LIFE IN EUROPE: LITERARY ACTIVITY.
When Irving sailed from New York, it was with lively anticipations of
witnessing the stirring events to follow the return of Bonaparte from
Elba. When he reached Liverpool the curtain had fallen in Bonaparte's
theatre. The first spectacle that met the traveler's eye was the mail
coaches, darting through the streets, decked with laurel and bringing
the news of Waterloo. As usual, Irving's sympathies were with the
unfortunate. "I think," he says, writing of the exile of St. Helena,
"the cabinet has acted with littleness toward him. In spite of all his
misdeeds he is a noble fellow [_pace_ Madame de Rémusat], and I am
confident will eclipse, in the eyes of posterity, all the crowned
wiseacres that have crushed him by their overwhelming confederacy. If
anything could place the Prince Regent in a more ridiculous light, it is
Bonaparte suing for his magnanimous protection. Every compliment paid
to this bloated sensualist, this inflation of sack and sugar, turns to
the keenest sarcasm."
After staying a week with his brother Peter, who was recovering from an
indisposition, Irving went to Birmingham, the residence of his
brother-in-law, Henry Van Wart, who had married his youngest sister,
Sarah; and from thence to Sydenham, to visit Campbell. The poet was not
at home. To Mrs. Campbell Irving expressed his regret that her husband
did not attempt something on a grand scale.
"'It is unfortunate for Campbell,' said she, 'that he lives in the
same age with Scott and Byron.' I asked why. 'Oh,' said she, 'they
write so much and so rapidly. Mr. Campbell writes slowly, and it
takes him some time to get under way; and just as he has fairly
begun out comes one of their poems, that sets the world agog, and
quite daunts him, so that he throws by his pen in despair.' I
pointed out the essential difference in their kinds of poetry, and
the qualities which insured perpetuity to that of her husband. 'You
can't persuade Campbell of that,' said she. 'He is apt to
undervalue his own works, and to consider his own little lights
put out, whenever they come blazing out with their great torches.'
"I repeated the conversation to Scott some time afterward, and it
drew forth a characteristic comment. 'Pooh!' said he, good
humoredly; 'how can Campbell mistake the matter so much? Poetry
goes by quality, not by bulk. My poems are mere cairngorms, wrought
up, perhaps, with a cunning hand, and may pass well in the market
as long as cairngorms are the fashion; but they are mere Scotch
pebbles, after all. Now, Tom Campbell's are real diamonds, and
diamonds of the first water.'"
Returning to Birmingham, Irving made excursions to Kenilworth, Warwick,
and Stratford-on-Avon, and a tour through Wales with James Renwick, a
young American of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had for a
time filled the chair of natural philosophy in Columbia College. He was
a son of Mrs. Jane Renwick, a charming woman and a life-long friend of
Irving, the daughter of the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey, of Lochmaben, Scotland,
and famous in literature as "The Blue-Eyed Lassie" of Burns. From
another song, "When first I saw my Jeanie's Face," which does not
appear in the poet's collected works, the biographer quotes:--
"But, sair, I doubt some happier swain
Has gained my Jeanie's favor;
If sae, may every bliss be hers,
Tho' I can never have her.
"But gang she east, or gang she west,
'Twixt Nith and Tweed all over,
While men have eyes, or ears, or taste,
She'll always find a lover."
During Irving's protracted stay in England he did not by any means lose
his interest in his beloved New York and the little society that was
always dear to him. He relied upon his friend Brevoort to give him the
news of the town, and in return he wrote long letters,--longer and more
elaborate and formal than this generation has leisure to write or to
read; letters in which the writer laid himself out to be entertaining,
and detailed his emotions and state of mind as faithfully as his travels
and outward experiences.
No sooner was our war with England over than our navy began to make a
reputation for itself in the Mediterranean. In his letter of August,
1815, Irving dwells with pride on Decatur's triumph over the Algerine
pirates. He had just received a letter from that "worthy little tar,
Jack Nicholson," dated on board the Flambeau, off Algiers. In it
Nicholson says that "they fell in with and captured the admiral's ship,
and _killed him_." Upon which Irving remarks: "As this is all that
Jack's brevity will allow him to say on the subject, I should be at a
loss to know whether they killed the admiral _before_ or _after_ his
capture. The well-known humanity of our tars, however, induces me to the
former conclusion." Nicholson, who has the honor of being alluded to in
"The Croakers," was always a great favorite with Irving. His gallantry
on shore was equal to his bravery at sea, but unfortunately his
diffidence was greater than his gallantry; and while his susceptibility
to female charms made him an easy and a frequent victim, he could never
muster the courage to declare his passion. Upon one occasion, when he
was desperately enamored of a lady whom he wished to marry, he got
Irving to write for him a love-letter, containing an offer of his heart
and hand. The enthralled but bashful sailor carried the letter in his
pocket till it was worn out, without ever being able to summon pluck
enough to deliver it.
While Irving was in Wales the Wiggins family and Madame Bonaparte passed
through Birmingham, on their way to Cheltenham. Madame was still
determined to assert her rights as a Bonaparte. Irving cannot help
expressing sympathy for Wiggins: "The poor man has his hands full, with
such a bevy of beautiful women under his charge, and all doubtless bent
on pleasure and admiration." He hears, however, nothing further of her,
except the newspapers mention her being at Cheltenham. "There are so
many stars and comets thrown out of their orbits, and whirling about the
world at present, that a little star like Madame Bonaparte attracts but
slight attention, even though she draw after her so sparkling a tail as
the Wiggins family." In another letter he exclaims: "The world is surely
topsy-turvy, and its inhabitants shaken out of place: emperors and
kings, statesmen and philosophers, Bonaparte, Alexander, Johnson, and
the Wigginses, all strolling about the face of the earth."
The business of the Irving brothers soon absorbed all Washington's time
and attention. Peter was an invalid, and the whole weight of the
perplexing affairs of the failing firm fell upon the one who detested
business, and counted every hour lost that he gave to it. His letters
for two years are burdened with harassments in uncongenial details and
unsuccessful struggles. Liverpool, where he was compelled to pass most
of his time, had few attractions for him, and his low spirits did not
permit him to avail himself of such social advantages as were offered.
It seems that our enterprising countrymen flocked abroad, on the
conclusion of peace. "This place [writes Irving] swarms with Americans.
You never saw a more motley race of beings. Some seem as if just from
the woods, and yet stalk about the streets and public places with all
the easy nonchalance that they would about their own villages. Nothing
can surpass the dauntless independence of all form, ceremony, fashion,
or reputation of a downright, unsophisticated American. Since the war,
too, particularly, our lads seem to think they are 'the salt of the
earth' and the legitimate lords of creation. It would delight you to
see some of them playing Indian when surrounded by the wonders and
improvements of the Old World. It is impossible to match these fellows
by anything this side the water. Let an Englishman talk of the battle of
Waterloo, and they will immediately bring up New Orleans and Plattsburg.
A thoroughbred, thoroughly appointed soldier is nothing to a Kentucky
rifleman," etc., etc. In contrast to this sort of American was Charles
King, who was then abroad: "Charles is exactly what an American should
be abroad: frank, manly, and unaffected in his habits and manners,
liberal and independent in his opinions, generous and unprejudiced in
his sentiments towards other nations, but most loyally attached to his
own." There was a provincial narrowness at that date and long after in
America, which deprecated the open-minded patriotism of King and of
Irving as it did the clear-sighted loyalty of Fenimore Cooper.
The most anxious time of Irving's life was the winter of 1815-16. The
business worry increased. He was too jaded with the din of pounds,
shillings, and pence to permit his pen to invent facts or to adorn
realities. Nevertheless, he occasionally escapes from the tread-mill. In
December he is in London, and entranced with the acting of Miss O'Neil.
He thinks that Brevoort, if he saw her, would infallibly fall in love
with this "divine perfection of a woman." He writes: "She is, to my
eyes, the most soul-subduing actress I ever saw; I do not mean from her
personal charms, which are great, but from the truth, force, and pathos
of her acting. I have never been so completely melted, moved, and
overcome at a theatre as by her performances.... Kean, the prodigy, is
to me insufferable. He is vulgar, full of trick, and a complete
mannerist. This is merely my opinion. He is cried up as a second
Garrick, as a reformer of the stage, etc. It may be so. He may be right,
and all the other actors wrong. This is certain: he is either very good
or very bad. I think decidedly the latter; and I find no medium opinions
concerning him. I am delighted with Young, who acts with great judgment,
discrimination, and feeling. I think him much the best actor at present
on the English stage.... In certain characters, such as may be classed
with Macbeth, I do not think that Cooper has his equal in England. Young
is the only actor I have seen who can compare with him." Later, Irving
somewhat modified his opinion of Kean. He wrote to Brevoort: "Kean is a
strange compound of merits and defects. His excellence consists in
sudden and brilliant touches, in vivid exhibitions of passion and
emotion. I do not think him a discriminating actor, or critical either
at understanding or delineating character; but he produces effects which
no other actor does."
In the summer of 1816, on his way from Liverpool to visit his sister's
family at Birmingham, Irving tarried for a few days at a country place
near Shrewsbury on the border of Wales, and while there encountered a
character whose portrait is cleverly painted. It is interesting to
compare this first sketch with the elaboration of it in the essay on The
Angler in the "Sketch-Book."
"In one of our morning strolls [he writes, July 15th] along the
banks of the Aleen, a beautiful little pastoral stream that rises
among the Welsh mountains and throws itself into the Dee, we
encountered a veteran angler of old Isaac Walton's school. He was
an old Greenwich out-door pensioner, had lost one leg in the battle
of Camperdown, had been in America in his youth, and indeed had
been quite a rover, but for many years past had settled himself
down in his native village, not far distant, where he lived very
independently on his pension and some other small annual sums,
amounting in all to about £40. His great hobby, and indeed the
business of his life, was to angle. I found he had read Isaac
Walton very attentively; he seemed to have imbibed all his
simplicity of heart, contentment of mind, and fluency of tongue. We
kept company with him almost the whole day, wandering along the
beautiful banks of the river, admiring the ease and elegant
dexterity with which the old fellow managed his angle, throwing the
fly with unerring certainty at a great distance and among
overhanging bushes, and waving it gracefully in the air, to keep it
from entangling, as he stumped with his staff and wooden leg from
one bend of the river to another. He kept up a continual flow of
cheerful and entertaining talk, and what I particularly liked him
for was, that though we tried every way to entrap him into some
abuse of America and its inhabitants, there was no getting him to
utter an ill-natured word concerning us. His whole conversation and
deportment illustrated old Isaac's maxims as to the benign
influence of angling over the human heart.... I ought to mention
that he had two companions--one, a ragged, picturesque varlet, that
had all the air of a veteran poacher, and I warrant would find any
fish-pond in the neighborhood in the darkest night; the other was a
disciple of the old philosopher, studying the art under him, and
was son and heir apparent to the landlady of the village tavern."
A contrast to this pleasing picture is afforded by some character
sketches at the little watering-place of Buxton, which our kindly
observer visited the same year.
"At the hotel where we put up [he writes] we had a most singular
and whimsical assemblage of beings. I don't know whether you were
ever at an English watering-place, but if you have not been, you
have missed the best opportunity of studying English oddities, both
moral and physical. I no longer wonder at the English being such
excellent caricaturists, they have such an inexhaustible number and
variety of subjects to study from. The only care should be not to
follow fact too closely, for I'll swear I have met with characters
and figures that would be condemned as extravagant, if faithfully
delineated by pen or pencil. At a watering-place like Buxton, where
people really resort for health, you see the great tendency of the
English to run into excrescences and bloat out into grotesque
deformities. As to noses, I say nothing of them, though we had
every variety: some snubbed and turned up, with distended nostrils,
like a dormer window on the roof of a house; others convex and
twisted like a buck-handled knife; and others magnificently
efflorescent, like a full-blown cauliflower. But as to the persons
that were attached to these noses, fancy any distortion,
protuberance, and fungous embellishment that can be produced in the
human form by high and gross feeding, by the bloating operations of
malt liquors, and by the rheumy influence of a damp, foggy,
vaporous climate. One old fellow was an exception to this, for
instead of acquiring that expansion and sponginess to which old
people are prone in this country, from the long course of internal
and external soakage they experience, he had grown dry and stiff in
the process of years. The skin of his face had so shrunk away that
he could not close eyes or mouth--the latter, therefore, stood on a
perpetual ghastly grin, and the former on an incessant stare. He
had but one serviceable joint in his body, which was at the bottom
of the backbone, and that creaked and grated whenever he bent. He
could not raise his feet from the ground, but skated along the
drawing-room carpet whenever he wished to ring the bell. The only
sign of moisture in his whole body was a pellucid drop that I
occasionally noticed on the end of a long, dry nose. He used
generally to shuffle about in company with a little fellow that was
fat on one side and lean on the other. That is to say, he was
warped on one side as if he had been scorched before the fire; he
had a wry neck, which made his head lean on one shoulder; his hair
was smugly powdered, and he had a round, smirking, smiling, apple
face, with a bloom on it like that of a frost-bitten leaf in
autumn. We had an old, fat general by the name of Trotter, who had,
I suspect, been promoted to his high rank to get him out of the way
of more able and active officers, being an instance that a man may
occasionally rise in the world through absolute lack of merit. I
could not help watching the movements of this redoubtable old Hero,
who, I'll warrant, has been the champion and safeguard of half the
garrison towns in England, and fancying to myself how Bonaparte
would have delighted in having such toast-and-butter generals to
deal with. This old cad is doubtless a sample of those generals
that flourished in the old military school, when armies would
manoeuvre and watch each other for months; now and then have a
desperate skirmish, and, after marching and countermarching about
the 'Low Countries' through a glorious campaign, retire on the
first pinch of cold weather into snug winter quarters in some fat
Flemish town, and eat and drink and fiddle through the winter.
Boney must have sadly disconcerted the comfortable system of these
old warriors by the harrowing, restless, cut-and-slash mode of
warfare that he introduced. He has put an end to all the old _carte
and tierce_ system in which the cavaliers of the old school fought
so decorously, as it were with a small sword in one hand and a
chapeau bras in the other. During his career there has been a sad
laying on the shelf of old generals who could not keep up with the
hurry, the fierceness and dashing of the new system; and among the
number I presume has been my worthy house-mate, old Trotter. The
old gentleman, in spite of his warlike title, had a most pacific
appearance. He was large and fat, with a broad, hazy, muffin face,
a sleepy eye, and a full double chin. He had a deep ravine from
each corner of his mouth, not occasioned by any irascible
contraction of the muscles, but apparently the deep-worn channels
of two rivulets of gravy that oozed out from the huge mouthfuls
that he masticated. But I forbear to dwell on the odd beings that
were congregated together in one hotel. I have been thus prolix
about the old general because you desired me in one of your letters
to give you ample details whenever I happened to be in company with
the 'great and glorious,' and old Trotter is more deserving of the
epithet than any of the personages I have lately encountered."
It was at the same resort of fashion and disease that Irving observed a
phenomenon upon which Brevoort had commented as beginning to be
noticeable in America.
"Your account [he writes] of the brevity of the old lady's nether
garments distresses me.... I cannot help observing that this
fashion of short skirts must have been invented by the French
ladies as a complete trick upon John Bull's 'woman-folk.' It was
introduced just at the time the English flocked in such crowds to
Paris. The French women, you know, are remarkable for pretty feet
and ankles, and can display them in perfect security. The English
are remarkable for the contrary. Seeing the proneness of the
English women to follow French fashions, they therefore led them
into this disastrous one, and sent them home with their petticoats
up to their knees, exhibiting such a variety of sturdy little legs
as would have afforded Hogarth an ample choice to match one of his
assemblages of queer heads. It is really a great source of
curiosity and amusement on the promenade of a watering-place to
observe the little sturdy English women, trudging about in their
stout leather shoes, and to study the various 'understandings'
betrayed to view by this mischievous fashion."
The years passed rather wearily in England. Peter continued to be an
invalid, and Washington himself, never robust, felt the pressure more
and more of the irksome and unprosperous business affairs. Of his own
want of health, however, he never complains; he maintains a patient
spirit in the ill turns of fortune, and his impatience in the business
complications is that of a man hindered from his proper career. The
times were depressing.
"In America [he writes to Brevoort] you have financial
difficulties, the embarrassments of trade, the distress of
merchants, but here you have what is far worse, the distress of the
poor--not merely mental sufferings, but the absolute miseries of
nature: hunger, nakedness, wretchedness of all kinds that the
laboring people in this country are liable to. In the best of times
they do but subsist, but in adverse times they starve. How the
country is to extricate itself from its present embarrassment, how
it is to escape from the poverty that seems to be overwhelming it,
and how the government is to quiet the multitudes that are already
turbulent and clamorous, and are yet but in the beginning of their
real miseries, I cannot conceive."
The embarrassments of the agricultural and laboring classes and of the
government were as serious in 1816 as they have again become in 1881.
During 1817 Irving was mostly in the depths of gloom, a prey to the
monotony of life and torpidity of intellect. Rays of sunlight pierce the
clouds occasionally. The Van Wart household at Birmingham was a frequent
refuge for him, and we have pretty pictures of the domestic life there;
glimpses of Old Parr, whose reputation as a gourmand was only second to
his fame as a Grecian, and of that delightful genius, the Rev. Rann
Kennedy, who might have been famous if he had ever committed to paper
the long poems that he carried about in his head, and the engaging sight
of Irving playing the flute for the little Van Warts to dance. During
the holidays Irving paid another visit to the haunts of Isaac Walton,
and his description of the adventures and mishaps of a pleasure party
on the banks of the Dove suggest that the incorrigible bachelor was
still sensitive to the allurements of life, and liable to wander over
the "dead-line" of matrimonial danger. He confesses that he was all day
in Elysium. "When we had descended from the last precipice," he says,
"and come to where the Dove flowed musically through a verdant
meadow--then--fancy me, oh, thou 'sweetest of poets,' wandering by the
course of this romantic stream--a lovely girl hanging on my arm,
pointing out the beauties of the surrounding scenery, and repeating in
the most dulcet voice tracts of heaven-born poetry. If a strawberry
smothered in cream has any consciousness of its delicious situation, it
must feel as I felt at that moment." Indeed, the letters of this doleful
year are enlivened by so many references to the graces and attractions
of lovely women, seen and remembered, that insensibility cannot be
attributed to the author of the "Sketch-Book."
The death of Irving's mother in the spring of 1817 determined him to
remain another year abroad. Business did not improve. His
brother-in-law Van Wart called a meeting of his creditors, the Irving
brothers floundered on into greater depths of embarrassment, and
Washington, who could not think of returning home to face poverty in New
York, began to revolve a plan that would give him a scanty but
sufficient support. The idea of the "Sketch-Book" was in his mind. He
had as yet made few literary acquaintances in England. It is an
illustration of the warping effect of friendship upon the critical
faculty that his opinion of Moore at this time was totally changed by
subsequent intimacy. At a later date the two authors became warm friends
and mutual admirers of each other's productions. In June, 1817, "Lalla
Rookh" was just from the press, and Irving writes to Brevoort: "Moore's
new poem is just out. I have not sent it to you, for it is dear and
worthless. It is written in the most effeminate taste, and fit only to
delight boarding-school girls and lads of nineteen just in their first
loves. Moore should have kept to songs and epigrammatic conceits. His
stream of intellect is too small to bear expansion--it spreads into
mere surface." Too much cream for the strawberry!
Notwithstanding business harassments in the summer and fall of 1817 he
found time for some wandering about the island; he was occasionally in
London, dining at Murray's, where he made the acquaintance of the elder
D'Israeli and other men of letters (one of his notes of a dinner at
Murray's is this: "Lord Byron told Murray that he was much happier after
breaking with Lady Byron--he hated this still, quiet life"); he was
publishing a new edition of the "Knickerbocker," illustrated by Leslie
and Allston; and we find him at home in the friendly and brilliant
society of Edinburgh; both the magazine publishers, Constable and
Blackwood, were very civil to him, and Mr. Jeffrey (Mrs. Renwick was his
sister) was very attentive; and he passed some days with Walter Scott,
whose home life he so agreeably describes in his sketch of "Abbotsford."
He looked back longingly to the happy hours there (he writes to his
brother): "Scott reading, occasionally, from 'Prince Arthur'; telling
border stories or characteristic anecdotes; Sophy Scott singing with
charming _naïveté_ a little border song; the rest of the family disposed
in listening groups, while greyhounds, spaniels, and cats bask in
unbounded indulgence before the fire. Everything about Scott is perfect
character and picture."
In the beginning of 1818 the business affairs of the brothers became so
irretrievably involved that Peter and Washington went through the
humiliating experience of taking the bankrupt act. Washington's
connection with the concern was little more than nominal, and he felt
small anxiety for himself, and was eager to escape from an occupation
which had taken all the elasticity out of his mind. But on account of
his brothers, in this dismal wreck of a family connection, his soul was
steeped in bitterness. Pending the proceedings of the commissioners, he
shut himself up day and night to the study of German, and while waiting
for the examination used to walk up and down the room, conning over the
German verbs.
In August he went up to London and cast himself irrevocably upon the
fortune of his pen. He had accumulated some materials, and upon these
he set to work. Efforts were made at home to procure for him the
position of Secretary of Legation in London, which drew from him the
remark, when they came to his knowledge, that he did not like to have
his name hackneyed about among the office-seekers in Washington.
Subsequently his brother William wrote him that Commodore Decatur was
keeping open for him the office of Chief Clerk in the Navy Department.
To the mortification and chagrin of his brothers, Washington declined
the position. He was resolved to enter upon no duties that would
interfere with his literary pursuits.
This resolution, which exhibited a modest confidence in his own powers,
and the energy with which he threw himself into his career, showed the
fibre of the man. Suddenly, by the reverse of fortune, he who had been
regarded as merely the ornamental genius of the family became its stay
and support. If he had accepted the aid of his brothers, during the
experimental period of his life, in the loving spirit of confidence in
which it was given, he was not less ready to reverse the relations when
the time came; the delicacy with which his assistance was rendered, the
scrupulous care taken to convey the feeling that his brothers were doing
him a continued favor in sharing his good fortune, and their own
unjealous acceptance of what they would as freely have given if
circumstances had been different, form one of the pleasantest instances
of brotherly concord and self-abnegation. I know nothing more admirable
than the life-long relations of this talented and sincere family.
Before the "Sketch-Book" was launched, and while Irving was casting
about for the means of livelihood, Walter Scott urged him to take the
editorship of an Anti-Jacobin periodical in Edinburgh. This he declined
because he had no taste for politics, and because he was averse to
stated, routine literary work. Subsequently Mr. Murray offered him a
salary of a thousand guineas to edit a periodical to be published by
himself. This was declined, as also was another offer to contribute to
the "London Quarterly" with the liberal pay of one hundred guineas an
article. For the "Quarterly" he would not write, because, he says, "it
has always been so hostile to my country, I cannot draw a pen in its
service." This is worthy of note in view of a charge made afterwards,
when he was attacked for his English sympathies, that he was a frequent
contributor to this anti-American review. His sole contributions to it
were a gratuitous review of the book of an American author, and an
explanatory article, written at the desire of his publisher, on the
"Conquest of Granada." It is not necessary to dwell upon the small
scandal about Irving's un-American feeling. If there was ever a man who
loved his country and was proud of it; whose broad, deep, and strong
patriotism did not need the saliency of ignorant partisanship, it was
Washington Irving. He was like his namesake an American, and with the
same pure loyalty and unpartisan candor.
The first number of the "Sketch-Book" was published in America in May,
1819. Irving was then thirty-six years old. The series was not completed
till September, 1820. The first installment was carried mainly by two
papers, "The Wife" and "Rip Van Winkle;" the one full of tender pathos
that touched all hearts, because it was recognized as a genuine
expression of the author's nature; and the other a happy effort of
imaginative humor,--one of those strokes of genius that recreate the
world and clothe it with the unfading hues of romance; the theme was an
old-world echo, transformed by genius into a primal story that will
endure as long as the Hudson flows through its mountains to the sea. A
great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.
The "Sketch-Book" created a sensation in America, and the echo of it was
not long in reaching England. The general chorus of approval and the
rapid sale surprised Irving, and sent his spirits up, but success had
the effect on him that it always has on a fine nature. He writes to
Leslie: "Now you suppose I am all on the alert, and full of spirit and
excitement. No such thing. I am just as good for nothing as ever I was;
and, indeed, 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."
It was with much misgiving that Irving made this venture. "I feel great
diffidence," he writes Brevoort, March 3, 1819, "about this reappearance
in literature. I am conscious of my imperfections, and my mind has been
for a long time past so pressed upon and agitated by various cares and
anxieties, that I fear it has lost much of its cheerfulness and some of
its activity. 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
feelings and fancy of the reader more than to his judgment. My writings
may appear, therefore, 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." This diffidence was not assumed.
All through his career, a breath of criticism ever so slight acted
temporarily like a hoar-frost upon his productive power. He always saw
reasons to take sides with his critic. Speaking of "vanity" in a letter
of March, 1820, when Scott and Lockhart and all the Reviews were in a
full chorus of acclaim, he says: "I wish I did possess more of it, but
it seems my curse at present to have anything but confidence in myself
or pleasure in anything I have written."
In a similar strain he had written, in September, 1819, on the news of
the cordial reception of the "Sketch-Book" in America:--
"The manner in which the work has been received and the eulogiums
that have been passed upon it in the American papers and periodical
works, have completely overwhelmed me. They go far, _far_ beyond my
most sanguine expectations, and indeed are expressed with such
peculiar warmth and kindness as to affect me in the tenderest
manner. The receipt of your letter, and the reading of some of the
criticisms this morning, have rendered me nervous for the whole
day. I feel almost appalled by such success, and fearful that it
cannot be real, or that it is not fully merited, or that I shall
not act up to the expectations that may be formed. We are
whimsically constituted beings. I had got out of conceit of all
that I had written, and considered it very questionable stuff; and
now that it is so extravagantly bepraised, I begin to feel afraid
that I shall not do as well again. However, we shall see as we get
on. As yet I am extremely irregular and precarious in my fits of
composition. The least thing puts me out of the vein, and even
applause flurries me and prevents my writing, though of course it
will ultimately be a stimulus....
"I have been somewhat touched by the manner in which my writings
have been noticed in the 'Evening Post.' I had considered Coleman
as cherishing an ill-will toward me, and, to tell the truth, have
not always been the most courteous in my opinions concerning him.
It is a painful thing either to dislike others or to fancy they
dislike us, and I have felt both pleasure and self-reproach at
finding myself so mistaken with respect to Mr. Coleman. I like to
out with a good feeling as soon as it rises, and so I have dropt
Coleman a line on the subject.
"I hope you will not attribute all this sensibility to the kind
reception I have met to an author's vanity. I am sure it proceeds
from very different sources. Vanity could not bring the tears into
my eyes as they have been brought by the kindness of my countrymen.
I have felt cast down, blighted, and broken-spirited, and these
sudden rays of sunshine agitate me more than they revive me. I
hope--I hope I may yet do something more worthy of the
appreciation lavished on me."
Irving had not contemplated publishing in England, but the papers began
to be reprinted, and he was obliged to protect himself. He offered the
sketches to Murray, the princely publisher, who afterwards dealt so
liberally with him, but the venture was declined in a civil note,
written in that charming phraseology with which authors are familiar,
but which they would in vain seek to imitate. Irving afterwards greatly
prized this letter. He undertook the risks of the publication himself,
and the book sold well, although "written by an author the public knew
nothing of, and published by a bookseller who was going to ruin." In a
few months Murray, who was thereafter proud to be Irving's publisher,
undertook the publication of the two volumes of the "Sketch-Book," and
also of the "Knickerbocker" history, which Mr. Lockhart had just been
warmly praising in "Blackwood's." Indeed, he bought the copyright of the
"Sketch-Book" for two hundred pounds. The time for the publisher's
complaisance had arrived sooner even than Scott predicted in one of his
kindly letters to Irving, "when
'Your name is up and may go
From Toledo to Madrid.'"
Irving passed five years in England. Once recognized by the literary
world, whatever was best in the society of letters and of fashion was
open to him. He was a welcome guest in the best London houses, where he
met the foremost literary personages of the time, and established most
cordial relations with many of them; not to speak of statesmen,
soldiers, and men and women of fashion, there were the elder D'Israeli,
Southey, Campbell, Hallam, Gifford, Milman, Foscolo, Rogers, Scott, and
Belzoni fresh from his Egyptian explorations. In Irving's letters this
old society passes in review: Murray's drawing-rooms; the amusing
blue-stocking coteries of fashion of which Lady Caroline Lamb was a
promoter; the Countess of Besborough's, at whose house The Duke could be
seen; the Wimbledon country seat of Lord and Lady Spence; Belzoni, a
giant of six feet five, the centre of a group of eager auditors of the
Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious
talker; Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with
something of a humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth,
reclining on a sofa, propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance
that you would expect from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming
man,--he it is who prunes the contributions and takes the sting out of
them (one would like to have seen them before the sting was taken out);
and Scott, the right honest-hearted, entering into the passing scene
with the hearty enjoyment of a child, to whom literature seems a sport
rather than a labor or ambition, an author void of all the petulance,
egotism, and peculiarities of the craft. We have Moore's authority for
saying that the literary dinner described in the "The Tales of a
Traveller," whimsical as it seems and pervaded by the conventional
notion of the relations of publishers and authors, had a personal
foundation. Irving's satire of both has always the old-time Grub Street
flavor, or at least the reminiscent tone, which is, by the way, quite
characteristic of nearly everything that he wrote about England. He was
always a little in the past tense. Buckthorne's advice to his friend
is, never to be eloquent to an author except in praise of his own works,
or, what is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the work of his
contemporaries. "If ever he speaks favorably of the productions of a
particular friend, dissent boldly from him; pronounce his friend to be a
blockhead; never fear his being vexed. Much as people speak of the
irritability of authors, I never found one to take offense at such
contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are particularly candid in
admitting the faults of their friends." At the dinner Buckthorne
explains the geographical boundaries in the land of literature: you may
judge tolerably well of an author's popularity by the wine his
bookseller gives him. "An author crosses the port line about the third
edition, and gets into claret; and when he has reached the sixth or
seventh, he may revel in champagne and burgundy." The two ends of the
table were occupied by the two partners, one of whom laughed at the
clever things said by the poet, while the other maintained his
sedateness and kept on carving. "His gravity was explained to us by my
friend Buckthorne. He informed me that the concerns of the house were
admirably distributed among the partners. Thus, for instance, said he,
the grave gentleman is the carving partner, who attends to the joints;
and the other is the laughing partner, who attends to the jokes." If any
of the jokes from the lower end of the table reached the upper end, they
seldom produced much effect. "Even the laughing partner did not think it
necessary to honor them with a smile; which my neighbor Buckthorne
accounted for by informing me that there was a certain degree of
popularity to be obtained before a bookseller could afford to laugh at
an author's jokes."
In August, 1820, we find Irving in Paris, where his reputation secured
him a hearty welcome: he was often at the Cannings' and at Lord
Holland's; Talma, then the king of the stage, became his friend, and
there he made the acquaintance of Thomas Moore, which ripened into a
familiar and lasting friendship. The two men were drawn to each other;
Irving greatly admired the "noble-hearted, manly, spirited little
fellow, with a mind as generous as his fancy is brilliant." Talma was
playing Hamlet to overflowing houses, which hung on his actions with
breathless attention, or broke into ungovernable applause; ladies were
carried fainting from the boxes. The actor is described as short in
stature, rather inclined to fat, with a large face and a thick neck; his
eyes are bluish, and have a peculiar cast in them at times. He said to
Irving that he thought the French character much changed--graver; the
day of the classic drama, mere declamation and fine language, had gone
by; the Revolution had taught them to demand real life, incident,
passion, character. Irving's life in Paris was gay enough, and seriously
interfered with his literary projects. He had the fortunes of his
brother Peter on his mind also, and invested his earnings, then and for
some years after, in enterprises for his benefit that ended in
disappointment.
The "Sketch-Book" was making a great fame for him in England. Jeffrey,
in the "Edinburgh Review," paid it a most flattering tribute, and even
the savage "Quarterly" praised it. A rumor attributed it to Scott, who
was always masquerading; at least, it was said, he might have revised
it, and should have the credit of its exquisite style. This led to a
sprightly correspondence between Lady Littleton, the daughter of Earl
Spencer, one of the most accomplished and lovely women of England, and
Benjamin Rush, Minister to the Court of St. James, in the course of
which Mr. Rush suggested the propriety of giving out under his official
seal that Irving was the author of "Waverley." "Geoffrey Crayon is the
most fashionable fellow of the day," wrote the painter Leslie. Lord
Byron, in a letter to Murray, underscored his admiration of the author,
and subsequently said to an American: "His Crayon,--I know it by heart;
at least, there is not a passage that I cannot refer to immediately."
And afterwards he wrote to Moore, "His writings are my delight." There
seemed to be, as some one wrote, "a kind of conspiracy to hoist him over
the heads of his contemporaries." Perhaps the most satisfactory evidence
of his popularity was his publisher's enthusiasm. The publisher is an
infallible contemporary barometer.
It is worthy of note that an American should have captivated public
attention at the moment when Scott and Byron were the idols of the
English-reading world.
In the following year Irving was again in England, visiting his sister
in Birmingham, and tasting moderately the delights of London. He was,
indeed, something of an invalid. An eruptive malady,--the revenge of
nature, perhaps, for defeat in her earlier attack on his
lungs,--appearing in his ankles, incapacitated him for walking,
tormented him at intervals, so that literary composition was impossible,
sent him on pilgrimages to curative springs, and on journeys undertaken
for distraction and amusement, in which all work except that of seeing
and absorbing material had to be postponed. He was subject to this
recurring invalidism all his life, and we must regard a good part of the
work he did as a pure triumph of determination over physical
discouragement. This year the fruits of his interrupted labor appeared
in "Bracebridge Hall," a volume that was well received, but did not add
much to his reputation, though it contained "Dolph Heyliger," one of his
most characteristic Dutch stories, and the "Stout Gentleman," one of
his daintiest and most artistic bits of restrained humor.[1]
[Footnote 1: I was once [says his biographer] reading aloud in
his presence a very flattering review of his works, which had
been sent him by the critic in 1848, and smiled as I came to
this sentence: "His most comical pieces have always a serious
end in view." "You laugh," said he, with that air of whimsical
significance so natural to him, "but it is true. I have kept
that to myself hitherto, but that man has found me out. He has
detected the moral of the _Stout Gentleman_."]
Irving sought relief from his malady by an extended tour in Germany. He
sojourned some time in Dresden, whither his reputation had preceded him,
and where he was cordially and familiarly received, not only by the
foreign residents, but at the prim and antiquated little court of King
Frederick Augustus and Queen Amalia. Of Irving at this time Mrs. Emily
Fuller (_née_ Foster), whose relations with him have been referred to,
wrote in 1860:--
"He was thoroughly a gentleman, not merely in external manners and
look, but to the inner-most fibres and core of his heart:
sweet-tempered, gentle, fastidious, sensitive, and gifted with the
warmest affections; the most delightful and invariably interesting
companion; gay and full of humor, even in spite of occasional fits
of melancholy, which he was, however, seldom subject to when with
those he liked; a gift of conversation that flowed like a full
river in sunshine,--bright, easy, and abundant."
Those were pleasant days at Dresden, filled up with the society of
bright and warm-hearted people, varied by royal boar hunts, stiff
ceremonies at the little court, tableaux, and private theatricals, yet
tinged with a certain melancholy, partly constitutional, that appears in
most of his letters. His mind was too unsettled for much composition. He
had little self-confidence, and was easily put out by a breath of
adverse criticism. At intervals he would come to the Fosters to read a
manuscript of his own.
"On these occasions strict orders were given that no visitor should
be admitted till the last word had been read, and the whole praised
or criticised, as the case may be. Of criticism, however, we were
very spare, as a slight word would put him out of conceit of a
whole work. One of the best things he has published was thrown
aside, unfinished, for years, because the friend to whom he read
it, happening, unfortunately, not to be well, and sleepy, did not
seem to take the interest in it he expected. Too easily
discouraged, it was not till the latter part of his career that he
ever appreciated himself as an author. One condemning whisper
sounded louder in his ear than the plaudits of thousands."
This from Miss Emily Foster, who elsewhere notes his kindliness in
observing life:--
"Some persons, in looking upon life, view it as they would view a
picture, with a stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life
as a picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights,--not its
defects and shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a
wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of
anything. Never beat a more kindly heart than his; alive to the
sorrows, but not to the faults, of his friends, but doubly alive to
their virtues and goodness. Indeed, people seemed to grow more good
with one so unselfish and so gentle."
In London, some years later:--
"He was still the same; time changed him very little. His
conversation was as interesting as ever [he was always an excellent
relater]; his dark gray eyes still full of varying feeling; his
smile half playful, half melancholy, but ever kind. All that was
mean, or envious, or harsh, he seemed to turn from so completely
that, when with him, it seemed that such things were not. All
gentle and tender affections, Nature in her sweetest or grandest
moods, pervaded his whole imagination, and left no place for low or
evil thoughts; and when in good spirits, his humor, his droll
descriptions, and his fun would make the gravest or the saddest
laugh."
As to Irving's "state of mind" in Dresden, it is pertinent to quote a
passage from what we gather to be a journal kept by Miss Flora Foster:--
"He has written. He has confessed to my mother, as to a true and
dear friend, his love for E----, and his conviction of its utter
hopelessness. He feels himself unable to combat it. He thinks he
must try, by absence, to bring more peace to his mind. Yet he
cannot bear to give up our friendship,--an intercourse become so
dear to him, and so necessary to his daily happiness. Poor Irving!"
It is well for our peace of mind that we do not know what is going down
concerning us in "journals." On his way to the Herrnhuthers, Mr. Irving
wrote to Mrs. Foster:--
"When I consider how I have trifled with my time, suffered painful
vicissitudes of feeling, which for a time damaged both mind and
body,--when I consider all this, I reproach myself that I did not
listen to the first impulse of my mind, and abandon Dresden long
since. And yet I think of returning! Why should I come back to
Dresden? The very inclination that dooms me thither should furnish
reasons for my staying away."
In this mood, the Herrnhuthers, in their right-angled, whitewashed
world, were little attractive.
"If the Herrnhuthers were right in their notions, the world would
have been laid out in squares and angles and right lines, and
everything would have been white and black and snuff-color, as they
have been clipped by these merciless retrenchers of beauty and
enjoyment. And then their dormitories! Think of between one and two
hundred of these simple gentlemen cooped up at night in one great
chamber! What a concert of barrel-organs in this great resounding
saloon! And then their plan of marriage! The very birds of the air
choose their mates from preference and inclination; but this
detestable system of _lot_! The sentiment of love may be, and is,
in a great measure, a fostered growth of poetry and romance, and
balderdashed with false sentiment; but with all its vitiations, it
is the beauty and the charm, the flavor and the fragrance, of all
intercourse between man and woman; it is the rosy cloud in the
morning of life; and if it does too often resolve itself into the
shower, yet, to my mind, it only makes our nature more fruitful in
what is excellent and amiable."
Better suited him Prague, which is certainly a part of the "naughty
world" that Irving preferred:--
"Old Prague still keeps up its warrior look, and swaggers about
with its rusty corselet and helm, though both sadly battered. There
seems to me to be an air of style and fashion about the first
people of Prague, and a good deal of beauty in the fashionable
circle. This, perhaps, is owing to my contemplating it from a
distance, and my imagination lending it tints occasionally. Both
actors and audience, contemplated from the pit of a theatre, look
better than when seen in the boxes and behind the scenes. I like to
contemplate society in this way occasionally, and to dress it up by
the help of fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it,
it is too apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and
_ennui_ of being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but
to be a mere spectator is amusing. I am glad, therefore, that I
brought no letters to Prague. I shall leave it with a favorable
idea of its society and manners, from knowing nothing accurate of
either; and with a firm belief that every pretty woman I have seen
is an angel, as I am apt to think every pretty woman, until I have
found her out."
In July, 1823, Irving returned to Paris, to the society of the Moores
and the fascinations of the gay town, and to fitful literary work. Our
author wrote with great facility and rapidity when the inspiration was
on him, and produced an astonishing amount of manuscript in a short
period; but he often waited and fretted through barren weeks and months
for the movement of his fitful genius. His mind was teeming constantly
with new projects, and nothing could exceed his industry when once he
had taken a work in hand; but he never acquired the exact methodical
habits which enable some literary men to calculate their power and
quantity of production as accurately as that of a cotton mill.
The political changes in France during the period of Irving's long
sojourn in Paris do not seem to have taken much of his attention. In a
letter dated October 5, 1824, he says: "We have had much bustle in Paris
of late, between the death of one king and the succession of another. I
have become a little callous to public sights, but have,
notwithstanding, been to see the funeral of the late king, and the
entrance into Paris of the present one. Charles X. begins his reign in a
very conciliating manner, and is really popular. The Bourbons have
gained great accession of power within a few years."
The succession of Charles X. was also observed by another foreigner, who
was making agreeable personal notes at that time in Paris, but who is
not referred to by Irving, who for some unexplained reason failed to
meet the genial Scotsman at breakfast. Perhaps it is to his failure to
do so that he owes the semi-respectful reference to himself in Carlyle's
"Reminiscences." Lacking the stimulus to his vocabulary of personal
acquaintance, Carlyle simply wrote: "Washington Irving was said to be in
Paris, a kind of lion at that time, whose books I somewhat esteemed.
One day the Emerson-Tennant people bragged that they had engaged him to
breakfast with us at a certain _café_ next morning. We all attended
duly, Strackey among the rest, but no Washington came. 'Couldn't rightly
come,' said Malcolm to me in a judicious _aside_, as we cheerfully
breakfasted without him. I never saw Washington at all, but still have a
mild esteem of the good man." This ought to be accepted as evidence of
Carlyle's disinclination to say ill-natured things of those he did not
know.
The "Tales of a Traveller" appeared in 1824. In the author's opinion,
with which the best critics agreed, it contained some of his best
writing. He himself said in a letter to Brevoort, "There was more of an
artistic touch about it, though this is not a thing to be appreciated by
the many." It was rapidly written. The movement has a delightful
spontaneity, and it is wanting in none of the charms of his style,
unless, perhaps, the style is over-refined; but it was not a novelty,
and the public began to criticise and demand a new note. This may have
been one reason why he turned to a fresh field and to graver themes.
For a time he busied himself on some American essays of a semi-political
nature, which were never finished, and he seriously contemplated a Life
of Washington; but all these projects were thrown aside for one that
kindled his imagination,--the Life of Columbus; and in February, 1826,
he was domiciled at Madrid, and settled down to a long period of
unremitting and intense labor.