MRS. TROLLOPE IN PORKOPOLIS
by WILLIAM H. HILDRETH
Professor of English, Ohio State
University
On January 1, 1828, Frances Milton
Trollope, an English
housewife, with three of her children,
left the port of New Orleans
bound north on the steamboat Belvidere.
She was going to Cincin-
nati to set herself up in business. Left
behind in England were her
husband Thomas and their two older sons.
Thomas Trollope, a
failure at both law and farming, sat in
England and brooded over
his ill luck, dosed himself with drugs,
and quarreled with his two
sons. Mrs. Trollope had taken the
family's future into her own
hands, and now with $20,000 salvaged
from the farm venture, she
was on her way to a new land. When she
was well established she
would send for Thomas and the boys.
Frances Trollope, at forty-eight, had
never been gainfully
employed. Reared as the daughter of an
English clergyman, her
early life had been pleasant and easy.
Her husband's paternal in-
heritance was sufficient for the family
to live in comfort for many
years. In both England and France she
had associated with people
of wealth and position. Her children had
been sent to good schools.
At last, however, the family fortune had
diminished to the point
where Thomas Trollope could no longer be
left in charge.
The social standing of the Trollopes
would not permit her to
open a shop in England, but she well
knew that on the American
frontier people of quality engaged in
trade. Judges sold meat, and
legislators made shoes. She planned to
erect a beautiful building
which by its architectural splendor
would draw the savage Ameri-
cans from their log cabins in
open-mouthed admiration. This build-
ing would be stocked with a profusion of
quality English goods-
cloth, combs, mirrors, beautiful
buttons, glassware-all the things
which she knew were needed in the
wilderness. Furthermore, she
expected her shop to contribute to the
intellectual and social tone
of the city, for she would throw the
rooms open to meetings of those
35
36
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
frontiersmen whose souls sought after
things of the mind and spirit.
She felt sure that in a short time the
shop would again establish the
family fortune. The Trollopes were
destined, in fact, to be freed
from money worries within a few years,
but they would not have
the shop to thank for their rescue.
Frances Wright, the Scottish reformer,
was also aboard the
Belvidere. She and Mrs. Trollope had been friends in England.
Miss Wright, a woman of wealth, keen
intellect, and limitless
energy, had, on a previous trip to
America, established a slave
colony in the forests of Tennessee. This
colony, named Nashoba,
was intended to demonstrate that negroes
were not inferior intel-
lectually to white men and could under
proper conditions take care
of themselves in a free world.
Accompanying Miss Wright was a
French artist, Auguste Hervieu, who had
frequently visited the
Trollope family in England and was now
on his way to teach paint-
ing to the Negroes in the new school.
Miss Wright had neglected
to tell M. Hervieu that the school had
yet to be built. He was to
discover that fact when he arrived at
Nashoba.
Miss Wright had invited Mrs. Trollope
and her children to
spend "some months" at the
Tennessee settlement, so when the
Belvidere stopped at Memphis, the Trollopes went ashore with Miss
Wright and Hervieu. The trip to Nashoba
carried them fifteen
miles inland through a deep forest. The
mud was deep and the
winter rain was cold. When they arrived,
the few damp cabins in
the dismal clearing hardly bore out Miss
Wright's account of her
settlement; therefore at the end of ten
unhappy days the Trollopes
started up the river for Cincinnati.
Auguste Hervieu went with
them. He was to stay with the family for
ten years.
On February 10, 1828, the Trollopes
landed at Cincinnati, a
rapidly growing city of twenty thousand
inhabitants, far different
from the frontier settlement which Mrs.
Trollope had expected to
find. It contained thirteen churches, a
theatre, a public hospital, a
water system, one city-owned and two
privately owned public
libraries, a medical college, a city
college, an endowed public
grammar school, three female seminaries,
an art school, nine news-
papers, and two monthly periodicals.
There were many small fac-
tories scattered about, the most
important of them producing glass,
MRS. TROLLOPE 37
furniture, vehicles, wool and cotton
cloth, hats, paint, soap, whiskey,
and flour.
The Trollope family took lodgings in a
hotel until they could
rent a small house where they lived for
several months. Then,
wishing to get out of the crowded city,
Mrs. Trollope leased a house
in the village of Mohawk, at the foot of
Mt. Auburn about two
miles from the boat-landing. In the
autumn Mr. Trollope and his
eldest son joined Mrs. Trollope in
Cincinnati, but they soon re-
turned to England. Sometime during the
year she purchased a lot in
the east end of the city and erected the
building in which she was
to start her bazaar. Neither the
building nor the imported merchan-
dise attracted customers. One of her
Mohawk neighbors wrote in
1833:
She passed two desultory and aimless
seasons, rearing, the while, a huge
building called a bazaar, which was no
air castle, but a queer, unique,
crescented Turkish Babel, so odd, that
no one has seen it since, without a
good humored laugh: a building which
cost her twenty-four thousand dol-
lars, on which she actually paid some
twelve or thirteen thousand, leaving
the remainder minus, spending, probably,
four or five thousand dollars
more in French articles of fancy finery,
which she exposed for sale in stalls
in this building; and so injudiciously,
owing to her total ignorance of the
American market, and of the proper place
in which to build her Bazaar,
and to her entrusting the sales to
irresponsible and probably dishonest for-
eigners, that the establishment ran her
in debt, instead of yielding her a
revenue. A fact will explain this utter
ignorance. When told, that the market
could not be transported from the place
where the people had been ac-
customed to purchase, she imagined that
her Bazaar would tempt the crowd
of fashionables a quarter of a mile from
their accustomed haunt. When
advised to examine the fancy stores in
the city, and furnish herself with
such articles, as they had not, she only
conformed to this salutary counsel,
after her orders had arrived from
France. The consequence was, that in
eking out the defects of her store, she
visited one of the most ample assort-
ments in the country, holding up her
hands in undisguised astonishment, to
find that such a large and splendid
assortment had found its way there,
antecedent to the grand findings of the
Bazaar, an assortment of twenty
times her capital, and far more rich and
expensive. How could such things,
she exclaimed, have found their way to
the United States.1
The end came soon. When she was unable
to pay the carpen-
ters for their labor, the sheriff sold
the building at public auction.
1 Timothy Flint, in a review of Mrs.
Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Ameri-
cans, The Knickerbocker: or, New York
Monthly Magazine, II (October 1833), 289.
Timothy Flint, editor, missionary,
novelist, lived near Mrs. Trollope in Mohawk. She
says in Domestic Manners that he was her closest
friend in America.
38
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Thereafter it was known as Trollope's
Folly, and during the next
fifty years it housed in turn schools,
restaurants, brothels, and
various small businesses.
Mrs. Trollope, with her sickly son and
two young daughters,
was left penniless in a strange land.
She was dispossessed, and all
of her furniture except the parlor
carpet was seized by the sheriff.
In return for the carpet a neighbor took
them in, Mrs. Trollope
and the two girls occupying one bed, the
boy and Hervieu sleeping
on the kitchen floor. Hervieu's
attachment to the Trollope family
was by that time creating much "tea
table conversation" in Cin-
cinnati.2 Perhaps Mr.
Trollope questioned the relationship, for in
a letter to her son Tom, Mrs. Trollope
said:
In one letter, in answer to one of mine
in which I stated our situation,
your father writes, "How is it
possible that you are dependent on Hervieu
for your living, when I sent out goods
to the amount of £2000?"
Is it not strange, Tom, that he does not
yet know that these goods never
brought one penny into my hands?
The proceeds of those we sold, went to
the workmen and servants, and the rest
were seized. I trust my letters have
reached him, and that he now knows this
fact, but I would have you recall
it to his memory.
My only hope in quitting Cincinnati was
that my old friend Mrs. Stone
would be able to receive my girls and me
until our return home and the
manner of it, could be settled. I then
hoped that some of the brilliant
prophecies which poor Hervieu heard for
his picture, would be realized. But
here again disappointment has followed
us.3
It is not recorded how money was raised
for the trip back to
England. Hervieu gave art lessons and
painted portraits, but he
certainly could not have earned enough
to take the unfortunates
home. Mrs. Trollope's letter to her son
Tom shows that all of her
money was gone. They had moved in with
another neighbor.
Poor Cecilia is literally without shoes,
and I mean to sell one or two
small articles tomorrow to procure some
for her, and for Emily. I sit still
and write, write, write,-so old shoes
last me a long time .... and Hope-
that quits us the last, perhaps, of all
our friends-tells me that it is possible
my book may succeed. It will have great
advantages from Hervieu's drawings.4
When she began preparations for Domestic
Manners in June 1828,
she wrote to Tom:
I amuse myself by making notes, and hope
some day to manufacture
2 Ibid., 288.
3 Frances Eleanor Trollope, Frances
Trollope, Her Life and Literary Work (2
vols., London, 1895), I, 128-129. Most
of the letters are undated and are reproduced
only in part.
4 Ibid., I, 130-131.
MRS. TROLLOPE 39
them into a volume. This is a remote
corner of the world, and but seldom
visited, and I think that if Hervieu
could find time to furnish sketches of
scenery, and groups, a very taking
little volume might be produced.5
While she took these notes, the bazaar
was being built and her
hopes were high, but the writing of the
book was started when she
was penniless, living on Hervieu's small
earnings, and selling her
personal possessions to buy shoes for
the children.
Somehow money was raised, and in March
of 1830 the
Trollopes and Hervieu went up the river
to Wheeling, and from
there by coach east to Baltimore. There
was money enough for
trips to Niagara Falls and Washington,
D. C., before they sailed.
Perhaps Mr. Trollope had sent some from
England.
The book, completed on board ship during
the voyage, was
offered to the firm of Whittaker and
Treacher soon after Mrs.
Trollope reached England. Several days
later Tom, sent by his
mother, called upon Mr. Whittaker to
inquire about its fate. He
was told that the manuscript was being
read by Captain Basil Hall.
It was accepted and was published on
March 19, 1832. Within a
few months Mrs. Trollope became the most
famous of all British
travel writers.
Domestic Manners of the Americans6
was filled with the
author's scorn for the city of her
failure. It omits the story of the
fiasco of the bazaar and her subsequent
humiliating poverty. Nor
does it tell that she was snubbed by the
wealthy families who she
had been sure would accept her. This
proud and pathetic book,
although fundamentally unfair to its
subject, strikes hard at the
people Mrs. Trollope had grown to hate.
One important Cincin-
natian knew her well. He was her
neighbor Timothy Flint,7 a man
of importance-a fashionable minister, an
editor, and a novelist.
Among his friends were the wealthy and
the cultured of Cincinnati,
but he could not persuade them to accept
his Mohawk neighbor.
In 1833 Flint wrote:
The ladies of the interior overdo the
ladies of the Atlantic cities in
dress, as imitators generally overreach
their model in show and gaudiness. In
such a town as Cincinnati, persons are
measured by their exterior. It was to
5 Ibid., I, 115.
6 Frances Milton Trollope, Domestic
Manners of the Americans (2 vols., Lon-
don, 1832).
7 John Ervin Kirkpatrick, Timothy Flint, Pioneer,
Missionary, Author, Editor,
1780-1840; the Story of His Life
Among the Pioneers and Frontiersmen in the Ohio
and Mississippi Valley and in New
England and the South (Cleveland,
1911).
40
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
no purpose to urge that she was endowed,
amusing, and a blue stocking dyed
in the wool. None would welcome or
receive her, save in four respectable
families ...
Had that lady come to Cincinnati with
letters from General La Fayette,
and Mr. Constant, and Miss Mitford, and
Miss Landon, and Mr. Campbell,
et allis, and in possession of what she actually wasted at
Cincinnati, some
sixteen or seventeen thousand dollars,
with her dentes sapientiae cut, with
plenty of fashionable dresses, &c.,
and she would have been dinnered and
toasted and the fashion. Her sayings
would have been quoted. Her free man-
ners would have been perniciously
contagious. Her movements would have
been imitated; and as she was . . .
remarkably good natured, when she was
pleased, she would have been a general
favorite.8
From the beginning Mrs. Trollope
encountered much anti-
British feeling. Her earliest clash with
the natives came upon her
first night in the city. The family had
taken rooms in a tavern and,
not wishing to eat in the public dining
room, had ordered their
meals served in the bed chamber. Such
service was not a part of
Cincinnati tavern accommodations, but
Mrs. Trollope, locating a
waitress who had recently immigrated,
got the meal smuggled into
the bedroom. Shortly afterward the
landlord called upon them,
and a small row ensued. Mrs. Trollope's
account represents the
host as a crude bellower to whom she
replied with an "apologistic
hint" that she was
"unaccustomed to the manners of the country."
To this excuse he boorishly replied,
"Our manners are very good
manners, and we don't wish any changes
from England."9 Through-
out her stay in the West, Mrs. Trollope
gave harsh replies to no
one, although she implies that she
suffered much from rustic
crudity. She emerges in Domestic
Manners as a quiet, gentle
woman, too shocked to raise her voice to
rude clowns. Flint, how-
ever, remembered her as being
"voluble as a French woman, shrill
and piercing in the tones of her voice,
piquant, and sarcastic in
the tenor of her conversation."10
No doubt she met many people who hated
England, for the
country was only fifteen years removed
from a frontier war. The
stories which she tells of this
animosity, however, are not convinc-
ing. At balls, society women asked her
if she had fled England to
escape body lice. At receptions, people
taunted her and shoved
atlases under her nose as they boasted
of America's greater size.
8 Flint, loc. cit., 289, 291-292.
9 Domestic
Manners, I, 51.
10 Flint, loc. cit., 287.
MRS. TROLLOPE 41
Gentlemen badgered her about the British
navy, and by way of
emphasizing their points propped their
feet upon the mantel higher
than their heads, glared at her, and
impudently whistled "Yankee
Doodle." These, of course, are her
versions.
She was distressed by the city itself,
for she was witnessing the
growth of a frontier town. Brick and
stone buildings were replacing
the original frame structures of the
lower basin. One of her diver-
sions was to watch these frame buildings
on rollers being drawn
through the streets by oxen, sometimes
forty in a team. This move-
ment of the city to the suburbs
disturbed her. Nothing seemed to
be permanent or fixed in America.
England was not like that.
She complained of the trash and garbage
piled in the streets (some-
times collected, more frequently rooted
over by hogs) and of the
abominable filth in the alleys which
seem never to have been
cleaned.11 The abundance of fresh foods
in three large public
markets impressed her, but she peevishly
complained that the
supply was always exhausted by eight in
the morning. Further-
more, in spite of its abundance
"all the fruit . . . exposed for sale
in Cincinnati was most miserable."
Peaches were "not worth eat-
ing," apples "would not be
thought good enough for an English
table," pears, cherries, and plums
were "most miserably bad," and
"grapes were too sour."12
All this miserable display she saw in
the hey-day of Cincinnati's great
fruit-growing period. Timothy
Flint had called it "the best fruit
market in America, perhaps in
the world."
Cincinnati was proud of its new
nickname, "Porkopolis." In
1826 it had exported more than five
million pounds of pork
products, and each year the amount was
increasing. Great droves
of hogs from the valley and headwaters
of the two Miami rivers
passed daily through the little village
of Mohawk. If Mrs. Trollope
walked up Main Street, "the chances
were five hundred to one
against . . . reaching the shady side
without brushing by a snout
fresh dripping from the kennel."
She describes a country walk:
When we had screwed our courage to the
enterprise of mounting a certain
noble-looking sugar-loaf hill, that
promised pure air and a fine view, we found
the brook we had to cross, at its foot,
red with the stream from a pig slaughter-
11Benjamin Drake and E. D. Mansfield in Cincinnati
in 1826 (Cincinnati, 1826)
verify these observations.
12 Domestic Manners, I, 85-87.
42
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
house; while our noses, instead of
meeting "the thyme that loves the green
hill's breast," were greeted by
odours that I will not describe, and which I
heartily hope my readers cannot imagine;
our feet, that on leaving the city
had expected to press the flowery sod,
literally got entangled in pig's tails
and jaw-bones: and thus the prettiest
walk in the neighbourhood was inter-
dicted for ever.13
As her first year progressed, the pigs
closed in on her. Drovers
left the Hamilton road and quartered
their stock in the woods about
Mohawk while they awaited their turns at
the slaughterhouses.
Frequently they butchered the animals
"beside the prettiest stream."
"Our walks," she says,
"were . . . curtailed in several directions by
my old Cincinnati enemies, the
pigs."14 And during her last weeks
in the little village she sat on her
piazza, "shaded by a group of
acacias" and watched the building
of a slaughterhouse next door.
The hogs were bad, but the people were
worse. Servant girls
shed tears and sulked when they were
ordered to eat alone in the
kitchen. In the West they ate with the
family. When they applied
for work they ignorantly asked to
"help" her, not "serve" her.
They tried to buy her castoff clothes,
when they should have known
that as servants they should accept the
clothes only as gifts from
their mistress.
Mrs. Trollope kept a cow of which she
was very fond-the
cow and Timothy Flint being the only Westerners
she approved of.
Since the cow gave more milk than the
family could use, Mrs.
Trollope decided to give the surplus to
the poor. Even in this
kindly act she ran afoul of a barbaric
custom which made her
unhappy. The ragged children who came
for the milk insisted that
they should pay for it. Others, when she
bestowed castoff clothes
upon them, insisted that they do work in
payment. Such an attitude
she could not understand until at last
she decided that it was as-
sumed "solely to avoid uttering
that most un-American phrase,
'thank you.' "
In the summer she was forced to witness
with disgust the
American predilection for watermelon.
Each day great wagon
loads of melons were hauled to the city
markets from the neighbor-
ing farms. People sat on the curbs
beside the wagons and gorged
themselves. The scene was disgusting.
13 Ibid., I, 122-123.
14 Ibid., I, 147.
MRS. TROLLOPE 43
Their manner of devouring them is
extremely unpleasant; the huge fruit
is cut into half a dozen sections, of
about a foot long, and then, dripping as
it is with water, applied to the mouth,
from either side of which pour copious
streams of the fluid, while, ever and
anon, a mouthful of the hard black seeds
are shot out in all directions, to the
great annoyance of all within reach.15
It seemed never to occur to these people
that melon should be
eaten with claret and sugar, with which
additions "it makes de-
licious wine and water."
But watermelon seeds were not the most
objectionable objects
"shot out in all directions."
The men chewed quantities of tobacco
and spat frequently. They spat on the
streets, in the stores, at balls,
and on the river boats. Mrs. Trollope
dodged and skittered to
escape the amber streams. The noble
Americans spat incessantly
at the celebration of their most
hallowed day-the Fourth of July.
They squirted juice from morning till
night. Said Mrs. Trollope,
"The gentlemen spit, talk of
elections and the price of produce,
and spit again."16
She drew a sad picture of the western
women. On river boats
they occupied a separate cabin into
which men could not enter.
At balls they sat on one side of the
room, the men on the other.
After dinner, while the men talked and
spat, the women conversed
with one another only. Neglected and
ignored by their husbands,
they worshiped and fawned upon their
preachers in an attempt
to get masculine attention. The wives of
the laborers and mechanics
were a sorry lot:
One has but to look at the wife of an
American cottager, and ask her
age, to be convinced that the life she
leads is one of hardship, privation, and
labour. It is rare to see a woman in
this station who has reached the age of
thirty, without losing every trace of
youth and beauty. . . . Even the young
girls, though often with lovely
features, look pale, thin, and haggard. I do
not remember to have seen in any single
instance among the poor, a specimen
of the plump, rosy, laughing physiognomy
so common among our cottage
girls.17
Mrs. Trollope gave a long report on the
religion of the West.
She avoided, however, any indication of
her own beliefs except to
state frequently her preference for a
state church. Her daughter-
in-law left this opaque, somewhat
inconclusive statement, "Mrs.
Trollope was always specially averse
from the forms of speech
15 1bid., I, 118.
16 Ibid., I, 83.
17 Ibid., I, 166.
44
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and methods of teaching associated with
low churchism, nor was
this aversion in any degree due to
indifference on the subject of
religion."18 Timothy
Flint, however, was able to speak more
frankly, and perhaps more honestly on
the subject. He said, "Reli-
gion she considered a mere matter of
state, an engine to keep the
people in awe, though she always spoke
respectfully of profession,
so far as she deemed it
conscientious."19
She approved of the Catholics in
Cincinnati, but had little use
for the Protestants. Of the Catholic
Bishop, she said, "He was an
American, but I should never have
discovered it from his pro-
nunciation or manner." We have the
word of James Flint, the
careful and observant Scotch traveler,
that there were dignified
Protestant services held regularly in
the leading churches of Cin-
cinnati. Apparently Mrs. Trollope either
did not visit these
churches or purposely ignored them in
her book.
Her first experience with western
religion came at a Presby-
terian hell-fire sermon which frightened
the congregation until it
groaned and shouted. Later, at a revival
meeting in the same
church she saw a true outpouring of the
spirit. Her description is
credible, for the same pattern is
followed today among the more
emotional sects. There was loud praying
and exhorting. People
arose and confessed their sins amid the
shouts of their brethren.
Women were most affected.
Young creatures, with features pale and
distorted, fell on their knees on
the pavement, and soon sunk forward on
their faces; the most violent cries
and shrieks followed, while from time to
time a voice was heard in convulsive
accents, exclaiming, "Oh
Lord!" "0 Lord Jesus!" "Help me, Jesus!" and
the like.20
Frances Trollope was most disturbed when
she observed that
these frontier anagogics aroused
emotions which were other than
mystical. Two preachers circulated among
the writhing virgins.
The prostrate penitents continued to
receive whispered comfortings, and
from time to time a mystic caress. More
than once I saw a young neck en-
circled by a reverend arm. Violent
hysterics and convulsions seized many of
them.... One young girl, apparently not
more than fourteen, was supported
in the arms of another some years older;
her face was pale as death; her
eyes wide open, and perfectly devoid of
meaning; her chin and bosom wet
with slaver; she had every appearance of
idiotism. I saw a priest approach
18 Frances Trollope, I, 90-91.
19 Flint, loc. cit., 287.
20 Domestic Manners, I, 111.
MRS. TROLLOPE 45
her, he took her delicate hand,
"Jesus is with her! Bless the Lord!" he said,
and passed on.
Did the men of America value their
women, as men ought to value
their wives and daughters, would such
scenes be permitted among them?21
It was in the Indiana forest that she
saw the true mob religion
of the frontier. Wishing to observe a
camp meeting, she and a few
friends went by carriage through the
woods, arriving at the clear-
ing about an hour before midnight. Four
huge fires were burning
on raised platforms. The worshipers were
in their tents getting
themselves emotionally charged for what
was to come. From the
tents came "praying, preaching,
singing, and lamentation." Curious
spectators wandered about the ground,
now and then peering into
tents to observe the spiritual
preparation of the believers.
At midnight the blast of a horn called
the people to public
worship. They collected in the clearing
and thenceforward the
meeting was in the hands of fifteen
Methodist preachers all saving
souls at once. Promptly the multitude
began its screaming, groan-
ing, and roaring. Presently the singing
of a hymn brought the two
thousand groveling or entranced worshipers
back to their feet. Of
this raising up of voices in the
wilderness, Mrs. Trollope said:
This was the only moment at which I
perceived anything like the solemn
and beautiful effect which I had heard
ascribed to this woodland worship.
It is certain that the combined voices
of such a multitude, heard at dead of
night, from the depths of their eternal
forests, the many fair young faces
turned upward, and looking paler and
lovelier as they met the moon-beams,
the dark figures of the officials in the
middle of the circle, the lurid glare
thrown by the altar-fires on the woods
beyond, did altogether produce a fine
and solemn effect, that I shall not
easily forget; but ere I had well enjoyed
it, the scene changed, and sublimity
gave place to horror and disgust.22
James Flint, the Scotsman, noted that
because of the variety of
immigrants in the West one encountered
many dialects and that no
single one dominated. Mrs. Trollope had
a different opinion. She
frequently reported the illiteracies of
her neighbors and indicated
that these examples were typical of the
West's clownish language.
"I beg to assure the reader,"
she said, "that whenever I give con-
versations they . . were written down immediately after they
occurred."23 It appears
that many of these frontier locutions
2l Ibid., I,
112-113.
22 Ibid., I, 241.
23 Ibid., I, 75.
46
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
were included to give the book lightness
and amuse the reader. A
few selected ones follow:
I be come to help you.
You be a downright Englisher.
. .. such dreadful fine corn as you sees
here.
Your papers ben't like ourn.
You don't know I.24
These expressions ring false. Timothy
Flint, who knew the people
of Cincinnati, said of Mrs. Trollope:
"The slang language which
she puts into the mouth of her servants,
and the common people
has not even the remotest smack of west
country dialect. It is en-
tirely woven, warp and woof, from
Cockney and Yorkshire."25
It was not the common people alone who
irritated Frances
Trollope with their gauche language.
Americans as a whole did
not know how to speak. Said Mrs.
Trollope:
I very seldom, during my whole stay in
the country, heard a sentence
elegantly turned, and correctly
pronounced from the lips of an American.
There is always something either in the
expression or the accent that jars
the feelings and shocks the taste.26
Defeated and humiliated by a new way of
life which she re-
fused to accept as civilized, Mrs.
Trollope clawed back at Cin-
cinnati. Yet some of her pictures were
sufficiently credible. For
example, one who knows the story of
western camp meetings would
not question her description of early
nineteenth century ecstatic
worship in the forest, nor was she alone
among the writers of her
time in complaining of the droves of
hogs which ambled through
the streets.
However, when she drew generalizations
from single
examples-generalizations which were
always detrimental to the
reputation of the West-her claws were so
obviously out that her
writing became unintentional caricature.
In her straining to make
the Westerners into dolts, she succeeded
only in parading uncon-
vincing people through her pages.
Perhaps only half-a-dozen
people, drawn accurately and fairly,
would have given the book
the verisimilitude which it lacks, but
they are not present.
To illustrate the breezy, vulgar,
intimate way in which
westerners thrust themselves upon
strangers, Mrs. Trollope told
24 lbid., I, 73,
74, 140-143.
25 Flint,
loc. cit., 290.
26 Domestic
Manners, I, 64.
MRS. TROLLOPE 47
the following story. On one occasion
while the family was walking
in the woods, the two girls wandered
away and became lost. Much
frightened, Mrs. Trollope returned to
the village to see if they had
found their way back. She inquired at a
saloon. Out bounced a
strange female who resembled "a
Covent Garden market-woman"
with the good news that the children had
passed by. Said Mrs.
Trollope:
Her look, her voice, her manner, were so
exceedingly coarse and ve-
hement, that she almost frightened me;
she passed her arm within mine, and to
the inexpressible amusement of my young
people, she dragged me on, talking
and questioning me without ceasing.27
This story was told to illustrate the
"uncouth advances" so
common in the West. This poor saloon
woman was presented as
a typical citizen. At that time, two
blocks from the bazaar stood the
beautiful home of Nicholas Longworth.
Nearby in their great
houses lived the Baums and the Piatts,
and scattered through the
east end of the city were the lesser
socialites, people of fine manners
and huge fortunes. Then there were the
lawyers, the doctors, the
merchants, the editors, the
teachers-many of them people of
learning and wit. These groups did not
appear in Domestic Man-
ners. If Timothy Flint's story is true, then it must be
granted that
she had little opportunity to observe
any but her poor and middle-
class neighbors. The others did,
however, deserve mention in a
book which purported to interpret the
culture of a region.
Each time Mrs. Trollope introduced a
Westerner into her
pages, it was for the purpose of
displaying his bad manners, his
stupid mind, or his unkempt person, and
from these characteristics
she always drew a generalization. To
illustrate typical western
behavior, she told of the ten-year-old
boy who sold eggs to her.
He was ragged and dirty. His family,
undernourished and malarial,
lived in wretched filth. The child,
however, owned some hens
which he kept in coops that he had
built. When he delivered his
eggs, Mrs. Trollope, surprised at the
number of coins which the
child carried in his pockets, decided to
question him although
she "felt an involuntary disgust
toward the young Jew." Her
questioning revealed that he sold many
dressed chickens and eggs
to the neighbors. When quizzed further
he informed Mrs. Trollope
27 Ibid., I, 139.
48
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
that he did not give his earnings to his
mother, but took care of
them himself. Said Mrs. Trollope of such
deplorable behavior:
How Nick got his first dollar is very
doubtful: . . . but having obtained
it, the spirit, activity, and industry,
with which he caused it to increase and
multiply, would have been delightful in
one of Miss Edgeworth's dear little
clean bright-looking boys, who would
have carried all he got to his mother;
but in Nick it was detestable. No human
feeling seemed to warm his young
heart, not even the love of
self-indulgence; for he was not only ragged and
dirty, but looked considerably more than
half-starved.28
Thus was illustrated the effect of
"independence." Nick's
case was presented as "one instance
out of a thousand, of the hard,
dry, calculating character that is the
result of it." These West-
erners, even the ragged and poor, were
not like the British. Per-
haps the fact that they had not read
Maria Edgeworth's novels
might explain their gaucheries. Mrs.
Trollope carried one measur-
ing stick, the behavior of the British
upper-middle class, and she
applied it indiscriminately. If a
miserable, hungry child of fron-
tier flotsam failed to behave as did the
children of Castle Rack-
rent, the conclusion was inevitable: American institutions
were at
fault.
The Westerners put up a confused and
ineffectual defense.
They lacked magazines through which they
might answer. Flint's
Western Monthly Review had been discontinued and Hall's West-
ern Monthly Magazine was yet to be started. American journals
of the East attacked Mrs. Trollope but
at the same time tacitly
admitted that what she said about the
West was true. In the West
she was subject only to the clumsy
attacks of the newspapers
which Domestic Manners had
described in the following terms:
Every American newspaper is more or less
a magazine, wherein the
merchant may scan while he holds out his
hand for an invoice, "Stanzas by
Mrs. Hemans," or a garbled extract
from Moore's Life of Byron; the lawyer
may study his brief faithfully, and yet
contrive to pick up the valuable dictum
of some American critic, that
"Bulwer's novels are decidedly superior to Sir
Walter Scott's."29
It was the custom for American
newspapers to seize upon what-
ever they could in order to fill their
pages. Mrs. Trollope did not
exaggerate when she told what one might
expect to find in a Cin-
cinnati paper.
28 Ibid., I, 173-176.
29 Ibid., I, 128-129.
MRS. TROLLOPE 49
The first reaction of the Ohio Valley
press to Domestic Man-
ners was normal. The book was popular; therefore, the Cincinnati
Chronicle and Literary Gazette began to reprint parts of it in
June 1832. The book had been published
in March. With the
second installment the editor warned his
readers that the book
was "palpably sinister."
Perhaps the editor began to hear com-
plaints, for without comment he
discontinued Domestic Manners
early in July.
The people of Cincinnati were to see
more of the book in
their papers. On June 16 the Catholic
Telegraph printed without
comment an extract from the book
describing a small but beauti-
ful Catholic church in Baltimore and
giving an account of a
raucous and violent Protestant revival
service in the same city. One
week later, on June 23, getting around
to conditions at home the
Telegraph reprinted a passage with the introductory comment,
"The following sketch, from Mrs.
Trollope's Book, we are sure,
has sufficient truth to serve for a
description." Then followed the
account of the revival services in the
West which Mrs. Trollope
had witnessed. Obviously the Catholic
editor was pleased with
the scene of his Protestant colleagues
lasciviously fondling the
hysterical virgins.
Thenceforward for a year and a half
Cincinnatians pecked
and sniped at Mrs. Trollope. It is most
significant that none of
the blasts by irate citizens and editors
denied any of her specific
charges. The Cincinnati Chronicle and
Literary Gazette, the town's
leading paper, carried the burden of the
fight. The Chronicle
struck first by reprinting the
introduction to the American edition
of Domestic Manners. The American
editor had laboriously
ground out a dull piece of whimsey
proving that Mrs. Trollope
and Basil Hall were the same person.
However, in October the
Chronicle announced that Hall had not written the book; he had
only reviewed it.30
It was inevitable that the Westerners
should attack Mrs.
Trollope's morals. In September a
lithographic caricature by a
Philadelphia artist showing Hervieu and
the Trollope family was
placed on sale.31 Mr.
Trollope, the husband, was standing so that
the horns of a deer, in a picture on the
wall, appeared to be grow-
30 July 28, 1832; October 27, 1832.
50
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ing out of Mr. Trollope's head. The Chronicle
quoted from the
publishers' description:
The 'old man' is present, and from the
orders in the region of his occiput,
we incline to the supposition that he
must be a cashiered comet in the
Domestic Dragoons, being essentially
cornuted.32
The charge of cuckoldry was frequently
repeated. Mrs. Trollope's
"liaison with a big whiskered
Frenchman" was denounced by
"C. D. K.," an enraged
citizen, who implied that she had violated
the "morality of the New
Testament."33 The Ten Commandments
were not mentioned. "Clifton
Cosmopolite," a contributor to the
Chronicle, pronounced her "ill-bred" and impertinently
named her
"Madam Malaprop Trollope." On
the next day the Chronicle
printed one paragraph of a letter
purporting to be from "a re-
spectable gentleman of London"
calling Mrs. Trollope "a jade
of the worst description."
Thus the misdirected fight went on. None
of Cincinnati's
mud balls were hitting the mark. Then in
November 1833, James
Hall of the Western Monthly Magazine charged
in and proclaimed:
There can be no doubt that most of the
British travellers in America have
been hired agents of the
government;-depraved men, whom a long career
of subserviency had rendered callous to
every principle of honor, and every
feeling of gentlemanly pride.
While therefore we might smile with
contempt at the flippant ribaldry
of Basil Hall, ... or the drunken
reveries of Mrs. Trollope, singly, they be-
come of more importance when regarded as
parts of a stupendous plan of
national detraction, in which the
authors are the poor tools of a craven min-
istry, who slander by proxy, and endeavor to strike through
others the blow
which they dare not avow as coming from
themselves.
The Cincinnati Daily Gazette had
stood on the sidelines dur-
ing the fight but at this point stepped
in and reprimanded Hall
for his accusation: "It is out of
season-out of date-out of good
taste. It will gain no general
credence."34
With the revelation and denial that Mrs.
Trollope was part of
an international plot, the ruckus ended
and the paper said no more.
Cincinnati kept on butchering hogs,
making whiskey, and build-
ing houses. Mrs. Trollope, encouraged by
the success of her book,
turned at once to writing sentimental
novels. For twenty years she
31Copy in possession of the Historical and Philosophical
Society, Cincinnati.
32Cincinnati Chronicle and Literary
Gazette, September 29, 1832.
33 Ibid., October 26, 1833.
34 November 6, 1833.
MRS. TROLLOPE 51
turned out a torrent of noble heroes and
shy heroines. Her villains
were black scoundrels; when they were
Americans they were also
stupid and uncouth.
The reading of Domestic Manners even
now is an entertaining
experience. The unconvincing clowns and
doodles with which she
peopled Cincinnati were drawn with a
concreteness seldom found
in the travel books preceding hers. Only
she and Thomas Ashe
among the early travel writers had a
consistent point of view. To
Ashe the Ohio Valley was a land of high
adventure; to Frances
Trollope it was a land of dull
stupidity. She came nearer to
humor than did her predecessors, but her
hate for the West was
so great that malice is always
predominant in her caricatures. She
alone of the travel writers avoided the
tedious detail which, like
dust and chaff, so
frequently hid their
scattered ideas. Her
sprightly malice has held up well.
Her mirror was out of focus. One feels
sure that had the
bazaar prospered and the book still been
written, the picture of
Porkopolis would have been more
sympathetic. She was too bitter
to give the Westerners their due. In
1883 her son Anthony, then
a famous novelist, wrote in his
autobiography of his mother and
her book:
No observer was certainly ever less
qualified to judge of the prospects
or even of the happiness of a young
people. No one could have been worse
adapted by nature for the task of
learning whether a nation was in a way to
thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as
most women do, from her own stand-
ing-point. If a thing were ugly to her
eyes, it ought to be ugly to all eyes,-
and if ugly, it must be bad....
She was endowed . . . with much creative
power, with considerable
humor, and a genuine feeling for
romance. But she was neither clear-sighted
nor accurate; and in her attempts to
describe morals, manners, and even
facts, was unable to avoid the pitfalls
of exaggeration.35
35 Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography
(London, 1883), 31-32, 44.