Date: Sat, 25 May 2002
Dear all
To be honest, I can't think of very much to say about this week's chapters of 'North America', Volume 2 Chapter 9: The Constitution of the United States and Chapter 10: The Government.
Both these chapters are very dry and factual, and I suspect they may well be omitted from many editions, as with an earlier factual chapter about the State Constitution of New York. I do have these chapters in my Granville Publishing edition, which is complete except for the three appendices which were included in the original editions, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. It is a pity not to have these - it's good to know that the new Trollope Society edition does include them, as Howard mentioned earlier in our read.
I always find Trollope's prose style very readable, but did struggle a little here. For those who don't have these chapters, he basically goes through the structure of the US legislature and States government, looking at how it differs from the British system, and discussing what he sees as the advantages and disadvantages. It is all clearly explained and the thing which comes across to me most of all is his own enthusiasm for politics - he mentions a few times how dismayed he is that "politician" is regarded as a bad word in the US, and how he believes that public service should be more highly regarded.
I'll go off at a bit of a tangent here. Thinking about Trollope's interest in the US and British political systems, I realised that it cannot have been long after writing 'North America' that he started work on the Palliser novels, with their portrayal of the workings of Parliament and the man who is in many ways his ideal politician, Plantagenet Palliser. In fact, in 'An Autobiography', he mentions the two works straight after one another:
"The work on North America had also come out in 1862. In August 1863 the first number of 'Can You Forgive Her?' was published as a separate serial and was continued through 1864."
It was also only a few years later, in 1868, that he stood for Parliament himself at Beverley. To turn to 'An Autobiography' again, he explains that being a Member of Parliament had been a lifelong ambition, something he had been thinking of for 30 years, even though he realised that he was not a good speaker and not likely to be a great success. As a young clerk he mentioned the idea to an uncle, who sneered at him, but this only made him more determined to achieve the ambition eventually.
"My uncle was dead, but if I could get a seat, the knowledge that I had done so might travel to that bourne from whence he was not likely to return, and he might there feel that he had done me wrong."
This sort of comment shows Trollope's deep lifelong interest in politics. The account of the US system in 'North America' seems dry now, but would have been more interesting at the time - and all this sort of observation of political institutions and systems went into the creation of The Pallisers. Looking ahead, in 'North America', the future chapters include discussions of the American post office and American literature - so there should be some interesting material still to come.
All the best,
Judy Geater
Re: North America: Knopf Edition Omissions
This is just to say that the Knopf edition omits "The Constitution of the United States", "The Government," "The Law Courts and Lawyers of the United States," and "The Financial Position". I read for this week Trollope on the "Post Office" and "American Hotels". These are amusing chapters -- and Trollope makes some interesting points about the difference culture, attitudes towards civil service and politics and geography makes in setting up and running a post office. He's also good on hotels.
fter "American Hotels" all that is left is "Literature" and "Conclusion" and the appendices which are made up of material Trollope wrote about his other trips to America and a detail of his itinerary for this one.
Ellen
Re: Trollope's North America: 1950 Reviewer of Trollope's Book
Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2002
Here are a few notes on these chapters towards the end of Trollope's prodigious travel-book. This week I was struck as was the reviewer of this book in the 1950 Herald Tribune (a copy of which was inserted in the pages of my Knopf edition by a kind bookseller:
"how much better and more thoroughly Trollope knew Americans than most of his compatriots or many Americans have known other Americans."
How even-handed, full and intelligent he is. How seriously he takes his task to become well-informed. His ideal of the travel book is not imaginative communing -- or that is only at the margins of his approach. His aim is to get inside the cultural assumptions and explicate these in terms of the customs, habits and real lives he can observe of the people about him, both in the local and in the general way, as a kind of continual response and as an immediate one to a situation (the civil war).
His chapter on the post office is judicious. He sees that the US post office has far more problems than the British one: the sheer space to be covered, the different regions. He is (as he is in his chapter on Literature) ultimately deeply democratic. He measures the success of a nation's literature not only by its quality but by how many people it reaches. He feels a strong respect for a people whose working class reads. He measures the success of the post office by how much it facilitates communication. In this chapter he assumes that government policies do make for customs, habits, and character shaping of individuals. That the US post office does not deliver the mail door-to-door keeps it from continual use by the poorer classes; he is convinced were the money spent to reach the poorer classes they would begin to write more. He is horrified or appalled -- and rightly so -- to learn that all the jobs of the US post office were given out through patronage and every four years just about everyone was replaced. Obviously no institution can improve or even do its job properly under such conditions: he writes of "the observer:" "finally he is lost in amazements as he contemplate this bare-faced prostitution of he public employ to the vilest purposes of political manoeuring" (Knopf ed, Ch 28, p 475)
His chapter ( 29) on American hotels is pictorial and amusing. I wonder if he's right when he says that the American hotel as a local institution as well as a place for travellers is not to be found in Europe. Luxurious hotels existed in Europe, and I have read accounts of where they are used as inns by the local population. He notices things: Americans move about. The American is a travelled and travelling animal. They go into housekeeping (set up their own homes) much quicker than their European counterparts. His description of the customs in a hotel is linked to what he has observed of American life and ways outside it. He persuades me he is giving an accurate account of the general experience.
Looking ahead to next week, his chapter on Literature (30) is particularly astute. He begins with the idea that England and America have two separate literatures though they are in the same language: the lack of narrow provincialism here is admirable. Trollope would have understood what is meant by colonial literature. He himself does not value one literature over the other but only seeks to see which is more read in each country and why -- ever the sceptic he looks to the price and the lack of copyright enforcement in the US. He is however impressed by how many more lower class and working Americans read than their counterparts in the UK. This is a continual theme with him. I did find his assumption that "all authors discuss whether that which they write shall be in itself good or bad -- or be true or false" touching. There speaks the idealist, the progressive in Trollope.
Ellen
To Trollope-l
June 4, 2002
Re: North America: American Hotels and Literature
I've never seen Victorian circulars of the kind that would be mailed to someone's home, but I have seen ads that appeared in periodicals and at the front and back of separately issued instalments of novels. It seems funny to see a great novel side-by-side with an ad for match,b but then one accepts this in the _New Yorker_ (and all magazines) for contemporary fiction and articles. What I remember best about all these ads is how they project an upper middle class reader. The kinds of things sold are solid furniture, other books (improving, high-minded history and criticism and philosophy or similar good novels) and things people might plan to buy over a period of time: they signify stability and coherence. Many objects in the novels were of the domestic sort (material for making clothes) and suggest a female reader is assumed.
I didn't mention how Trollope is so interested in readers rather than writers in his section on literature. As in his section on the post office, this shows his concern with reaching many people, with an object's usefulness (a book has non-pragmatic as well as pragmatic uses). As he thinks about two literatures in one language, so he looks to see how readers respond to books in general. Very post-modern :)
The Knopf edition lacks these political chapters Judy mentions. I did like the following too:
"The very fact that a Chancellor of the Exchequer sits in the House of Commons and is forced in that House to answer all questions on the subject of finance, renders it impossible that he should be ignorant of the rudiments of the science. If you put a white cap on a man's head and place him in a kitchen, he will soon learn to be a cook. But he will never be made a cook by standing in the dining-room and seeing the dishes as they are brought up."
Trollope knows that to know something you need to know how to use it, its inner workings -- and also be able to re-explain it in your own words.
Ellen
Dear all
I enjoyed Ellen's thoughts on these late chapters. I must admit I got a bit bogged down this week in 'The Law Courts and Lawyers of the United States' (Volume 2 Chapter 11) and 'The Financial Position' (Chapter 12), which are both omitted from Ellen's edition. It is easy to see why - as with the earlier discussions of the constitution which are also omitted from some editions, these chapters are very much concerned with contemporary issues which are not of so much interest more than a century on.
I can't think of much to say about these passages, except that they do bear out Ellen's point: "How even-handed, full and intelligent he is. How seriously he takes his task to become well-informed."
Even-handed is the word for Trollope's discussion of the legal and tax systems in America as compared with those in Britain. He looks carefully at the advantages and disadvantages of both, and, especially in the chapter on the financial position, he defends the US system against cheap gibes from some other British commentators. He shows how enormous the debt is which the US is running up during the Civil War - but still insists that it will not be beyond America to pay it off.
I especially liked a passage in chapter 12 where Trollope says:
"The very fact that a Chancellor of the Exchequer sits in the House of Commons and is forced in that House to answer all questions on the subject of finance, renders it impossible that he should be ignorant of the rudiments of the science. If you put a white cap on a man's head and place him in a kitchen, he will soon learn to be a cook. But he will never be made a cook by standing in the dining-room and seeing the dishes as they are brought up."
That sort of concrete image and wit combined make Trollope always so readable, even when he is dealing with a subject apparently of limited interest.
On the post office, Ellen wrote
His chapter on the post office is judicious. He sees that the US post office has far more problems than the British one: the sheer space to be covered, the different regions. He is (as he is in his chapter on Literature) ultimately deeply democratic. He measures the success of a nation's literature not only by its quality but by how many people it reaches. He feels a strong respect for a people whose working class reads. He measures the success of the post office by how much it facilitates communication. In this chapter he assumes that government policies do make for customs, habits, and character shaping of individuals. That the US post office does not deliver the mail door-to-door keeps it from continual use by the poorer classes; he is convinced were the money spent to reach the poorer classes they would begin to write more. He is horrified or appalled -- and rightly so -- to learn that all the jobs of the US post office were given out through patronage and every four years just about everyone was replaced.
I would agree with all of this and am not sure I can add much. It is refreshing to see that, as a post office professional, Trollope does not simply rush in and insist that the Americans should do everything exactly as he and his colleagues do in England. Instead, he thoughtfully considers the different problems, such as the greater distances, and gives full weight to the efforts of his professional colleagues in America.
One thing that especially interested me was the reference to 19th-century junk mail, which was apparently an everyday reality in Britain, but not in the US because recipients had to pay for each item of mail received, and would not be prepared to pay for advertising.
Trollope writes:
"Mercantile houses in our large cities send out thousands of trade circulars, paying postage on them; but such circulars would not be received, either in England or elsewhere, if a demand for postage were made on tehir delivery. Who does not receive these circulars in our country by the dozen, consigning them generally to the waste-paper basket, after a most cursory inspection?"
I was surprised to see this because I had somehow assumed junk mail was a modern phenomenon - wouldn't we love to see the letters which Trollope threw in the bin. Has anybody come across examples of Victorian advertising circulars?
I also especially liked the throwaway remark at the end of the chapter "I could greatly lengthen this list if I were addressing myself solely to Post-office people..." This is like getting a glimpse of Trollope in the office and makes me wish that the chapter about the civil service had been included in my edition of 'The Three Clerks'. I see that the Oxford Companion to Trollope says this chapter is boring, but I'd still like to see it for myself.
On hotels, Ellen wrote
His chapter ( 29) on American hotels is pictorial and amusing. I wonder if he's right when he says that the American hotel as a local institution as well as a place for travellers is not to be found in Europe. Luxurious hotels existed in Europe, and I have read accounts of where they are used as inns by the local population. He notices things: Americans move about. The American is a travelled and travelling animal. They go into housekeeping (set up their own homes) much quicker than their European counterparts. His description of the customs in a hotel is linked to what he has observed of American life and ways outside it. He persuades me he is giving an accurate account of the general experience.
Here I felt he was partly answering his mother, who strongly criticises the practice of living in hotels and wonders why on earth any young married couple would go in for this sort of life. Anthony is less judgemental here and recognises that there are good practical reasons for boarding in these giant hotels, although, like Fanny, he too feels that this is a bleak existence for a young married woman who has no chance to build her own home. I was amused by his vivid description of the charges for washing and the way in which people surreptitiously rinsed out their own handkerchieves to avoid paying a fortune to the hotel laundry. Also by his description of the deserted ladies' sitting-rooms with no entertainment, food or drink of any kind except a forlorn jug of iced water. Trollope has deliberately concentrated on the larger issues much of the time in this long travel book, but, when he does give us witty observations of this kind, they show the same fascination with everyday life which is one of the attractions of his fiction.
The food in the American hotels he describes sounds dire, although, to be fair, I have also seen equally horrible descriptions of food served in British hotels and cafes - in 'The Boy at Mugby', Dickens has a field day describing inedible offerings at a railway buffet. I'm quite surprised that hotels in the 19th century served such a huge number of dishes, rather than going for just a few - it seems as if diners often went for several meat or fish dishes at a single meal, perhaps because vegetables were not easily available as they are nowadays. I was struck by this "young girl" ordering her meal:
"Boiled mutton and caper sauce, roast duck, hashed venison, mashed potatoes, poached eggs and spinach, stewed tomatoes. Yes; and waiter, - some squash."
With three different kinds of meat as well as eggs, today this would sound more like a menu for a week than like a single sitting. Has anybody come across more menus like this elsewhere?
Bye for now
Judy Geater
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002
Hello all
This week we officially finish our marathon subgroup read of 'North America'. It would be very interesting to hear people's views on the book as a whole - I have enjoyed it although there are occasional difficult patches, for instance the long political discussions which are edited out of some editions. Still I agree with Ellen that the book has impressive scope. It is good to see Trollope's seriousness and his determination to look at the country as a whole, covering as much ground as possible.
Here are a few thoughts on Chapter 15: Literature. Turning to this chapter, I was expecting Trollope to give his views on the great American writers of the day, as he does on the great British writers in 'An Autobiography'. However, he doesn't really go into detail about any of their works. Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne and Longfellow are all mentioned with respect, but I was a bit disappointed to see that there are no detailed comments on any of their writings. However, it was probably difficult to write about contemporary authors who could be seen as rivals - he was writing his autobiography for posterity rather than for a current audience and so could be freer in saying what he thought.
Instead of focusing on American writers, Trollope spotlights the readers, as Ellen mentioned, and points out how far America exceeded Britain in terms of a reading public. It's easy to forget that the leading British 19th-century writers actually had more readers in the US than at home, partly, as Trollope shows, because of the difference in price, and partly because of the higher level of education of working people in the States. I like the way that Trollope doesn't just concentrate on the middle classes here, writing:
"Everybody in the States has books about his house. "And so has everybody in England," will say my English reader, mindful of the libraries, or book-rooms, or book-crowded drawing-rooms of his friends and acquaintances. But has my English reader who so replies examined the libraries of many English cabmen, of ticket porters, of warehousemen, and of agricultural labourers?"
Trollope lists the English names who were the most popular in America at this time as "Dickens, Tennyson, Buckle, Tom Hughes, Martin Tupper and Thackeray". I was a bit surprised by this list, partly because I hadn't quite thought of Tennyson as a bestseller - I knew Scott's poetry sold in massive quantities, but rather thought that sales of verse had slowed down by this stage in the 19th century. Certainly Robert Browning struggled to make any sort of living as a poet, but I know Tennyson's poetry had a wider appeal. I also hadn't realised that Thomas Hughes's 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' was successful in America
I was also surprised by the names Tupper and Buckle - to be honest I know nothing about either of these two. Has anybody come across any of their works? Looking them up in the Oxford Companion to English Literature, I see that Henry Thomas Buckle was a historian who wrote the first two volumes of a "History of Civilization in England" but died in 1862 of typhoid at Damascus, and so was unable to complete the work. (Trollope mentions Buckle's death in a footnote.) The Oxford Companion says: "The work achieved great success, was much admired by Charles Darwin, and gained an international reputation; it was particularly admired in Russia." Martin Tupper also has an entry in the Companion - he is described as a "prolific writer of verse and prose". The entry says: "His 'Proverbial Philosophy', (1838-76, 4 series), presenting maxims and reflections couched in vaguely rhythmical form, became the favourite of millions who knew nothing about poetry, and remained a best-seller in Britain and America for more than a generation. His two novels, 'The Crock of Gold' (1844) and 'Stephen Langton' (1858), and his numerous other published works are now forgotten." Trollope suggests that 'Proverbial Philosophy' was easy reading.
Of course, the name missing from the list of British bestselling authors in America is Trollope's own. Does anybody know how popular he was in the US and whether he was lionised much on his travels? He doesn't give that impression in 'North America,' although this may be through modesty, and he certainly seems to have had more freedom to look around than Dickens, who was pursued by mobs of fans whenever he went out. (But then, Trollope stresses that Dickens was far more popular than any of the other British authors he mentions.)
Dickens sparked bitter controversy in America by speaking out strongly in favour of international copyright. Trollope also tackles this fraught question in this chapter, but is more careful and measured in his approach, pointing out that it is very difficult for any publisher to make an agreement to pay royalties to a particular author when there is nothing to stop a rival publisher from bringing out the same book more cheaply and undercutting him. However, it is clear that he also feels strongly on the subject, when he says:
"The price of books would be enhanced by an international copyright law, and it is well that books should be cheap. That is the only argument used. So would mutton be cheap, if it could be taken out of a butcher's shop for nothing!"
At the end of the chapter, he strongly criticises American newspapers, suggesting that they sensationalise and are full of lies. Again this recalls Dickens, who was criticised by some American newspapers and took an angry revenge in 'Martin Chuzzlewit'. I wonder if Trollope found any paragraphs about himself appearing in US newspapers?
'll write a separate posting about the last chapter, 'Conclusion'.
Bye for now,
Judy Geater