Irving's health, always delicate, continued so much impaired when he
came of age, in 1804., that his brothers determined to send him to
Europe. On the 19th of May he took passage for Bordeaux in a sailing
vessel, which reached the mouth of the Garonne on the 25th of June. His
consumptive appearance when he went on board caused the captain to say
to himself, “There's a chap who will go overboard before we get across;”
but his condition was much improved by the voyage.
He stayed six weeks at Bordeaux to improve himself in the language, and
then set out for the Mediterranean. In the diligence he had some merry
companions, and the party amused itself on the way. It was their habit
to stroll about the towns in which they stopped, and talk with whomever
they met. Among his companions was a young French officer and an
eccentric, garrulous doctor from America. At Tonneins, on the Garonne,
they entered a house where a number of girls were quilting. The girls
gave Irving a needle and set him to work. He could not understand their
patois, and they could not comprehend his bad French, and they got on
very merrily. At last the little doctor told them that the interesting
young man was an English prisoner whom the French officer had in
custody. Their merriment at once gave place to pity. “Ah! le pauvre
garcon!” said one to another; “he is merry, however, in all his
trouble.” “And what will they do with him?” asked a young woman. “Oh,
nothing of consequence,” replied the doctor; “perhaps shoot him, or cut
off his head.” The good souls were much distressed; they brought him
wine, loaded his pockets with fruit, and bade him good-by with a hundred
benedictions. Over forty years after, Irving made a detour, on his way
from Madrid to Paris, to visit Tonneins, drawn thither solely by the
recollection of this incident, vaguely hoping perhaps to apologize to
the tender-hearted villagers for the imposition. His conscience had
always pricked him for it. “It was a shame,” he said, “to leave them
with such painful impressions.” The quilting party had dispersed by that
time. “I believe I recognized the house,” he says; “and I saw two or
three old women who might once have formed part of the merry group
of girls; but I doubt whether they recognized, in the stout elderly
gentleman, thus rattling in his carriage through their streets, the pale
young English prisoner of forty years since.”
Bonaparte was emperor. The whole country was full of suspicion. The
police suspected the traveler, notwithstanding his passport, of being
an Englishman and a spy, and dogged him at every step. He arrived at
Avignon, full of enthusiasm at the thought of seeing the tomb of
Laura. “Judge of my surprise,” he writes, “my disappointment, and my
indignation, when I was told that the church, tomb, and all were utterly
demolished in the time of the Revolution. Never did the Revolution,
its authors and its consequences, receive a more hearty and sincere
execration than at that moment. Throughout the whole of my journey I
had found reason to exclaim against it for depriving me of some
valuable curiosity or celebrated monument, but this was the severest
disappointment it had yet occasioned.” This view of the Revolution is
very characteristic of Irving, and perhaps the first that would occur
to a man of letters. The journey was altogether disagreeable, even to
a traveler used to the rough jaunts in an American wilderness: the inns
were miserable; dirt, noise, and insolence reigned without control. But
it never was our author's habit to stroke the world the wrong way: “When
I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to
suit my dinner.” And he adds: “There is nothing I dread more 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.'”
The traveler was detained at Marseilles, and five weeks at Nice, on one
or another frivolous pretext of the police, and did not reach Genoa till
the 20th of October. At Genoa there was a delightful society, and
Irving seems to have been more attracted by that than by the historical
curiosities. His health was restored, and his spirits recovered
elasticity in the genial hospitality; he was surrounded by friends to
whom he became so much attached that it was with pain he parted from
them. The gayety of city life, the levees of the Doge, and the balls,
were not unattractive to the handsome young man; but what made Genoa
seem like home to him was his intimacy with a few charming families,
among whom he mentions those of Mrs. Bird, Madame Gabriac, and Lady
Shaftesbury. From the latter he experienced the most cordial and
unreserved friendship; she greatly interested herself in his future, and
furnished him with letters from herself and the nobility to persons of
the first distinction in Florence, Rome, and Naples.
Late in December Irving sailed for Sicily in a Genoese packet. Off the
island of Planoca it was overpowered and captured by a little picaroon,
with lateen sails and a couple of guns, and a most villainous crew, in
poverty-stricken garments, rusty cutlasses in their hands and stilettos
and pistols stuck in their waistbands. The pirates thoroughly ransacked
the vessel, opened all the trunks and portmanteaus, but found little
that they wanted except brandy and provisions. In releasing the vessel,
the ragamuffins seem to have had a touch of humor, for they gave the
captain a “receipt” for what they had taken, and an order on the British
consul at Messina to pay for the same. This old-time courtesy was hardly
appreciated at the moment.
Irving passed a couple of months in Sicily, exploring with some
thoroughness the ruins, and making several perilous inland trips, for
the country was infested by banditti. One journey from Syracuse through
the center of the island revealed more wretchedness than Irving supposed
existed in the world. The half-starved peasants lived in wretched cabins
and often in caverns, amid filth and vermin. “God knows my mind never
suffered so much as on this journey,” he writes, “when I saw such
scenes of want and misery continually before me, without the power of
effectually relieving them.” His stay in the ports was made agreeable by
the officers of American ships cruising in those waters. Every ship
was a home, and every officer a friend. He had a boundless capacity for
good-fellowship. At Messina he chronicles the brilliant spectacle of
Lord Nelson's fleet passing through the straits in search of the French
fleet that had lately got out of Toulon. In less than a year Nelson's
young admirer was one of the thousands that pressed to see the remains
of the great admiral as they lay in state at Greenwich, wrapped in the
flag that had floated at the masthead of the Victory.
From Sicily he passed over to Naples in a fruit boat which dodged the
cruisers, and reached Rome the last of March. Here he remained several
weeks, absorbed by the multitudinous attractions. In Italy the worlds of
music and painting were for the first time opened to him. Here he
made the acquaintance of Washington Allston, and the influence of this
friendship came near changing the whole course of his life. To return
home to the dry study of the law was not a pleasing prospect; the
masterpieces of art, the serenity of the sky, the nameless charm which
hangs about an Italian landscape, and Allston's enthusiasm as an artist,
nearly decided him to remain in Rome and adopt the profession of a
painter. But after indulging in this dream, it occurred to him that it
was not so much a natural aptitude for the art as the lovely scenery and
Allston's companionship that had attracted him to it. He saw something
of Roman society; Torlonia the banker was especially assiduous in his
attentions. It turned out when Irving came to make his adieus that
Torlonia had all along supposed him a relative of General Washington.
This mistake is offset by another that occurred later, after Irving had
attained some celebrity in England. An English lady passing through an
Italian gallery with her daughter stopped before a bust of Washington.
The daughter said, “Mother, who was Washington?” “Why, my dear, don't
you know?” was the astonished reply. “He wrote the 'Sketch-Book.'” It
was at the house of Baron von Humboldt, the Prussian minister, that
Irving first met Madame de Stael, who was then enjoying the celebrity
of “Delphine.” He was impressed with her strength of mind, and somewhat
astounded at the amazing flow of her conversation, and the question upon
question with which she plied him.
In May the wanderer was in Paris, and remained there four months,
studying French and frequenting the theaters with exemplary regularity.
Of his life in Paris there are only the meagerest reports, and he
records no observations upon political affairs. The town fascinated
him more than any other in Europe; he notes that the city is rapidly
beautifying under the emperor, that the people seem gay and happy, and
'Vive la bagatelle!' is again the burden of their song. His excuse for
remissness in correspondence was, “I am a young man and in Paris.”
By way of the Netherlands he reached London in October, and remained in
England till January. The attraction in London seems to have been the
theater, where he saw John Kemble, Cooke, and Mrs. Siddons. Kemble's
acting seemed to him too studied and over-labored; he had the
disadvantage of a voice lacking rich bass tones. Whatever he did was
judiciously conceived and perfectly executed; it satisfied the head, but
rarely touched the heart. Only in the part of Zanga was the young critic
completely overpowered by his acting,--Kemble seemed to have forgotten
himself. Cooke, who had less range than Kemble, completely satisfied
Irving as Iago. Of Mrs. Siddons, who was then old, he scarcely dares to
give his impressions lest he should be thought extravagant. “Her looks,”
he says, “her voice; her gestures, delighted me. She penetrated in a
moment to my heart. She froze and melted it by turns; a glance of her
eye, a start, an exclamation, thrilled through my whole frame. The more
I see her, the more I admire her. I hardly breathe while she is on the
stage. She works up my feelings till I am like a mere child.” Some years
later, after the publication of the “Sketch-Book,” in a London assembly
Irving was presented to the tragedy queen, who had left the stage, but
had not laid aside its stately manner. She looked at him a moment, and
then in a deep-toned voice slowly enunciated, “You've made me weep.”
The author was so disconcerted that he said not a word, and retreated
in confusion. After the publication of “Bracebridge Hall” he met her
in company again, and was persuaded to go through the ordeal of another
presentation. The stately woman fixed her eyes on him as before, and
slowly said, “You 've made me weep again.” This time the bashful author
acquitted himself with more honor.
This first sojourn abroad was not immediately fruitful in a literary
way, and need not further detain us. It was the irresolute pilgrimage of
a man who had not yet received his vocation. Everywhere he was received
in the best society, and the charm of his manner and his ingenuous
nature made him everywhere a favorite. He carried that indefinable
passport which society recognizes and which needs no 'visee.' He saw
the people who were famous, the women whose recognition is a social
reputation; he made many valuable friends; he frequented the theater,
he indulged his passion for the opera; he learned how to dine, and
to appreciate the delights of a brilliant salon; he was picking up
languages; he was observing nature and men, and especially women. That
he profited by his loitering experience is plain enough afterward, but
thus far there is little to prophesy that Irving would be anything more
in life than a charming 'flaneur.'