Fanny Trollope Was Right About Us

An American Defends an Anti-American Screed

Above Plate from Domestic Manners of the Americans and meant to illustrate our habitual drunkenness

I am not a fan of Downton Abbey. Peel away the sumptuous costumes and set-pieces, strip off the tired Upstairs/Downstairs tropes, and you’re left with the worst kind of soap opera: A cheesy melodrama that insists on taking itself seriously.

Dame Maggie Smith, rest her soul, is the one saving grace of Downton Abbey, and that’s because she’s so caustic, so veddy-veddy aristocratic, that her performance serves as a naughty wink to the audience. Every time Smith delivers one of the Dowager Countess’s zingers, she’s signaling, “Yeah, I know it’s all a bit much. But I’m gonna collect a paycheck and have some fun.”

That combo of ultra-dry wit and self-awareness would have made Maggie Smith the perfect audiobook narrator for the 1832 British travelogue, Frances “Fanny” Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans. And that’s because Mrs. Trollope, too, possessed an ultra-dry wit, which she used enthusiastically to skewer Americans as slovens, rubes and boors. Yet she comes across as so easily irritated, so phenomenally prissy in her diatribes, that I have to believe she was also a smidge self-aware, playing up her offense for her English readers.

Whether self-aware or no, Trollope’s technique worked: Domestic Manners was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic, although Americans seemed to have primarily hate-read it for the pleasure of working themselves into a good, righteous lather. In all fairness, Mrs. Trollope gave us plenty to get worked up over. If you’re unfamiliar with Domestic Manners, let me summarize:

The book recounts Trollope’s travels in America circa 1827. She was a 47-year-old English gentlewoman down on her luck, married to a barrister whose family farm went bust. And so, like countless desperate others, she took off for the New World with three of her kids in tow, leaving the others (including the future novelist Anthony) behind with her husband. Her plan was to settle in Cincinnati and start a shop selling imported British knick-knacks to prettify those Spartan American frontier homes.

Well, we all know how best-laid plans go. From the moment Mrs. Trollope first sails into American from Louisiana, she’s disgusted: “For several miles above it’s mouth the Mississippi presents no objects more interesting than mud banks, monstrous bulrushes, and now and then a huge crocodile luxuriating in the slime.”

Sadly, her fellow steamboat passengers are no consolation for the shitty scenery: “Let no one who wishes to receive agreeable impressions of American manners commence their travels in a Mississippi steam boat; for myself, it is with all sincerity I declare, that I would infinitely prefer sharing the apartment of a party of well-conditioned pigs.”

From there, it gets unbelievably, preposterously worse. American men are shameless boozers, wolf down their food, and constantly spit chewing tobacco — even in the United States Senate Chamber. American women are dull and drab, so committed to their “make-do” existence that they “look at each other's dresses till they know every pin by heart.” Droves of pigs roam the streets of Cincinnati, kicking up filth in their wake. On the whole, the American people are uncultured, uncouth, and oblivious to all the little niceties that make daily living in England such a pleasure.

You can imagine how well-received these criticisms were in the States. As Tim Page noted in the Wall Street Journal, legend has it that Mrs. Trollope “was burned in effigy in America: She certainly received many scabrous reviews.”

But here’s the thing: In many ways, Domestic Manners is spot-on about Americans. Yes, it reads like a gigantic HARUMPH! And yes, it was unfair for Mrs. Trollope to focus predominantly on frontier Ohioans — tough Scots-Irish types who weren’t exactly known for their love of refinement, let alone basic rules of civility. Yet for all that, Mrs. Trollope delivered some shrewd social commentary that still holds up, even two centuries later.

Americans Are Obnoxious About Politics . . . and Obsessed By Them

For the better part of my life I’ve heard laments over the brutality of modern American politics. The once-civil partisanship turned vicious! The destruction of norms! And since a little populist uprising around oh, say 2016, these laments have become outright wails.

But Mrs. Trollope makes clear that, if our rude politics is nothing to celebrate, it’s nevertheless nothing new. She visits American during another little populist uprising: the eve of the electoral victory of Andrew Jackson over John Quincy Adams. And soon after her arrival, she finds herself trapped in a steamboat dining cabin with a crew of military men from Kentucky. They fail to make a good first impression upon her:

The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table; the voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured; the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterwards with a pocket knife, soon forced us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour was to be any thing rather than an hour of enjoyment.

It’s bad enough for Mrs. Trollope to be surrounded by Neanderthals. But then the Neanderthals start talking politics, which really brings out the caveman tendencies:

The little conversation that went forward was entirely political, and the respective claims of Adams and Jackson to the presidency were argued with more oaths and more vehemence than it had ever been my lot to hear.

Once a colonel appeared on the verge of assaulting a major, when a huge seven-foot Kentuckian gentleman horse-dealer, asked of the heavens to confound them both, and bade them sit still and be d - - - - d.

Leave it to a 7-ft “gentleman horse-dealer” to restore the peace! Unfortunately for Mrs. Trollope, the foregoing is not her last encounter with rude-and-crude American partisanship. Once she is settled in Cincinnati, recently-elected President Jackson arrives to visit the city. A crowd assembles to greet him, then parts to allow him to walk. He is visibly distraught over the death of his wife Rachel, who passed just days after his election. As Trollope observes:

He wore his grey hair, carelessly, but not ungracefully arranged, and, in spite of his harsh gaunt features, he looks like a gentleman and a soldier. He was in deep mourning, having very recently lost his wife; they were said to have been very happy together, and I was pained by hearing a voice near me exclaim, as he approached the spot where I stood, There goes Jackson, where is his wife?

Another sharp voice, at a little distance, cried, Adams forever!

So much for “norms.” Yet as much as she dislikes our politics, Mrs. Trollope cannot escape them. For one, she finds Americans read very little except for newspapers (and partisan ones at that). For another, electoral politics seem to be the American oxygen, pervading all aspects of life. Even during a restful summer vacation, Trollope recounts

we were not beyond the reach of the election fever which is constantly raging through the land. Had America every attraction under heaven that nature and social enjoyment can offer, this electioneering madness would make me fly it in disgust. It engrosses every conversation, it irritates every temper, it substitutes party spirit for personal esteem; and in fact, vitiates the whole system of society.

Sigh. You hit the nail on the head, Fanny. Thank God you never knew us in the era of social media, the 24/7 news cycle, and dwindling book readership.

We Don’t Know Our Place

When Mrs. Trollope sets up house in Cincinnati, she’s dismayed at the difficulty of finding good help, which she blames upon the unfortunate and baffling distaste working-class Americans have at being considered “The Help”:

The greatest difficulty in organizing a family establishment in Ohio is getting servants, or, as it is there called, getting help, for it is more than petty treason to the Republic to call a free citizen a servant. The whole class of young women, whose bread depends upon their labour, are taught to believe that the most abject poverty is preferable to domestic service.

How frustrating it must have been for Mrs. Trollope, after finally hiring “a pretty girl, whose natural disposition must have been gentle and kind,” to see the girl’s “good feelings soured,”

and her gentleness turned to morbid sensitiveness, by having heard a thousand and a thousand times that she was as good as any other lady, that all men were equal, and women too, and that it was a sin and a shame for a free-born American to be treated like a servant.

When she found she was to dine in the kitchen, she turned up her pretty lip, and said, ‘I guess that’s ‘cause you don’t think I’m good enough to eat with you. You’ll find that won’t do here.’

You have to sympathize with Mrs. Trollope. I mean, my God, she was paying the girl to do exactly the job of a domestic: to serve. To make matters worse, Mrs. Trollope then endures a disastrous series of incompetent and/or criminal hires, including a girl who quits as soon as Mrs. Trollope refuses to front her money for a silk ball-gown.

But it’s not just servants who drive Mrs. Trollope nuts. It’s the American — or more accurately, the underclass American — insistence on equality in general. She’s peeved by the familiarity of her backwoods neighbors, who think nothing of stopping in her home unannounced, pulling up a chair, and chatting away as if they were welcome company. A “woman whose appearance more resembled a Covent Garden market-woman” has the temerity to address Mrs. Trollope’s sons as “honey.” And when President Jackson visits, she gripes “there was not a hulking boy from a keel-boat who was not introduced to the President . . . unless they introduced themselves.”

Mrs. Trollope was vehemently abolitionist; in fact, the most biting and fiercely argued passages in Domestic Manners concern the blatant hypocrisy of a nation that insisted “all men are created equal” while simultaneously allowing slavery. With that in mind, it’s pretty telling that, when she visits Virginia, Mrs. Trollope can’t help but admire how quickly and deftly the slaves prepare her hotel room, “with all that sedulous attention which in this country distinguishes a slave state:”

In making this observation I am very far from intending to advocate the system of slavery; I conceive it to be essentially wrong; but so far as my observation has extended, I think its influence is far less injurious to the manners and morals of the people than the fallacious ideas of equality which are so fondly cherished by the working classes of the white population in America . . .

. . . which is essentially to say, Yeah, slavery’s bad, but at least the slaves show a lady some respect, unlike those toothless hicks in Ohio.

Once again, Mrs. Trollope was right: In America, those considered lower status have a funny way of bristling at the idea they aren’t on equal footing with anyone else. It’s baked into our culture — just take a look at our movies. From the Marx Brothers throwing Margaret DuMont into a hissy fit, to the Animal House/Revenge of the Nerds/Dodgeball comedy genre, we typically take the side of the underdogs in trolling the elites.

But at the same time — and Mrs. Trollope was onto this as well — there's a difference between equality of opportunity and equality in ability, character, and circumstance. We all know this. Would it hurt us to acknowledge it? As Mrs. Trollope relates:

I once got so heartily scolded for saying that I did not think all American citizens were equally eligible to [the office of President] that I shall never again venture to doubt it.

Yet this American insistence that anyone has the ability to “make it” still holds true — perhaps even more so now that the former hallmarks of elite status have been tarnished. What’s the use of a fancy degree if it was conferred by a university where standards have been watered down and grade inflation is the norm? How impressive is a resume if its credentials were obtained through family and political connections? The more our elites decline in merit, the more persuasive it is to think any Joe Blow could do their jobs.

We’re Religious Hucksters and Wing-Nuts

Mrs. Trollope was Anglican, the daughter of the Rev. William Milton. Having grown up in the Church of England, and being unapologetically snooty, it’s no surprise she’s appalled by the absence of a state religion in America:

I believe I am sufficiently tolerant; but this does not prevent my seeing that the object of all religious observances is better obtained when the government of the church is confided to the wisdom and experience of the most venerated among the people, than when it is placed in the hands of every tinker and tailor who chooses to claim a share in it . . . As there is no legal and fixed provision for the clergy, it is hardly surprising that their services are confined to those who can pay them.

With no state-sponsored clergy about, Mrs. Trollope soon encounters that tried-and-true American archetype, the charismatic Huckster Preacher. A vegetable-seller from the market invites Mrs. Trollope to attend a prayer session at his home, conducted by a traveling minister. On first sight, he’s repugnant to Mrs. Trollope, with “his dress, the cut of his hair, and his whole appearance strongly recalling the idea of one of Cromwell’s fanatics.” He then becomes even more repugnant by ranting for hours “in a drawling, nasal tone, with no other respite than what he allowed himself for expectoration.”

Baffled, Mrs. Trollope asks a friend how such a man could possibly be paid for his jawing. The friend responds the preacher’s trade was “an excellent one.” He wanders door to door asking the lady of the house if he can enlist her in prayer; invariably, the lady not only agrees to his services, but gives him food and lodging, besides paying him “more than a tithe of what her good man trusted to her keeping.”

This is an important point Mrs. Trollope frequently repeats: It’s largely American women who fund religion and devote themselves to it with remarkable fervor. Mrs. Trollope speculates this is because American society was far more sex-segregated than in England, with far less for females to do outside of the home. Dinner parties often excluded women, for instance, and what few theaters existed weren’t always considered proper entertainment for wives and daughters.

That certainly explains women’s participation in religion — with so little opportunity to get out of the house and socialize, why not attend a revival? But Mrs. Trollope’s description of the fervor of women’s devotion suggests another reason for their religiosity: It allows them to get sexed-up without moral sanction. In Cincinnati, for example, a revival preacher

… roared out in the coarsest accents, Do you want to go to hell tonight? The church was almost entirely filled with women, who vied with each other in howling and contortions of the body; many of them tore their clothes nearly off.

A camp-meeting Mrs. Trollope attends in Indiana is likewise dominated by women, with the few men in attendance there to — um — support them in worship, so to speak. The male clergymen are especially committed in this regard:

Many of [those in attendance] were beautiful young females. The preachers moved about among them, at once exciting and soothing their agonies. I heard the muttered Sister! dear Sister! I saw the insidious lips approach the cheeks of the unhappy girls; I heard the murmured confession of the poor victims, and I watched their tormentors, breathing into their ears consolations that tinged the pale cheek with red. Had I been a man, I am sure I should have been guilty of some rash act of interference.

In case you missed her gist, Mrs. Trollope later recounts the story of an itinerant preacher who manages to impregnate no less than seven young ladies.

The overlap of religion, commerce, and sex described by Mrs. Trollope persists in America today. We have televangelists and Internet-celebrity Christians who fill their bank accounts as they fill stadiums. The stagecraft of modern church services — the giant video screen displays, the indie-folk rock bands — surely echoes the theatrics of the old-time camp-meeting. And as for charismatic church leaders grooming congregants for sexual relations? Well, do a quick Google search for that and try not to wince at the results.

Mrs. Trollope was prescient in noting that freedom of religion works hand-in-hand with the selling of religion in America. Untethered from a long religious tradition, at liberty to choose from dozens of modes of worship, it’s tempting to opt for the most attractive spokesperson with the most appealing pitch. Or as Mrs. Trollope puts it:

I sincerely believe that if a fire-worshipper or an Indian Brahmin were to come to the Unites States, prepared to preach and pray in English, he would not be long without a very respectable congregation.

Classism is Eternal

Mrs. Trollope’s disdain for Americans noticeably softens as she travels from Ohio to Manhattan, where the residents have more comfortable incomes and exhibit some of the education and living habits familiar to Mrs. Trollope in England. She concludes her travelogue fretting that the American experiment will fail, given the general populace’s insistence on an equality that prevents “human respect and human honor from resting upon high talent, gracious manners, and exalted station.”

On the other hand, however, she concedes there are at least a handful of civilized Americans who would countenance a change:

With the wisdom of philosophers, and the fair candor of gentlemen, [they] shrink from a profession of equality which they feel to be untrue, and believe to be impossible.

. . . most truly should I rejoice to see power pass into such hands. If this ever happens, if refinement once creeps in among them, if they once learn to cling to the graces, the honors, the chivalry of life, then we shall say farewell to American equality, and welcome to European fellowship one of the finest countries on the earth.

Once again, you have to sympathize with Mrs. Trollope. Our tobacco-spitting must have been truly heinous, and the way her neighbors in Ohio referred to her as “The Old Woman” seemed to have traumatized her.

Yet boiled down to its essence, Mrs. Trollope’s distaste for the American brand of equality is a distaste for the working classes: their lack of deference in manners and speech, their taste for newspapers and low-brow entertainment over “high” literature and art, their preference for experience over schooling.

She’s a classist, and while she may come across as laughably snobby, she doesn’t sound too far removed from the liberal woman buying black truffle Manchego at the West Village Citronella, bemoaning the local food scene when she had to visit her blue collar relatives in Nebraska. If Domestic Manners proves anything, it’s that decorum has always been a lightning rod for class antagonism.