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The Riverside Biographical Series
NUMBER 11
[Illustration: Washington Irving]
WASHINGTON IRVING
BY
HENRY W. BOYNTON
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY HENRY W. BOYNTON
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. EARLY YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 1
II. MAN ABOUT TOWN 16
III. MAN OF LETTERS--FIRST PERIOD 35
IV. MAN OF LETTERS--SECOND PERIOD 59
V. A PUBLIC CHARACTER 81
VI. THE MAN HIMSELF 105
* * * * *
WASHINGTON IRVING
I
EARLY YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS
Irving's name stands as the first landmark in American letters. No
other American writer has won the same sort of recognition abroad or
esteem at home as became his early in life. And he has lost very
little ground, so far as we can judge by the appeal to figures. The
copyright on his works ran out long since, and a great many editions
of Irving, cheap and costly, complete and incomplete, have been issued
from many sources. Yet his original publishers are now selling, year
by year, more of his books than ever before. There is little doubt
that his work is still widely read, and read not because it is
prescribed, but because it gives pleasure; not as the product of a
"standard author," but as the expression of a rich and engaging
personality, which has written itself like an indorsement across the
face of a young nation's literature. It is that of a man so sensitive
that the scornful finger of a child might have left him sleepless; so
kindly that nobody ever applied to him in vain for sympathy; so modest
that the smallest praise embarrassed him. His manner and tastes were
simple and unassuming. He had no great passions; the brother was
stronger in him than the lover. To these qualities, which might by
themselves belong to ineffectiveness, he added courage, firmness,
magnanimity. It was because he was such a man, and because what he was
shines on every page he wrote, that the world still warms to him.
Not that so elusive a thing as personal charm can be neatly plotted by
the card. We love certain people because we love them; and since that
is so, everything they do is interesting to us. A great writer lives
in his books, to be sure, but we want to know what he actually did in
the flesh. Did he walk, eat, sleep, like other men? Was he as strong,
as human, as lovable as one would think? What sort of boy was he? Did
he marry a wife, and was she good enough for him? The world will never
believe that such questions are impertinent.
There are, of course, more formal matters to be considered,--his debt
to circumstance, his place in the practical world, his influence on
the moral or intellectual or national life of his day. Some of these
themes may be touched on, even within the narrow limits of the present
sketch; not categorically, but rather by way of such suggestion and
indirection as may be consistent with a compact narrative.
* * * * *
One of those apparent chances which are the commonplaces of history
led William Irving from his far home in the Orkneys, married him to
Sarah Sanders, and made him the father of Washington Irving. The
Irvings--a branch of the well-known Scotch Irvines--had been for
generations the leading family on the Island of Shapinsha. Finally
they had gone threadbare, and with a fortune to seek, William Irving
chose the natural ordeal for an islander, the trial by sea. Toward the
close of the French War he had become petty officer on an armed
English packet. In New York he met Mistress Sanders, who was also
English-born, and in 1761 they were married. He must have saved money,
for at the end of the war he left the sea, and entered trade in New
York.
William Irving and his wife were very different in up-bringing and in
temperament. He was a stern man, a strict Presbyterian, with the cold
fire of Calvin in his bones. She had been bred an Episcopalian, and
was genial and sympathetic by nature. The husband was the
master-spirit, and the children grew up under the rigid exactions of
his sect. Sunday was a long day of penance, and one of their two
half-holidays was consecrated to the cheerful uses of the catechism.
To New England ears it all has a familiar sound. When the children
grew old enough they promptly left the fold and resigned themselves
to her of Babylon and England. There were eleven of them, and
Washington was the youngest, born in New York, April 3, 1783. As a
very little child he had the honor of a pat on the head from his great
namesake, for whom he was to do an important service many years later.
He was a perfectly normal, healthy boy. Fortunately there are no
brilliant sayings to record; he did not lisp in periods. Genius was
not written upon his brow, nor tied upon his sleeve. He had none of
the pale fervor of precocity, or the shyness of premature conceit. He
was absorbed in childish things, loved play, shirked his studies,
dreamed of a life on the ocean wave, and regarded "Robinson Crusoe"
and "Sinbad the Sailor" as the end of all literary things. The
savagery of boyhood he lacked. He was fond of playing battle, but
could not bear to see his schoolfellows publicly thrashed, according
to the amiable custom of that day. Otherwise he was all that a mother
might deplore or an uncle delight in.
Altogether the most interesting story of his schooldays has a
dramatic setting. Addison's "Cato" was to be spouted in public by the
schoolchildren. Irving, in the part of Juba, was called a little
sooner than he expected, and came on the boards with his mouth full of
honey-cake. Speech was out of the question--_vox haesit_--there was a
momentary deadlock in his throat. The audience began to laugh, but the
prince was not to be counted out. With a skillful rotary finger he
removed the viand, and brought down the house by calmly taking up his
lines as if nothing had happened. He was then ten years old, and deep
in love with the leading lady. A year or two later he had decided to
follow the sea; but a short experiment of sleeping on the floor and
eating salt pork was too much for his enthusiasm, and at fourteen he
gave up the ship. By this time he had begun to fancy that he could
write, but there is nothing preserved which shows the least promise.
"When I was young," he said long afterward, "I was led to think that
somehow or other everything that was pleasant was wicked." The
theatre was one of the forbidden sweets, and he naturally seized every
chance to taste it. Family prayers at nine were something of an
interruption, but he had managed a private exit by way of the roof
which got him back to the theatre in time for the after-piece. This
early liking for the stage he never outgrew. In the meantime he was
going through with the ordinary schooling of the New York boy of that
period. He learned a little Latin; he hated mathematics, and had very
little love for dull books of any sort. At sixteen his formal
education was over. Two of his elder brothers had studied at Columbia
College, and no doubt Irving might have done the same. He was too
lazy, or, to put it more gracefully, too little interested in set
tasks. Later he expressed regret for the lost chance, but the loss
cannot have been very great for him or for us. If we could imagine
that he might have gained any sort of scholarship, its effect upon his
writing would still be more than doubtful. His order of genius gains
little from bookishness. Addison was supposed to be a classical
scholar, but the "De Coverley Papers" are not a product of
scholarship, and we could better spare anything else that he wrote.
At sixteen Irving entered a law office, and for the next five years
was understood to be studying law. He had no real aptitude for such
study, to be sure, and must have known it; certainly he learned very
little law. He had other things to be interested in. He was an eager
reader in his own way, and a handsome, well-mannered boy, already fond
of society. And I doubt if very much was expected of him in the way of
steady application, for during this whole period his health was
uncertain. More than once he had to give up study entirely, and go to
this watering-place or that for weeks or months. His family and
friends were afraid of consumption, and it was against all forecasts
that he held his own till manhood.
In 1800 he made his first voyage up the Hudson. "A voyage to Albany
then," he wrote in 1851, "was equal to a voyage to Europe at present,
and took almost as much time." The journey was made in a sloop manned
by slaves, and commanded by a native of Albany, who spoke nothing but
Dutch.
Two years later his brother Peter became proprietor and editor of the
New York "Morning Chronicle," for which Irving presently wrote a
series of satirical letters signed "Jonathan Oldstyle." In these
letters, his earliest work of any significance, he touches the
Addisonian string upon which his critics have harped so insistently
ever since. They are decidedly clever for a boy of nineteen, but not
cleverer than the best college work of to-day, and perhaps more
consciously imitative. The fact that they were greatly praised and
gained some vogue through copying in other journals, is rather an
indication of the unfruitfulness of the period than of their merit.
One of their greatest admirers was Charles Brockden Browne, the only
American before Irving to make a profession of writing.
In 1804 the young amateur came of age. He was still threatened with
consumption, and his family determined to send him abroad. Nobody felt
very sanguine about his returning. As he was helped on board, the
captain eyed him dubiously and said in an undertone, "There's a chap
who will go overboard before we get across." If it had been in him to
die just then, the captain gave him plenty of time; it was six weeks
later when they landed at Bordeaux. But though the voyage had been not
over-comfortable, it did him much good. Before the end of it he was
scrambling about the vessel, and describes himself as "quite expert at
climbing to the masthead, and going out on the maintopsail yard."
Irving's body was never to be altogether tractable, but we shall hear
nothing further of the consumptive tendency.
His early letters from abroad are full of life and spirits. He jaunted
about through France and Italy, picked up acquaintances everywhere,
and was evidently much more interested in the people he met than in
the "doing" of buildings or galleries. Evidently he was growing
stronger all the time. In the company of a little Pennsylvania doctor,
whom he had picked up in a diligence, he played several boyish pranks
in France; he kicked out an insolent porter at Montpellier, and fell
foul of a police spy at Avignon. In the main, however, he was inclined
to take things as they came. "There is nothing I dread more," he wrote
from Marseilles, "than to be taken for one of the Smellfungi of this
world. I therefore endeavor to be pleased with everything about me,
and with the masters, mistresses, and servants of the inns,
particularly when I perceive they have 'all the dispositions in the
world' to serve me; as Sterne says, 'It is enough for Heaven, and
ought to be enough for me.'"
At that day the European traveler was not hedged in from adventure. On
the way from Genoa to Messina Irving's vessel was boarded by a
piratical picaroon. The consequences were not dreadful, but the _mise
en scene_ was all that could have been desired. The pirates had
"fierce black eyes scowling under enormous bushy eyebrows.... They
seemed to regard us with the most malignant looks, and I thought I
could perceive a sinister smile upon their countenances, as if
triumphing over us, who had fallen so easily into their hands."
Nothing could have been more satisfactory. At Termini he had a
romantic adventure with a masked Turk. At Genoa he was captivated by
the beauty of a young Italian lady. Instead of trying to make her
acquaintance, as he might easily have done, he contented himself with
stealing a handkerchief which she had dropped. Some time later it was
stolen from him. Thereupon he wrote an account of the affair to a
friend whom he had left in Genoa. The lady heard of it, as ladies
will, and sent him a lock of her hair, with a friendly hint that she
might be better admired at closer quarters. By a natural paradox of
boyish sentiment he did not return to Genoa, but had the hair put into
a locket, which he wore for years. It was later unearthed by a friend
from a pair of breeches borrowed from Irving, and made the subject of
some badinage between them.
Both his brothers and his biographer have made the aimlessness of this
first European experience an occasion for something like reproach. His
plans were of the vaguest. Such as they were, he was willing to
sacrifice any of them for the sake of congenial companionship. After a
few weeks he left Rome hurriedly because he could not bear to be
parted from a friend who was going to Paris. He was anxious, he told
his brothers quaintly, to study various arts and sciences there. In
Paris he kept a journal for about three weeks; it records attendance
upon a single lecture in botany and seventeen theatrical performances.
Naturally his brothers could only see that he was an amiable, idle
young fellow, who had drifted into a dilettante attitude toward life,
and showed little promise of usefulness. But idling as well as
industry has to be judged by its fruits. He was in a real sense seeing
life, as he personally needed to see it, not in its passion and
mystery, but in its lighter moods of humor and sentiment. Paris
frankly seemed to him at this time the most profitable place in the
world. Two months after his arrival, he wrote airily, "You will excuse
the shortness and hastiness of this letter, for which I can only plead
as an excuse that I am a young man and in Paris." He had momentary
fancies as to a possible direction for his talents. A sudden intimacy
at Rome with Washington Allston made him think for a time of turning
painter. He was something of a dandy, and puts on record a Paris
costume of "gray coat, white embroidered vest, and colored
small-clothes." Presently he left Paris for London, where Kemble and
Mrs. Siddons seem to have pleased him more than anything else English.
Three months later he set sail for New York, and arrived in March,
1826, after an absence of nearly two years.
Irving was now twenty-three years old. All that he had done so far was
haphazard enough. He had trifled with his schooling, loitered over his
law, read a great deal at random, seen many theatres, and made many
friends. He had escaped from the valley of the shadow, and was now
free to go on in the primrose way of much society, little literature,
and less law. For the next ten or twelve years he was to be little
more than a petted man about town.
II
MAN ABOUT TOWN
At that time New York was hardly more than a big village, such as
Boston continued to be for a half-century later. Everybody (who was
anybody) knew everybody else in the friendly and informal way which
nowadays belongs to a "set." Conviviality--this dignified name of the
thing best suggests the way in which it was looked at then--was as
much a part of fashionable life in New York as in Edinburgh or London.
Into this society Irving entered with zest, flirting, dancing,
tippling with other young swaggerers according to the mode. He went
back nominally to his legal studies, but was really very little
concerned with law or gospel. Of this kind of life, "Salmagundi," the
first number of which, appeared in January, 1807, was the legitimate
outcome. It was made up of short satirical sketches of the
"Spectator" type. Irving and J. K. Paulding were the principal
contributors, but they had some assistance from William Irving and a
few others. In the course of a year twenty numbers were published at
irregular intervals, when they suddenly ceased to appear. The authors,
who wrote under fictitious names, affected from the start complete
indifference to fame or profit. Their purpose, they said with
whimsical assurance, was simply "to instruct the young, reform the
old, correct the town, and castigate the age." The audacity of the
thing caught the town; it was a decided success, and very
profitable--for the publisher. There is a mildly sophomoric flavor
about the "Salmagundi" papers, as there is about Irving's letters of
the same period. But they are full of amusing things, and worth
reading, too, for the odd side-lights they throw upon the foibles of
that old New York.
As he grew older, Irving came to feel the shallowness of fashionable
society, but in the Salmagundi days he appears to have asked for
nothing better. He had good looks, good humor, and good manners,
showed a proper susceptibility, and knew how to turn a compliment or
write a graceful letter. No wonder he found himself welcome wherever
he went. After a visit to Philadelphia one of the ladies to whom he
had made himself agreeable wrote, "Half the people exist but in the
idea that _you_ will one day return."
Early in the following year he had a little experience of the
practical working of ward politics, which he described in a letter to
a certain charming Mary Fairlie: "Truly, this saving one's country is
a nauseous piece of business, and if patriotism is such a dirty
virtue,--prythee, no more of it.... Such haranguing and puffing and
strutting among the little great men of the day. Such shoals of
unfledged heroes from the lower wards, who had broke away from their
mammas, and run to electioneer with a slice of bread and butter in
their hands." Irving's patriotism was not found wanting when the time
came, but he had a life-long contempt for the petty trickery of party
politics. That year he made another of his leisurely jaunts,
nominally on business, this time to Virginia. His letters record the
usual round of social gallantries, and some graver matter. Burr's
trial was on in Richmond. Irving made his acquaintance, and was
retained in some ornamental sense among his counsel. One or two
letters from Richmond show a sentimental sympathy for his client of
which the less said the better. A characteristic weakness of Irving's
was always an unreasoning fondness for the under dog. In the autumn of
1807 his father died, one of the most sincere among the "unco guid," a
man whom few people loved and everybody respected.
Not long after the discontinuance of the Salmagundi papers a new idea
suggested itself to Irving and his brother Peter, which in its
original form does not look especially promising. It was to develop
into a really remarkable work, and to place Irving's name in a secure
place among living humorists. The "Knickerbocker History of New York"
really laid the foundation of his fame. The first plan was for a mere
burlesque of an absurd book just published, a Dr. Samuel Mitchill's
"Picture of New York." Mitchill began with the aborigines: the Irvings
began with the creation of the world. Fortunately Peter was soon
called away to Europe, and Irving was left to his own devices, which
presently took a different and more original turn. He threw out most
of the pompous erudition which belonged to the work as a burlesque,
and condensed what remained. Everything after the five introductory
chapters is his own.
At this time he had begun to do commission business for certain New
York houses, with a genuine impulse toward steadiness and industry
which it is easy to account for. He was deep in love with the second
daughter of Mr. Hoffman, in whose office he had originally idled. He
had been for years very intimate with the family, and had ended by
making a remarkable discovery about one of them. As he was evidently
not in a position to marry, he was now setting to work with real
energy to improve his means.
Matilda Hoffman was a girl of seventeen, pretty, amiable, and clever.
She died of quick consumption in April, 1809. It is certain that they
loved each other very much, and that Irving never forgot her. The
claim put forth by his nephew and biographer that he gave up marriage
for her sake, and was romantically scrupulous in his faithfulness to
her memory, seems hardly borne out by the facts. He was crushed for
the moment, but not heartbroken. The truth is Irving's nature was
sentimental rather than passionate. His love for Miss Hoffman appears
to have been the deepest feeling of his life, but it did not absorb
his whole nature. The first effect of her loss was to fill him with a
sort of horror--the rebellion of a young and sensitive health against
the tyranny of death. It was enough to show that the mourner was by no
means in desperate case, for extreme grief is not afraid. In after
life he never mentioned her name, and wrote of her only once. At the
same time pretty faces and the charm of womanly companionship
continued to attract him; indeed, a few years later he openly
expressed his expectation of some time marrying. That he did not was
clearly due to temper and circumstance rather than to romantic
fidelity or abnegation. In the end his susceptibility became purely
impersonal; his satisfaction in the exercise of a gentle old-school
gallantry did much to take the sting from his life-long bachelorhood.
Plainly, Irving was the sort of man who finds a grace in every
feminine presence.
It is encouraging to find him in a few months at work again upon the
Knickerbocker history. Its appearance was cleverly heralded by a
series of preliminary advertisements, announcing the disappearance of
one Diedrich Knickerbocker, and the finding of a manuscript history by
his hand. The book was published in December, 1809, and made a
remarkable impression, in England as well as in America. Henry
Brevoort, a close friend of Irving's, in 1813 sent a copy of the
second edition to Walter Scott, who wrote at once: "I beg you to
accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which
I have received from the most excellently jocose History of New
York.... I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of
Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been
employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. Scott and
two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore
with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that
the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches
which remind me much of Sterne."
The work in its completed form is a history of the three Dutch
governors of New York, whom Irving uses as a stalking-horse for
purposes of satire. Everybody laughed at it except a few descendants
of the old Dutch worthies with whose names and characters he had made
free. As late as the year 1818, G. C. Verplanck, a personal friend of
Irving's, called him to account in an address before the New York
Historical Society, to which the first edition of Knickerbocker was
gravely dedicated, for "wasting the riches of his fancy on an
ungrateful theme, and his exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." One
of his brothers wrote to Irving, deprecating the attack. Irving
replied: "I have seen what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more
than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications; and he said
nothing of my work that I have not long thought of it myself.... I am
sure he wishes me well, and his own talents and acquirements are too
great to suffer him to entertain jealousy; but were I his bitterest
enemy, such an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that I would
refer any one to him for an honest account of me, sooner than to
almost any one else."
Soon after Knickerbocker came out, Irving went to Albany in the
fruitless pursuit of a minor court appointment. There he found his
name come not altogether pleasantly before him. "I have somehow or
another formed acquaintance with some of the good people," he wrote,
"and several of the little Yffrouws, and have even made my way and
intrenched myself strongly in the parlors of several genuine Dutch
families, who had declared utter hostility to me." One lady had said
that if she were a man she would horsewhip him; but an hour with
Irving, who had made a point of meeting her, left her resigned to be a
woman.
Irving had now scored his first great literary success. He had proved
himself master of a fluent humorous style which might have been
applied indefinitely to the treatment of similar themes. He was
twenty-seven years old, and there was no reason why the next ten years
should not be a most fruitful period. Unfortunately, during most of
that time life was made too easy for him. He knew now that he could
write, but he had no desire to write for a living. Probably he felt
that such a course would be in some way not quite suitable for a man
of fashion. At all events, ten years passed, and middle age was at
hand before the promising author began to fulfill his promise. Not
till 1819 appeared his next literary venture, conceived in a more
serious spirit, and launched with many misgivings as the first
performance of the professional man of letters.
He had by this time pretty much given up any notion he may have had of
living by the law. His attempts to gain civil appointments were not
successful. The brilliant younger brother must be provided for;
presently Peter and Ebenezer, who were proprietors of a fairly
prosperous hardware business, offered him a partnership, with nominal
duties and one fifth of the profits. His connection with the firm was
at first a sinecure. Later, and when the business had come to the
brink of failure, the burden fell upon him, and absorbed his whole
time and energies for nearly two years. His literary idling cannot be
said to have been due to this entanglement. In his view writing was
apparently little more than an agreeable indulgence which had brought
him some half-deserved praise, and a pleasant social recognition in
desirable quarters. One of the first results of his new connection was
a visit to Washington, ostensibly in the interests of the business.
The character of his services may be surmised from the fact that his
journey from New York to Washington, _via_ Philadelphia and
Baltimore, consumed nineteen days; and that was when the affairs of
the firm were in some straits, and supposed to be particularly in need
of representation at Washington.
In 1812 he accepted the editorship of a periodical called "Select
Reviews," to which during the next two years he contributed various
critical and biographical articles. He found little to his liking in
the editorial and still less in the critical part of his work. "I do
not profess," he wrote, "the art and mystery of reviewing, and am not
ambitious of being wise or facetious at the expense of others." He was
never a good critic, for he was too soft-hearted, and too little in
conceit with his own judgment to give an unfavorable opinion. And this
was in the period of "slashing" criticism, when it was the proper
thing, unless an author could show good reason for being declared the
greatest man of the age, to hang, draw, and quarter him on the spot.
At about this time, Jeffrey of the "Edinburgh Review," a critic who
made the most of his prerogative, visited America. His coming was
heralded by Irving's friend Brevoort in a letter whose ludicrous
climax is worth quoting: "It is essential that Jeffrey may imbibe a
just estimate of the United States and its inhabitants.... Persuade
him to visit Washington _and by all means to see the falls of
Niagara_." Apparently Irving received the great Jeffrey with courtesy
and composure; as an equal, and not in the least as an idol to be
propitiated with gewgaws.
It was an anxious time, the year 1813. The struggle with England had
assumed a more serious form. At last the British succeeded in entering
Washington, and destroyed most of the public buildings. Irving's
attitude had been uncompromisingly American from the outset. This act
of vandalism aroused his indignation; he promptly offered his services
to Governor Tompkins of New York, and was made an aide on his staff,
with the brevet rank of colonel. This position he held for four
months, when Governor Tompkins retired from the command. During that
time Irving showed much military zeal, and enough capacity to be
ordered to the front at Sackett's Harbor, at an important moment, with
powers of which he made creditable use.
In the spring of 1815 he narrowly escaped sailing with Decatur on the
expedition to Algiers. It was largely by his advice that Decatur
decided to accept the command. Irving's trunks had been taken on board
the commodore's frigate when orders came from Washington delaying the
expedition. Irving was afraid that his presence might in some way
embarrass the commander, and left the ship at once. He was not to be
balked of Europe, however; he was ready to sail and the affairs of the
firm seemed to promise an easy competence. On May 25 he embarked for
Liverpool, with no very distinct plans, but with no expectation of
being long abroad. It was seventeen years before he saw America again.
He reached Liverpool at a dramatic moment. Napoleon had fallen, and
the mail coaches were rushing through England with the news of
Waterloo. It was the sort of pageant which always roused Irving's
fancy. He was absorbed in the situation.
His letters show that however he may have shrunk from concerning
himself with practical politics, he viewed the great _coups_ of
statecraft with the greatest interest. His sympathies are with
Bonaparte; the English were perhaps too recent enemies to be treated
quite charitably. "I have made a short visit to London," he wrote to
one of his brothers in July. "The spirits of this nation, as you may
suppose, are wonderfully elated by their successes on the Continent,
and English pride is inflated to its full distention by the idea of
having Paris at the mercy of Wellington and his army. The only thing
that annoys the honest mob is that old Louis will not cut throats and
lop off heads, and that Wellington will not blow up bridges and
monuments, and plunder palaces and galleries. As to Bonaparte, they
have disposed of him in a thousand ways; every fat-sided John Bull has
him dished up in a way to please his own palate, excepting that as yet
they have not observed the first direction in the famous receipt to
cook a turbot,--'First catchy our turbot.'" Then comes a postscript:
"The bells are ringing, and this moment news is brought that poor
Boney is a prisoner at Plymouth. _John has caught the turbot!_"
Peter Irving was in charge of the firm's English office at Liverpool.
He was a bachelor, and Irving had to go to Birmingham, to the house of
his brother-in-law, Henry van Wart, to find an American home in
England. But he did not make his permanent escape from Liverpool so
easily. Not many months had passed before Peter fell ill, had to leave
Liverpool, and Irving was left in charge. For over eight months the
entire management of an ill-ordered establishment fell into his hands.
He seems to have made a thorough attempt to examine and arrange the
confusions of the office. He studied bookkeeping, so that he might get
some knowledge of the accounts, and otherwise busied himself in a
methodical way foreign to his habit. At last, in 1818, the best thing
possible under the circumstances happened,--the business collapsed,
and the brothers found a road out of their difficulties by way of the
bankruptcy court. It was a great relief. "For upwards of two years,"
he wrote to Brevoort, "I have been bowed down in spirit, and harassed
by the most sordid cares. As yet, I trust, my mind has not lost its
elasticity, and I hope to recover some cheerful standing in the world.
Indeed, I feel very little solicitude about my own prospects. I trust
something will turn up to procure me subsistence, and am convinced,
however scanty and precarious may be my lot, I can bring myself to be
content. But I feel harassed in mind at times on behalf of my
brothers. It is a dismal thing to look round on the wrecks of such a
family connection. This is what, in spite of every exertion, will
sometimes steep my soul in bitterness."
Irving had now fairly arrived at maturity. The experience of the last
few years had done much to sober him. He was still fond of society,
and still of a cheerful temper; but the absorbing sophomoric joy in
cakes and ale was now past and not to return. The pinch of necessity
had come at last: the world no longer offered him the life of an
elegant dawdler. He had a serious business before him,--to gain a
competency for himself and his brother. The unpractical younger
brother was to be after this the mainstay of the family fortunes. And
what especially makes this the finest moment of his life is the sudden
and clear perception that to gain this end he must depend upon the
steady and fruitful exercise of his gift for writing. It was not to be
taken up as a last resort, but as a matter of deliberate choice.
Presently he received the offer of a good position on the Navy Board
at Washington, with a salary of $2400. A few years earlier he would
have snatched at it. "Flattering as the prospect undoubtedly is which
your letters hold out," he wrote to his brother Ebenezer, "I have
concluded to decline it for various reasons.... The principal one is,
that I do not wish to undertake any situation that must involve me in
such a routine of duties as to prevent my attending to literary
pursuits." His determination was sturdy enough, but he was not then
nor afterward the master of his moods. "I have heard him say," notes
Pierre Irving, "that he was so disturbed by the responsibility he had
taken in refusing such an offer and trusting to the uncertain chances
of literary success, that for two months he could scarcely write a
line." His elder brothers were heartily disappointed by the decision.
They could not suppose that he would prove greatly more busy or
fruitful in the future than he had in the past, and up to this time,
he had done little enough. The youthful "Salmagundi" sketches, the
broad satire of the Knickerbocker History were not much for a man of
leisure to boast of at thirty-five. But they did not reckon justly
with the new seriousness which had come into his purposes. Washington
Irving was always fitful in his manner of working, often uncertain of
himself and of his work. But from this time on he had no doubt of his
calling; he had ceased to be a man about town, and become a man of
letters.
III
MAN OF LETTERS--FIRST PERIOD
The appearance of the "Sketch Book," in 1819, marks the beginning of
Irving's professional life as a literary man. It was, moreover, the
first original literary work of moment by an American. Two years later
Bryant's first volume of poems was published, and Cooper's novels had
begun to appear; at this time Irving had the field to himself. Firm as
his determination was to depend upon writing for support, he was by no
means satisfied with what he was able to do. Even after the complete
"Sketch Book" had appeared, and had been met with hearty applause in
England and America, he continued to be doubtful of its merits, and
embarrassed by its reception. In sending the manuscript of the first
number to America, he wrote to his brother Ebenezer: "I have sent the
first number of a work which I hope to continue from time to time. I
send it more for the purpose of showing you what I am about, as I find
my declining the situation at Washington has given you chagrin. The
fact is, that situation would have given me barely a genteel
subsistence. It would have led to no higher situations, for I am quite
unfitted for political life. My talents are merely literary, and all
my habits of thinking, reading, etc., have been in a different
direction from that required by the active politician. It is a mistake
also to suppose I would fill an office there, and devote myself at the
same time to literature. I require much leisure, and a mind entirely
abstracted from other cares and occupations, if I would write much or
write well.... If I ever get any solid credit with the public, it must
be in the quiet and assiduous operations of my pen, under the mere
guidance of fancy or feeling.... I feel myself completely committed in
literary reputation by what I have already written; and I feel by no
means satisfied to rest my reputation on my preceding writings. I have
suffered several precious years of youth and lively imagination to
pass by unimproved, and it behooves me to make the most of what is
left. If I indeed have the means within me of establishing a
legitimate literary reputation, this is the very period of life most
auspicious for it, and I am resolved to devote a few years exclusively
to the attempt.... In fact, I consider myself at present as making a
literary experiment, in the course of which I only care to be kept in
bread and cheese. Should it not succeed--should my writings not
acquire critical applause, I am content to throw up the pen and take
to any commonplace employment. But if they should succeed, it would
repay me for a world of care and privation to be placed among the
established authors of my country, and to win the affections of my
countrymen.... Do not, I beseech you, impute my lingering in Europe to
any indifference to my own country or my friends.... I am determined
not to return home until I have sent some writings before me that
shall, if they have merit, make me return to the smiles, rather than
skulk back to the pity, of my friends."
To Brevoort he wrote at the same time: "I have attempted no lofty
theme, nor sought to look wise and learned, which appears to be very
much the fashion among our American writers, at present. I have
preferred addressing myself to the feeling and fancy of the reader,
more than to his judgment. My writings, therefore, may appear light
and trifling in our country of philosophers and politicians; but if
they possess merit in the class of literature to which they belong, it
is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only to blow a flute
accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the
fiddle and French horn."
The favorable reception of the "Sketch Book" not only failed to remove
his diffidence, but left him oppressed by a new sense of obligation to
the public which had lauded his work. This feeling is expressed in a
letter to Leslie, the painter, with whom he had become very intimate:
"I am glad to find the second number pleases more than the first. The
sale is very rapid, and, altogether, the success exceeds my most
sanguine expectation. Now you suppose I am all on the alert, full of
spirit and excitement. No such thing. I am just as good for nothing as
ever I was; and indeed I have been flurried and put out of my way by
these puffings. I feel something as I suppose you did when your
picture met with success--anxious to do something better, and at a
loss what to do."
Murray, who a little later was eager to publish anything from Irving's
hand, declined to undertake the first English edition of the "Sketch
Book." Irving was afraid of some incomplete pirated edition, and
finally published the first number entirely at his own expense. Murray
was glad enough to change his mind and bring out the later numbers.
Among the many friends whom the young American had made in England was
Walter Scott. A few days spent by Irving at Abbotsford had been enough
to attach them strongly to each other. Scott had by no means outgrown
his interest in the author of the "Knickerbocker History," and Irving
found nothing that was not delightful in the great romancer's
character and way of life. "As to Scott," he wrote, "I cannot express
my delight at his character and manners. He is a sterling,
golden-hearted old worthy, full of the joyousness of youth, with an
imagination continually furnishing forth pictures, and a charming
simplicity of manner that puts you at ease with him in a moment. It
has been a constant source of pleasure to me to remark his deportment
towards his family, his neighbors, his domestics, his very dogs and
cats; everything that comes within his influence seems to catch a beam
of that sunshine that plays round his heart." Now, while the prospects
of the "Sketch Book" were still dubious, Scott offered him the
editorship of an Anti-Jacobin magazine. Irving declined it, first on
the ground of his dislike for politics, and second on account of his
irregular habits of mind. "My whole course of life has been desultory,
and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, or any
stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no command of my talents
such as they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would
a weathercock. Practice and training may bring me more into rule; but
at present I am as useless for regular service as one of my own
country Indians or a Don Cossack."
In August of this year, Irving and his brother Peter left England for
the Continent. They had got no farther than Havre when their fancy was
taken with an apparent business opening for Peter, who had been idle
since the failure of the firm. A steamboat had just been put upon the
Seine, to run between Havre and Rouen. Peter should be a chief
stockholder and director; he and Washington would each put in $5000,
and between Havre and Rouen the river would presently run gold for
them. To be sure the money was yet to be found, but there were
brothers William and Ebenezer, who would no doubt be glad to help set
that little golden river flowing. Unfortunately brothers William and
Ebenezer did not approve of the scheme at all. They flatly refused to
lend brother Peter $5000, or to honor brother Washington's drafts for
the same amount. More unfortunately still, Irving had already
committed himself. All of his literary property had to be disposed of,
to provide the pledged amount, which was forthwith placed in the
little steamboat on the Seine, and never heard of more. Peter was
associated with the management, and kept busy, at least, for several
years. This was the first of a long series of business ventures which
made Irving's life uneasy. He would no sooner turn a few thousand by
writing than he must sink it in this or that absolutely safe and
immensely profitable enterprise. It was not for many years that he
learned how certainly he might count upon disastrous results from such
experiments.
After the settlement of this affair, Irving took lodgings in Paris.
Here he met Tom Moore, and in his house more than anywhere else he
became intimate. Moore's diary makes frequent mention of him; one of
the most interesting entries records that Irving at this time wrote
in ten days one hundred and thirty pages of the "Sketch Book" size.
This was undoubtedly material for "Bracebridge Hall," the suggestion
of which had come from Moore. In the meantime the "Sketch Book" had
continued to gain ground in England. Byron admired it greatly, and its
popularity with the general public may be judged from the fact that it
was commonly attributed to Scott. Irving described himself in a letter
to Murray as leading "a 'miscellaneous' kind of life at Paris....
Anacreon Moore is living here, and has made me a gayer fellow than I
could have wished; but I found it impossible to resist the charm of
his society."
In July (1821) he returned to London, in poor physical condition. He
had now been tormented at intervals for several years by an eruptive
complaint which kept him from exercise, and brought on other troubles.
After his return he was bedridden for four or five months, most of
which he passed at his sister's house in Birmingham. He grew very fond
of his little nephews and nieces--particularly an urchin named
George, of whom his letters record such items as: "George has made his
appearance in a new pair of Grimaldi breeches, with pockets full as
deep as the former. To balance his ball and marbles, he has the
opposite pocket filled with a peg-top and a quantity of dry peas, so
that he can only lie comfortably on his back or belly." He was by no
means idle at this time. In January of the following year he sent the
manuscript of "Bracebridge Hall" to his brother Ebenezer with the
remark, "My health is still unrestored. This work has kept me from
getting well, and my indisposition on the other hand has retarded the
work. I have now been about five weeks in London, and have only once
been out of doors, about a month since, and that made me worse." That
single escape from the sick-room, his biographer says, was made for
the sake of persuading Murray to publish Cooper's "Spy," which had
already appeared in America. Irving's own experience was duplicated:
Murray refused to take "The Spy," but was glad to publish Cooper's
later work. He now gave Irving a thousand guineas for the English
rights in "Bracebridge Hall." It was less than he might have given,
but Irving could never be persuaded to haggle over prices. He seems to
have agreed with Peter, who wrote cheerfully, "A thousand guineas has
a golden sound." It was the amount which had been sunk in poor Peter's
steamboat, which was still making its unprofitable trips up and down
the Seine; and two hundred guineas of this thousand soon passed into
his pocket, where no doubt he found their melody even pleasanter.
"Bracebridge Hall" was well received; and confirmed its author's
reputation, especially in England. He had only to be passive to find
himself overwhelmed with social engagements. A more liberal diet and
plenty of exercise had improved his condition, and for a month or so
after getting rid of "Bracebridge Hall," he gave himself up to the
engagements of a London season. But his ankles soon began to trouble
him again, and in July, 1822, he set out for Aix-la-Chapelle, where
he hoped to get permanent relief from his distressing complaint. He
found nothing to keep him long at Aix. The baths and waters were well
enough, but he was too dependent upon cheerful companionship to endure
life among a company of invalids. He began a leisurely round of the
Continental watering-places, staying a few weeks here and a few days
there, and gradually improving in condition. Toward the close of the
year he brought up at Dresden.
The only touch of mystery which belongs to the story of Irving is
connected with this six months' stay at Dresden. He made many friends
there, and grew especially intimate with an English family named
Foster, a mother and two daughters. It is said--and denied--that he
would have liked to marry the youngest daughter, Emily. His biographer
insists that there was nothing in the affair but friendship. To Mrs.
Foster he wrote the only account he ever gave of his early love and
loss; and his nephew quotes the closing passage as proof that he had
no thought of marrying Emily Foster, however fond of her he may have
been: "You wonder why I am not married. I have shown you why I was not
long since. When I had sufficiently recovered from that loss, I became
involved in ruin. It was not for a man broken down in the world, to
drag down any woman to his paltry circumstances. I was too proud to
tolerate the idea of ever mending my circumstances by matrimony. My
time has now gone by; and I have growing claims upon my thoughts and
upon my means, slender and precarious as they are. I feel as if I had
already a family to think and provide for."