Mrs. Trollope and her Adventure

Mrs. Trollope and her Adventure

by D. Brooks

Mrs. Frances “Fanny” Trollope, an English novelist, had at some point been encouraged by remarks made by the Marquis de Lafayette on the fortunes that could be made in the expanding countryside in the United States in the 1820s. She set to sell her home and belongings, travel across the Atlantic to seek her fortune in the “new world” and at whatever lay before her at the end of the Erie Canal. The journey was made along with her son and they opened a mercantile business near Cincinnati in 1828. She had little success and in just a couple of years was bankrupt; turning her to try and earn enough money by writing so they could return to England.  That success was laid by her wry attacks on what “civilization” was in America, thus making her quite popular in Britain.

   Maligning the “peculiar race” of Americans, especially the Yankee’s, she described her journey on the Erie Canal as she made the trip to see Niagara Falls (from the British side).  The first sixteen or so miles from Albany they avoided the locks by riding a stagecoach, eventually boarding a canal packet boat in Schenectady.

“The Erie Canal has cut through much solid rock, and we often pass between magnificent cliffs. The little falls of the Mohawk form a lovely scene; the rocks over which the river runs are most fantastic in form.  The fall continues nearly a mile; and a beautiful village, called the Little Falls, overhangs it. As many locks occur at this point, we   quitted the boat, that we might the better enjoy the scenery, which is of the wildest description.”

   Continuing to Utica in sweltering heat they took a side trek to Trenton Falls by carriage. Observing the landscape, Trollope described “…an unfathomable torrent…” as her head “swam” and “knees tottered” while traversing the steps.  Nearing the end of the falls, she appears to reflect with a mix of awe and terror at the grand scene of nature.

   The falls empties into the whirlpool where she noted an observation platform and shanty had been erected for the best possible view. In a humorous twist, “The walls of this shanty are literally covered with autographs, and I was inclined to join the laugh against the egotistical trifling, when one of the party discovered ‘Trollope, England,’ amidst the innumerable scrawls.  The well-known characters were hailed with such delight, that I think I shall never again laugh at any one for leaving their name where it is possible a friend may find it.”

   Upon return to Utica she and her son discovered that if they were to take the stagecoach to Rochester as planned, they’d have to wait until the next day, or they could board a canal packet boat and be on their way. “Our impatience induced us to prefer the latter; not very wisely, I think,…from the canal nothing is seen to advantage, and very little is seen at all.” Trollope was more enamoremed by the names of places, such as Port Byron (only “consisting of a whiskey store and a warehouse”). A day and a half later, “…we arrived in Rochester, a distance of a hundred and forty miles…fully determined never to enter a canal boat again, at least not in America.”

   After which they traveled by coach, onward to Lockport and Lewiston before crossing the Niagara River to view the falls “from British ground.”  After viewing the beauty of New York’s landscape, and the “demon of machinery” in quickly industrializing mill towns as Americans sought to not “let such a privilege of water lie idle,” Trollope would conclude:

   “I never felt more out of humour at what the Americans call improvement; it is, in truth, as it now stands, a most hideous place, and gladly did I leave it behind."

 *this article originally appeared in the Spring 2022 Newsletter

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