136 Domestic Manners of the Americans (1828)
We reached Cincinnati on the 10th of February. It is finely situated on the south side of a hill that rises gently from the water’s edge, yet it is by no means a city of striking appearance. It wants [lacks] domes, towers, and steeples, but its landing-place is noble, extending for more than a quarter of a mile. It is well paved and surrounded by neat though not handsome buildings. I have seen fifteen steam-boats lying there at once, and still half the wharf was unoccupied.
We had the good fortune to find a dwelling before long and we returned to our hotel having determined upon taking possession of it as soon as it could be got ready. Not wishing to take our evening meal either with the three score and ten gentlemen of the dining-room nor yet with the half dozen ladies of the bar-room, I ordered tea in my own chamber. A good-humored Irish woman came forward with a sort of patronizing manner, took my hand and said, “Och, my honey, ye’ll be from the old country. I’ll see you will have your tay all to yourselves, honey.” With this assurance we retired to my room, which was a handsome one as to its size and bed furniture but it had no carpet and was darkened by blinds of paper such as rooms are hung with.
We took our tea and were enjoying our family talk relative to our future arrangements, when a loud sharp knocking was heard at our door. My “come in” was answered by the appearance of a portly personage who proclaimed himself our landlord.
“Are any of you ill?” he began.
“No, thank you sir. We are all quite well,” was my reply.
“Then, madam, I must tell you, that I cannot accommodate you on these terms. We have no family tea-drinkings here, and you must live either with me or my wife, or not at all in my house.”
This was said with an air of authority that almost precluded reply but I ventured a sort of apologistic hint that we were strangers and unaccustomed to the manners of the country.
“Our manners are very good manners and we don’t wish any changes from England.”
We were soon settled in our new dwelling, which looked neat and comfortable enough but we speedily found that it was devoid of nearly all the accommodation that Europeans conceive necessary to decency and comfort. No pump, no cistern, no drain of any kind, no dustman’s cart or any other visible means of getting rid of the rubbish, which vanishes with such celerity in London that one has no time to think of its existence, but which accumulated so rapidly at Cincinnati that I sent for my landlord to know in what manner refuse of all kinds was to be disposed of.
“Your Help will just have to fix them all into the middle of the street. But you must mind, old woman, that it is the middle. I expect you don’t know as we have got a law what forbids throwing such things at the sides of the streets. They must just all be cast right into the middle and the pigs soon takes them off.” In truth the pigs are constantly seen doing Herculean service in this way through every quarter of the city. And though it is not very agreeable to live surrounded by herds of these unsavory animals, it is well they are so numerous and so active in their capacity of scavengers. For without them the streets would soon be choked up with all sorts of substances in every stage of decomposition.
The “simple” manner of living in Western America was more distasteful to me from its leveling effects on the manners of the people than from the personal privations that it rendered necessary. And yet, till I was without them, I was in no degree aware of the many pleasurable sensations derived from the little elegancies and refinements enjoyed by the middle classes in Europe. There were many circumstances, too trifling even for my gossiping pages, which pressed themselves daily and hourly upon us and which forced us to remember painfully that we were not at home. It requires an abler pen than mine to trace the connection which I am persuaded exists between these deficiencies and the minds and manners of the people.
All animal wants are supplied profusely at Cincinnati and at a very easy rate, but alas! The total and universal want of manners both in males and females is so remarkable that I was constantly endeavoring to account for it. It certainly does not proceed from want of intellect. I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly. They appear to me to have clear heads and active intellects, are more ignorant on subjects that are only of conventional value than on such as are of intrinsic importance but there is no charm, no grace in their conversation. I very seldom during my whole stay in the country heard a sentence elegantly turned and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American. There is always something either in the expression or the accent that jars the feelings and shocks the taste.
But whatever may be the talents of the persons who meet together in society, the very shape, form, and arrangement of the meeting is sufficient to paralyze conversation. The women invariably herd together at one part of the room and the men at the other. But in justice to Cincinnati I must acknowledge that this arrangement is by no means peculiar to that city or to the western side of the Alleghenies. Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion. A few of the most daring youths, animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things who are comparing with one another “how many quarters’ music they have had.” Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the slender gentlemen are left to themselves and on such occasions the sound of laughter is often heard to issue from among them. But the fate of the more dignified personages who are left in the other room is extremely dismal. The gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the price of produce, and spit again. The ladies look at each other’s dresses till they know every pin by heart. Talk of Parson Somebody’s last sermon on the day of judgment, on Dr. T’otherbody’s new pills for dyspepsia till the “tea” is announced, when they all console themselves together for whatever they may have suffered in keeping awake by taking more tea, coffee, hot cake and custard, hoe cake, johnny cake, waffle cake, and dodger cake, pickled peaches, and preserved cucumbers, ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce, and pickled oysters than ever were prepared in any other country of the known world. After this massive meal is over, they return to the drawing-room and it always appeared to me that they remained together as long as they could bear it and then they rise en masse, cloak, bonnet, shawl, and exit.
The theatre was really not a bad one, though the very poor receipts rendered it impossible to keep it in high order. But an annoyance infinitely greater than decorations indifferently clean was the style and manner of the audience. Men came into the lower tier of boxes without their coats and I have seen shirt sleeves tucked up to the shoulder. The spitting was incessant and the mixed smell of onions and whiskey was enough to make one feel even the Drakes’ acting dearly bought by the obligation of enduring its accompaniments. The bearing and attitudes of the men are perfectly indescribable. The heels thrown higher than the head, the entire rear of the person presented to the audience, the whole length supported on the benches are among the varieties that these exquisite posture-masters exhibit. The noises too were perpetual and of the most unpleasant kind. The applause is expressed by cries and thumping with the feet instead of clapping and when a patriotic fit seized them and “Yankee Doodle” was called for, every man seemed to think his reputation as a citizen depended on the noise he made.
Source: Mrs. [Frances Milton] Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), I, 48-188. https://archive.org/details/toldcontemporari03hartrich/page/520/mode/2up
