His writings, journeys, associations and his
life, by Wallace Bruce
The memory of Washington Irving rests like a ray of sunshine upon the
pages of our early history. Born in 1783, at the close of the great
struggle for Independence, his life of seventy-six years marks a period
of growth and material progress, the pages of which we have just been
turning, and it is peculiarly fitting to consider at this time in the
morning of our Twentieth Century the life and services of our sweetest
writer--the best representative of our early culture.
It is my purpose to consider his writings, his associations, and his
life, and I take up his works in the order in which they were written,
as in this way we trace the natural development of the writer and the
man.
“Knickerbocker,” his earliest work, written at the age of twenty-six,
bears the same relation to his later works as “Pickwick,” the first
heir of Dickens’ invention, to his novels that follow. And there is
another point of similarity in the fact that “Knickerbocker” and
“Pickwick” both outgrew the original design of the authors: neither
Irving nor Dickens, when he took pen in hand, had any idea of the
character of the work he was to produce. The philosophic and benevolent
Pickwick was barely rescued from being the head of a Nimrod Hunting
Club, with a character cut to fit a series of drawings that had been
purchased from the wife of a needy artist by a second-class publishing
house in London; and the idea of “Knickerbocker” at first was simply
to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared, entitled “A
Picture of New York.” Following this plan, a humorous description of
the early governors of New Amsterdam was intended merely as a preface
to the customs and institutions of the city but like Buckle’s “History
of Civilization,” the preface became the body of the book, and all
idea of a parody was early and happily abandoned. The rise and fall
of the Dutch domination presented a subject of poetic unity. In the
character of the pseudo-historian we have the representative of a race
whose customs were fast passing away, and the serio-comic nature of
the work is intensified, and as it were italicized, at the very outset
by notices in the New York _Evening Post_ and other journals calling
attention to the mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Never was any volume more happily introduced. Before we turn a single
page of the book we have an idea of the veritable writer. We see
him the representative of a noble Dutch family--first cousin of the
renowned Congressman of Schaghticoke. We become interested in the
mystery that surrounds him; in fact, the great charm of the book is in
the semi-reality, or assumed personality, of Deidrich Knickerbocker.
The portrait of Don Quixote, so familiar to every one, starting out
from La Mancha to redress the wrongs of the world, is not more clearly
drawn and has no more reality in our minds than the historian of New
Amsterdam, with his silver shoe-buckles and cocked hat, trudging along
the old post-road from village to village. But there is this difference
in the mind of the reader: in the great satire of Cervantes there is an
element of sadness. We see a crazed old gentleman going out in quest
of adventures exciting our pity, almost excusing the paradox of Lord
Byron, “The saddest of all tales, and more sad because it makes us
laugh;” but here there is only a mild sort of insanity about the old
gentleman with his books and papers, wandering off on long excursions
that touches our humor without exciting our sympathy. We see as it were
only a touch of the same malady which belongs to all writers “seeking
after immortality;” and, by the way, the books of humor we have here
associated--“Pickwick,” “Don Quixote,” and “Knickerbocker”--belong to
the same family, can be profitably studied together, and ought to stand
upon the same shelf in our libraries.
The philosopher Hume said “a turn for humor was worth to him ten
thousand a year,” and perhaps if this remark had been fully explained
to the early members of the New York Historical Society--to whom, by
the way, the volume was first dedicated--the following paragraph might
have been omitted from our Colonial History: “It is the misfortune of
this State,” the writer says, speaking of New York, “that its early
founders have been held up to the ridicule of the world by one of its
most gifted sons, who has exhausted the resources of his wit and satire
in exposing imaginary traits in their characters, while the most
polished efforts of his graver style have been reserved to adorn the
Corinthian columns of the more aristocratic institutions of foreign
countries. Founders of ancient dynasties have sometimes been deified
by their successors. New York is perhaps the only commonwealth whose
founders have been covered with ridicule from the same quarter.” Some
of the old Holland families are also reported to have taken the work in
high dudgeon as a rash invasion of the domain of history; and I believe
one of the gentle sex in Albany, who perhaps had no brother or lover
to fight a duel, proposed herself with her own hands to horse-whip
the offensive writer for his bold attempt, forsooth, at spelling and
printing for the first time some of the old family names.
From today’s standpoint these things seem ludicrous and uncalled
for in reference to a work abounding in kindly humor, everywhere
accepted as the finest blending of the classic and the comic in our
literature; and were it not that these early enemies soon became his
warmest friends, I would certainly pass it over in silence; but the
transition was so sudden and sincere that it is one of the pleasantest
features in his history, and Irving himself when preparing his revised
edition, refers to the matter with evident satisfaction in a prefatory
article facetiously styled “The Author’s Apology.” “When I find, after
a lapse of forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still
cherished among the descendants of the Dutch worthies; when I find its
very name become a household word, and used to give the home-stamp to
everything recommended for popular acceptance, such as Knickerbocker
societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats,
Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker’s bread, and Knickerbocker ice;
and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon
being genuine Knickerbockers--I please myself with the persuasion that
I have struck the right chord; that my dealings with the good old Dutch
times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are in harmony
with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a
vein of pleasant associations and quaint characteristics peculiar to
my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer
to pass away; and that, though other histories of New York may appear
of higher claim to learned acceptance, and may take their appropriate
and dignified rank in the family library, Knickerbocker’s history will
still be received with good-humored intelligence, and be thumbed and
chuckled over by the family fireside.” It was indeed wide from the
sober aim of history, but no volume ever gave such rose-tint colors to
the early annals of any country, and New York, instead of being covered
with ridicule, is today the only State of this Union whose early
history is associated with the golden age of poetry, with “an antiquity
extending back into the regions of doubt and fable,” and it is safe to
say _that the streams of Scotland are no more indebted to the genius of
Robert Burns and Walter Scott than the Hudson and the Catskills to the
pen of Washington Irving_.
So much for the introduction, the first reception, and the success of
“Knickerbocker;” but I cannot refrain, in passing, from giving a few
illustrations from this most picturesque of histories. Perhaps the
sketch of the first governor of New Amsterdam is one of the happiest in
its outline and general filling:
“The renowned Wouter Van Twiller was descended from a long line of
Dutch burgomasters, who had comported themselves with such singular
wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of,
which, next to being universally applauded, should be the ambition of
all magistrates. He was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster;
but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible
was his gravity that he was never known either to laugh or to smile
through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a
joke were uttered in his presence that set light-minded hearers in
a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. He
was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches
circumference. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a
vast expanse unfurrowed by any of those lines or angles which disfigure
the human countenance with what is termed expression. He daily took
his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each. He
smoked and doubted eight hours, and slept the remaining twelve of the
four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller governor
of the golden age of the province.” “Honest days,” as the historian
proceeds, “when every woman wore pockets, aye, and that, too, of a
goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices and
ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient
receptacles where all good housewives carefully stored away such things
as they wished to have at hand, by which means they often came to be
incredibly crammed; and I remember there was a story current when I
was a boy that the lady of Wouter Van Twiller once had occasion to
empty her right pocket in search of a wooden ladle, when the contents
filled a couple of corn baskets, and the utensil was discovered lying
among some rubbish in one corner, but we must not give too much faith
to all these stories, the anecdotes of remote periods being very
subject to exaggeration.”
I pass over the tea parties and parlor gatherings, the dress and
manners, his chapters of philosophy and those “happy days of primeval
simplicity when there were neither public commotions nor private
quarrels, neither parties nor sects nor schisms, neither persecutions
nor trials nor punishments; when every man attended to what little
business he was lucky enough to have, or neglected it, if he pleased,
without asking the opinion of his neighbor; when nobody meddled with
concerns above his comprehension, nor neglected to correct his own
conduct in his zeal to pull to pieces the characters of others.” I
pass over the days of William the Testy, who first introduced the art
of fighting by proclamation the inroads of the Yankees with their
witchcraft--their inventions, their schoolmasters, and wandering
propensities--who “required only an inch to gain an ell, or a halter
to gain a horse; who from the time they first gained a foothold on
Plymouth Rock began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place
to place, making a little here and a little there, and controverting
the old proverb that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Hence they have
facetiously received the nickname of the Pilgrims,--that is to say, a
people who are always seeking a better country than their own.” We see
Antony Van Corlear, the celebrated trumpeter, on his diplomatic mission
up the Hudson--a chapter too dramatic for these degenerate days. We
see the noble army of Peter Stuyvesant passing in review before us,
and come with sorrow to the brief line in which the chivalric hero is
gathered to his fathers--“Well, den, hardkoppig Peter ben gone at last.”
In his first volume we would naturally look for his peculiar
characteristics as a writer, and we find a rich vein of humor and
invention; but here and there are gentle touches and the promise of
other qualities to which Walter Scott refers in a letter to Henry
Brevoort:
“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. I beg you will have the kindness to let me
know when Mr. Irving takes pen in hand again; for assuredly I shall
expect a very great treat, which I may chance never to hear of but
through your kindness.”
The prophecy of Scott waited ten years for its fulfilment, but it came
at last in the most charming collection of essays in our language--the
“Sketch Book”--which I divide into essays of character and sentiment,
English pictures and American legends. As representatives of the first
I take “The Broken Heart,” “The Wife,” “The Widow and Her Son.”
“The Broken Heart,” perhaps the greatest favorite of his character
sketches and the best transcript of his own early experience, seems to
me a gem in our literature. In the short space of six pages he portrays
the finer qualities of woman’s nature, and illustrates it with the
touching story of Curran’s daughter, whose heart was buried in the
coffin of Robert Emmet. This essay was suggested by a friend who had
seen the heroine at a masquerade and heard the plaintive song which
melted every one to tears:
“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.
* * * * *
She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking.
Ah! little they think who delight in her strains
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking.”
In the whole range of English literature I know of no pen except
Irving’s which could have written an essay like this in plain and
simple prose. We find the same tender sentiment in “Highland Mary”
and “Annabel Lee;” but poetry is the natural language of passion
and sorrow. Irving had often been likened to Addison, but in this
particular they have nothing in common. Edward Everett has well said:
“One chord in the human heart, the pathetic, for whose sweet music
Addison had no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a master. He
learned that skill in the school of early disappointment.” And in the
following passage we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibration still
responding through ten years of sorrow to the memory of her whose
hopes were entwined with his: “There are some strokes of calamity
which scathe and scorch the soul, which penetrate to the vital seat of
happiness and blast it, never again to put forth bud and blossom; and
let those tell her agony who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly
closed between them and the being they most loved on earth; who have
sat at its threshold as one shut out in a cold and lonely world whence
all that was most lovely and loving had departed.”
It is said when Lord Byron was dying at Missilonghi that he requested
his attendant to read to him “The Broken Heart.” While he was reading
one of the most touching portions the poet’s eyes moistened and he
said, “Irving never wrote that story without weeping, nor can I hear it
without tears;” and he added, “I have not wept much in this world, for
trouble never brings tears to my eyes, but I always have tears for ‘The
Broken Heart.’”
Soon after its publication in England, Irving met Mrs. Siddons. After
his introduction the queen of tragedy looked at him for a moment and
then, in her clear, deep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, “You have
made me weep.” As Pierre Irving remarks in his “Life and Letters,”
“Nothing could have been finer than such a compliment from such a
source, but the ‘accost’ was so abrupt and the manner so peculiar that
our modest writer was completely disconcerted.” Some time afterward,
after the appearance of his “Bracebridge Hall,” they again met, and
singularly enough she addressed him in the self-same fashion--“You’ve
made me weep again.” “Ah!” replied Irving, “but you taught me first to
weep,” as he called up his first visit to London, fifteen years before
the “Sketch-Book” was written and the then wonderful power of this
actress without a rival.
Kindred to this essay which we have just considered, and well suited
as a companion-sketch, I select “The Wife,” a true picture of woman’s
power in adversity. As the story goes, his friend Leslie had married
a beautiful and accomplished girl, and, having an ample fortune it
was his ambition that her life should be a fairy-tale; but one day,
having embarked in speculation, his riches took to themselves wings
and he found himself reduced almost to penury. For a time he keeps
his situation to himself, but every look reveals his sorrow. When at
last he tells his story and we see her rising from a state of childish
dependence, becoming the support and comfort of her husband in his
misfortune, and follow them from a mansion to a cottage, we feel that
the last state of that man is better than the first. In the knowledge
and possession of such a heart he had truer riches than diamonds can
symbolize, and to the credit of our better nature the words of Irving
are true: “There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly
fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which
kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. No man
knows what the wife of his bosom is; no man knows what a ministering
angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of
this world.” What a beautiful simile is this: “As the vine which has
long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it
into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt,
cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered
boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is
the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be
his stay and solace when smitten by sudden calamity, winding herself
into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the
drooping head and binding up the broken heart.”
Outside of the drama of Shakespeare and the pages of Walter Scott, I
know of no pictures of graceful womanhood so complete as those found
in Irving’s Sketch Book. It is said that the original of which this
character is a copy, was the wife of the poet Morris; and perhaps the
following incident gave rise to the suggestion which shows how little
truth popular rumor _needs_ for a sustaining diet. While minister at
Spain he received a letter from his brother saying that General Morris
requested permission to publish his story of “The Wife” in a periodical
of which he was proprietor, and Irving facetiously responded, “Give
my regards to General Morris, and tell him he is quite welcome to my
wife,--which is more than most of his friends could say.” (Perhaps Rip
Van Winkle would have been willing to have thrown in his.)
The other sketch to which we call attention in our division of
character and sentiment--“The Widow and her Son”--is one of the most
pathetic in the “Sketch Book,” and follows naturally the two we have
just considered. It seems to round out and complete Irving’s idea of
womanhood as seen in a maiden’s life, a wife’s devotion, and a mother’s
love. What depths of feeling in passages like this: “Oh! there is an
enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends
all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by
selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness,
nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his
convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she
will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity; and, if misfortune
overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune; and, if
disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in
spite of his disgrace; and, if all the world beside cast him off, she
will be all the world to him.”
There are few passages in prose or poetry more touching than
the description of the mother’s effort to put on something like
mourning for her only son--a black ribbon or so, a faded black
handkerchief--showing the struggle between pious affection and utter
poverty.
All through these essays we seem to see a gentle spirit clouded by
some great sorrow, yet cheerful in spite of misfortune. What a change
has come over him since “Knickerbocker”! Lord Bacon says, “It is more
pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground than to
have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground.” This may
be true in pictures, but not in character; for the principal element
in that happy compound--a genuine man or woman--is _cheerfulness_,
and disposition naturally gloomy and foreboding is rarely ever so
thoroughly irradiated, even by the light of heaven, that we are not
chilled by contact. Misanthropy never improves by years: it is a
heart-thermometer ever below freezing-point even in the sunlight of
prosperity. But there are natures so bright and lightsome that no
clouds of misfortune can hide their cheering radiance; mellowed by
sorrow, and tempered by adversity, they shine forth in gentle gleams,
full of genial and tender expression; and I think this distinction
is one your own reading will justify: that we find in these essays
a bright spirit sobered by sorrow, but look in vain for a line of
misanthropy.
There is another element in Irving’s composition no less marked than
his humor and pathos--a reverence for antiquity which forms a marked
feature in the essays that we designate as English pictures. In his
“Rural Life” and “Christmas Sketches” we see his love for the old
English writers, and recognize the fact that Chaucer and Spenser were
among his favorite authors. These early poets were to him something
more than “wells of English undefiled.” They are rather like the lakes
of the Adirondacks, separated from each other and from us by events
which loom up like mountains in the world’s history, clear and cool in
far-off solitudes, reflecting in their bright mirrors the serenity of
earth and the broad expanse of heaven, responding to the gentle glow
of summer sunsets, holding quiet communion with the evening stars, and
awaking to rosy life at the first touch of morning.
The old English ballads have all the sparkles the energy, and rhythm
of our mountain streams, but Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bunyon
are the fountains from which flows the river--_ay, the Hudson_--of
our language. Irving’s mind was early turned to these sources of our
literature, and we find the result of this study a pure and classic
style. What a beautiful acknowledgment is this: “The pastoral writers
of other countries appear as if they had paid nature an occasional
visit and become acquainted with her general charms, but the British
poets have lived and revelled with her; they have wooed her in her
most secret haunts; they have watched her minutest caprices; a spray
could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground,
a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragrance could not
exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to
the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate
observers and wrought up into some beautiful morality.”
With this deep love for the old masters of English literature, we are
not surprised that Westminster Abbey, with its Poet’s Corner, should be
the subject of one of his earliest essays; and the principal feature of
this essay, and that which makes it the enduring one of all that have
been written on this venerable pile, is the native quality of reverence
and sincerity. And it is indeed pleasant in days, when flippant
writing is often received for wit and misspelled slang accepted for
originality to turn to these essays in which we see the nobility of a
royal heart, and feel that “Truth and Good and Beauty--the offspring
of God--are not subject to the changes which beset the invention of
men.” I make no quotation from this familiar essay. It possesses too
much unity to detach a paragraph or a sentence. I can only say I read
it over and over with the same interest today as years ago in the deep
shadow of that melancholy aisle at the tomb of the unfortunate Mary
Queen of Scots.
There is one other place in England where I took my pocket edition of
the “Sketch Book,”--to Stratford-on-Avon; for, more than any other man,
Irving is associated with the home and burial-place of the world’s
greatest poet. Writers without number, and many well known to fame,
have given their impressions of Stratford, but Irving’s description
supersedes them all. It seems as if the quiet and pensive character of
the man fits into the rural scenery of England--ay! as if the hills and
woodlands of Warwickshire, recognizing a kindred spirit to their gentle
Shakespeare, after the lapse of three centuries, had associated in
enduring framework and sweet companionship the living presence of our
gentlest writer. What a wonderful blending of the old and the new! Two
hundred and fifty years of progress, of struggle and invention! A new
nation rising into being, with its material trinity--the steam-engine,
the printing-press, and the telegraph. The single newspaper of Queen
Elizabeth unfolding in every town and city its crowded columns of daily
and hourly records from every quarter of the globe. Ariel and Puck, at
last thoroughly materialized, and dressed in comely muslin, whisper
to each other across a continent, and beyond the Bermudas, to the
far-off islands of the sea. It seems, indeed, a new world, separated
from the old by greater spaces than waste of waters or the lapse of
years; but in this companionship of Shakespeare and Irving we see the
enduring qualities of the human heart. In the deep sympathy of Irving’s
nature for the olden time we feel that he has added another charm to
Stratford--that we, as a nation, have a better claim to the great
poet. We muse at his grave. We wander along the gently-flowing Avon,
we rest beneath the great oaks of Sir Thomas Lucy, We pick flowers
in the garden of Ann Hathaway’s cottage; it seems as if Irving in
some way belongs here too, and we are not at all certain if the Bacon
theory is established but that Irving will come in for his share of the
dramas, as author of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or the “Merry Wives
of Windsor.” To pass from the very centre of “Merrie England,” with
its hallowed associations and rich inheritance of centuries, to the
mountains and valleys of our own country, would be a sudden transition
if the space were not bridged over and the distance dissipated in
one of the closing paragraphs of this essay: “I had been walking all
day in a complete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the
prism of poetry, which had tinged every object with the hues of the
rainbow. I had been surrounded with fancied beings, with mere airy
nothings conjured up by poetic power, yet which to me had all the charm
of reality; and I could but reflect on the singular gift of the poet,
to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of
nature, to give to things and places a charm and character not their
own, and to turn this working day world into a perfect fairy-land.”
In this passage we find the best description of Irving’s own creative
faculty. This wizard influence which the traveller experiences at
Stratford is equally felt along the banks of the Hudson. The whole
landscape, from the Palisades to the Catskills, is seen today through
the prism of poetry--the magic of his mind spread over the loveliest
vale of the fairest stream that flows, and this working-day world
converted into a perfect fairy-land.
It is said that “walls must get the weather-stain before they grow the
ivy;” that legends like ghosts flourish best in an uncertain twilight,
or
“Where auld ruined castles gray
Nod to the moon.”
We expect to find legends flourishing in the gloaming mountains of old
Scotland. We have easy faith for the Knights of the Round Table, the
Tales of Robin Hood and the brave outlaws of Sherwood Forest. We see
the frozen mythology of Scandinavia every day melting into poetry, like
the fabled words of Plato or the thawed-out music of Baron Munchausen’s
flute. We read the story of Undine and Hildebrand, the “Arabian
Nights,” the prowess of the Cid, and the warm troubadour chivalry of
southern Europe; but what have we to do with legends and poetry in the
broad sunlight of the nineteenth century? These have no place when
facts and history pre-empt the soil.
Yes! but this adds to the wonder and charm of Irving’s creative power!
the romance of Europe was to be had for the gleaning. In America it had
to be created; and the wonder is that this which sprang up in a night
is more real than the legends which have grown and blossomed for a
thousand years. He touched the mountains and the valleys with the wand
of his fancy, and they were peopled with beings more substantial than
fairies, more real than history.
In his “Rip Van Winkle” and “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which I take
as illustrations of his American legends, we at once see that he is
one of the few writers who appreciate the fact that comedy is quite as
natural as tragedy. At every step in the story we see the impossible;
but after all we feel that it is none the less real. Bryant’s poem,
“The Kaaterskill Falls,” is at once full of unity, possibility, and
beauty; but it is a dream compared with the “Legend of Rip Van Winkle.”
At the time it was written we understand that Irving had never visited
the Catskill Mountains; in the legend itself we see traces of a German
superstition; but there is this feature in all his stories: wherever he
located them they seem at once to take root and flourish. This story is
too well known, to need delineation. The old Dutch village, with its
philosophers and sages; the shiftless but good-natured Van Winkle; the
strange adventure on the mountain; the return--it all passes before
our mind like a series of pictures: and we come to the closing scene,
which the play-writer would have done well to follow; for there is more
dramatic unity in the story than in the drama. “Does nobody here know
Rip Van Winkle?” “Oh! Rip Van Winkle,” exclaimed two or three. “Oh! to
be sure; there’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against a tree.” Rip
looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the
mountain, apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow
was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether
he was himself--or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment it was
again demanded what was his name. “God knows!” exclaimed he, at his
wits’ end. “I’m not myself. I’m some one else. That’s me yonder--no,
that’s somebody else got into my shoes. I was myself last night,
but I fell asleep on the mountains, and they’ve changed my gun, and
everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I cannot tell what’s my name
or who I am.” At this critical moment a fresh comely woman pressed
through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a
chubby child in her arms which, frightened at his looks, began to cry.
“Hush, Rip,” cried she, “the old man won’t hurt you.” The name of the
child, the air of the mother, the tone of the voice, all awakened a
train of recollections in his mind. “What is your name my good woman?”
asked he. “Judith Gardenier.” “And your father’s name?” “Oh, poor man!
Rip Van Winkle was his name. It’s twenty years since he went away from
home with his gun, and has never been heard of since. His dog came home
without him; but whether he shot himself or was carried away by the
Indians nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.” Rip had but one
question more to ask, but he put it with a faltering voice. “Where’s
your mother?” “Oh! she, too, died but a short time since. She broke a
blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedler.” There was a
drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could
control himself no longer. He caught his daughter and child in his
arms. “I am your father!” cried he. “Young Rip Van Winkle once, old Rip
Van Winkle now. Does nobody here know poor Rip Van Winkle?”
This touch of humor, even in the most intense part of the drama, is
entirely consistent and does not disturb in the least its charming
reality. The same element is still more marked in the “Legend of Sleepy
Hollow.” and perhaps even in greater degree illustrates the reality of
Irving’s legends--their power of taking root and flourishing even in
the midst of history.
On the old post-road, half way between Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, a
monument marks the spot where Major Andre was captured, erected in
1853 by the county of Westchester to the memory of the brave men who
could not be tempted by British gold. But this marble shaft with its
beautiful inscription lack the magnetic influence and the heartfelt
interest of the plain headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow;
for in the universal heart of mankind the poet’s corner is dearer than
the hero’s tomb, although, as here, the hero springs from the common
people, and his monument commemorates the highest and the rarest
courage--the heroism of honesty!
Nay, more; the United States Government, in remembrance of Paulding’s
courage, gave him a large tract of land in Ohio, and from this revenue
one of his sons built one of the finest villas on the Hudson; but the
traveller today along our river, even the most loyal _American_, who
spells his country’s name with a good-sized capital letter and rightly
considers it the first in the alphabet of nations, turns with a deeper
reverence and a truer love to a little cottage near at hand, with its
quaint turrets and gables looking out on the tranquil waters of Tappan
Zee, the quiet home of Diedrich Knickerbocker--the Dutch Herodotus--the
writer of the gentle heart.
Everything that Irving has written about Tarrytown seems to partake
of the drowsy, dreamy influence that pervades the very atmosphere.
The “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” seems as native to the soil as the
bright, honest-faced flowers of their snug-sheltered gardens. As
Darwin or Huxley would say, Irving’s stories fit themselves to the
environments. They belong to the age and the time which they represent.
What a natural picture, one we all have seen, is this of old Baltus
Van Tassel dozing his life away in solid comfort, his bustling dame
completely occupied with her housekeeping and her poultry, letting
her rosy-cheeked daughter Katrina do just as she pleased, adding a
sage and sensible observation fully appreciated by each generation
and which may some day be endorsed by colleges and institutions of
learning, that “ducks and geese are foolish things and must be looked
after, but girls can take care of themselves.” We are introduced to
Ichabod Crane, the Yankee schoolmaster of the neighborhood, and Brom
Bones, his dangerous rival for the hand and fortune of Katrina. They
meet at a quilting-party at the house of Mynheer Van Tassel, where we
are entertained with ghostly stories of the olden time, including a
marvelous adventure of Brom Bones with the well-known goblin-rider, the
Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow.
Ichabod lingers after the company disperses,--the custom, I believe, of
old-time lovers; but something must have gone wrong in the interview,
for “he sallies forth with an air quite desolate and chopfallen, and
now at the very witching time of night he mounts his steed for his
homeward journey. Unluckily, his route was the very road over which
the headless horseman was wont to ride. The night grew darker and
darker. The stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky. He had never felt
so lonely and miserable. He passed the fearful tree where Major Andre
was captured, but in the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of
the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror.
To turn and fly was now too late, for with a scramble and a bound the
shadowy object put itself into motion and stood at once in the middle
of the road. Ichabod bethought himself of the galloping Hessian, and
quickened his steed with the hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger,
however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and
fell into a walk. The strange horseman did the same. His heart began to
sink within him. He endeavored to sing a psalm-tune, but his parched
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. There was something in the
silence of his strange companion at once mysterious and appalling. It
was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which
brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky,
gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck
on perceiving that he was headless, but his horror was still more
increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his
shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle.” His
terror rose to desperation, and, like Caius Cassius in Macaulay’s
poem of the “Battle of Lake Regillus,” he rode “for death and life;”
but the spectre started full jump with him. “Away, then, they dashed
through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at every
bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air as he stretched
his long, lank body away over his horse’s head in the eagerness of his
flight. ‘If I can but reach the bridge,’ thought Ichabod, ‘I’m safe.’
Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind
him. He even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive
kick, and his steed sprang upon the bridge. He thundered over the
resounding planks. He gained the opposite side. Then he saw the goblin
rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of launching his head
at him. He endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late.
It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled
headlong into the dust, and the black steed and the goblin-rider passed
by like a whirlwind. The next day a saddle was found trampled in the
dirt; the tracks of horses deeply dented in the road, evidently at
furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank
of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black,
was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a
shattered pumpkin.”
Throughout the entire race we are reminded of the midnight ride of
Tarn o’Shanter when pursued by witches, and his strange adventure
at the Bridge of Doon. In fact, the old Dutch church is not a bad
representation of old Alloway Kirk, and there is still greater
resemblance in the fact that the _reality_ of the poem and the reality
of the story are not in the least affected by the humorous catastrophe.
The legends of “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” were introduced in
the “Sketch Book” as having been found among the papers of the late
Diedrich Knickerbocker. In touches of humor and gentleness of spirit
they are entirely consistent with the old gentleman’s character. The
wit and humor are always kindly, and these qualities find happy
illustration in the fact that Mr. Jesse Merwin, the original of Ichabod
Crane, whom Irving met at the house of Judge Van Ness, was always
proud of the delineation, and returned the compliment in the sincerest
way. Think of it! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Ichabod Crane
survives the pumpkin catastrophe, woos and weds some other Katrina, and
names a son after Washington Irving. After Irving’s death a letter was
found among his papers--written by our Yankee schoolmaster, endorsed in
Irving’s own handwriting--“From Jesse Merwin the original of Ichabod
Crane.”
I have dwelt at length on the “Sketch Book,” for in these essays the
writer seems to have _unpacked_ every quality of his style. We find
Bracebridge Hall outlined in his “Christmas Sketches,” the spirit of
the Alhambra in “Westminster Abbey,” and Knickerbocker in his “American
Legends.”
It is, moreover, one of the few books that never grow old. It belongs
to the people, and is one of the best known of American books. A fine
critic and scholar, George Sumner, said that the “Sketch Book” was more
widely read in its original tongue than any in our language except
the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and Longfellow, in an address before the
Massachusetts Historical Society, pays it a beautiful tribute in the
following poetic paragraph:
“Every reader has his first book, one among all others which first
fascinates his imagination and excites and satisfies the desires of his
mind. To me this was the ‘Sketch Book’ of Washington Irving. How many
delightful works he has given us, written before and since! volumes of
history and fiction which illustrate his native land, and some of which
illuminate it and make the Hudson as romantic as the Rhine. Yet still
the charm of the ‘Sketch-Book’ remains unbroken, the old fascination
still lingers about it, and whenever I open its pages, I open also that
mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth.”
“Bracebridge Hall,” his next volume, written at the suggestion of
Thomas Moore, gives us a fine picture of old-fashioned English life.
The book begins where most stories end--with a wedding gathering;
but when we are fairly introduced to the Hall and its hospitable
proprietor, we are in no hurry for the wedding to take place. In the
society of Lady Lilly-craft the old General, the tender-hearted Phoebe
Wilkins, old Simon and Christy, we are content to float on together for
months, if need be, through a social dream of five hundred pages. I
know of no gathering where the reader more thoroughly feels that he is
an invited guest. The story has none of the characteristics of a novel.
It possesses neither plot nor dramatic quality. The essays are strung
together like beads on a slender thread, and the value is in the beads
and not the string. We may forget the fair Julia and her brave Captain,
but the sketch of the “Stout Gentleman” and “St. Mark’s Eve” once read
are never forgotten. We may forget the day after we read it whether
the wedding took place in the morning or in the afternoon, whether
the bride had eyes blue or hazel, or like most of lovers, had none at
all; but the character of the old Squire, with his dogs, his whims and
kindly heart, who “taught his boys to ride, and shoot, and speak the
truth,” taken an enduring hold on the memory, when we close the volume
we feel that Lowell in his “Fable for the Critics” has given us in a
dozen lines a genuine crayon sketch:
“But allow me to speak what I honestly feel;
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele;
Throw in all of Addison _minus_ the chill,
With the whole of that partnership, stock, and good-will
Mix well, and while stirring hum o’er as a spell
The fine old English gentleman: simmer it well.
Sweeten just to your own private liking; then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain.
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves--
And you’ll have a choice nature not wholly deserving,
A name either English or Yankee--just Irving.”
Next to “Bracebridge Hall,” in order of publication, we have the “Tales
of a Traveller,” to my mind the most _unanchored_ of Irving’s writings,
and therefore lacking for the most part the great charm and unity of
his other essays, viz., local associations and attachments.
But, if any of his friends, on either side of the Atlantic, were
disposed to be critical, their censure was of short duration; for his
next work the “Life and Voyages of Columbus,” was a new departure in
the right direction. This event--the greatest in the annals of mankind,
the most daring and romantic in the domain of truth, the sublime energy
and perseverance of a man struggling with fate--was a happy subject for
his pen, and it was so carefully written, so graceful in style, and
so accurate in research, that Lord Jeffrey remarks in the _Edinburgh
Review_: “It will supersede every other work on the subject and never
itself be superseded.”
Compliments were now literally showered upon him on every hand. The
Royal Society of Literature voted the new historian one of their
fifty-guinea gold medals, and, with just pride, Irving writes to this
brother, “What makes this the more gratifying is that the other medal
is voted to Hallam, author of the ‘Middle Ages.’”
There is an incident connected with this medal worthy of notice. Some
years after his return to America, it was stolen from his brother’s
safe during a fire, but returned the same night by the thief, who slyly
opened the door of his brother’s residence and threw it into the hall.
This medal melted down into a mass of shapeless gold, the work of an
hour, would have been worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Even the
robber had respect for the guinea-stamp when it bore the inscription of
Washington Irving.
“The Chronicles of Granada,” his next volume, not only opens up, as the
writer says, a tract of history which had been overrun with the weeds
of fable, but also forms a natural introduction or threshold over which
we pass from the “History of Columbus” to the “Tales of the Alhambra,”
aptly styled by Prescott “the beautiful Spanish Sketch Book.”
His “Crayon Miscellany,” published on his return from Europe, contains
the “Tour on the Prairies” and the well-known essays, “Abbottsford” and
“Newstead Abbey.” Then follow the Spanish Legends, “Astoria” and the
“Adventures of Captain Bonneville.” The “Life of Goldsmith” comes next
in order--a labor of sympathy and love. The “Life of Mahomet” shows his
passion for Oriental history. “Wolfert Roost,” published at the age
of seventy-two, is full of the old-time humor of “Sleepy Hollow,” and
brings us to the crowning labor--the fitting capital of the column--his
“Life of Washington.”
Wonderful as these volumes are, which even in this brief review seem
to rise up before us like a new vision of the “Arabian Nights,” in
our literature they are only part and parcel of the poetry of his own
experience. His picturesque and varied essays are the natural product
of a varied and wandering life, and to feel the full beauty of his
works we must read them in the light of his early and later history.
When seventeen years of age he made his first voyage up the Hudson,
“in the good old times,” as he expresses it, “before steamboats and
railroads had driven all poetry and romance out of travel.” Three
years later we see him in the northern wilderness of New York _en
route_ for Ogdensburg and Montreal--a tedious journey in those days
of corduroy roads and unbridged rivers. After his return, we find him
at Ballston and Saratoga Springs, given up by his friends to die of
consumption. The following year we see him in southern Europe, in
quest of health at Marseilles, Genoa, and Sicily; at Rome, in company
with Washington Allston, half persuaded by the enthusiasm of genius
to try his own hand as an artist; at Paris, spending six months with
profit and pleasure, judging from his brief journal and correspondence;
then, through Belgium and Holland, to London, the great city of modern
civilization--yes, for centuries the university of the poet and writer,
compared with which New York, with its strange mixture of eighty
thousand inhabitants, must have seemed a parish school.
After two years’ absence he returns with health restored, resumes his
studies, and in his twenty-fourth year is admitted attorney-at-law.
But the following year we find him pursuing the main business of his
life--viz., literature and travel. The first number of _Salmagundi_
appears early in January. In March, his letters bear date Philadelphia;
in May, Fredericksburgh; in June, Richmond, drawn thither by the
magnetism and trial of Aaron Burr. The following season he makes two
trips to Montreal, and spends a number of weeks at the residence of
Judge Van Ness, now known as Lindenwald, home of the late Martin Van
Buren. We next see him at Baltimore and Washington--cities far removed
from New York in those primitive times when our traveller “spent three
days on the road and one night in a log-house.” In 1813 we find him
editor of the _Analectic Magazine_ in Philadelphia. In 1814, during
our second war with Great Britain we see him secretary of Governor
Tompkins, with the rank of colonel, bearing despatches through the
western wilderness to Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario. At the close of
the war we see him in his brother’s counting-house in Liverpool. The
following season he makes a pilgrimage through the Welsh Mountains, the
central part of England, and the Highlands of Scotland. The next season
we find him harassed with business, until the failure and bankruptcy of
the firm swept away his brother’s fortune and his own; and at the age
of thirty-five Irving went up to London to commence life anew.
It seems as if the success of every man is in part the transcript of
the same story that Genius has less need of opportunity than adversity.
“That he that creeps from cradle on to grave,
Unskilled save in the velvet course of fortune,
Hath missed the discipline of noble hearts.”
In this fifteen years of wandering by land and sea, this general study
of human nature in every phase of life, we find a good capital and
rich experience for the coming essayist. Add this to a fine classical
education and a still finer course of reading from the English authors
of the Elizabethan and Augustan periods, under the guidance of his
brothers, all of whom had a taste for literature, and we have one side
of the equation of Washington Irving’s life. The question now is, What
is he equal to, what can he do? The study and discipline of every young
man find expression in the plain algebraic symbols _x_ × _y_--unknown
quantities in the unworked problem of life. Mere education may be
furnished by teacher, parent, or guardian, or it may be acquired by the
patience and perseverance of a youth like Elihu Burritt, who learns
eighty languages at the forge, but the result rests alone in the _will_
and _manhood_ of the individual; and it was this which supported Irving
when he wandered almost penniless through the streets of London, and in
the darkest hour of adversity, when urged by his brothers and his old
friend, Commodore Decatur, to come home and accept the first clerkship
of the navy at a salary of $2400 a year, led him to reply, “I am
determined not to return until I have sent some writings before me that
shall make me return to the smiles rather than skulk back to the pity
of my friends.”
It was this _faith in himself_ which published the first volume of
the “Sketch Book” at his own expense when declined by the London
publishers,--the reception of which in Britain, France, and Germany
silently answered the standing sneer of the English critic, “Who reads
an American book?”
The following season, happy in his success, we find him in Paris
writing “Bracebridge Hall,” and launching his brother Peter in a
steamboat enterprise with a rashness worthy of Colonel Sellers in the
“Gilded Age” of Mark Twain. We next see him at Leyden, Amsterdam,
Frankfort, and Heidelburg, visiting the castles and ruins along the
Rhine; then to Strasburg and through the Black Forest to the upper
waters of the Danube. On his way to Munich and Vienna, he visits the
battlefield of Blenheim; then through Moravia and Bohemia to Dresden,
where he remains six months tossed about, as he expresses it, on the
stream of society; then through the Hartz Mountains, to Paris, where he
remains one year and writes the “Tales of a Traveller.” On his return
from London he makes an excursion through Orleans and the centre of
France to Madrid, where, in the midst of books and manuscripts, he
works fourteen hours a day for ten months on the “History of Columbus.”
We next see him on his way through La Mancha and the desolate mountains
of the Morenas, well known today through the illustrations of Doré,
and rounds out the year in Spain with an Oriental dream of ten weeks in
the palace of the Alhambra. Diedrich Knickerbocker in the romantic land
of Cervantes, with a sovereignty as absolute as Sancho Panza’s firmly
established on the throne of Boabdil!
But an appointment from President Jackson breaks the enchantment, and
he repairs to London as Secretary of the American Legation. We see him
at Oxford University receiving a degree of LL.D., almost overwhelmed
by the acclamations of the students and cries of Ichabod Crane, Rip
Van Winkle, Diedrich Knickerbocker, and Geoffrey Crayon. We find him
at Newstead Abbey, occupying Lord Byron’s room by way of inspiration,
breathing in as it were the very oxygen of poetry among the surviving
oaks of Sherwood Forest. We see him travelling with Martin Van Buren,
on a Christmas holiday, through England; and after seventeen years of
absence he returns to his native country, the acknowledged pioneer of
American literature, and, like him whose name he honored, “first in the
hearts of his countrymen.”
At the solicitation of his friends, he receives a public banquet in his
native city, presided over by Chancellor Kent, pronounced by Charles
King, President of Columbia College,--the most successful dinner ever
given in the United States.
During the summer he visits the Catskill Mountains, and the White
Mountains, a section abounding with stories that never reach the
dignity of a legend. We see him on his “Tour of the Prairies” through
Ohio to the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri.
In 1855 he purchases ten acres of land two miles south of Tarrytown,
and the Wolfert Roost of old Jacob Van Tassel is transformed into the
Sunnyside of Washington Irving. It seems strange that the old family
device, “Flourishing in sun and shade,” should be happily abbreviated
here in Sunnyside, and the three holly leaves given as a coat of arms
to his warlike ancestor, William de Irwin, by Robert Bruce on the
field of Bannockburn, should, after the lapse of five hundred years,
find poetic association in the ivy that twines about the porch of his
cottage, brought from the home of the minstrel, who has woven the stern
history of Scotland with the flowers of poesy--from Abbottsford, the
land of his fathers, transplanted by Mrs. Renwick, the “Blued-eyed
Lassie” of Robert Burns; and stranger still that this wanderer of the
family should associate this device with a _real_ family shield or
shelter, the only device of our broad land--the American home--and
gather under his own roof his brother and sister.
Busy and happy in the development of his plans, he declines the office
of mayor of the city of New York, and also the post of Secretary of
the Navy in the Cabinet of Martin Van Buren. Two years later, urged by
his friends and a personal letter of Daniel Webster, he accepts the
appointment of minister to Spain. He spends four years at Madrid in the
midst of revolution and insurrection; is summoned to London to assist
in the settlement of the Oregon claims; returns to Sunnyside, builds a
new tower to the cottage, and recommences the “Life of Washington.” He
is now seventy years of age, but we find him on his old familiar trips
to Baltimore and in the library of Washington, looking up material for
his history; for it was characteristic of the man, even to the close of
his life, whatever he did to do it accurately and well.
He spends a portion of the following summer at Saratoga and Niagara,
and his trip through the lakes calls up his first visit to the St.
Lawrence and the memories of his early life. A letter written at this
time to a niece in Paris shows the wonderful changes of fifty years,
presenting a contrast almost as effective and dramatic as the long
absence of his sleeping hero. It seemed necessary and fitting for the
traveller through many lands to come back again to this point of his
early wandering in order to complete the cycle of his life. “One of
the most interesting circumstances of my tour,” he writes, “was the
sojourn of a day at Ogdensburg. I had not been there since I visited
it in 1803, when I was but twenty years of age. All the country then
was a wilderness. We floated down the Black River in a scow; we toiled
through forests in wagons drawn by oxen; we slept in hunters’ cabins,
and were once four-and-twenty hours without food. Well, here I was
again after a lapse of fifty years. I found a populous city occupying
both banks of the Oswegatchie, connected by bridges. It was the
Ogdensburg of which a village plot had been planned at the time of our
visits. I sought the old French fort where we had been quartered: not a
trace of it was left. I sat under a tree on the site and looked round
upon what I had known as a wilderness, now teeming with life, crowded
with habitations. I walked to the point where I used to launch forth
in a canoe with the daughters of Mr. Ogden and Mr. Hoffman. It was now
a bustling landing-place for steamers. There were still some rocks
where I used to sit of an evening and accompany with my flute one of
the ladies who sang. I sat for a long time summoning recollections of
by-gone days and of the happy beings by whom I was then surrounded. All
had passed away! All were dead and gone! Of that young and joyous party
I was the sole survivor. They had all lived quietly at home, out of the
reach of mischance, yet had gone down to their graves, while I, who had
been wandering about the world, exposed to all hazards by sea and land,
was yet alive. I have often, in my shifting about the world, come upon
the traces of former existence, but I do not think anything has made a
stronger impression upon me than this my second visit to the banks of
the Oswegatchie.”
To come back again after the lapse of a century to the memory and
traces of his early life seems indeed like the fulfilment of Tennyson’s
dream in the “Sleeping Beauty,” and we wonder if the retrospect from
this lone standpoint of three score years and ten fulfilled the dreams
of the youth of twenty. Perhaps so! for it was the good fortune of
Irving to _realize_ his visions, and in this particular he stands
alone in the field of letters. Unlike the most of us, his “castles
in Spain” were of genuine marble, and he lived to walk beneath their
turrets and to know the richness of his inheritance. On one of his
last visits to London he was domiciled with a friend in a cloister of
Westminster Abbey, and in one of his midnight reveries he writes to
his sister: “How strange it seems to me that I should thus be nestled
quietly in the very heart of the old pile that used to be the scene
of my half-romantic, half-meditative haunts. It is like my sojourn in
the halls of the Alhambra. Am I always to have my dreams turned into
realities?”
Singularly enough, even Sunnyside itself is fore-shadowed in his
“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” written in his thirty-sixth year, and the
reader of the “Sketch Book” will remember his reference, near the
beginning of the essay, to a little valley near Tarrytown, one of the
quietest places in the whole world; and he says, “If ever I should wish
for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions
and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none
more promising than this little valley.” Twenty-three years afterward
he writes to his brother from Spain: “I hope some day or other to sleep
my last sleep in this favorite resort of my boyhood;” and when the long
procession wound its way from Sunnyside through quiet Irvington and
Tarrytown among scenes which had found new charm in Irving’s life,
across the old bridge draped with mourning, past the Dutch church with
its hallowed memories of two hundred years, to the peaceful valley of
Sleepy Hollow, it seemed not so much a mourning procession as a poetic
pilgrimage--as if his dreams were realized in his last sleep; as if
there were a kindred sympathy in the words “dust to dust,” and that
the land he had filled with his legends was only receiving him to his
own. It was one of those warm November days which seem to belong to the
Hudson Valley, as mild and gentle as the spring-time, and the broad
river, every point of which is punctuated with exclamations of beauty,
lay tranquil as the heart of the gentle writer, as if it, too, missed a
friend and companion; for
“They do not err
Who say that when a poet dies
Mute Nature mourns her worshiper
And celebrates his obsequies.”