Mrs. Royall's Southern Tour, or Second Series of the Black Book.
Royall, Anne Newport. Mrs. Royall’s Southern Tour, or Second Series of the Black Book. In three or more volumes: Volume I. Washington: [N.P.], 1830.
8vo.; heavily foxed throughout; occasional marginal tears; blue and tan paper-covered boards, worn, front cover reattached; title in autograph on spine; a remarkable copy in original, untrimmed state. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Volume I; two subsequent volumes followed in 1830 and 1831; the second of Royall’s ten travelogues. Among the flaws of this volume—Mrs. Royall’s publications were all shabbily produced—are the duplication of the first signature and the misbinding of the last. With a small printed broadside calling for religious freedom and a form of land reform called “Homestead Democracy,” possibly issued by Mrs. Royall, affixed to the front endpaper. BAL 17072. Clark, III, 98. Howes R-483. Sabin 17072.
Each of the three volumes of Mrs. Royall’s Southern Tour is equal parts travelogue, with notes on boarding houses and road conditions; personal diary, with opinions the manners of individuals and daily activities recounted in extravagant, occasionally tedious detail; and political editorial, with tirades against the Congress and the Presbyterian religion. Her experiences are organized geographically, and are related in rambling prose style—Mrs. Royall edited out neither the most inconsequential of thoughts or experiences nor the vagaries of her casual narrative voice. Each volume has a long section on every city visited, describing its history, public buildings, principal citizens, industry statistics and other items, as well as free and frank criticism of the same. Her general contempt for the Congress and Presbyterians dominate, but citizens, businesses, and government officials all receive her attention. She lavishes loving praise on much of the territory itself, and gives credit to deserving people and agencies, but her astonishing talent for violent abuse in earlier writings did not go unnoticed: In 1829 she has been convicted in Washington on “trumped-up, obsolete charge of being a common scold” after an unusually scathing portrayal of the Presbyterians. A couple of typical quips will give the flavor of her attacks: “After vexing my soul out with our muleish Congress, I left them to their wine and their sins (no small curse) and departed South…” (p. 53); “New Baltimore is a pretty little town, and inhabited by the most enlightened people I have seen in the State. In fact I perceive that this part of Virginia has escaped that all devouring monster, Presbyterian-craft” (p. 57).
The present volume recounts the first leg of a tour of the South, taking her from Baltimore through Virginia, Washington, and North Carolina, whence she departed by sea to Charleston. The second stage began at Charleston and included Camden, Columbia and Augusta; a boat trip down the river to Savannah and back to Augusta; a stage tour from Augusta, by way of Sparta, Milledgeville, Macon, Columbus, and Fort Mitchell, to Montgomery; and thence by boat to Mobile and New Orleans. From New Orleans she went up the Mississippi to St. Louis, overland to Shawneetown, Illinois, by boat to Smithland and Eddyville, Kentucky, and thence by stage, through Princeton, Hopkinsville, Russellville, and Bowling Green, to Nashville.
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