The Influence of European Travel on the Political and Social Outlook of Henry Ad Jos, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain
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THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN TRAVEL ON THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF HENRY AD JOS, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, AND MARK TWAIN DISSERTATION Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Dootor of Philosophy1 in the Graduate Sohool of The Ohio State University By AUGUST LYNN ALTENBERND, B. S. in Bdu.„ M. A. The Ohio State University 1954 Approved byt _ TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page I THE TRADITION OF AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING, 1800-1865......................................... 1 II ADAMS, HO •YELLS, AND TWAIN AT HOME................. 11 III FIRST JOURNEYS TO EUROPE.......................... 47 IV EARLY 'WRITING ON EUROPE............................ 114 V DISILLUSION AND DESPAIR............................ 187 NOTES............................................. 238 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY............................. 263 CHAPTER I THE TRADITION OF AMERICA!! TRAVEL WRITING, 1800-1865 From the earliest oolonial times Americans hare maintained a lively interest in Europe, regarding it with a mixture of reverence, irritation, and contempt. The first colonists had a recent and intimate knowledge of the mother oountry, and they were, mo re over# loyal British sub jeots who did not oonsider that in migrating to America they had beoome any the less Englishmen. Gradually this easy familiarity with the homeland diminished as Anerican-born colonials increasingly outnumbered natives of England, but oultural, scien tific, and humanitarian relations remained so olose as to retard the growth of a distinctive Amerioan national consciousness. In fact, suoh men of the Revolutionary generation as Franklin and Jefferson broadened, rather than narrowed, their views, so that they became genuinely cosmopolitan. They corresponded with numerous soientists and politicians on the Continent as well as in England*^ But this cosmopolitanism was also a weakening of the sense of personal identi float ion with England. By the time that Anerloan literature began to emerge as a separate entity in the work of Washington Irving, more than a century and a half of ruatioation in Amerioa and the wave of national feeling during and after the Revol ution had done their work. Whether the Amerioan approached Europe as the shrine of antiquity, as Irving did in unoritioal admiration. 2 or as the arena of contemporary political struggles, as Cooper did with unapolegetlc candor, he oould no longer write without the con sciousness that he was, in a sense, a marked men— the representatlTe of a new end increasingly independent way of life. Hence Amerioan travelers of the nineteenth century approached European culture with so dlstinot a sense of its difference from American culture that it was possible to minimise or erren forget the continuity of Amerioan life with its European sources. At the same time, the idea that the United States was the realization of mankind's age-old dream of an earthly paradise was so strong that derogatory accounts of the sooiety and political institutions o f the Old Tforld beoame a domin ant theme in the writing of Amerioan travelers. Thus two related but divergent attitudes toward Europe emerged early in the nineteenth oentury. Irving epitomises nostalgia for the old home and a desire to identify himself with the rich culture of the European past. Cooper, on the other hand, represents those writers who plaoe more emphasis on politics and sooiety and who find Amerioan demooraoy and Amerioan opportunity superior to European aristocracy and oppression. Perhaps most often the two tendencies are intermingled in the work of the same author, but they remain as separable elements which produce the ambivalence characteristic of Amerioan attitudes toward Europe. In "The Author's Aooount of Hina el f," which prefaces The Sketch book, Irving points out the differences between travel in America and 3 in Burop®. Amerioan natural beauty is unsurpassed, be says# But Bur ope held forth the o harms of storied and poetical association* There were to be seen the masterpiece of art# the refinments of highly culti vated sooiety# the quaint peculiarities of ancient and looal custom. Ity native country was full of youthful promisei Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gqne by# and every mouldering stone was a chron icle • I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement#--to tread# as it were# in the footsteps of antiquity#--to loiter about the ruined castle#» to meditate on the falling tower#--to escape# in short# from the ocanonplaoe realities of the present# and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past* "The shadowy grandeurs of the past"— the phrase holds implicit all the romantic antiquarianism of Irving and his host of followers. The Sketchbook and Bmoebridge Hall# whioh followed it in 1822# are made up of observations on English customs# architecture# history# and character. In The Alhambra (1832) Irving exploits a rloh source of romantio legendry in the tales of the Moorish occupa tion of Spain. Antiquity and picturesqueness# mouldering castles and beautiful phantoms from a storied past fill these still-pleasant pages. The same motives that sent Irving to Europe lay behind the writing of Longfellow’s Outre-Mer (1833). It is true that Longfellow went to Burope to continue his education in Paris and Gottingen# but he also traveled in Spain and Italy to oolleot impressions of the same romantio tendenoy as that of Irving's sketohes.^ Longfellow# like Irving# based much of his work on European legend# and oosnented on the pioturesque and the beautiful# while almost entirely avoiding 4 any comment on the contemporary soene. Thus one kind of travel book early established a pattern which was to be followed with variations for the rest of the century* Gradually the area oovered by foot-loose Americana broadened* aa they pushed on to Switzerland* Austria* Greece* Egypt* the Holy Land* India* and eventually the Far Saat* Host literary men of the oentury wrote at least one book of foreign travel* Among prominent authors* only Thoreau* Whitman* and Dickinson did not travel abroad* although Poe might also be added to the number* since his reoolleotions of a few childhood years in England furnished so little material for hie pen* Of all literary travelers* Bayard Taylor undoubtedly put most miles and words behind him* Beginning with V i e w Afoot? or Europe Seen with Knapsaok and Staff in 1846* he published a dosen volumes in the following thirty years* dealing with Ireland* Sootland* Bug land* Belgian, Germany* Bohemia* Austria* Italy* Switzerland* Franoe* California* Uexioo* Egypt* Central Africa* Palestine* Sicily* Spain* India* China* Japan* Sweden* Denmark* Lapland* Greeoe, Russia* Norway* and Iceland* Taylor's work usually appeared as travel letters in the New York Tribune* to be put between covers when he oorapleted any particular trip** The sketches are almost devoid of ooment on men and manners* so that notable sights usurp attention even more thoroughly than they do in most travel books. In introduc ing Views Afoot* Taylor desoribed the motives that drove him onward through one oountry after another for most of his life in terms B almost identical with Irving* s statement in The Sketchbook. adding that ha wished to "educate Myself more completely and variously than 6 my situation and olrcimstanoes enabled me to do at home." And while he noted in "A Familiar Latter to the Reader" prefacing Byways of Buropa twenty-three years later that his first book of travel had < been the untrained observations of a nineteen-year-old boy* the later work shows little more oonoera for the problems of contemporary sooiety. Ho thorough census has ever been attempted of the traveling ladies and gentlemen who wrote letters to be published in their home town papers* and perhaps subsequently collected their sketohes into books. Bone familiarity with nineteenth-oentury newspapers and magaslnes* however* lndicates that their work was voluminous* and e that the t radition of Irving and Taylor was the dominant one. Other travelers* however* used their trips to Bur ope as am opportunity to analyse the old-world sooieties and to compare them with the United States. It soon became oustomary, of oourse* for every suthor of travel sketohes to make soma kind of general compari son to the advantage of the United States and* often in his conclu sion* to empress his eagerness to return to the free atmosphere of his homeland. Bryant* for example* without any detailed analysis* contrasted the typioal European government of power with the Amerioan government of opinion and oonoluded* "1 shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it."7 Such a stateawnt may be 6 Merely an elevation of the tourist's homesickness to the level of am Ideal, but the persistence of auoh remarks tempera the view that Amerioan pilgrims were wholly uncritical of what they aaw in Europe* Of the wrltere *ho were primarily observers of aooiety and government. Cooper, Booraon, and Hawthorne deaerre notioe here* Cooper lived in Europe from 1826 to 1833, where he went to educate hia daughters, to Improve his health, to find a little recreation, and to proteot hia valuable Britlah oopyrighta, aa Irving had done* Both in Franoe and in England he waa cordially received* In France he waa on familiar terms with Lafayette and indeed gave at least his sympathy to the Frenchman's project a for spreading liberty in Europe* In England Cooper met the leading English men of letters, by whom he was accepted as a fellow worker*