Diary in America, Series One

by Frederick Marryat

Many of those who have preceded me have not been able to devote sufficient time to their object, and therefore have failed. If you have passed through a strange country, totally differing in manners, and customs, and language from your own, you may give your readers some idea of the contrast, and the impressions made upon you by what you saw, even if you have travelled in haste or sojourned there but a few days; but when the similarity in manners, customs, and language is so great, that you may imagine yourself to be in your own country, it requires more research, a greater degree of acumen, and a fuller investigation of cause and effect than can be given in a few months of rapid motion. Moreover, English travellers have apparently been more active in examining the interior of houses, than the public path from which they should have drawn their conclusions; they have searched with the curiosity of a woman, instead of examining and surveying with the eye of a philosopher. Following up this wrong track has been the occasion of much indiscretion and injustice on their parts, and of justifiably indignant feeling on the part of the Americans. By many of the writers on America, the little discrepancies, the mere trifles of custom have been dwelt upon, with a sarcastic, ill-natured severity to give their works that semblance of pith, in which, in reality, they were miserably deficient; and they violated the rights of hospitality that they might increase their interest as authors.

The Americans are often themselves the cause of their being misrepresented; there is no country perhaps, in which the habit of deceiving for amusement, or what is termed hoaxing, is so common. Indeed this and the hyperbole constitute the major part of American humour. If they have the slightest suspicion that a foreigner is about to write a book, nothing appears to give them so much pleasure as to try to mislead him; this has constantly been practised upon me, and for all I know, they may in some instances have been successful; if they have, all I can say of the story is that “se non e vero, e si ben trovato,” that it might have happened. (Note 1.)

When I was at Boston, a gentleman of my acquaintance brought me Miss Martineau’s work, and was excessively delighted when he pointed out to me two pages of fallacies, which he had told her with a grave face, and which she had duly recorded and printed. This practice, added to another, that of attempting to conceal (for the Americans are aware of many of their defects), has been with me productive of good results: it has led me to much close investigation, and has made me very cautious in asserting what has not been proved to my own satisfaction to be worthy of credibility.

Another difficulty and cause of misrepresentation is, that travellers are not aware of the jealousy existing between the inhabitants of the different states and cities. The eastern states pronounce the southerners to be choleric, reckless, regardless of law, and indifferent as to religion; while the southerners designate the eastern states as a nursery of overreaching pedlars, selling clocks and wooden nutmegs. This running into extremes is produced from the clashing of their interests as producers and manufacturers. Again, Boston turns up her erudite nose at New York; Philadelphia, in her pride, looks down upon both New York and Boston; while New York, clinking her dollars, swears the Bostonians are a parcel of puritanical prigs, and the Philadelphians a would-be aristocracy. A western man from Kentucky, when at the Tremont House in Boston, begged me particularly not to pay attention to what they said of his state in that quarter. Both a Virginian and Tennessean, when I was at New York did the same.

At Boston, I was drinking champaign at a supper. “Are you drinking champaign?” said a young Bostonian. “That’s New York—take claret; or, if you will drink champaign, pour it into a green glass, and they will think it hock; champaign is not right.” How are we to distinguish between right and wrong in this queer world? At New York, they do drink a great deal of champaign; it is the small beer of the dinner-table. Champaign become associated with New York, and therefore is not right. I will do the New Yorkers the justice to say, that, as far as drinks are concerned, they are above prejudice: all’s right with them, provided there’s enough of it.

The above remarks will testify, that travellers in America have great difficulties to contend with, and that their channels of information have been chiefly those of the drawing-room or dinner-table. Had I worked through the same, I should have found them very difficult of access; for the Americans had determined that they would no longer extend their hospitality to those who returned it with ingratitude—nor can they be blamed. Let us reverse the case. Were not the doors of many houses in England shut against an American author, when from his want of knowledge of conventional usage, he published what never should have appeared in print! And should another return to England, after his tetchy, absurd remarks upon the English, is there much chance of his receiving a kind welcome? Most assuredly not; both these authors will be received with caution. The Americans, therefore, are not only not to blame, but would prove themselves very deficient in a proper respect for themselves, if they again admitted into their domestic circles those who eventually requited them with abuse.

Admitting this, of course I have no feelings of ill-will toward them for any want of hospitality toward me; on the contrary, I was pleased with the neglect, as it left me free, and unshackled from any real or fancied claims which the Americans might have made upon me on that score. Indeed, I had not been three weeks in the country before I decided upon accepting no more invitations, even charily as they were made. I found that, although invited, my presence was a restraint upon the company; every one appeared afraid to speak; and when anything ludicrous occurred, the cry would be—“Oh, now. Captain Marryat, don’t put that into your book.” More than once, when I happened to be in large parties, a question such as follows would be put to me by some “free and enlightened individual”:—

“Now, Captain Marryat, I ask you before this company, and I trust you will give me a categorical answer, Are you, or are you not about to write a book upon this country?” I hardly need observe to the English reader, that, under such circumstances, the restraint, became mutual; I declined all farther invitations, and adhered to this determination as far as I could without cause of offence, during my whole tour through the United States.

But if I admit, that after the usage which they had received, the Americans are justified in not again tendering their hospitably to the English, I cannot, at the same time, but express my opinion as to their conduct toward me personally. They had no right to insult and annoy me in the manner they did, from nearly one end of the Union to the other, either because my predecessors had expressed an unfavourable opinion of them before my arrival, or because they expected that I would do the same upon my return to my own country, I remark upon this conduct, not from any feeling of ill-will or desire of retaliation, but to compel the Americans to admit that I am under no obligations to them: that I received from them much more of insult and outrage than of kindness; and, consequently, that the charge of ingratitude cannot be laid to my door, however offensive to them some of the remarks in this work may happen to be.

And here I must observe, that the Americans can no longer anticipate lenity from the English traveller, as latterly they have so deeply committed themselves. Once, indeed, they could say, “We admit and are hospitable to the English, who, as soon as they leave our country, turn round and abuse and revile us. We have our faults, it is true: but such conduct on their part is not kind or generous.” But they can say this no longer; they have retaliated, and in their attacks they have been regardless of justice. The three last works upon the Americans, written by English authors, were, on the whole, favourable to them; Mr Power’s and Mr Grund’s most decidedly so; and Miss Martineau’s, filled as it is with absurdities and fallacies, was intended, at all events to be favourable.