A NOTE ON MRS. TROLLOPE
By JOHN
FRANCIS MCDERMOTT
When Charles Joseph Latrobe made his
tour of the West
with Washington Irving in 1832, they
passed through Cincinnati
at a very interesting moment. The
citizens were big with in-
dignation over Mrs. Frances Trollope.
Latrobe related that they
found the good citizens of that rising
and flourishing city busily ruminating
over the first edition of a well-known
picture of their domestic manners,
which the English press had just sent forth
for their special benefit.1
Whether the compote was justly and
wisely compounded, I was in no way
enabled to judge at the time, but it was
very evident from the wry faces
on all sides, and the aroused spirit of
indignation, that the bitter herbs
predominated over the sweet.2
In the next ten years no traveler passed
through Cincinnati
without making reference to Mrs.
Trollope's book, or without
bestowing upon her either indignation or
amused pity for the
offense her "aristocratic
senses" received from the pork-packing
industry.3 But of all the
comment passed upon her, the most
amusing and the most lightly
contemptuous was that of a Creole
of Saint Louis.
Latrobe, Irving, and the others of the
party proceeded to
Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory
under the guidance of Colonel
Auguste Pierre Chouteau, whose
companionship they found
thoroughly enjoyable. Latrobe described
the party as it set out
for the Western Creek Agency, and
concluded with this para-
graph:
1 Frances Trollope, The Domestic
Manners of the Americans (London, 1832),
2v. Mrs. Trollope lived in Cincinnati
from 1828 to 1830.
2 Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Rambler
in North America. 2nd ed. (London, 1886),
I, 99.
3 Cf. James Stuart, Three Years in North America (Edinburgh,
1833), II, 184-86,
272-81, 442-69, 491-92, 494-96, 517-18.
Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America
(London, 1833), II, 170ff, 189; J. E.
Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches (London, 1833),
II, 123, 124-25; C. D. Arfwedson, The
United States and Canada in 1832-3-4 (London,
1834), II, 130ff, 176ff; Patrick
Shirreff, Tour through North America (Edinburgh,
1835), 9; Michel Chevalier, Lettres
sur L'Amerique du Nord (1839?--the letters are
dated from 1833 to 1835), 319; Francis
J. Grund, The Americans in Their Moral,
Social, and Political Relations (London, 1837), I, 1, 6, 26. This is not, of course, a
complete list of sources of such
discussion of Mrs. Trollope. Many other travelers,
including Henry Tudor, Captain Basil Hall,
Captain Frederick Marryat, etc., added
their opinions.
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