As Elizabeth Bohls observes in Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1719-1818 , "Clearly, travel does not always entail openness to unfamiliar cultures. In fact, one suspects this is rarely the case. Most travelers carry with them an entire apparatus for assimilating their new experiences to comfortable systems of belief. In the case of eighteenth-century British travelers, part of this baggage was the language of aesthetics, specifically landscape aesthetics . . ." (18). This paper will examine the ways in which Isaac Weld frames his views of North America within a "familiar aesthetic mode of vision and descriptive vocabulary" (Bohls 92)--and does so to both artistic and political ends.
Weld purports to describe what "chance" presented, and writes that the pictorial views of North American landscapes he provides are "what he himself sketched upon the spot" (1: v). In doing so, he claims for his depictions the qualities of immediacy and authenticity of observation valued in the eyewitness report. Nevertheless, it is obvious from Weld's frequent use of terms such as "landscape," "prospect," and"scene"--terms identified by Bohls as part of the aesthetic apparatus used to frame, commodify and, at least imaginatively, possess land (93)--the composition of his sketches, and at least one reference to "Mr. Gilpin" (2:313) (that is, William Gilpin) that, whether drawn on the spot or not, the views that the self-styled "enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of Nature" (v) presents conform to the prescribed set of aesthetic conventions of the picturesque and the sublime. Indeed, one of the selling points of the book is arguably Weld's extensive description--in words and pictures--of Niagara Falls. His preface advertises his depiction of "that wonderful natural curiosity" (1: vi) and perfect example of a sublime spectacle. Yet, while the topography of Upper and Lower Canada delights his eye and gratifies his taste, that of the United States often offends and disappoints. The territory under British rule conforms to European notions of the picturesque and the sublime, but the country to the south suffers from the presence of "unpicturesque" features. The beauty of American landscapes "is much impaired" (1: 232) by the lack of aesthetic appreciation on the part of the republic's citizens.
At a time when Britain and France were engaged in the first Napoleonic War and the leaders of the society of United Irishmen, having opened relations with the revolutionary regime of France, had begun plans for an armed insurrection and the subsequent establishment of a Irish Republic, Weld traveled to North America "for the purpose of examining with his own eyes into the truth of the various accounts which had been given of the flourishing and happy condition of the United States of America, and ascertaining whether, in case of future emergency, any part of those territories might be looked forward to as an eligible and agreeable place of abode" (1: iii). Given that he "crossed the Atlantic strongly prepossessed in favour of the people and the country" (1: iv), the most striking aspects of his response to North America are his disillusionment with the United States and his profoundly negative characterization of the citizens produced by the democratic experiment. Frustrated and perhaps threatened by the lack of outward distinction made between social classes, and offended by the lack of deference paid him by those he clearly feels are inferior in station, the Tory Weld writes indignantly of the manners and morals of the Americans, and he uses the language of landscape aesthetics to further distance himself from a people he finds to be rude, both in the sense of being insulting or uncivil and lacking refinement or a polished culture.
As a self-proclaimed "enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of Nature," Weld places himself in direct contrast to the citizens of the republican United States who seem to him "to be totally dead to the beauties of nature, and only to admire a spot of ground as it appears to be more or less calculated to enrich the occupier by its produce" (2: 328). In characterizing the Americans in this way, Weld may be seen to be positioning himself--to use the terms Bohls borrows from Joseph Addison--as a "'Man of a Polite Imagination'" in direct opposition to the "'vulgar,'" that portion of the population that does not possess taste or "the capacity for aesthetic pleasure" (Bohls 8). Bohls argues that "[t]he aesthetic subject depends on . . . the 'vulgar' as a foil--that from which he is distinguished" (67), and that one of the ways in which the aesthetic subject separates himself from the "vulgar" is in his "aesthetic disinterestedness" (Bohls 67). An aesthetic appreciation of the landscape requires "a strategy of willed distance from particular objects" (67). Unlike those who cannot see anything beyond material interests, Weld does not allow the commercial value of the land and its produce to affect his assessment of its aesthetic composition.
In this paper, I will focus on how Weld uses the language of landscape aesthetics to show that in becoming a republic, the United States "thr[ew] off the yoke" (1: iv) not only of British rule, but of imagination and taste. In his subsequent construction of British North America as a desirable alternative to the United States, one that is more orderly, hospitable, and aesthetically interesting, he demonstrates a need to reinforce British superiority in the face of republican challenges to it.
Works Cited
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