which, indeed, seemed to exist in order that Lady Morgan might write
upon it. This second book, like its predecessor, is cleverly and smartly
written; it contains many lively descriptions, and some just criticisms
upon men and things. Names appear upon each page, with a personal sketch
or a _mot_, which makes the reader at once of their society. There is a
visit to Beranger, the great French lyrist, in the prison of La Force;
and there are two memorable dinners, one at the Comte de Segur's, with a
record of the conversation, as graphic and amusing as if it were not on
topics half a century old; the other is a dinner at Baron Rothschild's,
dressed by the great Careme, who had erected a column of the most
ingenious confectionery architecture, and inscribed Lady Morgan's name
upon it in spun sugar. Very complimentary, but, unfortunately, sadly
prophetic! It is only upon "spun sugar" that her name was inscribed by
herself or others.
Mrs. Mary Somerville, the illustrious astronomer and physicist, would
not have claimed for herself the distinction of traveller, nor has she
written any complete book of travel; but there are sketches of scenery
in her "Personal Recollections" which make one wish that she had done
so. And, indeed, the fine colouring of the pictures which occur in her
"Physical Geography" show that she had the artist's eye and the artist's
descriptive faculty, both so essential to the full enjoyment of travel.
Much clear and forcible writing, with many vivacious observations, will
be found in the "Sketches and Characteristics of Hindustan," published
by Miss Emma Roberts in 1835. More minute and exact are the details
which Mrs. Postans has collected in reference to the mode of life, the
religion, and the old forms of society and government in one of the
north-western provinces of India, under the title of "Cutch." It
includes a very animated account of a Suttee, that cruel mode of
compulsory self-sacrifice which the British Government has since
prohibited. On this occasion the widow, a remarkably handsome woman,
apparently about thirty, seems really to have been a willing victim, and
behaved with the utmost composure.
"Accompanied by the officiating Brahmin, the widow walked seven times
round the pyre, repeating the usual mantras, or prayers, strewing rice
and cowries on the ground, and sprinkling water from her hand over the
bystanders, who believe this to be efficacious in preventing disease and
in expiating committed sins. She then removed her jewels and presented
them to her relations, saying a few words to each with a calm, soft
smile of encouragement and hope. The Brahmins then presented her with a
lighted torch, bearing which
'Fresh as a flower just blown,
And warm with life, her youthful pulses playing,'
she stepped through the fatal door, and sat within the pile. The body of
her husband, wrapped in rich kincob, was then carried seven times round
the pile, and finally laid across her knees. Thorns and grass were piled
over the door, and the European officers present insisted that free
space should be left, as it was hoped the poor victim might yet relent,
and rush from her fiery prison to the protection so freely offered. The
command was readily obeyed; the strength of a child would have sufficed
to burst the frail barrier which confined her, and a breathless pause
succeeded; but the woman's constancy was faithful to the last. Not a
sigh broke the death-like silence of the crowd, until a slight smoke
curling from the summit of the pyre, and then a tongue of flame darting
with bright and lightning-like rapidity into the clear blue sky, told us
that the sacrifice was complete. Fearlessly had this courageous woman
fired the pile, and not a groan had betrayed to us the moment when her
spirit fled. At sight of the flame a fiendish shout of exultation rent
the air, the tom-toms sounded, the people clapped their hands with
delight as the evidence of their murderous work burst on their view;
whilst the English spectators of this sad scene withdrew, bearing deep
compassion in their hearts, to philosophize as best they might on a
custom so fraught with horror, so incompatible with reason, and so
revolting to human sympathy. The pile continued to burn for three hours;
but from its form it is supposed that almost immediate suffocation must
have terminated the sufferings of the unhappy victim."
There is a very charming book, brightly written, and dealing with an
interesting people, which reaches very high in the literature of travel.
We refer to Lady Eastlake's "Residence on the Shores of the Baltic,
described in a series of Letters," in which, with a polished pen and a
quick observation, she sets before us the patriarchal simplicity of life
and honest character of the Esthonians. Travel-books by ladies were rare
at the time that Lady Eastlake (then Miss Rigby) wrote, and the success
of her work was influenced, no doubt, by this rarity; but its reputation
may well rest upon its genuine merit. Only, justice compels us to say
that writing of almost equal merit, sometimes of superior, is now poured
out every year, nay, every month, by adventurers of the "other sex." A
female traveller has ceased to be a _rara avis_; delicately-nurtured
women now climb Mont Blanc or penetrate into the Norwegian forests, or
cross the Pacific, or traverse sandy deserts, or visit remote isles, in
company with their husbands and brothers, or "unprotected." This great
and rapid increase in the number of female travellers is partly due, no
doubt, to the greater facilities of locomotion; but we believe it is
also due to the greater freedom which women of late years have
successfully claimed, and to the consequent development of powers and
faculties, their possession of which was long ignored or denied.
MRS. TROLLOPE.
Frances Milton, so well known in English literature under her married
name of Trollope, was born at Heathfield Parsonage in Hampshire, in
1787. She received, under her father's supervision, a very careful
education, and developed her proclivities for literary composition at an
early age. She was but eighteen when she accepted the hand of Mr. Thomas
A. Trollope, a barrister, and the cares and duties of married life for
some years diverted her energies into a different channel. The true bent
of her talents--a sharp, bold, and somewhat coarse satire--she did not
discover until after her visit to the United States (1829-1831). There
she conceived an antipathy to American manners and customs, which seems
to have awakened her powers of sarcasm, and resulted in her first
publication, "Domestic Life of the Americans." The peculiarities she had
found so obnoxious she sketched with a strong, rough hand; and the truth
of her drawing was proved by the wrathful feelings which it provoked in
the breasts of its victims. Reading it now, we are naturally inclined
to think it a caricature and an exaggeration; but it is only fair to
remember that, since its appearance half a century ago, a great change
has come over the temper of American society. The great fault of Mrs.
Trollope is, that she is always a critic and never a judge. She looks at
everything through the magnifying lens of a microscope. And, again, it
must be admitted that she is often vulgar; whatever the want of
refinement in American society, it is almost paralleled by the want of
refinement in her lively, but coarsely-coloured pages. For the rest, she
is a shrewd observer; has a considerable insight into human nature,
especially on its "seamy side"; and if a hard hitter, generally keeps
her good temper, and does not resent a fair stroke from an antagonist.
As a humorist she takes high rank: there are scenes in her novels, as
well as in her records of travel, which are marked by a real and
vigorous, if somewhat masculine, fun. Perhaps some of her defects are
due to the influences among which she lived--that ultra Toryism of the
Castlereagh school which resented each movement of reform, each impulse
of progress, as a direct revolutionary conspiracy against everything
approved and established by "the wisdom of our ancestors"--that
narrowness of thought and shallowness of feeling which resisted all
change, even when its necessity was most apparent.
That Mrs. Trollope's prejudices sometimes prevail over her sense of
justice is apparent in the ridicule she lavishes upon the rigid
observance of the Sabbath by the American people. She forgot that they
inherited it from the English Puritans. If her evidence may be accepted,
it amounted in her day to a bigotry as implacable as that of the
straitest sect of the Scotch Presbyterians a generation ago. She tells
an anecdote to the following effect:--A New York tailor sold, on a
Sunday, some clothes to a sailor whose ship was on the point of sailing.
The Guild of Tailors immediately made their erring brother the object of
the most determined persecution, and succeeded in ruining him. A lawyer
who had undertaken his defence lost all his clients. The nephew of this
lawyer sought admission to the bar. His certificates were perfectly
regular; but on his presenting himself he was rejected, with the curt
explanation that no man bearing the name of F---- (his uncle's name)
would be admitted. We need hardly add that such fanaticism as this would
not be possible now in the United States.
Mrs. Trollope's animadversions are obsolete on many other subjects. Much
of her indignation was necessarily, and very justly bestowed on the then
flourishing institution of domestic slavery; but that foul blot on her
scutcheon America wiped out in blood, the blood of thousands of her
bravest children. Her criticism upon manners and social customs has
also, to a great extent, lost its power of application. Of its
liveliness and pungency we may give, however, a specimen; her
description of the day's avocations of a Philadelphian lady of the first
class:--
"This lady," she says, "shall be the wife of a senator and a lawyer in
the highest repute and practice. She has a very handsome house, with
white marble steps and door-posts, and a delicate silver knocker and
door-handle; she has very handsome drawing-rooms, very handsomely
furnished (there is a side-board in one of them, but it is very
handsome, and has very handsome decanters and cut-glass water jugs upon
it); she has a very handsome carriage and a very handsome free black
coachman; she is always very handsomely dressed; and, moreover, she is
very handsome herself.
"She rises, and her first hour is spent in the scrupulously nice
arrangement of her dress; she descends to her parlour neat, stiff, and
silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free black footman; she eats
her fried bean and her salt fish, and drinks her coffee in silence,
while her husband reads one newspaper, and puts another under his elbow;
and then, perhaps, she washes the cups and saucers. Her carriage is
ordered at eleven; till that hour she is employed in the pastry-room,
her snow-white apron protecting her mouse-coloured silk. Twenty minutes
before her carriage should appear she retires to her chamber, as she
calls it, shakes, and folds up her still snow-white apron, smooths her
rich dress, and with nice care sets on her elegant bonnet, and all the
handsome _et caetera_; then walks downstairs, just at the moment that her
free black coachman announces to her free black footman that the
carriage waits. She steps into it, and gives the word, "Drive to the
Dorcas Society." Her footman stays at home to clean the knives, but her
coachman can trust his horses while he opens the carriage door, and his
lady not being accustomed to a hand or an arm, gets out very safely
without, though one of her own is occupied by a work basket, and the
other by a large roll of all those indescribable matters which ladies
take as offerings to Dorcas societies. She enters the parlour
appropriated for the meeting, and finds seven other ladies, very like
herself, and takes her place among them; she presents her contribution,
which is accepted with a gentle circular smile, and her parings of
broad-cloth, her ends of ribbon, her gilt paper, and her minikin pins,
are added to the parings of broad-cloth, the ends of ribbon, the gilt
paper, and the minikin pins with which the table is already covered; she
also produces from her basket three ready-made pin-cushions, four
ink-wipers, seven paper matches, and a paste-board watch-case; these are
welcomed with acclamations, and the youngest lady present deposits them
carefully on shelves, amid a prodigious quantity of similar articles.
She then produces her thimble, and asks for work; it is presented to
her, and the eight ladies all stitch together for some hours. Their talk
is of priests and of missions; of the profits of their last sale, of
their hopes from the next; of the doubt whether young Mr. This or young
Mr. That should receive the fruits of it to fit him out for Siberia; of
the very ugly bonnet seen at church on Sabbath morning; of the very
handsome preacher who performed on Sabbath afternoon; and of the very
large collection made on Sabbath evening. This lasts till three, when
the carriage again appears, and the lady and her basket return home; she
mounts to her chamber, carefully sets aside her bonnet and its
appurtenances, puts on her scalloped black silk apron, walks into the
kitchen to see that all is right, then into the parlour, where, having
cast a careful glance over the table prepared for dinner, she sits down,
work in hand, to await her spouse. He comes, shakes hands with her,
spits, and dines. The conversation is not much, and ten minutes suffices
for the dinner: fruit and toddy, the newspaper, and the work-bag
succeed. In the evening the gentleman, being a savant, goes to the
Wister Society, and afterwards plays a snug rubber at a neighbour's. The
lady receives at ten a young missionary and three members of the Dorcas
Society. And so ends her day."
A harmless day, after all! No doubt such days were spent by
Philadelphian ladies exactly as Mrs. Trollope describes them; no doubt
such days are possible in American society now, and, for that matter, in
English society also. But it is not less certain that then and now many
women in Philadelphia spent and spend their time with a wiser activity,
and more to the advantage of themselves and their fellow creatures. The
fault of the satirist is, that he reasons from particulars to generals,
whereas the sagacious observer will reason from generals to particulars.
The manners and customs, the idiosyncrasies of a class will probably be
the manners and customs and idiosyncrasies of most of its members; but
it by no means follows that from two or three individuals we can safely
predict the general characteristics of the class to which they belong.
In a regiment famous for its bravery we may unquestionably conclude that
the majority of the rank and file will be brave men; but a few may be
composed of less heroic stuff. Would it be just to take these as the
types of the regiment?
* * * * *
After an unsuccessful attempt to make a home in America, Mrs. Trollope
returned to England, with the world to begin again, a husband
incapacitated for work by ill-health, and children who needed aid, and
were too young to give any. In such circumstances many would have
appealed to the sympathy of the public, but Mrs. Trollope was a
courageous woman, and preferred to rely upon her own resources. She
followed her first book, the success of which was immediate and very
great, by a novel entitled "The Refugee in America," in which the plot
is ill-constructed, and the characters are crudely drawn, but the
writer's caustic humour lends animation to the page. "The Abbess," a
novel, was her third effort; and then, in the following year, came
another record of travel, "Belgium and Western Germany in 1833." Her
Conservative instincts found less to offend them in Continental than in
American society, and her sketches, therefore, while not less vivid, are
much better humoured than in her American book. Some offences against
the "minor morals" incur her condemnation; but the evil which most
provokes her is the incessant tobacco smoking of the Germans, against
which she protests as vehemently as did James I. in his celebrated
"Counterblast."
Three years later she produced her "Paris and the Parisians," of which
M. Cortambret speaks as "crowning her reputation," and as receiving
almost as warm a welcome in France as in England. The character,
customs, and literature of the French furnish the theme of a series of
letters, in which the clever and vivacious writer never fails to charm
even those whom she does not convince. It is curious to read this book,
published in 1836, and to compare the state of society in those days
with that which now exists. What changes, in half a century, have been
wrought in the national character! There seems in the present a certain
dulness, greyness, and indifference,--or is it rather an acquired
reticence and self-control?--which contrast very strikingly with the
feverish, agitated, tumultuous past, so partial to fantastic crotchets,
but so sympathetic also with great doctrines and generous ideas.
Mrs. Trollope records as an historical and noteworthy phrase, much in
vogue in 1835, "Young France," and describes it as one of those
cabalistic formulae which assume to give expression to a grand, terrible,
sublime, and volcanic idea. What shall we say now-a-days of these two
brief monosyllabic words, in which the strong generation of the
Revolution and the First Empire reposed so haughty a confidence? What
shall we say of them to a disillusionized youth, who no longer believe
in anything, and know neither faith nor culture, except in one thing,
money--for whom Sport and the Bourse have replaced the literature which
strengthened and developed the faculties, and the politics which made
men citizens?
Mrs. Trollope preserves two other words, which first rose into
popularity in 1835--the words _rococo_ and _decousu_. All things which
bore the stamp of the principles and sentiments of former generations
were branded as _rococo_. Whatever partook of the extravagance of the
Romantic school was termed _decousu_. Eventually this latter word was
abandoned as wanting in vigour, and at first that of _debraille_ was
substituted; afterwards that of _Bohemian_, which, despite the injurious
insinuation it conveyed, has been accepted and adopted by a considerable
school. Mrs. Trollope avers that, when she visited France, it was
impossible for two persons to carry on a conversation for a quarter of
an hour without introducing the words _rococo_ and _decousu_ a score of
times. They turned up as frequently as "the head of Charles I." in Mr.
Dick's discourse. And, she adds, with her usual causticity, that if one
were to classify the population into two great divisions, it would be
impossible to define them more expressively than by these two words.
* * * * *
That Mrs. Trollope had no sympathy with the Romantic school will not
excite surprise. Lamennais and Victor Hugo she stigmatizes as _decousus_
of the worst kind, and places them in the same rank as Robespierre. The
genius of Victor Hugo, so vast, so elevated, and so profound, she could
not understand; she could see only its irregularities, like a certain
"aesthete" who, when contemplating the water-floods of Niagara, directed
his attention to a supposed defect in their curve! Her methodical,
matter-of-fact mind was wholly unable to measure the proportions of the
gigantic genius of the author of "Notre Dame," and hence she discharges
at him a volley of denunciatory epithets, borrowed always from the
severest classic style--"the champion of vice," "the chronicler of sin,"
"the historian of shame and misery." She could not believe that in all
his writings it was possible to discover a single honourable, innocent,
and wholesome thought. Sin was the Muse which he invoked; horror
attended his footsteps; thousands of monsters served as his escort, and
furnished him with the originals of the "disgusting" portraits which he
passed his life in painting. This was plain speaking; but Mrs. Trollope
attacking Victor Hugo is one of those rebellions on the part of the
infinitely little against the infinitely great which move the laughter
of gods and men.
In truth, she is seldom happy in her literary criticisms. She speaks of
Beranger as "a meteor," yet of no French poet has the renown more
steadily increased. She is constrained to admit that the great people's
poet, whose fame will endure when that of most of his contemporaries has
passed into dull oblivion, is a man of a fine genius, but she will not
yield to him that foremost place which posterity, nevertheless, has
adjudged to belong to him. Of Thiers and Mignet she admits the merits
as historians, but characterizes their philosophy as narrow and shabby.
But from literature let us turn to society, in which she is easier to
please. Whether it belongs to the character of the people, or whether it
is but a transitory feature in the physiognomy of the age, she declares
herself unable to determine; but nothing strikes her so forcibly as the
air of gaiety and indifference with which the French discuss those great
subjects that involve the world's destinies. We are inclined to think,
however, that of late years a more serious spirit has prevailed. On the
other hand, we cannot recognize as in existence now that exquisite
courtesy of the French husband towards his wife which moved Mrs.
Trollope's admiration. Unless recent observers err greatly, and unless
the stage has ceased to reflect the tone and manners of society, a great
change for the worst has taken place in this respect, due, perhaps, to
the combined influence of speculation on the Bourse, smoking, and the
coarser code of morals introduced from the North. That elaborate and
delicate gallantry was a kind of _blague_ for the whole nation; it made
every Frenchman a knight of chivalry. No doubt it served as a cloak for
many vices, but we have the vices still, without the cloak! "I should be
surprised," says Mrs. Trollope, "if I heard it said that a Frenchman of
good education had ever spoken rudely to his wife!"
To one of the worst enemies of the old-fashioned courtesy she makes a
passing allusion, while hoping cordially that the ladies will easily
conquer it--we mean _Positivism_. If the women of France, she says,
remain true to their vocation, they will eventually combat with success
the ever-increasing partiality of their compatriots for the _positive_,
and will prevent each _salon_ from becoming, like the boulevard of the
Cafe Tortoni, a _petite Bourse_. Under the second Empire, however, women
were scarcely less guilty than the men, and the mania of speculation
raged in almost every boudoir. It is too early to decide dogmatically
whether in this all-important branch of morals the Republic has effected
an improvement; but assuredly the improvement, if it has begun, has not
extended very far or very deep.
In 1835 the Parisians sometimes fell to blows in support of a
philosophical principle, and would incur almost any hazard to hear a
favourite orator or to "assist" at the representation of a drama by one
of their own pet authors. Half a century later and they hurry to horse
races, and fight one another for a caprice. In 1835 they committed
suicide through love or sentiment; now they blow out their brains when
their speculations have suddenly collapsed, some bubble burst.