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The Honeymoon Trail to Niagara Falls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Elizabeth McKinsey
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Extract

By the time oscar wilde made his American tour in 1882, the honeymoon tradition at Niagara was firmly established. Perhaps we are as cynical about honeymoons at the Falls as Wilde; by now the idea is a thorough cliche. Yet the custom has had a remarkably long life, reaching its widest vogue in the 1920s and 1930s, and even today it is not completely defunct: Young couples still “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and the Falls. In the late nineteenth century the association of the Falls with the wedding journey was promoted by hotel advertisements and railroad excursion pitches – a product of commercial “hype” much like the modern Poconos honeymoon. But the origin of the Niagara honeymoon seems to antedate such promotion by several decades, although it is difficult to pinpoint. Both its elusive origins and its remarkable persistence suggest a deep-seated imaginative attraction that Niagara has held for newlyweds.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 9 , October 1984 , pp. 169 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

NOTES

1. Wilde, Oscar, “Impressions of America” (09 1883)Google Scholar, in Mason, Stuart, ed., Impressions of America (Sunderland, Eng.: Keystone Press, 1906), p. 25.Google Scholar

2. “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” is a song written by Harry Warren with lyrics by Al Dubin, copyright 1932 by Witmark and Sons, for the Brothers, Warner musical, Forty-second StreetGoogle Scholar; see Thomas, Tony, Harry Warren and the Hollywood Musical (Seacaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1975), p. 35.Google Scholar Hotels and motels at the Falls still advertise honeymoon suites, and in 1976 an estimated 100,000 newlyweds stayed there according to “What's Doing in Niagara Falls,” New York Times, 08 15, 1976, sec. 10, p. 9.Google Scholar

3. Rothman, Ellen K., Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (New York: Basic, 1984), p. 81–3.Google Scholar

4. Lindsay, Kenneth C., The Works of John Vanderlyn (Binghamton, N.Y.: SUNY Art Gallery, 1970), p. 56Google Scholar; Smith, Dorothy Valentine, “An Intercourse of the Heart,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 37 (01 1953), 41–53.Google Scholar

5. The erroneous statement that Bonaparte and his bride honeymooned at Niagara appears in Williams, Marjory F., “Honeymoons at Niagara,” American Notes and Queries 6 (01 1947), p. 154Google Scholar, and is repeated in “What's Doing in Niagara Falls,” New York Times, 1976.Google ScholarSergeant, Philip W., in The Burlesque Napoleon (London: Laurie, 1905), p. 75Google Scholar, reports that they went to the Pattersons, ' estate “Homestead”Google Scholar outside Baltimore for their honeymoon in late December 1803. Saffell, W. T. R., in The Bonaparte-Patterson Marriage (Philadelphia: Saffell, 1873), pp. 92–3Google Scholar, quotes an unnamed New York newspaper notice of July 9, 1804, that “Jerome Bonaparte … contemplates commencing in a few days a pretty extensive tour, in the course of which, after passing through the Eastern States, he will visit … the grand Falls of Niagara. His lady will be of the party.” By August 20 there were reports of their return to New York (p. 97).

6. Rothman, , p. 83Google Scholar; for Dickens, see Philip, Alexander J., Dickens' Honeymoon and Where He Spent It (London: Chapman & Hall, 1912).Google Scholar Perhaps the custom of elopement had some influence on the honeymoon becoming a private trip to a particular place. As early as 1830, the Lake Drummond Hotel, on the Virginia-North Carolina border, was known as an “establishment … in a superior degree calculated to render facilities for matrimonial and dualistic engagements.” (Quoted from the hotel's owner, Rogerson, William, in Newman, Harry Shaw Gallery [New York], Panorama 2 [08–09 1946], 9.)Google Scholar

7. Rothman, , p. 175Google Scholar; Alexander, quoted in Williams, Marjory F., “Honeymoons at Niagara,” p. 154Google Scholar; “Two Days at Niagara,” Southern Literary Messenger 11 (12 1845), 728Google Scholar, quoted in Franklin, John Hope, A Southern Odyssey: Travellers in the Antebellum North (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1976), p. 15.Google Scholar

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9. Ewen, David, ed., American Popular Songs from the Revolutionary War to the Present (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 282Google Scholar; lyrics from Luther, Frank, Americans and Their Songs (New York: Harper, 1942), p. 108.Google Scholar

10. Howells, William Dean, “Niagara First and Last,” in Howells, et al. , The Niagara Book, 2d ed. (1893; New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901), p. 242Google Scholar; Tate, Allen, The Fathers (1838; rev. ed., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1977), p. 51.Google Scholar

11. Quoted in Rothman, , p. 175Google Scholar; McCausland, Walter, “Honeymoons at Niagara Falls,” American Notes and Queries 6 (11 1946), pp. 122–3Google Scholar, notes the inconclusiveness of the evidence for dating the beginnings of the custom but ventures a guess that it was probably in the 1840s or 1850s. C.R. Crandall in the same Notes and Queries series (07 1946, pp. 59–60)Google Scholar cites Martin, Edgar W.'s Standard of Living in 1860 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1942)Google Scholar, which declares that Niagara was not a favorite honeymoon resort before the Civil War, but this is contradicted by the evidence.

12. Howells, William Dean, Their Wedding Journey (Boston: Osgood, 1871), p. 189Google Scholar; Martin, E. S., “As It Rushes By,”Google Scholar in Howells, et al. , The Niagara Book, p. 276Google Scholar; Catton, Bruce, “The Thundering Water,” American Heritage 15 (06 1964), 42Google Scholar; Braider, Donald, The Niagara (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1972), p. 255Google Scholar; “NBC Today Show” featuring New York State, 05 14, 1976.Google Scholar

13. Martin, , “As It Rushes By,” p. 276.Google Scholar

14. Cooper, James Fenimore, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821; rpt. New York: Hafner, 1960), p. 347Google Scholar; Parsons, Horatio, The Book of Niagara Falls (Buffalo: Steele, 1836), p. 35Google Scholar; the story of George Train's betrothal is told in Severance, Frank, Studies of the Niagara Frontier (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, 1911), p. 56.Google Scholar For the Indian legends, see Canfield, William W., The Legends of the Iroquois Told by “The Cornplanter” (New York: Wessels, 1902), pp. 47–50 and 200–1Google Scholar, and Maxwell, Harriet Converse, Myths and Legends of the New York State Iroquois, New York State Museum Bulletin No. 125 (1908), p. 41.Google Scholar

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16. Fragonard, Jean Honoré, The Féte at Rambouillet; or, The Isle of Love, ca. 1780Google Scholar, Calouste Gulbankian Foundation, Lisbon, illus. in Starobinski, Jean, The Invention of Liberty, 1700–1789, (Geneva: Skira, 1964), p. 71Google Scholar; Wheatley, Francis, Julie and St. Preux at Meillerie, 1785Google Scholar, wash drawing, British Museum, illus. in Cummings, Frederick and Staley, Allen, Romantic Art in Britain: Paintings and Drawings, 1760–1860, exhibition catalogue (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1968), p. 135.Google Scholar The scene Wheatley illustrates is from Rousseau, Jean Jacques's Julie ou la nouvelle Heloise (1761), letter 136.Google Scholar

17. Burns, Robert, “The Plenipotentiary,” in Barke, James and Smith, Sydney Goodsir, eds., The Merry Muses of Caledonia (New York: Capricorn, 1959), pp. 201–5Google Scholar; Moore, Thomas, Poetical Works (New York: Sheldon 1861), p. 185Google Scholar; “A Legend of the Forest,” The Atlantic Souvenir: A Christmas and New Year's Offering (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1826), pp. 104–23.Google Scholar

18. Such a myth was apparently apocryphal, however; told countless times by whites (as in Notes on Niagara, [Chicago: Lespinasse, 1883], pp. 30–l)Google Scholar, there is no authority for it in Indian lore, and it is explicitly disclaimed by Canfield, in The Legends of the Iroquois, pp. 200–1.Google Scholar Authenticated myths include one of a suicidal virgin who directs her canoe over the Falls rather than marry a hated suitor (see Beauchamp, William Martin, The Iroquois Trail [Fayetteville, N.Y.: Beauchamp, 1892], pp. 127–8)Google Scholar, and one of a young woman pushed over the Falls by a thwarted suitor (see Canfield, , The Legends of the Iroquois, pp. 47–50 and 200).Google Scholar In both cases, the women's spirits were saved by gods or other spirits dwelling behind the Falls.

19. Alexander, J. L., The Wonders of the West (n. p., 1825)Google Scholar; Fuller, Margaret, Summer on the Lakes (1844; rpt. New York: Haskell House, 1970), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

20. Ripa, , allegories 6 and 9Google Scholar; Wheatley, , Girls Bathing by a Waterfall, 1783Google Scholar, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, illus. in Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Painting in England, 1700–1850, exhibition catalogue (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1963), II, 205.Google Scholar Turner's drawing and etching of The Fall of the Clyde (Liber Studiorum, n. 18)Google Scholar, Paul Mellon Collection, executed after Turner's Scottish tour of 1801, are illustrated in White, Christopher, English Landscape, 1630–1850 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for British Art, 1977)Google Scholar, plate 118. For Eilshemius, see Karlstrom, Paul J., Louis Michel Eilshemius (New York: Abrams, 1978)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 5. For the Great Mother image, see Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (New York: Pantheon, 1955).Google Scholar

21. Inman, 's Bathing Beauties by the Hudson, 1887Google Scholar, private collection, is illustrated in Gerdts, William H., The Great American Nude (New York: Praeger, 1974), p. 75.Google Scholar

22. The phrase “scribbling women” is of course Hawthorne's; Henry, Walter, Events of a Military Life (London: Pickering, 1843)Google Scholar, quoted in Dow, Charles Mason, Anthology and Bibliography of Niagara Falls (Albany: State of New York, 1921), I, 186–7Google Scholar; Henry visited the Falls in 1833. Sigourney, Lydia, “Farewell to Niagara,”Google Scholar quoted in Dow, , Anthology II, 707.Google Scholar

23. Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977), p. 48Google Scholar; Judd, Sylvester quoted in Douglas, , p. 102Google Scholar; Cott, Nancy, in The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1977)Google Scholar, traces the differentiation of sex roles in America in the early years of the nineteenth century; Douglas follows the consequences, especially for women and ministers, through the Victorian period; and Ward, John William, in Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955)Google Scholar, chap. 10, explores the implications for men.

24. Dickens, Charles to Felton, C. C., 19 04 1842Google Scholar, in Madeleine House and Storey, Graham, eds. Letters of Charles Dickens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), III, 216.Google Scholar He said the same thing with greater rhetorical flourish in American Notes (1842)Google Scholar, in Works (London: Chapman and Hall, 1873), XVII, 384–5.Google ScholarHowells, , “Niagara First and Last,” pp. 240–1Google Scholar; “Coup d'oeil of Niagara Out of Season,” Crayon 3, (03 1856), 77.Google Scholar

25. Sigourney, , “The Hermit of the Falls” (1834), in Illustrated Poems (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1849), pp. 144–5.Google Scholar It is not surprising to turn to Ripa and find the image of Chastity represented by a fountain, a channeled flow of water. The personified figure stands on a serpent, to show that she has overcome sin and unbridled passion, and she holds a cup of rings to symbolize the chastity of the married state (allegory 48).