Mrs. Trollope reported truthfully what she saw and heard. But a frontier city is made up of people gathered from the four corners of the earth: each family is a law unto itself; so that the speeches Mrs. Trollope carefully set down, and the customs she depicted, were often peculiarities of individuals rather than of a community. But she has left a vivid picture of American life in the twenties, less exaggerated than the picture Charles Dickens gave of it in the forties. Mrs. Trollope's attitude is no more hostile than his, but he is more entertaining. He held us up to ridicule and laughed at us; she seriously pointed out our errors in the hope that we might amend. She is slightly inconsistent at times, for, while asserting the equality of whites and blacks, she as bitterly resented the equality of white master and white servant. Her purpose in writing this book was to warn her own countrymen of the evils which must follow a government of the many.
Although she never takes the broad view, but always the narrow and partial one, her book gives a good picture of the everyday life and habits of thought of the next generation to that which had fought and won the American Revolution. The white heat of republican fervour, so obnoxious to a European, welded the nation together as one people, and filled their hearts with a religious reverence for the constitution. She meant them as a reproach, but we read these words with pride: "I never heard from anyone a single disparaging word against their government."
Mrs. Trollope has been described by her friends as a refined woman of charming personality. But as soon as she began to write, she donned her armour and proclaimed her hostility either to her hero or to the larger part of the characters of the book. This method is dangerous to art. Even the genius of Thackeray is lessened by his lack of sympathy.
In 1833 Mrs. Trollope published her first novel, The Refugee in America. It is the story of an English lord who has fled to America to escape English justice. He and his friends have settled in Rochester, New York. It was written for the sole purpose of describing the manners of the people of our Eastern cities. The author's attitude toward them is well illustrated by a conversation between Caroline, the young English girl, and her American protégée, Emily. After a dinner in Washington, Caroline exclaims to her friend:
"'Oh, my own Emily, you must not live and die where such things be.'
"Emily sighed as she answered, 'I am born to it, Miss Gordon.'
"'But hardly bred to it. We have caught you young, and we have spoiled you for ever as an American lady.'"
Three years later Mrs. Trollope published her strongest novel, The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw. This is a powerful picture of early life on the Mississippi; it was the first novel since Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko which called attention to the evils of African slavery. It is marred, however, by want of sympathy with the community she is describing. Mr. Jonathan Whitlaw Senior has "squat in the bush," an expression to which Mrs. Trollope objects, but which brings to mind at once the log cabin in the forest clearing, and the muscular, uncouth pioneer. Jonathan furnishes firewood to the Mississippi steamers, and by this means gains sufficient wealth to carry out his life's ambition: to set up a store in Natchez, and to own "niggers." But the life of a pioneer has made Jonathan as cunning as a fox. This cunning his son Jonathan, the hero of the story, has inherited to the full. As a slave-owner he is as grasping and cruel as Legree, whom Mrs. Stowe immortalised some years later. His character, though drawn with strength and vigour, is inconsistent. He is a miser, yet he is a gambler and a spendthrift, qualities not often found together. He is not a true representative of the son of a pioneer. Clio Whitlaw, the aunt of the hero, belongs more truly to her environment. One suspects the English family at Cincinnati had received neighbourly kindnesses from women like her. With her physical strength and great courage she is kind and neighbourly to all who need her help. The sad story of Edward Bligh, the young Kentuckian who preached the gospel to the slaves, the victim of lynch law, a word dreaded even then, is as thrilling as parts of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Besides Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, Mrs. Trollope created two other characters that will cause her name to live as long as those of William Harrison Ainsworth or G. P. R. James. The coarse scheming widow Barnaby is the heroine of three novels, Widow Barnaby, The Widow Married, and The Widow Wedded, or the Barnabys in America. In the last book Mrs. Trollope somewhat humorously pays off her scores against her American critics, who had dubbed her a cockney, unfamiliar with good society in either England or America. The Widow Barnaby, who has come to New Orleans with her husband after his little gambling ways have made residence in London unpleasant, decides to earn some money by writing a book on America. She describes the Americans, not as they are, but as they think they are. She listens to all their boasts about themselves and country, and puts it faithfully in her book. Of course they like it and she becomes the literary lion of America.
Anthony Trollope, in his book An Autobiography, said of his mother's books on America: "Her volumes were very bitter; but they were very clever, and they saved the family from ruin." She is also given the credit of having improved the manners of American society. Whenever a "gentleman" at his club put his feet on the table, or indulged in any liberty of which she would not have approved, others cried, "Trollope! Trollope! Trollope!"