BOOKS.
MRS. TROLLOPE.* THIS biography seems somewhat belated. Mrs. Trollope died more than thirty years ago. It is probable that comparatively few people under fifty have ever heard her name, and still fewer seen any of her books. And yet these volumes quite justify their existence. They are very cleverly written and in excellent taste. They present an interesting and vigorous personality,—a woman who did a great deal of good work, not, indeed, of the lasting kind, but quite wholesome, and useful in its day. As the mother of two writers of consider- able note, one of whom was in the front rank of English novelists, Frances Trollope would deserve some notice. When we come to learn what she was and what she did, we cannot but be glad to have been made acquainted with a story so full of interest, we may even say, so full of example.
Frances Milton, born in 1780, was married in her thirtieth year to Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister with good pro- spects, for he was earning as much as 2700 a year. He was a clever and accomplished man, but with a certain element of impracticability in his character which ended in disaster to the family fortunes. By degrees his business disappeared, and the unhappy idea occurred or was suggested to him of restoring his broken fortunes by trade. He invested what remained of his capital in a building speculation at Cin- cinnati in Ohio. The idea was to erect a bazaar for the sale of European produce. His adviser seems to have been a certain Miss Wright, who was a friend of Robert Owen, the Socialist. (Where a bazaar cornea into the scheme of Socialism it is not easy to see.) Miss Wright had purchased at Nashoba, in Tennessee, a tract of land which was to be cultivated by free negroes. It was hoped, among other things, that the schools of the settlement in which white and black children were to be taught the same things, would demonstrate to the world the equality of the two races. Nashoba was, of course, a dismal failure, and Mrs. Trollope got away from it as soon as she could. The bazaar scheme was not more suezessful. The good that came oat of these reverses was this,—that Frances Trollope, at her wits' end to provide food for her children, wrote a book, and so commenced a course of literary work which never failed to bring both pleasure and profit. The distress which com- pelled this action was acute. "Poor Cecilia," she writes in a letter to her elder son Thomas, "is literally without shoes, and I mean to sell one or two small articles to-morrow to procure same for her and for Emily." In 1830 Mrs. Trollope returned to England, bringing with her the manuscript of the book which was published two years afterwards, under the title of Domestic Manners of the Americans. The author, it will be seen, was fifty-two years of age when this her first work was published. She went on writing for about a quarter of a century, producing in that time, among other books, more than a hundred novels. Patting aside Lope de 'Vega, with his millions of verses, an epic every six months, and a drama every week, this literary fertility can scarcely be • Prances Tralope: kor Life and Literary Work. By ber Dangbter.in•Law, Trances Eleanor Trollop). 2 vole. London: Bentley and Soo.
matched. Probably no one, beginning so late in life, wrote so much. And what she wrote seems to have sold. Up to the last, publishers were glad to have a book from her pen.
On the strength of the Domestic Manners of the Americans, Mrs. Trollope became at once a famous personage. John Murray—the book was published by Messrs. Whittaker and Treacber—invited her to meet a distinguished party, among whom Lockhart, Croker, Basil Hall, and Walter Savage Landor are mentioned. Southey and Wordsworth, the latter not effusive about other people's work, were loud in praise. The subject was new, and the field of literature was not so crowded as it is now. But when this is allowed for, there remains substantial reason for so great a success. The fact is that Mrs. Trollope had a rare faculty of observa- tion. She says herself in her preface to Belgium and Western Germany, a work published in 1834, I have an inveterate habit of suffering all I see to make a deep impression on my memory ; and the result of this is a sort of mosaic, by no means very grand in colour or skilful in drawing, but each morsel of colour has the reality of truth, in which there is ever some value." This is well said. Indeed, Mrs. Trollope had a way of saying things well. If any one would search through her six score of volumes he might put together a very pretty book under the title of "Wit and Wisdom of Frances Trollope." Here is a saying of much acuteness, especially in the first half of the antithesis (it was written in the year of revolution, 1848):—" My own idea is that there is no ground to fear any general rising either in England or Ireland. I think there is too much intelligence in England for any large body of men to look for any sudden im- provement; and not enough intelligence in Ireland for any body of men at all to conceive the possibility of social improvement." The following again is admirable,—" To irreproachably elegant manners, a tolerable knowledge of the small world in which she moved (calling it, and believing it, the great world), and a fair share of common sense, Lady Augusta added that deep-seated vulgarity of mind which is the invariable product of a mind spent in looking up to that on which we ought to look down." Nothing, again, could he better in its way than the two pictures of Sydney Smith and Samuel Rogers under the names of " (Merlons " and " Contrarius " in the "Blue Belles of England." It is too long to quote, but the sentences that describe Contrarius may be given :—" Contrarius is wise and weak, generous and little-minded. His soul appears to be graceful and refined, his imaginings beautiful, his aspirations pure. Yet will he condescend to be pitiful and spiteful; and for the sake of giving utterance to a pointed word or stinging jest, render himself more notorious for his ill words than his good deeds."
Mrs. Trollope saw some interesting people in the course of her life. In the early days of her marriage she made the acquaintance of Lafayette, and gives a very pleasing picture of the old man ; and in later years of King Jerome Bona- parte, his son, and Prince Napoleon, "the most facsimile likeness of his Imperial uncle that I ever saw in any family." Madame Recamier, Chateaubriand, Ampere, Sismondi, Ben- jamin Constant, Massimo d'Azeglio, Greenough, and Hiram Powers, Sir Henry Taylor, Joseph Henry Green, are a few of the names, taken almost at random from these pages, which suggest many and varied kinds of interest. Not the least valuable element in the book is to be found in the glimpses that we get of the two Trollope brothers. More dutiful and affectionate sons could not be. Mother and children were worthy of each other ; and it is no small pleasure to be allowed to see something of their family life. Mrs. Frances Eleanor Trollope will scarcely revive her mother-in-law's fame, but she has paid a debt of affectionate piety to one who well deserved it.
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