Apr 27, 2017 - Sale 2444

Sale 2444 - Lot 120

Price Realized: $ 312
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
"I DISLIKE THE AMERICANS AS A NATION" (CONNECTICUT.) [Macrae, Farquhar.] Diary of a charming but acerbic Scottish visitor to Connecticut. [48] manuscript pages. 4to, original marbled wrappers, minimal wear; pencil scribbling on last page and rear wrapper, otherwise minimal wear to contents. Vp, 11 August to 10 September 1832
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This diary was written by a wealthy young man taking an extended tour of America; it is headed "Book Seventh, Continuation of Journal in America." The entirety of this volume was written in various Connecticut towns, all of which met with the author's derision. He describes two tiresome days in a Stafford, CT hotel designed for invalids (11 August 1832), a conversation with an Andrew Jackson fanatic in Vernon, CT, who enthused "I never seen him in all my life, but I know him as well as if I did. Isn't he filling the atmosphere with his story!" (13 August), a Yale commencement (14 August), and militia training day in Norwich, CT, where "the ludicrous appearance of the soldiers was enough to kill the souls of laughing adversaries" (3 September). After a year in the young nation, he commits a diatribe to paper: "I dislike the Americans as a nation but not for their ludicrous customs, to them established by usage, nor for their erroneous pronunciation. . . . I contemn the nation for their concealed fondness for aristocracy, and outward dislike towards it. I dislike their consummate vanity and overweening self-conceit. I abhor their Jacobin creed and despise the impudent freedom of their lower classes. I pity their cupidity and jealousy, and feel vexed at their obstinate eulogy. Their country is magnificent and has incredibly advanced in prosperity & improvement, and will be no doubt the greatest of nations if it holds together, but at present it is a mere child" (4 September).
The diary is unsigned, but the author would seem to be Farquhar Macrae (1808-1838), son of Scottish native Colin Macrae who had settled as a sugar planter in Guyana. The best clue is on the sixth page of the diary, when an old friend greets him "Macrae, how are you?" He mentions his Aunt [Margaret van den Heuvel] Ingersoll in New Haven on 14 August, and plans to visit a sister in Florida [Charlotte Macrae Vass] in September. Farquhar Macrae settled in Florida soon after the period of this diary, had some of his letters to the Farmer's Register published, and drowned in 1838 while trying to rescue a fellow passenger on a steamboat.