but they could not leave Cincinnati until March, as the Ohio was frozen. Trading the parlor carpet for rent, they boarded with a neighbor. Creditors had even taken their beds, so through a hard winter Fanny and the girls shared a cot while Henry and Hervieu slept on the kitchen floor. Fanny contracted malaria and Henry fell seriously ill with an unknown malady. Just when things were at their worst, Fanny turned fifty.

* * * * * * *

She returned to Harrow with three inky notebooks filled with scribblings. These pages, now, represented her only hope of salvation. The Scottish naval officer Basil Hall’s Travels in North America had just gone through three rapid printings and Fanny judged that the reading public wanted to know more about the independent nation that had sprung from what had been, to most Britons, an uninteresting colony. And it did. America in the end delivered what Fanny had set sail to find – financial security. So it was the promised land after all.

What is Domestic Manners? It is a vivid, funny, idiosyncratic and deeply selective portrait of America written in prose with serrated edges. Fanny sailed from England a liberal and returned a conservative, and the transformation gave her book its tensile strength. From the start, she skews the evidence in an attempt to prove that equality is an antidote to improvement, and that handing state power to the populace leads to a breakdown of social control. In these pages Fanny reveals a suspicion both of Jefferson’s insistence that all men are born equal, and of the Jacksonian concept of popular democracy. Were I an English legislator, she wrote, instead of sending sedition to the tower, I would send her to make a tour of the US. I had a little leaning towards sedition myself when I set out, but before I had half completed my tour I was quite cured.

In her prose and in her life Fanny moved with eighteenth-century ease from battlefield to boudoir, and Domestic Manners covers both. The voice that sings from these pages speaks with the inflections of another age, but it is Fanny’s voice: stylish and pithy. Her elegant and sardonic prose is edged with satire and laced with wit. There is something true at the heart of Domestic Manners. It is a story of disillusion, of seeking and not finding, of the gap between expectation and reality.

In the years following the appearance of Domestic Manners, Fanny, now a famous author, produced a stream of novels. They are bright, coarse and generally weak, though strong women who win through crop up a good deal. She was in many ways a pioneer, and she often spoke up, through her characters, on behalf of women whom society judged to be foolish or wayward. But while books poured out, Henry and both the girls who had accompanied Fanny to America developed tuberculosis. Their mother wrote through the night, sustained by laudanum and green tea. Henry died aged twenty-three, then Emily at eighteen, followed by thirty-three-year-old Cecilia. Anthony wrote years later, I have written many novels under many circumstances; but I doubt much whether I could write one when my whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son.

When there was nobody left alive to nurse, Fanny swanned round the great European capitals: Prince Metternich escorted her into dinner and the last king of France gave her a ball. She loved life, and never gave up on it. Hers was one of the most dramatic reinventions of all time. She never returned to America. She saw the USA and Britain moving together, culturally, as she had feared they would. (One wonders what she would have made of twenty-first century globalization – though one can guess.) She died aged 83 at her lovely Florentine palazzo, the Villino Trollope. One obituary referred to her as one of the most remarkable women of her period, which I would change to of any period. Hers is a story of self-made success and of winning through by grit and hard work – an American story. She was more American than she imagined.

* * * * * * *

Other nations, Fanny concludes in Domestic Manners, were thin-skinned, but the citizens of the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze blows over them. The American reading public did indeed baulk at criticism from a pesky Briton: unflattering cartoons, caricatures and waxworks of Fanny appeared throughout the land, and the new verb Trollopize meant to abuse the American nation. According to one critic, No other author of the present day has been so much admired, and so much abused. Later, though, Fanny picked up one fan in America. Mark Twain. In his own maudlin middle years he took a library of European commentators on a nostalgic Mississippi voyage, and on the last page of his copy of Domestic Manners noted, in his sprawling hand, Of all these tourists, I like Dame Trollope best. She was, said the master stretcher-teller, merely telling the truth.

Domestic Manners of the Americans

On me dit que pourvu que je ne parle ni de I’autorité, ni du culte, ni dela politique, ni de la morale, ni des gens en place, ni de I’opéra, ni des autres spectacles, ni de personne qui tienne à quelque chose, je puis tout imprimer librement.

—Mariage de Figaro.

CHAPTER 1

Entrance of the Mississippi—Balize

On the 4th of November, 1827, I sailed from London, accompanied by my son and two daughters; and after a favourable, though somewhat tedious voyage, arrived on Christmas-day at the mouth of the Mississippi.

The first indication of our approach to land was the appearance of this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters, and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. The shores of this river are so utterly flat, that no object upon them is perceptible at sea, and we gazed with pleasure on the muddy ocean that met us, for it told us we were arrived, and seven weeks of sailing had wearied us; yet it was not without a feeling like regret that we passed from the bright blue waves, whose varying aspect had so long furnished our chief amusement, into the murky stream which now received us.

Large flights of pelicans were seen standing upon the long masses of mud which rose above the surface of the waters, and a pilot came to guide us over the bar, long before any other indication of land was visible.

I never beheld a scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors. One only object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding prophet of that which is to come.

By degrees bulrushes of enormous growth become visible, and a few more miles of mud brought us within sight of a cluster of huts called the Balize, by far the most miserable station that I ever saw made the dwelling of man, but I was told that many families of pilots and fishermen lived there.

For several miles above its mouth, the Mississippi presents no objects more interesting than mud banks, monstrous bulrushes, and now and then a huge crocodile luxuriating in the slime. Another circumstance that gives to this dreary scene an aspect of desolation, is the incessant appearance of vast quantities of drift wood, which is ever finding its way to the different mouths of the Mississippi. Trees of enormous length, sometimes still bearing their branches, and still oftener their uptorn roots entire, the victims of the frequent hurricane, come floating down the stream. Sometimes several of these, entangled together, collect among their boughs a quantity of floating rubbish, that gives the mass the appearance of a moving island, bearing a forest, with its roots mocking the heavens; while the dishonoured branches lash the tide in idle vengeance: this, as it approaches the vessel, and glides swiftly past, looks like the fragment of a world in ruins.

As we advanced, however, we were cheered, notwithstanding the season, by the bright tints of southern vegetation. The banks continue invariably flat, but a succession of planless villas, sometimes merely a residence, and sometimes surrounded by their sugar grounds and negro huts, varied the scene. At no one point was there an inch of what painters call a second distance; and for the length of one hundred and twenty miles, from the Balize to New Orleans, and one hundred miles above the town, the land is defended from the encroachments of the river by a high embankment which is called the Levee; without which the dwellings would speedily disappear, as the river is evidently higher than the banks would be without it. When we arrived, there had been constant rains, and of long continuance, and this appearance was, therefore, unusually striking, giving to this great natural feature the most unnatural appearance imaginable; and making evident, not only that man had been busy there, but that even the mightiest works of nature might be made to bear his impress; it recalled, literally, Swift’s mock heroic,

Nature must give way to art;

yet, she was looking so mighty, and so unsubdued all the time, that I could not help fancying she would some day take the matter into her own hands again, and if so, farewell to New Orleans.

It is easy to imagine the total want of beauty in such a landscape; but yet the form and hue of the trees and plants, so new to us, added to the long privation we had endured of all sights and sounds of land, made even these swampy shores seem beautiful. We were, however, impatient to touch as well as see the land; but the navigation from the Balize to New Orleans is difficult and tedious, and the two days that it occupied appeared longer than any we had passed on board.

In truth, to those who have pleasure in contemplating the phenomena of nature, a sea voyage may endure many weeks without wearying. Perhaps some may think that the first glance of ocean and of sky shew all they have to offer; nay, even that that first glance may suggest more of dreariness than sublimity; but to me, their variety appeared endless, and their beauty unfailing. The attempt to describe scenery, even where the objects are prominent and tangible, is very rarely successful; but where the effect is so subtile and so varying, it must be vain. The impression, nevertheless, is perhaps deeper than any other; I think it possible I may forget the sensations with which I watched the long course of the gigantic Mississippi; the Ohio and the Potomac may mingle and be confounded with other streams in my memory, I may even recall with difficulty the blue outline of the Alleghany mountains, but never, while I remember any thing, can I forget the first and last hour of light on the Atlantic.

The ocean, however, and all its indescribable charm, no longer surrounded us; we began to feel that our walk on the quarter-deck was very like the exercise of an ass in a mill; that our books had lost half their pages, and that the other half were known by rote; that our beef was very salt, and our biscuits very hard; in short, that having studied the good ship, Edward, from stem to stern till we knew the name of every sail, and the use of every pulley, we had had enough of her, and as we laid down, head to head, in our tiny beds for the last time, I exclaimed with no small pleasure,

To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new.

CHAPTER 2

New Orleans—Society —Creoles and Quadroons Voyage up the Mississippi

On first touching the soil of a new land, of a new continent, of a new world, it is impossible not to feel considerable excitement and deep interest in almost every object that meets us. New Orleans presents very little that can gratify the eye of taste, but nevertheless there is much of novelty and interest for a newly arrived European. The large proportion of blacks seen in the streets, all labour being performed by them; the grace and beauty of the elegant Quadroons, the occasional groups of wild and savage looking Indians, the unwonted aspect of the vegetation, the huge and turbid river, with its low and slimy shore, all help to afford that species of amusement which proceeds from looking at what we never saw before.

The town has much the appearance of a French Ville de Province, and is, in fact, an old French colony taken from Spain by France. The names of the streets are French, and the language about equally French and English. The market is handsome and well supplied, all produce being conveyed by the river. We were much pleased by the chant with which the Negro boatmen regulate and beguile their labour on the river; it consists but of very few notes, but they are sweetly harmonious, and the Negro voice is almost always rich and powerful.

By far the most agreeable hours I passed at New Orleans were those in which I explored with my children the forest near the town. It was our first walk in the eternal forests of the western world, and we felt rather sublime and poetical. The trees, generally speaking, are much too close to be either large or well grown; and, moreover, their growth is often stunted by a parasitical plant, for which I could learn no other name than Spanish moss; it hangs gracefully from the boughs, converting the outline of all the trees it hangs upon into that of weeping willows. The chief beauty of the forest in this region is from the luxuriant undergrowth of palmetos, which is decidedly the loveliest coloured and most graceful plant I know. The pawpaw, too, is a splendid shrub, and in great abundance. We here, for the first time, saw the wild vine, which we afterwards found growing so profusely in every part of America, as naturally to suggest the idea that the natives ought to add wine to the numerous production of their plenty-teeming soil. The strong pendant festoons made safe and commodious swings, which some of our party enjoyed, despite the sublime temperament above-mentioned.

Notwithstanding it was mid-winter when we were at New Orleans, the heat was much more than agreeable, and the attacks of the mosquitos incessant, and most tormenting; yet I suspect that, for a short time, we would rather have endured it, than not have seen oranges, green peas, and red pepper, growing in the open air at Christmas. In one of our rambles we ventured to enter a garden, whose bright orange hedge attracted our attention; here we saw green peas fit for the table, and a fine crop of red pepper ripening in the sun. A young Negress was employed on the steps of the house; that she was a slave made her an object of interest to us. She was the first slave we had ever spoken to, and I believe we all felt that we could hardly address her with sufficient gentleness. She little dreamed, poor girl, what deep sympathy she excited; she answered us civilly and gaily, and seemed amused at our fancying there was something unusual in red pepper pods; she gave us several of them, and I felt fearful lest a hard mistress might blame her for it. How very childish does ignorance make us! and how very ignorant we are upon almost every subject, where hearsay evidence is all we can get!

I left England with feelings so strongly opposed to slavery, that it was not without pain I witnessed its effects around me. At the sight of every Negro man, woman, and child that passed, my fancy wove some little romance of misery, as belonging to each of them; since I have known more on the subject, and become better acquainted with their real situation in America, I have often smiled at recalling what I then felt.

The first symptom of American equality that I perceived, was my being introduced in form to a milliner; it was not at a boarding-house, under the indistinct outline of Miss C*****, nor in the street through the veil of a fashionable toilette, but in the very penetralia of her temple, standing behind her counter, giving laws to ribbon and to wire, and ushering caps and bonnets into existence. She was an English woman, and I was told that she possessed great intellectual endowments, and much information; I really believe this was true. Her manner was easy and graceful, with a good deal of French tournure; and the gentleness with which her fine eyes and sweet voice directed the movements of a young female slave, was really touching: the way, too, in which she blended her French talk of modes with her customers, and her English talk of metaphysics with her friends, had a pretty air of indifference in it, that gave her a superiority with both.

I found with her the daughter of a judge, eminent, it was said, both for legal and literary ability, and I heard from many quarters, after I had left New Orleans, that the society of this lady was highly valued by all persons of talent. Yet were I, traveller-like, to stop here, and set it down as a national peculiarity, or republican custom, that milliners took the lead in the best society, I should greatly falsify facts. I do not remember the same thing happening to me again, and this is one instance among a thousand, of the impression every circumstance makes on entering a new country, and of the propensity, so irresistible, to class all things, however accidental, as national and peculiar. On the other hand, however, it is certain that if similar anomalies are unfrequent in America, they are nearly impossible elsewhere.

In the shop of Miss C***** I was introduced to Mr. M’Clure, a venerable personage, of gentlemanlike appearance, who in the course of five minutes propounded as many axioms, as Ignorance is the only devil; Man makes his own existence; and the like. He was of the New Harmony school, or rather the New Harmony school was of him. He was a man of good fortune, (a Scotchman, I believe), who after living a tolerably gay life, had conceived high thoughts, such as Lycurgus loved, who bade flog the little Spartans, and determined to benefit the species, and immortalize himself, by founding a philosophical school at New Harmony. There was something in the hollow square legislations of Mr. Owen, that struck him as admirable, and he seems, as far as I can understand, to have intended aiding his views, by a sort of incipient hollow square drilling; teaching the young ideas of all he could catch, to shoot into parallelogramic form and order. This venerable philosopher, like all of his school that I ever heard of, loved better to originate lofty imaginings of faultless systems, than to watch their application to practice. With much liberality he purchased and conveyed to the wilderness a very noble collection of books and scientific instruments; but not finding among men one whose views were liberal and enlarged as his own, he selected a woman to put into action the machine he had organized. As his acquaintance with this lady had been of long standing, and, as it was said, very intimate, he felt sure that no violation of his rules would have place under her sway; they would act together as one being: he was to perform the functions of the soul, and will everything; she, those of the body, and perform everything.

The principal feature of the scheme was, that (the first liberal outfit of the institution having been furnished by Mr. M’Clure,) the expense of keeping it up should be defrayed by the profits arising from the labours of the pupils, male and female, which was to be performed at stated intervals of each day, in regular rotation with learned study and scientific research. But unfortunately the soul of the system found the climate of Indiana uncongenial to its peculiar formation, and, therefore, took its flight to Mexico, leaving the body to perform the operations of both, in whatever manner it liked best; and the body, being a French body, found no difficulty in setting actively to work without troubling the soul about it; and soon becoming conscious that the more simple was a machine, the more perfect were its operations, she threw out all that related to the intellectual part of the business, (which to do poor soul justice, it had laid great stress upon), and stirred herself as effectually as ever body did, to draw wealth from the thews and sinews of the youths they had collected. When last I heard of this philosophical establishment, she, and a nephew-son were said to be reaping a golden harvest, as many of the lads had been sent from a distance by indigent parents, for gratuitous education, and possessed no means of leaving it.

Our stay in New Orleans was not long enough to permit our entering into society, but I was told that it contained two distinct sets of people, both celebrated, in their way, for their social meetings and elegant entertainments. The first of these is composed of Creole families, who are chiefly planters and merchants, with their wives and daughters; these meet together, eat together, and are very grand and aristocratic; each of their balls is a little Almack’s, and every portly dame of the set is as exclusive in her principles as the excluded but amiable Quadroons, and such of the gentlemen of the former class as can by any means escape from the high places, where pure Creole blood swells the veins at the bare mention of any being tainted in the remotest degree with the Negro stain.

Of all the prejudices I have ever witnessed, this appears to me the most violent, and the most inveterate. Quadroon girls, the acknowledged daughters of wealthy American or Creole fathers, educated with all of style and accomplishments which money can procure at New Orleans, and with all the decorum that care and affection can give; exquisitely beautiful, graceful, gentle, and amiable, these are not admitted, nay, are not on any terms admissable, into the society of the Creole families of Louisiana. They cannot marry; that is to say, no ceremony can render an union with them legal or binding; yet such is the powerful effect of their very peculiar grace, beauty, and sweetness of manner, that unfortunately they perpetually become the objects of choice and affection. If the Creole ladies have privilege to exercise the awful power of repulsion, the gentle Quadroon has the sweet but dangerous vengeance of possessing that of attraction. The unions formed with this unfortunate race are said to be often lasting and happy, as far as any unions can be so, to which a certain degree of disgrace is attached.

There is a French and an English theatre in the town; but we were too fresh from Europe to care much for either; or, indeed, for any other of the town delights of this city, and we soon became eager to commence our voyage up the Mississippi.

Miss Wright, then less known (though the author of more than one clever volume) than she has since become, was the companion of our voyage from Europe; and it was my purpose to have passed some months with her and her sister at the estate she had purchased in Tennessee. This lady, since become so celebrated as the advocate of opinions that make millions shudder, and some half-score admire, was,

Reviews for Domestic Manners of the Americans

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mrs Trollope (the mother of Anthony) was one of the earliest and most enterprising members of the stream of European intellectuals who visited the USA in its early years and wrote about their experiences. She set out for darkest Tennessee with her children in 1828, intending to join Fanny Wright's Nashoba Commune. When she saw the commune, she packed her bags and left at once, appalled at the conditions there, and then found herself stranded in Cincinnati for a couple of years before she could raise the money to travel back to England. These circumstances are only vaguely hinted at in the book, but obviously go a long way to explain her generally negative impression of the United States and contempt for the hypocrisy of American egalitarianism.

[lovinglit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a fantastic rant from a European (British) lady who visits the new(ish) lands of America and who doesn't much like the people she meets. It is the early-mid 1800s and Americans are proud of their independence, they are proud of their equality and freedom, and they want to keep it that way. Mrs Trollope however, sees uncouth and uncultured ways wherever she goes. Although she many times absolutely loves the picturesque and dramatic natural scenery, she cannot abide by the way that the Americans are. She describes in great depth how far people will go to avoid thanking someone, or how most people seem too above menial work to be her maid or cleaner, and how everybody continually evokes this notion of equality when doing so. She picks to shreds the inconsistency with this notion and the existence of slaves, and the treatment of Native Americans. And she dislikes thoroughly the dress, facial expressions, and vernacular of the American women....they are not at all like they should be, in her mind. I loved reading this, the language was so beautiful, sometimes you were sure she must be paying a compliment with using such pretty language, but the message was passive/aggressive and very clear- Americans really ought to be more European. It was funny to read, but also did lay out a lot of the foundations of how a new society consolidates. It is fascinating to consider the trajectory of American culture from this time onwards. She points out the obscene way that people are obsessed with making money (if only she could see the world now!), and the hypocrisy of religions that preach freedom and fairness so fervently while condoning slavery and lining their own pockets first. Although her ranty style is clearly opinionated, I liked her bold statements and have enough brain matter to consider for myself what her biases were or might have been. The book said as much about her and her lifestyle as it did about the Americans'. A rollicking good, if somewhat flowery, read.

[cakecop_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting read. Fanny admits she is biased against Americans, but she does make an attempt to balance her criticisms of America. Overall she is extremely impressed by the landscape and natural vegetation in America. I admire her focus on the environment and how she makes it one of the central themes of the book.She praises American ingenuity with patents and architecture.Her negative descriptions of Americans are supported with experiences that she records. She finds the lack of refinement in Americans vulgar. I agree. She carefully describes the prejudices of American's toward England and she correctly puts the blame on the newspapers. I find the similarities between America in 1830 and today amusing. I enjoy her careful dialogue of a two men talking and how one man responds but never directly answers a question to the other man. This is very funny.The faults of men like spitting, drinking, gambling are repeated over and over. I understands her feelings of revulsion. She attends many types of churches and carefully describes the excesses of he preachers. Her description of American's feeling of superiority is relevant today. Americans belief that they are the chosen people and the best hope for the world it obnoxious to foreigners and I sympathize with them.She writes long sentences that are sometimes filled with double negatives that make is difficult to understand her point.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians. Billiards are forbidden by law, so are cards. To sell a pack of cards in Ohio subjects the seller to a penalty of fifty dollars. They have no public balls, excepting, I think, six, during the Christmas holidays. They have no concerts. They have no dinner parties.They have a theatre, which is, in fact, the only public amusement of this triste little town; but they seem to care little about it, and either from economy or distaste, it is very poorly attended. Ladies are rarely seen there, and by far the larger proportion of females deem it an offence against religion to witness the representation of a play. It is in the churches and chapels of the town that the ladies are to be seen in full costume; and I am tempted to believe that a stranger from the continent of Europe would be inclined, on first reconnoitering the city, to suppose that the places of worship were the theatres and cafes of the place.Near the end of the book, the author devotes some time to discussing American reactions to a book by Captain Basil Hall, commenting on their inability to tolerate the slightest criticism of their country, and how it seemed as if everyone in the country had bought the book and was enraged at the calumnies of that despicable author. As I read this, I was picturing Fanny Trollope with dollar signs in her eyes and the sound of cash registers ringing (much like Scrooge McDuck in the cartoons). I am sure that she thought about her opinions on the uncouth citizens of American, with their constant spitting, strange ideas of how to run hotels and lack of enthusiasm for anything except politics and making money, and realised that she was perfectly capable of writing in bitchy, condescending and scornful tones, so why shouldn't she write a book that would infuriate the American public and make herself just as much money as Captain Hall had.The Chatham is so utterly condemned by bon ton, that it requires some courage to decide upon going there; nor do I think my curiosity would have penetrated so far, had I not seen Miss Mitford's Rienzi advertised there. It was the first opportunity I had had of seeing it played, and spite of very indifferent acting, I was delighted. The interest must have been great, for till the curtain fell, I saw not one quarter of the queer things around me: then I observed in the front row of a dress-box a lady performing the most maternal office possible; several gentlemen without their coats, and a general air of contempt for thedecencies of life, certainly more than usually revolting.This is actually a very readable book, as Fanny's bitchiness and condescension when discussing the people and their way of life contrasts with her descriptions of the beauties of the mountains, rivers, waterfalls and autumn foliage. And her scorn can cut to the heart of things when she compares the Americans' constant lauding of their freedom with their acceptance of slavery and the breaking of every legal agreement made with the Native Americans. Had I, during my residence in the United States, observed any single feature in their national character that could justify their eternal boast of liberality and the love of freedom, I might have respected them, however much my taste might have been offended by what was peculiar in their manners and customs. But it is impossible for any mind of common honesty not to be revolted by the contradictions in their principles and practice. They inveigh against the governments of Europe, because, as they say, they favour the powerful and oppress the weak. You may hear this declaimed upon in Congress, roared out in taverns, discussed in every drawing-room, satirized upon the stage, nay, even anathematized from the pulpit: listen to it, and then look at them at home; you will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing their mob on the indefeasible rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil, whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.

[pussreboots · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I take book suggestions from all sorts of sources. In the case of Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope, the recommendation came tucked into The Cat Who Robbed a Bank by Lilian Jackson Braun. Trollope's book was featured in a game of twenty questions that piqued my interest.Frances Trollope, mother of Anthony Trollope, and author of twenty-five novels, as well as travelogues, got the writing bug during her stay in the United States with three of her six children. The idea behind the trip was two fold — take a break from marital issues and rebuild some of the waning family fortune.The Trollops landed in New Orleans and from there traveled north via a commune in Tennessee to Cincinnati and later other urban centers in the area. Throughout her journey she remarked on the people she met, the mode of transportation, the weather, the food and pretty much anything else that either intrigued her or pissed her off.As this was the early days of United States and things were still pretty damn rural even in the big cities (note her descriptions of pigs as garbage disposal units), she of well established Britain, took her visits as something of an adventure into untamed, barbaric lands.Her travelog inspired Edmund White to pen Fanny: A Fiction. If I am to keep following the thread of recommendations from Braun to Trollop to White, I suppose I should read his book too. It is now on my wishlist to read as time permits.