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Rollo in Rome
Rollo went to Rome in company with his uncle George, from Naples. They went by the diligence, which is a species of stage coach. There are different kinds of public coaches that ply on the great thoroughfares in Italy, to take passengers for hire; but the most common kind is the diligence.
172 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1858
About the author
Jacob Abbott
1,549 books93 followersAbbott was born at Hallowell, Maine to Jacob and Betsey Abbott. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1820; studied at Andover Theological Seminary in 1821, 1822, and 1824; was tutor in 1824-1825, and from 1825 to 1829 was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College; was licensed to preach by the Hampshire Association in 1826; founded the Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies in Boston in 1829, and was principal of it in 1829-1833; was pastor of Eliot Congregational Church (which he founded), at Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1834-1835; and was, with his brothers, a founder, and in 1843-1851 a principal of Abbott's Institute, and in 1845-1848 of the Mount Vernon School for Boys, in New York City.
He was a prolific author, writing juvenile fiction, brief histories, biographies, religious books for the general reader, and a few works in popular science. He died in Farmington, Maine, where he had spent part of his time after 1839, and where his brother, Samuel Phillips Abbott, founded the Abbott School.
His Rollo Books, such as Rollo at Work, Rollo at Play, Rollo in Europe, etc., are the best known of his writings, having as their chief characters a representative boy and his associates. In them Abbott did for one or two generations of young American readers a service not unlike that performed earlier, in England and America, by the authors of Evenings at Home, The History of Sandford and Merton, and the The Parent's Assistant.
Fewacres in 1906, Abbott's residence at Farmington, Maine
His brothers, John S.C. Abbott and Gorham Dummer Abbott, were also authors. His sons, Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, Austin Abbott, both eminent lawyers, Lyman Abbott, and Edward Abbott, a clergyman, were also well-known authors.
He was a prolific author, writing juvenile fiction, brief histories, biographies, religious books for the general reader, and a few works in popular science. He died in Farmington, Maine, where he had spent part of his time after 1839, and where his brother, Samuel Phillips Abbott, founded the Abbott School.
His Rollo Books, such as Rollo at Work, Rollo at Play, Rollo in Europe, etc., are the best known of his writings, having as their chief characters a representative boy and his associates. In them Abbott did for one or two generations of young American readers a service not unlike that performed earlier, in England and America, by the authors of Evenings at Home, The History of Sandford and Merton, and the The Parent's Assistant.
Fewacres in 1906, Abbott's residence at Farmington, Maine
His brothers, John S.C. Abbott and Gorham Dummer Abbott, were also authors. His sons, Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, Austin Abbott, both eminent lawyers, Lyman Abbott, and Edward Abbott, a clergyman, were also well-known authors.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 17, 2021
So we come to the end of the road, and it leads to Rome...
After fleeing Naples at the end of the last book, Rollo and Mr. George are in their hotel room somewhere in Italy when the waiter brings in a whole, cold chicken. Rollo asks Mr. George what that's all about, and Mr. George explains that in the Pontine Marshes, a person can never sleep or they will succumb to a chilling miasma... I did a research paper on the Pontine Marshes for water school because of what Mr. George said. The paper was supposed to be on "emerging technologies in water treatment" but I got an A anyway because I write better than a tech college average. It turns out that the Pontine Marshes are an area of swamp south of Rome and the first attempt to drain them was in pre-Roman times. Multiple caesars, popes, and leaders of the Italian Republic tried to drain the swamps but they continued to be a malaria-ridden hellhole. The Italian Red Cross reported in 1920, seventy years after Rollo in Rome was written, that a person who stayed in the Pontine Marshes for one night during mosquito season had an eighty percent chance of contracting malaria. Mr. George and Rollo don't understand germ theory, but the people of the day must have made the connection between not sleeping in the marshes and not contracting malaria: if you are awake, you're more likely to kill the mosquitoes who are biting you. (Mussolini drained the marshes and now the city of Latina is in their place until the pumps fail. Latina's groundwater is naturally high in arsenic and I really leaned on arsenic treatment in my research paper).
After a long night and a cold chicken, Rollo and Mr. George arrive in Rome. Rollo meets an American boy at the hotel and his mother allows himself and Rollo to go out exploring together after Rollo assures her that if they get lost, they will take a carriage back to the hotel. This is a good plan, of course, because this book is didactic, but Rollo and the other boy forget the rub of it: you need to know the name of the hotel. Neither of them do, and after some nameless terror interspersed with Rollo ordering a customized shawl for his cousin, they ask a carriage man to take them from hotel to hotel that Americans stay it. I expect more from you, Rollo, and so does Mr. George.
Mr. George is really showing his hand in this book, by the way. He's already a confirmed misogynist and a beggar-hating Christian hypocrite, but in this book there is an undercurrent of classism that is unbefitting an American. Rollo meets another boy later in the book and this boy is disobedient and doesn't tell his brother where he's going and gets his Grand Tour cut short for it, but this boy proposes a boat ride to Ostia and Mr. George disapproves because it is the boat for commoners, not gentlemen. America doesn't have gentlemen, Mr. George! We don't see class. Yes, in pre-Civil War America, I'll allow a difference between enslaved and non-enslaved people, but all the white Protestants running around get one vote each, be we rich or poor, and that is all there is. But Mr. George isn't running around in prosperous New York, he is too close for his comfort to Italian Catholics, and Mr. George struggles to extend the rights of man to these people in their own country. Anti-Catholicism runs gently through this book. Also, when Rollo and Mr. George go to the Coliseum, the arches on the lower levels are full of little chapels and Abbott says they're full of crucifixes and other Catholic symbols. Was pre-Civil War Protestantism so austere that they didn't put crosses on things?
I went to the Coliseum once, and a man dressed as a gladiator tried to convince me to have sex with him in his car. This doesn't happen to Rollo and Mr. George, but Rollo tries to deface the stone a little bit and ends up finding an oodle of good Roman souvenir stone on the ground. Rollo and Mr. George also go to see the Dying Gaul statue, and they view the Roman statues and the Coliseum at night by torchlight when everything looks heavily shadowed and eerie. By then, the tourist season is winding down, the winds are blowing on the Mediterranean, and Mr. George and Rollo grapple with the one last logistical challenge of leaving Rome at the same time that everyone else is, and then they are away, last time, holiday ended, and where are Mr. and Mrs. Holiday? where are Jenny and Thanny? why was Thanny in these books anyway? who in the 1840s can afford to go on vacation for a year? are they sailing back by way of Liverpool? does Rollo die in the Civil War? These questions will never be answered. Or maybe they are answered somewhere. I don't know. This was a good time but I don't want to become a Jacob Abbott scholar. Misogynistic, anti-Catholic motherfucker. Well, we had a good trip, and remember: When traveling, always do what everyone else is doing, and if no one else is doing anything, do nothing.
After fleeing Naples at the end of the last book, Rollo and Mr. George are in their hotel room somewhere in Italy when the waiter brings in a whole, cold chicken. Rollo asks Mr. George what that's all about, and Mr. George explains that in the Pontine Marshes, a person can never sleep or they will succumb to a chilling miasma... I did a research paper on the Pontine Marshes for water school because of what Mr. George said. The paper was supposed to be on "emerging technologies in water treatment" but I got an A anyway because I write better than a tech college average. It turns out that the Pontine Marshes are an area of swamp south of Rome and the first attempt to drain them was in pre-Roman times. Multiple caesars, popes, and leaders of the Italian Republic tried to drain the swamps but they continued to be a malaria-ridden hellhole. The Italian Red Cross reported in 1920, seventy years after Rollo in Rome was written, that a person who stayed in the Pontine Marshes for one night during mosquito season had an eighty percent chance of contracting malaria. Mr. George and Rollo don't understand germ theory, but the people of the day must have made the connection between not sleeping in the marshes and not contracting malaria: if you are awake, you're more likely to kill the mosquitoes who are biting you. (Mussolini drained the marshes and now the city of Latina is in their place until the pumps fail. Latina's groundwater is naturally high in arsenic and I really leaned on arsenic treatment in my research paper).
After a long night and a cold chicken, Rollo and Mr. George arrive in Rome. Rollo meets an American boy at the hotel and his mother allows himself and Rollo to go out exploring together after Rollo assures her that if they get lost, they will take a carriage back to the hotel. This is a good plan, of course, because this book is didactic, but Rollo and the other boy forget the rub of it: you need to know the name of the hotel. Neither of them do, and after some nameless terror interspersed with Rollo ordering a customized shawl for his cousin, they ask a carriage man to take them from hotel to hotel that Americans stay it. I expect more from you, Rollo, and so does Mr. George.
Mr. George is really showing his hand in this book, by the way. He's already a confirmed misogynist and a beggar-hating Christian hypocrite, but in this book there is an undercurrent of classism that is unbefitting an American. Rollo meets another boy later in the book and this boy is disobedient and doesn't tell his brother where he's going and gets his Grand Tour cut short for it, but this boy proposes a boat ride to Ostia and Mr. George disapproves because it is the boat for commoners, not gentlemen. America doesn't have gentlemen, Mr. George! We don't see class. Yes, in pre-Civil War America, I'll allow a difference between enslaved and non-enslaved people, but all the white Protestants running around get one vote each, be we rich or poor, and that is all there is. But Mr. George isn't running around in prosperous New York, he is too close for his comfort to Italian Catholics, and Mr. George struggles to extend the rights of man to these people in their own country. Anti-Catholicism runs gently through this book. Also, when Rollo and Mr. George go to the Coliseum, the arches on the lower levels are full of little chapels and Abbott says they're full of crucifixes and other Catholic symbols. Was pre-Civil War Protestantism so austere that they didn't put crosses on things?
I went to the Coliseum once, and a man dressed as a gladiator tried to convince me to have sex with him in his car. This doesn't happen to Rollo and Mr. George, but Rollo tries to deface the stone a little bit and ends up finding an oodle of good Roman souvenir stone on the ground. Rollo and Mr. George also go to see the Dying Gaul statue, and they view the Roman statues and the Coliseum at night by torchlight when everything looks heavily shadowed and eerie. By then, the tourist season is winding down, the winds are blowing on the Mediterranean, and Mr. George and Rollo grapple with the one last logistical challenge of leaving Rome at the same time that everyone else is, and then they are away, last time, holiday ended, and where are Mr. and Mrs. Holiday? where are Jenny and Thanny? why was Thanny in these books anyway? who in the 1840s can afford to go on vacation for a year? are they sailing back by way of Liverpool? does Rollo die in the Civil War? These questions will never be answered. Or maybe they are answered somewhere. I don't know. This was a good time but I don't want to become a Jacob Abbott scholar. Misogynistic, anti-Catholic motherfucker. Well, we had a good trip, and remember: When traveling, always do what everyone else is doing, and if no one else is doing anything, do nothing.
July 24, 2011
This book wasn't terrible and the story has a nice flow, but it was definitely written more as a travel brochure than a novel. Probably a big hit back in its day though.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews