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

DEATH OP 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 from it the fact
that one of the most gifted and accomplished women
of the day has passed away from ns. Mrs. Trollope
had ceased to exercise her pen for a few years past,
and lived in a happy retirement at Florence.
Mrs. Trollope 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
know° as a most accomplished man of science. The
old Wykehamist connection brought about Miss
Milton's marriage with Mr. Thomas Anthony Trol-
lope, B.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.
:\lrs. 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. Mrs. 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
on America. One, her companion, her " guide,',
and "friend"—it is impossible to add " philosopher',
_was Miss Frances Wright, of Nashoba, dame de
compagnie 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-
life of Cincinnati, which she calls " triste
forts of
though there were 30,000 inhabitants in
village,'
the metropolis of the kingdom of pork at that time.
S he was very inquisitive—
" Look in the baths, and God knows where besides."
ed
Her descriptions of the social habits of the people
offence—the gave greatnce—the spitting,the chewing, the
smoking, the dram-drinking, the boasting, bellying,
and roaring of the mob, the government of tinkers
and tailors, and so on. The comic element in Mrs.
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
people. "In America, Where women are guarded
by a sevenfold shield of habitual insignificance, such
a spectacle caused an effect that can hardly be de-
scribed." seakspeare, according to the transatlantic
critics,
was now "too gross," and it was " quite fus-
tian to speak of Poee,,,
r and all the world laughed
at such stories as that of the help, who said to the
Gim ini !
authoress, e 0 you be a downright Eng-
fisher ! I2hould like to see a young lady engage
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-
siderable sensation. She was one of the
many who are desillusiones on the subject of
liberal and republican institutions by a visit to
America. Captain Hall had preceded her and set
pie of a Whig
her the exam of Whigs turned Tory
by a visit to Liberty's head-quarters ; ar.d Thomas
Moore himself, though ho did not return from
America unwhigged, gave the world a pretty clear
idea of his aversion to Republican manners and
customs. Ire, Trollope said, before she had been
long in the country, " Were I an English legislator,
I would send sedition to make the tour of the United
States instead of to the Tower, I had once a lean-
ing to sedition; but I was cured before I had half
completed
ray 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 teatable and the toilette; when dwelling on these
grievances she is most querulous. " West ever at
p
Court, sheppherd • ' " NO, truly." " Then thou
are damned." ,4 Nay, I hope." " Truly thou art
damned, like an ill roasted egg, all on one side."
" What, for not going to Court ?" " Why, if thou
hast never been to Court thou never saw'st good
manners ; and if so thy manners must be wicked ;
and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou
art in a parlous state, shepherd." The anger of the
Americans at this book Was prodigious. One Trollope an
re-
viewer calls Mrs. " 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 e Refugee in America," established
Mrs. Trollope's reputation, and she forthwith en-
tered upon that long career of authorship which has
been as prolific as it has been successful. In 1833
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. Trollope
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-
gelical clergyman pushing his way into the house
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 history and
adventures of a crafty husband-bunter, without
money or principle ; " Michael Armstrong, the
Factory Boy," exposing the evils of the manufac-
turing system ; and " One Fault," a domestic story,
showing the sad consequences of ill temper, the
result of pride and over-sensitiveness. Mrs. Baruaby
was for a long time a source of amusement to novel
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 " Barnabys in
America."

or, the Youth of Genius," Mrs.
lii " Chesterfield ;
Trollopc took occasion to expose the abandoned
character of authors, editors, end 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 a lively satire 02 " superior