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The Paper War Between England and America: The Inchiquin Episode, 1810–1815

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Herbert G. Eldridge
Herbert G. Eldridge
Affiliation:
Herbert G. Eldridge is Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Denver, Denver, Colorado 80202.
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Extract

In the London Quarterly Review for January 1814 appeared a long and brilliantly written review of an anonymous American pamphlet entitled Inchiquin the Jesuit's Letters, which had been published in New York some four years earlier. The pamphlet, indeed, was only of passing interest to the Quarterly. The real issue was the moral condition of the United States, an enemy which had to be dealt with during the coming year first militarily then diplomatically. The British reader was to be assured that the Americans should be handled no less severely than the French. To this end, the essayist revealed the distressing truth: through Gallic influence the Yankees had become imperialists, and the mania pervaded every aspect of life in the States. It followed that such a people should be chastised without scruple — whatever their English affinities. American magazines called the review a “collected mass of calumny and falsehood against a whole nation,” a “nefarious tissue of calumnies on the American character,” a copy of “all the effusions of malevolence, misrepresentation, and ignorance” which the Quarterly could find against “American taste, customs, morality, and literature.” Even a few notable Britons were embarrassed: the venerated Wilberforce called on John Quincy Adams in London to explain that the Quarterly's opinions of the United States were not those of the British people, and Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate and a major contributor to the magazine, told young George Ticknor in Paris after the war (a conflict that the Tory Southey had supported enthusiastically) that nothing in his literary career had caused him more mortification than “being thought” the author of the piece.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , April 1982 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Rev. of Inchiquin, the Jesuit's Letters [by Ingersoll, Charles Jared], Quarterly Review, 10 (1813–1814), 494–539Google Scholar.

2 [William Tudor,] Rev. of The United States and England [by Paulding, James Kirke], North American Review, 1 (1815), 65Google Scholar; [Caldwell, Charles,] “War with America,” Port Folio, 4th ser., 6 (1815), 533Google Scholar; [Hall, John Elihu,] “The Adversaria,” Port Folio, 5th ser., 1 (1816), 52Google Scholar; Adams, John Quincy, Memoirs, ed. Adams, Charles F. (Philadelphia, 1874), III, 249–50Google Scholar; Ticknor, George, Life, Letters, and Journals, eds. Ticknor, Anne and Hillard, George S. (London, 1876), I, 136Google Scholar. Standard accounts of the incident are John Bach McMaster, Chap. 48, “British Criticism of the United States,” A History of the People of the United States (New York: Appleton, 1904), V, 307–42Google Scholar — still a useful summary of the primary documents and issues; Cairns, William B., British Criticisms of American Writings, 1783–1815, Univ. of Wisconsin Studies in Lang, and Lit., No. 1 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1918)Google Scholar; Allen, Harry Cranbrook, Great Britain and the United States (London: Odhams, 1954)Google Scholar; Perkins, Bradford, Chap. 10, “Warfare of the Mind,” Castlereagh and Adams (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1964), pp. 173–95Google Scholar. The weakness of all these studies is that by treating the various literary events in broad categories of time and nationality, rather than in chronological order, they fail to identify and explain the surges and ebbs of ill will that marked the progress of the quarrel.

3 See Eldridge, Herbert G., “Anacreon Moore and America,” PMLA, 83 (1968), 52–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 [Ingersoll, Charles Jared,] Inchiquin the Jesuit's Letters, during a late residence in the United States of America: Being a fragment of a private correspondence accidentally discovered in Europe; Containing a favourable view of the manners literature and state of Society, of the United States and a refutation of many of the aspersions cast upon this country, by former residents and tourists (New York, 1810)Google Scholar.

5 Allan Nevins, taking into account the “serried shelves” of British travels as a whole, argues that early nineteenth-century travelers were less hostile to the United States than historians like John Bach McMaster have led us to believe. America Through British Eyes (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), pp. 8–10Google Scholar. But this position does not do justice to the notoriety of the distorted pictures in Weld, Isaac, Travels Through the States of North America during the Years, 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London, 1799)Google Scholar, Janson, Charles William, The Stranger in America (London, 1807)Google Scholar, Ashe, Thomas, Travels in America Performed in 1806, 3 vols. (London, 1808)Google Scholar, and Parkinson, Richard, A Tour in America in 1798, 1799, and 1800, 2 vols. (London, 1805)Google Scholar, let alone the uproar inspired by Moore, 's Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (London, 1806)Google Scholar, which Nevins does not mention.

6 Among the many models for this familiar device was Southey, Robert's Letters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, 3 vols. (London, 1807)Google Scholar, which, in two English and two American editions before 1810, was something like a best seller in Inchiquin's day. Southey's models included Horace Walpole's Letter from Xo lie: A Chinese Philosopher at London to his Friend Lieu Chi at Peking (1757) and Goldsmith, 's Citizen of the World (1762)Google Scholar. See the introduction to Jack Simmons's London 1951 edition of the Letters, pp. xxiii–xxiv and xvii–xviii.

7 [Caldwell, Charles,] Rev. of Inchiquin the Jesuit's Letters, Port Folio, 3rd ser., 5 (1811), 300–16 and 385–400Google Scholar. Caldwell intended to offer a third segment, but it did not appear. For the identification of Caldwell as author of the review, see Randall, Randolph C., “Authors of the Port Folio Revealed by the Hall Files,” AL, 11 (1940), 391CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Though Philadelphia newspapers took notice of Ingersoll's pamphlet, I can find no other reviews in American journals.

8 For example, the reviews queued up to pay tribute to Walsh, Robert's “acute and comprehensive mind,” as the Quarterly Review called it, displayed in his Federalist pamphlet Letter on the Genius and Dispositions of the French Government (Philadelphia and London, 1810)Google Scholar, in which the “criminal enterprise” of Bonaparte and the “perfection” of British civilization were both proclaimed. See the Critical Review for March, the Edinburgh Review for April, and the Quarterly Review for May — all in 1810. And more panegyrics appeared in 1811 and 1812. Another much-acclaimed Federalist document was Channing, William Ellery's Sermon Preached in Boston, April 5, 1810 (Boston, 1810, and London, 1811)Google Scholar. The Tory British Critic was so taken with Channing's anti-French sentiments that the journal praised the Sermon in three separate issues: January and December, 1812, and January, 1813. Another source of British moderation was the fact that, even in 1812, there was a lively expectation, months beyond Madison's declaration of war in June, that English-speaking people would stand together against the French tyrant. Perkins, pp. 10–13; Adams, Henry, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, 9 vols. (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1889–1891), 7, 2–4Google Scholar.

9 Rev. of A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clarke, by Glass, Patrick, Quarterly Review, 1 (1809), 293–304Google Scholar; Rev. of Travels through the South of France in the Years 1807 and 1808, by Pinkney, Ninian, Quarterly Review, 2 (1809), 181–87Google Scholar; [Robert Southey,] Rev. of The Annals of America, by Holmes, Abiel, Quarterly Review, 2 (1809), 319–37Google Scholar; Rev. of Washington, or Liberty Restored: A Poem in Ten Books, by Northmore, Thomas, Quarterly Review, 2 (1809), 365–75Google Scholar.

10 Shine, Hill and Shine, Helen Chadwick, The Quarterly Review under Gifford: Identification of Contributors, 1809–1824 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1949), pp. xv–xvi, 10Google Scholar.

11 The review attracted what was perhaps the first shot in the magazine phase of Anglo-American literary warfare — a brief complaint from Albany, New York, against the Quarterly's republication of falsehoods about the United States. “National Prejudice, or, the Reviewer Reviewed,” The Balance and State Journal, NS 1 (1811), 193–94Google Scholar.

12 See note 8.

13 Quarterly Review, 7 (1812), 1–34Google Scholar. This is an essay-review of four British and American documents pertaining to the events leading to war. Later in the year a Barrow review of a Federalist pamphlet entitled Mr. Madison's War repeated these arguments and ended with the reaffirmation “that the true interests of Great Britain and the United States of America are intimately blended with each other.” Quarterly Review, 8 (1812), 193–214Google Scholar. Neither review makes any general attack on the American people or society.

14 As Charvat, William has pointed out in The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1810–1835 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1936)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, critics on both sides of the Atlantic often sounded alike because they had been conditioned by the same intellectual environment. See also Benjamin T. Spencer's discussion of the strength of common Anglo-American literary tastes, The Quest for Nationality: An American Literary Campaign (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 36–39Google Scholar.

15 Port Folio, 4th Ser., 1 (1813), 397–98.

16 [Charles Caldwell,] Rev. of The United States and England, [by Paulding, James Kirke], Port Folio, 4th ser., 5 (1815), 103Google Scholar.

17 On the issue of Southey's involvement, see entry, Shine and Shine, p. 40, and Curry, Kenneth and Dedmon, Robert, “Southey's Contributions to The Quarterly Review,” The Wordsworth Circle, 6 (1975), 269Google Scholar.

18 During the period from 1800 to 1832 Croker, author of the infamous review of Keats's Endymion in the Quarterly, organized and manipulated a “network of influence” among literary men and journalists dedicated to the Tory cause by which the policies and views of government were translated into literary fare. Brightfield, Myron, John Wilson Croker (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1940), pp. 53–54, 165, 261–63Google Scholar. Croker's presence in the January 1814 issue of the Quarterly was pervasive: according to Shine and Shine, pp. 39–41, he was the author of the reviews of James Kirke Paulding's Lay of the Scottish Fiddle and of the Intercepted Letters to Napoleon, and possibly of the featured consideration of Maria Edgeworth's Patronage.

19 Barrow, John, An Autobiographical Memoir (London, 1847), 506, 507Google Scholar.

20 Brightfield, pp. 210–13.

21 Quoted in Carnall, Geoffrey, Robert Southey and His Age: The Development of a Conservative (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1960), p. 124Google Scholar.

22 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, I, 58.

23 This was almost ritualistic among British commentators on the United States — thus the shock to American sensibilities when Thomas Moore slandered Washington in his first (London) edition of Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems. I have given the facts in “Anacreon Moore and America,” pp. 56 and 56n.

24 The reviewer was quoting from one of the editions of Morse's American Geo graphy.

25 McMaster's precis of the review, History of the American People, V, 309–12, though convenient and comprehensive, misses the purpose and thesis. The piece may not have been “good caricature,” as McMaster concludes, but it was an expert piece of political invective.

26 According to Shine and Shine, p. 39, the January issue of the Quarterly did not appear in England until about April 1. The time of crossing, of course, would depend on the weather and the vessel: fast packets took about 45 days from Liverpool to one of the Eastern seaports, regular vessels about 50 or 60 days. A convenient indicator is that the reviews of Maria Edgeworth's Patronage that appeared in the January 1814 issues of the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review were both reprinted in the July 1814 issue of the Philadelphia Analectic.

27 Cf. Clark, Roy Benjamin, William Gifford, Tory Satirist, Critic, and Editor (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1930), p. 185Google Scholar, which cites the review of Hunt's Feast of the Poets as an example of American denunciation of the Quarterly. Perhaps this is the place to correct Clark's misstatement of fact that the review of Inchiquin produced an affair of honor involving a young American whose family was slandered in its pages. Clark, p. 183. The article in question was a later Quarterly Review diatribe against the United States — the review of Faux, William, Memorable Days in America (1823), Quarterly Review, 29 (1823), 338–70Google Scholar.

In its May 1814 issue the Analectic printed what appears to be a veiled response to the Inchiquin review. The author, probably J. K. Paulding, called for resistance to the British “blockade” of American development of the common language – particularly the denial of “those genuine” native citizens, Messrs. Lengthy and Progressing. The “letter” was signed “Lemuel Lengthy.” “To the Editor of the Analectic Magazine,” Analectic, 3 (1814), 404–09Google Scholar. The review of Inchiquin includes, as no other current British magazine article does, several ironic allusions to these Americanisms.

28 [Charles Caldwell,] Rev. of Remarks on the Review of Inchiquin's Letters [by Dwight, Timothy], Port Folio, 4th Sen, 6 (1815), 154Google Scholar.

29 There is evidence that Caldwell and the other editors also wanted to avoid agitating American public opinion when the peace commissioners were meeting at Ghent. The most nationalistic of American magazines, Niles National Register, a weekly record of political, military, and economic events, did not mention the Quarterly attack, although it frequently reprinted material from overseas periodicals.

30 Paulding had reason for personal irritation at the January 1814 issue of the Quarterly: a companion piece to the abuse of America and Inchiquin was Croker's review of Lay of the Scottish Fiddle (1813, reprinted London, 1814) in which Paulding, parodying Scott's narrative verse, satirized the Upper Chesapeake campaign of Sir George Cockburn in the spring of 1813. Croker wrote that it was about time some flash of wit brightened a culture marked by “tame uniformity” and “monotony of character” but that, like America itself, the performance was childish and wearisome. Quarterly Review, 10 (1813–1814), 463–67Google Scholar. For the attribution to Croker, see Shine and Shine, p. 40.

31 Port Folio, 4th ser., 5 (1815), 103–04Google Scholar.

32 Rev. of The United States and England, Port Folio, 4th ser., 5 (1815), 123–40Google Scholar.

33 “Observations on the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews,” Port Folio, 4th ser., 5 (1815), 264, 265 nGoogle Scholar.

34 “An Oration in Defence of the American Character,” before the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania, Port Folio, 4th ser., 6 (1815), 19Google Scholar.

35 Rev. of Remarks on the Review of Inchiquin's Letters by Dwight, Timothy, Port Folio, 4th ser., 6 (1815), 150–59 and 254–65Google Scholar; “The Prosaid and Poesyad, or, American Authors and Foreign Libellers,” Port Folio, 4th ser., 6 (1815), 311–16Google Scholar; “Strictures on Moore, the Poet,” Port Folio, 4th ser., 6 (1815), 506–12Google Scholar. To the “Prosiad and Poesyad,” which named Southey as a chief libeler of America, Caldwell appended Southey's disavowal of authorship of the Inchiquin review (pp. 312n–13n).

36 British Critic, NS 2 (1814), 298–311Google Scholar; Monthly Review, 77 (1815), 225–43, 337–50, and 78 (1815), 1–13Google Scholar; Edinburgh Review, 24 (1814–1815), 412–38Google Scholar.

37 [Robert Southey,] Rev. of Travels to the Source of the Missouri River, and across the American Continent, by Lewis, Meriwether and Clark, William, Quarterly Review, 12 (1814–1815), 317–68Google Scholar.

38 “The Quarterly Review,” Analectic, 6 (1815), 57–62Google Scholar.

39 “Seppings on Ship-Building,” Analectic, 6 (1815), 450–59Google Scholar.

40 [William Tudor,] Rev. of The United States and England [by Paulding, James Kirke], North American Review, 1 (1815), 61–89Google Scholar. The concern of the North American with the issue of cultural independence was formally initiated later in the year when Walter Channing published a somewhat turgid analysis in which the lack of literary achievement was traced to dependence on English literature. “Reflections on the Literary Delinquency of America,” North American Review, 2 (1815–1816), 33–43Google Scholar.

41 William Cairns notes a review of Dwight's Remarks in the Literary Panorama and National Register for July 1816. British acknowledgment of exasperation in the American general press did not appear until the next phase of magazine warfare — roughly the period from 1816 to 1825.

42 Quarterly Review, 13 (1815), 352–83Google Scholar; Critical Review, 5th ser., 2 (1815), 483–94Google Scholar. The target in these two reviews is not American democracy and character but the work and its author.

43 “America,” British Review, 6 (1815), 379Google Scholar. For other expressions of relief and cordiality, see New Monthly Magazine, 3 (1815), 265Google Scholar, and Critical Review, 5th ser., 2 (1815), 553Google Scholar. On the other hand, the British Critic remained truculent through the peace negotiations, treaty signing, and restoration of normal relationships. See especially the review of Nathaniel Atcheson's pro-Canadian pamphlet A Compressed View, suggesting harsh terms at Ghent. British Critic, NS 3 (1815), 30–37Google Scholar.

44 Southey reviewed nine books in this piece. Quarterly Review, 15 (1816), 537–74Google Scholar. Cf. Cairns, William, who sees the commendation of Silliman in a context “all hostile to America.” British Criticism of American Writings, 1815–1833, Univ. of Wisconsin Studies in Lang. and Lit., No. 14 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1922), p. 259Google Scholar.

45 [Irving, Washington,] “A Biographical Sketch of Thomas Campbell,” Analectic, 5 (1815), 244–46, 246nGoogle Scholar. Irving had written this sketch back in 1810 for an American edition of Campbell's Poetical Works. The footnote to the Analectic reprint seems to be an updating of Irving's pro-British feelings amidst the passions of a shooting war; it is also an affirmation of the universality of literature.

46 “Foreign Literature and Science,” Analectic, 6 (1815), 173Google Scholar. Caldwell also reprinted this amicable note, which had appeared in the London Examiner. “The Fine Arts,” Port Folio, 4th ser., 4 (1814), 88–93Google Scholar.

47 Port Folio, 4th ser., 6 (1815), 312n–13n; 333–64; 533–55Google Scholar.

48 North American Review, 2 (1815–1816), 43–44Google Scholar; “British Abuse of American Manners,” Port Folio, 5th ser., 1 (1816), 397–410Google Scholar.