It is a little over one hundred years since Washington Irving was born;
and it is nearly thirty years since he ceased to charm the reading world
by the work of his genial and graceful pen. For fifty long and fruitful
years he was our pride and boast, and his memory will for many a long
year yet be green in the hearts of his countrymen. He was our first and
best humorist. Before his advent, what little writing had been done in
this country was mostly of the sentimental and tearful sort. And for
many years after he began to write, it was much the same. Weeping
poetesses filled whole columns with their tears, and in every local
sheet new Werthers were trying to tell of the worthlessness of life and
the beauties of dying. Young bards were inditing odes to melancholy, and
everybody was chanting in chorus, if not the words, at least the
sentiment of, "how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong." There
was no laughter in the land.
Could a collection of these mournful melodies have been made, and these
lorn lyrists have been induced to glance over it, it seems to us that
they must have received it with inextinguishable laughter. Each delicate
little wail when taken by itself was not so bad, but the united wail of
this band of broken-hearted singers would have produced, instead of
tears, laughter both long and deep. This doleful period lasted long
after Irving had begun to write in a different vein, and has lasted in
too large a measure even to this day; but he began the corrective
process, and has had more influence for good in that direction than any
of our other writers. At a later day Dr. Holmes began to write almost,
if not quite, "as funny as he could." Charles G. Leland, in his
"Sunshine-in-Thought" series, in the old "Knickerbocker," ridiculed the
prevailing weakness so forcibly and effectually that some stopped
groaning through sheer shame. Charles Dudley Warner sent a smile over
the set features of the nation when he wrote of his "Summer in a
Garden;" and Willis told in his "Fun Jottings" about some of the laughs
he had taken a pen to. But none of these had the magic touch of Irving,
although each in his own way was inimitable; and during these later
years, when the professional humorist has become one of our established
institutions, no writer has arisen to wear the mantle which fell from
the shoulders of Washington Irving. Bret Harte, doubtless, made us laugh
more. Irving could by no possibility ever have written the "Heathen
Chinee," or those other bits of compressed humor called Poems; but Bret
Harte is not exactly a lineal descendant of Irving. Mark Twain also can
produce a roar, a thing which Irving never did. But, though it has been
a good thing for the American people to roar with Mark Twain, we are all
desirous to see some writer arise who, with as keen an eye as his for
the humorous side of life, shall have a delicacy of touch which he
lacks, and a refinement of expression to which he is a stranger.
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York in 1783, the youngest
of eleven children born to his parents. At that time New York was a
rural city of twenty-three thousand inhabitants clustered about the
Battery. The Irvings were descendants of the old Scotch Covenanters, and
were strict Presbyterians. The home rule was one of austerity and
repression. The children were brought up on the catechism and the
Thirty-Nine Articles. As they grew older all were repelled from the
church of the father by the severity of its dogmas, and all except one
attached themselves to the Episcopal Church. Washington, we are told by
Mr. Warner, "in order to make sure of his escape and feel safe, while he
was still constrained to attend his father's church, went stealthily to
Trinity Church at an early age and received the rite of confirmation."
He was of a joyous and genial temperament, full of life and vivacity,
and not at all inclined to religious seriousness. He was born with a
passion for music, and was also a great lover of the theatre. These
things, in the eyes of his father, were serious evils, and he felt great
anxiety for the son's spiritual welfare. The gladsomeness and
sportiveness of the boy's nature were things which he could not
understand, and he feared that they were of the Evil One. There was no
room in the darkness of his religions creed for anything that was simply
bright and joyous. To save one's soul was the business of life; all
things else were secondary and of small importance. Of course, he
worried much over this handsome, dashing, susceptible, music-loving,
laughter-loving son, and doubtless shed many tears over his waywardness.
Yet there was nothing wild about the boy. The writing of plays seems to
have been his worst boyish offence. His first published writings were
audacious satires upon the theatre, the actors, and the local audiences.
They had some promise, and attracted some attention in the poverty of
those times.
At the age of twenty-one he was in such delicate health that a voyage to
Europe was looked upon as the only means of saving his life. He
accordingly embarked for Bordeaux and made an extended tour of Europe,
loitering in many places for weeks at a time, and laying up a store of
memories which gave him pleasure throughout life. In Rome he came across
Washington Allston, then unknown to fame. He was about three years older
than Irving, and just establishing himself as a painter. Irving was
completely captivated with the young Southerner, and they formed a very
romantic friendship for each other.
Irving even dreamed of remaining in Rome and turning artist himself,
that he might always be near his friend. He had a great dread of
returning to the New World and settling down to the uncongenial work of
the law, and he fancied he had some talent for art. He certainly had one
essential qualification,--a passionate love of color, and an eye for its
harmonies. This love was a great source of pleasure to him throughout
life. He always thought that he might have succeeded as a landscape
painter. However this might be, the gift of color-loving is in itself a
rich endowment to any mind. There are few purer and higher sources of
enjoyment in this life than this love of color, and it is a possession
which ought to be cultivated in every child.
But the art scheme was soon abandoned, and he went on to London, where
he began his literary work. His name of Washington attracted
considerable attention there, and he was frequently asked if he was a
relative of General Washington. A few years later, after he had written
the "Sketch Book," two women were overheard in conversation near the
bust of Washington in a large gallery. "Mother, who was Washington?"
"Why, my dear, don't you know?" was the reply, "he wrote the 'Sketch
Book.'"
Soon after the book was published Irving was one night in the room with
Mrs. Siddons, the Queen of Tragedy. She carried her tragic airs even
into private life, it is said, and when Irving was presented to her, he,
being young and modest, was somewhat taken aback on being greeted with
the single sentence, given in her grandest stage voice and with the most
lofty stateliness, "You have made me weep." He could find no words to
reply, and shrank away in silence. A very short time after he met with
her again, and, although he sought to avoid her, she recognized him and
repeated in tones as tragic as at first, "You have made me weep;" which
salutation had the effect of discomfiting Irving for the second time.
He returned to New York in 1806, and was much sought after in society
from that time on. It was a very convivial company, that of old New York
in the early part of the century, and Irving entered into its pleasures
with the rest of his friends. Late suppers and good wine sometimes
rendered these young men rather hilarious, and one evening, going home,
Harry Ogden, Irving's chum, fell through a grating into a vault beneath.
He told Irving next day that the solitude was rather dismal at first,
but in a little while, after the party broke up, several other guests
came along and fell in one by one, and then they all had a pleasant
night of it, "who would have thought," said Irving to Governor Kemble,
in alluding, at the age of sixty-six, to these scenes of high jollity,
"that we should ever have lived to be two such respectable old
gentlemen!"
It was during these years that he made the acquaintance and learned to
love so deeply Matilda Hoffman, a beautiful young girl, daughter of one
of his older friends. She was a most lovely person, in body and mind,
and in his eyes the paragon of womanhood. He was young, romantic, full
of sensibility, and his love for this beautiful girl filled his whole
life. He was poor and could not marry, but he had many arguments with
himself about the propriety of doing so even without an income. "I
think," he finally writes, "that these early and improvident marriages
are too apt to break down the spirit and energy of a young man, and make
him a hard-working, half-starving, repining animal all his days." And
again: "Young men in our country think it a great extravagance to set up
a horse and carriage without adequate means, but they make no account of
setting up a wife and family, which is far more expensive." But while he
was looking about on every side for some way to better his fortunes,
that he might take to his home this woman he loved so tenderly, her
health began to fail, and in a short time he was deprived by death of
her companionship. His sorrow was life-long, and it was a sorrow which
he held sacredly in his own heart. He never mentioned her name, even to
family friends, and they learned to avoid any allusion to her, he was so
overcome with emotion when merely hearing her name spoken. This was in
his early youth, and throughout a long life he held himself faithful to
her memory,--never, it is believed, wavering once in his allegiance.
Thackeray refers to this as one of the most pleasing things he knew of
Irving.
It was at this time that he was writing the "History of New York." He
wrote afterward:--
"When I became more calm and collected I applied myself by way of
occupation to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close as
well as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances
in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it
with satisfaction."
His countenance long retained the trace of his melancholy, and he was
ever after a more subdued and quiet man. After his death a beautiful
picture and lock of hair were found among his private papers marked in
his hand-writing, "Matilda Hoffman." He also kept by him throughout
life her Bible and Prayer-Book. He lay with them under his pillow in the
first days of his anguish, and carried them with him always in all lands
to the end of his life. In a little private notebook intended only for
his own eye were found these words after his death: "She died in the
beauty of her youth, and in my memory she will ever be young and
beautiful." Truly, not an unhappy fate as the world goes,--to live thus
in the memory of such a man. What would years and cares and the
commonplace of existence have done for such a love as this, we wonder?
We shall never know. But we have all seen loves apparently as pure and
as strong, worn away by the attritions of life,--by the daily labor for
daily bread, by little incessant worries and faults and foibles upon the
part of one or both,--until there was nothing left of the early color of
romance; only a faded web of life where once was cloth of gold. How
sweet to many a faded and careworn woman would be the thought of being
always young and beautiful to the man she loved. Fortunate Matilda
Hoffman of the olden time!
In 1817 he went again to Europe, and while there definitely made up his
mind to look upon literature as his profession,--an almost unheard of
thing in America at that time. He writes to his brother:--
"For a long while past I have lived almost entirely at home,
sometimes not leaving the house for two or three days, and yet I
have not had an hour pass heavily; so that if I could see my
brothers around me prospering, and be relieved from this cloud that
hangs over us all, I feel as if I could be contented to give up all
the gayeties of life; I certainly think that no hope of gain,
however flattering, would tempt me again into the cares and sordid
concerns of traffic. . . . In protracting my stay in Europe, I
certainly do not contemplate pleasure, for I look forward to a life
of loneliness and of parsimonious and almost painful economy."