The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-09 00:00:00

DEATH OF MRS. TROLLOPE.

Few people who read yesterday the dry and for-
mal announcement of the death, at Florence, of
Frances, widow of Tnomas Anthony Trollope, Esq.,
barrister-at-law, will have gathered ftom it the fact
that one of the most gifted and accomplished women
of the day has passed away from us. Mrs. Trollope
had ceased to exercise her pen for a few years past,
and lived in a happy retirement at Florence.

Mrs. Trollops was born at Heckfield, Hants, in
1779. Her father, the Rev. Mr. Milton (who held
the New College living of Heckfield), was the de-
signer of the wet dock at Bristol, and was well
known as a most accomplished man of science. The
old Wykehamist connection brought about Miss
Milton's marriage with Mr. Thomas Anthony Trol-
lope, R.C.L. of Oxford (1794), and Fellow of New
College, who was called to the bar in 1801, and died
at Bruges Oct. 23, 1835.

Mrs. Trollope's first appearance as an authoress
is owing to her displeasure at the way she was
treated in America—" Facit indignatio versum."
In the latter part of the reign of his sacred Majesty
George IV. Mre. Trollope and her party, including
Mrs. Trollope's husband, set sail for America on
some mysterious expedition, the object of which was
moneymaking, and the end a fiasco. Mrs. Trol-
lope was a Whig—" I had a little leaning towards
sedition myself when I set out," she says in her book
aa America. One, her companion, her "
and " friend"—it is impossible to add " philosopher"
....was Miss Frances Wright, of Nashoba, dame tie
ompagnie to La Fayette, who was on her way back
to America. At one time this lady's only desire was
to seclude herself for life in the deepest forest of the
West, and to devote herself, her time, her fortune,
and her talents, such as they were, to the op-
pressed African ; but she soon became a public lec-
turer against Christianity, against matrimony, and
against most of the decencies of modern civilisation,
till she was herself entrapped into marriage, and
became a highly respectable wife and mother. Mrs.
Trollope soon changed her views under the discom-
forts of life of Cincinnati, which she calls " triste
village," though there were 30,000 inhabitants in
the metropolis of the kingdom of pork at that time.
She was very inquisitive—
.. Looked in the baths, and God knows where besides."
gee descriptions of the social habits of the people
goo great offence—the spitting, the chewing, the
smoking, the dram-drinking, the boasting, bellying,
and roaring of the mob, the government of tinkers
il taors, and so on. and The comic element in .Airs.
Trollope's nature had full play in those volumes,
with the odd expression, the ridiculous vulgarity,
the upstart impudence of the lower orders. Mrs.
Trollope quarrelled with Miss Wright, and she
describes her lectures in a way which shall effec-
tually hurt both the lecturer and the American
rnenple• "In America, where women are guarded by saeaenfold shield of habitual insignificance, such
a spectacle caused an effect that can hardly be de-
scribed." Shakspeare, according to the transatlantic
critics,
was now " too gross," and it was " quite fus-
tian to speak of Pope," and all the world laughed
at such stories as that of the help, who said to the
authoress,
" 0 Gimini ! you be a downright Eng-
I should like to see a young lady engage
lisher !
by the year in America. I shall be an old maid
outright if 1 don't get a husband, for I be most
17 already." Mrs. Trollope was in America for
three years and a half. On her return her picture
of the want of delicacy, coarse selfishness, and
bad
manners of the Americans caused a con-
sensation. She was one of the
siderable
many who are dcsillusiones on the subject of
republican institutions by a visit to
liberal sad
America. Captain Hall had preceded her and set
her the example of a Whig of Whigs turned Tory
by a visit to Liberty's head-quarters ; and Thomas
Moore himself, though he did not return from
America unwhigged, gave the world a pretty clear
aversion to Republican manners and
idea of his
Dies. Trollope said,
customs. before she had been
long in the country, " Were I an English legislator,
sedition to make the tour of the United
I would send
States instead of to the Tower. I had once a loan-
ing to sedition; but I was cured before I had half
completed my tour." She found that there was a
want of religion, of morals, of honesty, and of refine-
ment, in America. It was this latter deficiency that
hurt her feelings. Somebody called her an " old
woman," and this embittered her mind. After all,
most of the complaints are those appertaining to
the testable and the toilette; when dwelling on these
querulous. " West ever at
grievances she is must
Court, sheppberd ? ' No, truly." " Then thou
I holm". "Truly thou art
are damned*" " Nay'
damned, like an ill roasted egg, all on one side."
What, for not going to Court ?" " Why, if thou
Nast never been to Court thou never saw'st good
manners; and it so thy manners must be wicked;
and sin is damnation. Thou
and wickedness is
sin,
art in a parlous state, shepherd." The anger of the
at this book
Americans Was prodigious. One re-
viewer calls Mrs. Trollope an " unsexed creature,"
and generally throughout the United States she was
vehemently abused. But this work had one good
effect. It reformed the minor morals of the Ameri-
cans, angry as they might be at a Britisher coming
among them and taking notes of their gaucheries.
America and the Americans," with its compa-
nion novel of the " Refugee in America," established
Mrs. Trollope's reputation, and she forthwith en-
tered upon that long career of authorship which has
oas it has been successful. In 1833
been as prolific
appeared Belgium and Western Germany," a
work marked by shrewd observation and a lively
style, though the authoress's gloomy picture of Bel-
gium under the revolutionary Government (King
Leopold's)
is probably not one of her most self-gra-
tulatory reflections. In spite of bad spelling of
German names the book is valuable. Mrs. Trollop@
goes to Bonn, Heidelberg, Baden, and all sorts of
places without any affectation of scholarship, or
German mysticism, or transcendental philosophy,
or inopportune fits of moralising. "Paris and the
Parisians" was published in 1835. Then we had
" Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw," a novel bringing
out the peculiarities of the black and coloured races
of the Southern States (1836), "Vienna and the
Austrians," with a novel, " The Romance of Vienna:
"The Vicar of Wrexhill" is one of Mrs. Trollope s
best novels. The picture of the scheming Evan-
to the house
'
gelical clergyman pushing his way in
of a wealthy widow, marrying her, and turning her
children out of doors; his hypocrisy,
his
.brutality,
and the final exposure of his shameless immorali-
ties, is terribly vivid, and is generally said—it is
to be hoped without much truth—to be drawn from
the life. In 1839 Mrs. Trollops published three
novels—" The Widow Barnaby," the y and
adventures of a crafty husband-hunter, without
money or principle ; " Michael Armstrong, the
the evils of the manufac-
Factory Boy," exposing
and " One Fault," a domestic story,
turing system;
showing the sad consequences of ill temper, the
result of pride and over-sensitiveness. Mrs. Barnaby

was for a long time a source of amusement to nove7

readers ; and 1840 gave us " The Widow Married "
—her cleverness in angling for a wealthy husband

having led her into the trap of a cleverer wife-
hunter of similar principles, or no principles; and
then we were bidden to laugh at the 6‘ Barnabys iu
America?'

In " Chesterfield ; or, the Youth of Genius," Mrs.
Trollope took occasion to expose the abandoned
character of authors, editors, and publishers, whom
she abused in choice terms. In " Hargrave," she
sketched the life of a man of fashion. "Jessie
Phillips," published in the same year, was directed
against the new poor-law ; and " Lauriston," also a
work of 1843, was lively satire ou " superior