Cincinnati—Forest Farm—Mr. Bullock
Though I do not quite sympathise with those who consider Cincinnati as
one of the wonders of the earth, I certainly think it a city of
extraordinary size and importance, when it is remembered that thirty
years ago the aboriginal forest occupied the ground where it stands;
and every month appears to extend its limits and its wealth.
Some of the native political economists assert that this rapid
conversion of a bear-brake into a prosperous city, is the result of
free political institutions; not being very deep in such matters, a
more obvious cause suggested itself to me, in the unceasing goad which
necessity applies to industry in this country, and in the absence of
all resource for the idle. During nearly two years that I resided in
Cincinnati, or its neighbourhood, I neither saw a beggar, nor a man of
sufficient fortune to permit his ceasing his efforts to increase it;
thus every bee in the hive is actively employed in search of that honey
of Hybla, vulgarly called money; neither art, science, learning, nor
pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit. This unity of purpose,
backed by the spirit of enterprise, and joined with an acuteness and
total absence of probity, where interest is concerned, which might set
canny Yorkshire at defiance, may well go far towards obtaining its
purpose.
The low rate of taxation, too, unquestionably permits a more rapid
accumulation of individual wealth than with us; but till I had
travelled through America, I had no idea how much of the money
collected in taxes returns among the people, not only in the purchase
of what their industry furnishes, but in the actual enjoyment of what
is furnished. Were I an English legislator, instead of sending sedition
to the Tower, I would send her to make a tour of the United States. I
had a little leaning towards sedition myself when I set out, but before
I had half completed my tour I was quite cured.
I have read much of the “few and simple wants of rational man,” and I
used to give a sort of dreamy acquiescence to the reasoning that went
to prove each added want an added woe. Those who reason in a
comfortable London drawing-room know little about the matter. Were the
aliments which sustain life all that we wanted, the faculties of the
hog might suffice us; but if we analyze an hour of enjoyment, we shall
find that it is made up of agreeable sensations occasioned by a
thousand delicate impressions on almost as many nerves; where these
nerves are sluggish from never having been awakened, external objects
are less important, for they are less perceived; but where the whole
machine of the human frame is in full activity, where every sense
brings home to consciousness its touch of pleasure or of pain, then
every object that meets the senses is important as a vehicle of
happiness or misery. But let no frames so tempered visit the United
States, or if they do, let it be with no longer pausing than will store
the memory with images, which, by the force of contrast, shall sweeten
the future.
“Guarda e passa (e poi) ragioniam di lor.”
The “simple” manner of living in Western America 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. There were many circumstances, too
trifling even for my gossiping pages, which pressed themselves daily
and hourly upon us, and which forced us to remember painfully that we
were not at home. It requires an abler pen than mine to trace the
connection which I am persuaded exists between these deficiencies and
the minds and manners of the people. All animal wants are supplied
profusely at 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. It certainly does
not proceed from want of intellect. I have listened to much dull and
heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly
call silly, (if I except the every where privileged class of very young
ladies). They appear to me to have clear heads and active intellects;
are more ignorant on subjects that are only of conventional value, than
on such as are of intrinsic importance; but there is no charm, no grace
in their conversation. 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.
I will not pretend to decide whether man is better or worse off for
requiring refinement in the manners and customs of the society that
surrounds him, and for being incapable of enjoyment without them; but
in America that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of
our nature is unknown and undreamed of. There is much substantial
comfort, and some display in the larger cities; in many of the more
obvious features they are as Paris or as London, being all large
assemblies of active and intelligent human beings—but yet they are
wonderfully unlike in nearly all their moral features. Now God forbid
that any reasonable American, (of whom there are so many millions),
should ever come to ask me what I mean; I should find it very
difficult, nay, perhaps, utterly impossible, to explain myself; but, on
the other hand, no European who has visited the Union, will find the
least difficulty in understanding me. I am in no way competent to judge
of the political institutions of America; and if I should occasionally
make an observation on their effects, as they meet my superficial
glance, they will be made in the spirit, and with the feeling of a
woman, who is apt to tell what her first impressions may be, but unapt
to reason back from effects to their causes. Such observations, if they
be unworthy of much attention, are also obnoxious to little reproof:
but there are points of national peculiarity of which women may judge
as ably as men,—all that constitutes the external of society may be
fairly trusted to us.
Captain Hall, when asked what appeared to him to constitute the
greatest difference between England and America, replied, like a
gallant sailor, “the want of loyalty.” Were the same question put to
me, I should answer, “the want of refinement.”
Were Americans, indeed, disposed to assume the plain unpretending
deportment of the Switzer in the days of his picturesque simplicity,
(when, however, he never chewed tobacco), it would be in bad taste to
censure him; but this is not the case. Jonathan will be a fine
gentleman, but it must be in his own way. Is he not a free-born
American? Jonathan, however, must remember, that if he will challenge
competition with the old world, the old world will now and then look
out to see how he supports his pretensions.
With their hours of business, whether judicial or mercantile, civil or
military, I have nothing to do; I doubt not they are all spent wisely
and profitably; but what are their hours of recreation? Those hours
that with us are passed in the enjoyment of all that art can win from
nature; when, if the elaborate repast be more deeply relished than
sages might approve, it is redeemed from sensuality by the presence of
elegance and beauty. What is the American pendant to this? I will not
draw any comparisons between a good dinner party in the two countries;
I have heard American gentlemen say, that they could perceive no
difference between them; but in speaking of general manners, I may
observe, that it is rarely they dine in society, except in taverns and
boarding houses. Then they eat with the greatest possible rapidity, and
in total silence; I have heard it said by American ladies, that the
hours of greatest enjoyment to the gentlemen were those in which a
glass of gin cocktail, or egging, receives its highest relish from the
absence of all restraint whatever; and when there were no ladies to
trouble them.
Notwithstanding all this, the country is a very fine country, well
worth visiting for a thousand reasons; nine hundred and ninety-nine of
these are reasons founded on admiration and respect; the thousandth is,
that we shall feel the more contented with our own. The more unlike a
country through which we travel is to all we have left, the more we are
likely to be amused; every thing in Cincinnati had this newness, and I
should have thought it a place delightful to visit, but to tarry there
was not to feel at home.
My home, however, for a time it was to be. We heard on every side, that
of all the known places on “the globe called earth,” Cincinnati was the
most favourable for a young man to settle in; and I only awaited the
arrival of Mr. T. to fix our son there, intending to continue with him
till he should feel himself sufficiently established. We accordingly
determined upon making ourselves as comfortable as possible. I took a
larger house, which, however, I did not obtain without considerable
difficulty, as, notwithstanding fourteen hundred new dwellings had been
erected the preceding year, the demand for houses greatly exceeded the
supply. We became acquainted with several amiable people, and we
beguiled the anxious interval that preceded Mr. T.’s joining us by
frequent excursions in the neighbourhood, which not only afforded us
amusement, but gave us an opportunity of observing the mode of life of
the country people.
We visited one farm, which interested us particularly from its wild and
lonely situation, and from the entire dependence of the inhabitants
upon their own resources. It was a partial clearing in the very heart
of the forest. The house was built on the side of a hill, so steep that
a high ladder was necessary to enter the front door, while the back one
opened against the hill side; at the foot of this sudden eminence ran a
clear stream, whose bed had been deepened into a little reservoir, just
opposite the house. A noble field of Indian-corn stretched away into
the forest on one side, and a few half-cleared acres, with a shed or
two upon them, occupied the other, giving accommodation to cows,
horses, pigs, and chickens innumerable. Immediately before the house
was a small potatoe garden, with a few peach and apple trees. The house
was built of logs, and consisted of two rooms, besides a little shanty
or lean-to, that was used as a kitchen. Both rooms were comfortably
furnished with good beds, drawers, &c. The farmer’s wife, and a young
woman who looked like her sister, were spinning, and three little
children were playing about. The woman told me that they spun and wove
all the cotton and woolen garments of the family, and knit all the
stockings; her husband, though not a shoe-maker by trade, made all the
shoes. She manufactured all the soap and candles they used, and
prepared her sugar from the sugar-trees on their farm. All she wanted
with money, she said, was to buy coffee, tea, and whiskey, and she
could “get enough any day by sending a batch of butter and chicken to
market.” They used no wheat, nor sold any of their corn, which, though
it appeared a very large quantity, was not more than they required to
make their bread and cakes of various kinds, and to feed all their live
stock during the winter. She did not look in health, and said they had
all had ague in “the fall;” but she seemed contented, and proud of her
independence; though it was in somewhat a mournful accent that she
said, “Tis strange to us to see company: I expect the sun may rise and
set a hundred times before I shall see another _human_ that does not
belong to the family.”
I have been minute in the description of this forest farm, as I think
it the best specimen I saw of the back-wood’s independence, of which so
much is said in America. These people were indeed independent, Robinson
Crusoe was hardly more so, and they eat and drink abundantly; but yet
it seemed to me that there was something awful and almost unnatural in
their loneliness. No village bell ever summoned them to prayer, where
they might meet the friendly greeting of their fellow-men. When they
die, no spot sacred by ancient reverence will receive their
bones—Religion will not breathe her sweet and solemn farewell upon
their grave; the husband or the father will dig the pit that is to hold
them, beneath the nearest tree; he will himself deposit them within it,
and the wind that whispers through the boughs will be their only
requiem. But then they pay neither taxes nor tythes, are never expected
to pull off a hat or to make a curtsy, and will live and die without
hearing or uttering the dreadful words, “God save the king.”
About two miles below Cincinnati, on the Kentucky side of the river,
Mr. Bullock, the well known proprietor of the Egyptian Hall, has bought
a large estate, with a noble house upon it. He and his amiable wife
were devoting themselves to the embellishment of the house and grounds;
and certainly there is more taste and art lavished on one of their
beautiful saloons, than all Western America can show elsewhere. It is
impossible to help feeling that Mr. Bullock is rather out of his
element in this remote spot, and the gems of art he has brought with
him, shew as strangely there, as would a bower of roses in Siberia, or
a Cincinnati fashionable at Almack’s. The exquisite beauty of the spot,
commanding one of the finest reaches of the Ohio, the extensive
gardens, and the large and handsome mansion, have tempted Mr. Bullock
to spend a large sum in the purchase of this place, and if any one who
has passed his life in London could endure such a change, the active
mind and sanguine spirit of Mr. Bullock might enable him to do it; but
his frank, and truly English hospitality, and his enlightened and
enquiring mind, seemed sadly wasted there. I have since heard with
pleasure that Mr. Bullock has parted with this beautiful, but secluded
mansion.