Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890–1950

Introduction: The Forebears

Introduction The Forebears The great nineteenth-century British observers of America were tough critics. Conservatively inclined observers were especially harsh in their assessments, which so much dominated the field prior to midcentury that Allan Nevins has called these decades the age of “Tory condescension.”1 The conservative commentators adopted a haughty, disdainful tone in describing a nation they saw as excessively democratic and egalitarian. Devoid of aristocratic leadership and contemptuous of tradition, Americans, in their view, were a crass, ill-mannered people. Throughout the nineteenth century, however, there was an admiration for the United States in British radical circles. America was perceived as the land of freedom and opportunity.2 Nevertheless, when radicals predisposed to like America actually observed the nation firsthand, the reality they found frequently disappointed them. After confronting such institutions as slavery and the American party machine, they were capable of writing critiques of the United States in many respects as scathing as the Tory assessments. No matter what the political orientation of the writer, America usually fared badly at the hands of British observers , who believed the nation deficient either because of its republican ideals or in spite of those ideals. Only in the late 1880s, with the publication of James Bryce’s American Commonwealth, did the tide begin to turn. 3 The most conspicuous—and notorious—of the conservative British observers of America was Frances Trollope, who lived and traveled in the United States for almost three and a half years, beginning at the end of 1827.3 The extensive notes she compiled resulted in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), a distinctly unflattering portrait of the United States that caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic and established the author’s literary reputation.4 As she conceded in her book, Mrs. Trollope did not address the American governmental system, except for its effect in shaping the habits and customs of everyday life, her primary focus. In Domestic Manners she asserted that Americans were totally lacking in the social graces and showed no appreciation for culture and education either. Furthermore, she maintained that Americans were hypocritical. They would insist, for example, on a certain propriety about keeping the Sabbath or adhering to strict sexual mores, while at the same time holding slaves and treating them brutally. It was also her contention that the Americans were a selfrighteous , super-sensitive people who wallowed in patriotism and the conviction that the United States was the best of all possible worlds. They would brook no criticism of their native land yet felt free to hurl all kinds of abuse at the British. Mrs. Trollope believed that in large part America’s shortcomings could be attributed to its rejection of certain long-cherished British traditions and institutions, and the assumptions underpinning them. In her view, American society was deplorable because there was no recognition that humankind naturally organizes itself along hierarchical lines. Thomas Jefferson, among others, had poisoned the American mind with the doctrine of equality. As there was no leisured aristocracy in the United States and all were compelled to work for their livelihood, she wrote, the nation would remain relatively uncivilized. The tone of American society could have been elevated to some degree, Mrs. Trollope maintained, if the sexes mingled more. She noted how often in the United States, in contrast to Europe, men and women were segregated—commonly dining separately, retreating to different sections on riverboats, and spending their Sundays apart, the women in church rapt by the mesmerizing spell of the preacher and the men off on their own smoking and drinking whiskey. She felt certain that both conversation and etiquette would improve—perhaps even the pervasive spitting by the men would cease—if the sexes were brought into greater contact . But not only was American society not nearly as refined as British, 4 Introduction • Trollope observed that the common folk, without the traditional fairs and festivals of the Old World, did not even enjoy themselves as heartily. Mrs. Trollope openly admitted that she disliked America, and she included precious little in her book of a positive nature—her kind words about a few individuals and her appreciation of the landscape being exceptions . Why she should have found America so distasteful can be explained in various ways. First of all, with her Tory sympathies, it would have been surprising had she returned from her encounter with the radical experiment across the...