From this brief sketch of the life of the great Swedish novelist, we turn to a consideration of her work as a traveller.
Her visit to the United States she turned to good account, examining with a keen observant eye the manners and customs of the people. She made the acquaintance of Channing and Emerson; she went from town to town, and village to village; she investigated the character and influence of American institutions; she gave a lively consideration to the great moral and political questions which were then stirring the American mind. The result was, a strong and affectionate interest in the great Western Commonwealth—an interest so strong and deep that it made her somewhat unjust to England, which she had formerly placed in the front rank of the nations as the mother of progress and true freedom.
In the following passage she particularizes, from her point of view, the difference between the English and American character:—
"Brother Jonathan and John Bull," she says, "have the same father, but not the same mother. John Bull is corpulent, with high-coloured cheeks, is self-assertive, and speaks in a loud voice; Brother Jonathan, who is much younger, is lank, tall, weak about the knees, not boastful, but vigorous and decided. John Bull is at least forty, while Jonathan is not yet twenty-one.
"The movements of John Bull are pompous, and somewhat affected; Jonathan's feet move as nimbly as his tongue. John Bull laughs loud and long; Jonathan does not laugh, but smiles slightly. John Bull seats himself calmly to make a good dinner, as if he were bent on some great and weighty matter; Jonathan eats rapidly, and is in a hurry to quit the table in order to found a town, dig a canal, or construct a railway. John wishes to be a gentleman; Jonathan does not trouble himself about appearances—he has so much to do, that it matters little to him if he rushes about with a hole at the elbow or a tail of his coat torn off, so long as he advances. John Bull marches, Jonathan runs. John Bull is certainly very polite to the ladies, but when he is bent on enjoying himself at the table, he puts them to the door—that is, he begs them to be so obliging as to go into another room and make tea for him, 'he will follow them immediately.' Jonathan does not act like this; he loves the society of women, and will not be deprived of it; he is the most gallant man upon earth, and if he sometimes forgets his gallantry, it is because he has forgotten himself; but this does not often happen. When John Bull has a fit of indigestion, or a stroke of ill-luck, he suffers from the spleen, and thinks of hanging himself; when Jonathan has a fit of indigestion, or a stroke of ill-luck, he goes on his travels. Now and then he has a paroxysm of lunacy, but he recovers himself quickly, and never dreams of putting an end to his existence. On the contrary, he says to himself, 'Let us think no more of it; go ahead!'
"The two brothers have taken it into their heads that they will humanize and civilize the world; but Jonathan marches with more zeal in this direction, and wishes to go much farther than John Bull; he has no fear of wounding his dignity by putting his two hands to the pie, like a true workman. The two brothers desire to become rich men; but John Bull keeps for himself and his friends the best and largest portion. Jonathan is willing to share his with everybody, to enrich all the world;[11] he is a cosmopolitan; a part of the earth serves him as larder, and he has all the treasures of the globe with which to keep up his household. John Bull is an aristocrat; Jonathan is a democrat—that is to say, he wishes to be, and thinks he is one; but it occurs to him to forget it in his relations with people of a different complexion from his own. John Bull has a good heart, which at times he conceals in his fat and phlegm under his well-wadded and buttoned-up coat. Jonathan has a good heart also, but does not hide it. His blood is warmer; he has no corpulence; he marches with coat unbuttoned or without one. Some persons maintain even that Brother Jonathan is John Bull stripped of his coat, and it is with this American saying that I take leave, for the present, of John Bull and his brother Jonathan."
The manners and customs most opposed to European ideas found favour in the eyes of Frederika Bremer, when she thought she detected in American usages the elements of progress and liberty. It is, indeed, with too light a touch that she glides by the more regrettable defects of the American character, so fascinated, so dazzled is she by the brilliant mirage of independence—independence of thought and action, often verging upon or passing into licence—which the United States presented to her. She reminds one of that Western patriot who, from the banks of the Mississippi, watching the explosion of a steamship, exclaimed, "Heavens! the Americans are a great people!" This exclamation she does not repeat in so many words, but the idea which it embodies is present in every page of her book.
But, in truth, she travelled under conditions which made it almost impossible for her to form an impartial judgment of men and things. She was everywhere received with so much enthusiastic hospitality, even by Quakers, Shakers, Plungers, and other of those strange sects described with so much unction by the late Mr. Hepworth Dixon, that her usual keen powers of observation were necessarily obscured. She saw everything through rose-coloured glasses. On the question of slavery, for example, she, the ardent champion of the emancipation of humanity, who started with the firm resolution to launch her heaviest thunderbolts at the slave-owners, was led to give forth an uncertain sound. For the astute Southerners got hold of her, fêted her, complimented her, read her works; how could she retain her impartiality when brought under such powerful influences? Can any author inveigh against the men who read his books? So it has not inaptly been said that she denounces the slave-holders only when she is in Yankee territory, and criticises the Yankees only when she is in the Southern States. Allowing herself to believe that the condition of the negroes was not so deplorable as she had supposed, she even began to extenuate the institution of slavery by arguments too transparently feeble to call for detailed confutation. It is true, she says, that slavery is an evil to-day, but to-morrow it will be a boon to humanity, and a boon to the negro world. Why? Because the American negro, enlightened by the teachings of Christianity through his contact with the white man, will, at some future time, return to Africa, the home of his ancestors, a missionary of civilization, charged with the glorious task of redeeming and regenerating it.
This was a new reading of the old falsehood, doing evil that good may come. What could the negro think of a Christianity that justified his subjugation by oppression? Or how could a race, kept in the bonds and fetters of an accursed degradation, be fitted to play the part of apostles and missionaries? Happily it is unnecessary to discuss the subject, since slavery no longer exists in America.