Not long after the discontinuance of "Salmagundi," Irving, in connection
with his brother Peter, projected the work that was to make him famous.
At first nothing more was intended than a satire upon the "Picture of New
York," by Dr. Samuel Mitchell, just then published. It was begun as a
mere burlesque upon pedantry and erudition, and was well advanced, when
Peter was called by his business to Europe, and its completion was
fortunately left to Washington. In his mind the idea expanded into a
different conception. He condensed the mass of affected learning, which
was their joint work, into five introductory chapters,--subsequently he
said it would have been improved if it had been reduced to one, and it
seems to me it would have been better if that one had been thrown away,
--and finished "A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
substantially as we now have it. This was in 1809, when Irving was
twenty-six years old.
But before this humorous creation was completed, the author endured the
terrible bereavement which was to color all his life. He had formed a
deep and tender passion for Matilda Hoffman, the second daughter of
Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in whose family he had long been on a footing of
the most perfect intimacy, and his ardent love was fully reciprocated.
He was restlessly casting about for some assured means of livelihood
which would enable him to marry, and perhaps his distrust of a literary
career was connected with this desire, when after a short illness Miss
Hoffman died, in the eighteenth year of her age. Without being a
dazzling beauty, she was lovely in person and mind, with most engaging
manners, a refined sensibility, and a delicate and playful humor.
The loss was a crushing blow to Irving, from the effects of which he
never recovered, although time softened the bitterness of his grief into
a tender and sacred memory. He could never bear to hear her name spoken
even by his most intimate friends, or any allusion to her. Thirty years
after her death, it happened one evening at the house of Mr. Hoffman,
her father, that a granddaughter was playing for Mr. Irving, and in
taking her music from the drawer, a faded piece of embroidery was brought
forth. "Washington," said Mr. Hoffman, picking it up, "this is a piece
of poor Matilda's workmanship." The effect was electric. He had been
talking in the sprightliest mood before, but he sunk at once into utter
silence, and in a few moments got up and left the house.
After his death, in a private repository of which he always kept the key,
was found a lovely miniature, a braid of fair hair, and a slip of paper,
on which was written in his own hand, "Matilda Hoffman;" and with these
treasures were several pages of a memorandum in ink long since faded.
He kept through life her Bible and Prayer Book; they were placed nightly
under his pillow in the first days of anguish that followed her loss, and
ever after they were the inseparable companions of all his wanderings.
In this memorandum--which was written many years afterwards--we read the
simple story of his love:
"We saw each other every day, and I became excessively attached to
her. Her shyness wore off by degrees. The more I saw of her the
more I had reason to admire her. Her mind seemed to unfold leaf by
leaf, and every time to discover new sweetness. Nobody knew her so
well as I, for she was generally timid and silent; but I in a manner
studied her excellence. Never did I meet with more intuitive
rectitude of mind, more native delicacy, more exquisite propriety in
word, thought, and action, than in this young creature. I am not
exaggerating; what I say was acknowledged by all who knew her.
Her brilliant little sister used to say that people began by
admiring her, but ended by loving Matilda. For my part, I idolized
her. I felt at times rebuked by her superior delicacy and purity,
and as if I was a coarse, unworthy being in comparison."
At this time Irving was much perplexed about his career. He had "a fatal
propensity to belles-lettres;" his repugnance to the law was such that
his mind would not take hold of the study; he anticipated nothing from
legal pursuits or political employment; he was secretly writing the
humorous history, but was altogether in a low-spirited and disheartened
state. I quote again from the memorandum:
"In the mean time I saw Matilda every day, and that helped to
distract me. In the midst of this struggle and anxiety she was
taken ill with a cold. Nothing was thought of it at first; but she
grew rapidly worse, and fell into a consumption. I cannot tell you
what I suffered. The ills that I have undergone in this life have
been dealt out to me drop by drop, and I have tasted all their
bitterness. I saw her fade rapidly away; beautiful, and more
beautiful, and more angelical to the last. I was often by her
bedside; and in her wandering state of mind she would talk to me
with a sweet, natural, and affecting eloquence, that was
overpowering. I saw more of the beauty of her mind in that
delirious state than I had ever known before. Her malady was rapid
in its career, and hurried her off in two months. Her dying
struggles were painful and protracted. For three days and nights I
did not leave the house, and scarcely slept. I was by her when she
died; all the family were assembled round her, some praying, others
weeping, for she was adored by them all. I was the last one she
looked upon. I have told you as briefly as I could what, if I were
to tell with all the incidents and feelings that accompanied it,
would fill volumes. She was but about seventeen years old when she
died.
"I cannot tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long
time. I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me.
I abandoned all thoughts of the law. I went into the country, but
could not bear solitude, yet could not endure society. There was a
dismal horror continually in my mind, that made me fear to be alone.
I had often to get up in the night, and seek the bedroom of my
brother, as if the having a human being by me would relieve me from
the frightful gloom of my own thoughts.
"Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone; but the
despondency I had suffered for a long time in the course of this
attachment, and the anguish that attended its catastrophe, seemed to
give a turn to my whole character, and throw some clouds into my
disposition, which have ever since hung about it. 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. Still it took with the public, and gave me celebrity,
as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in
America. I was noticed, caressed, and, for a time, elevated by the
popularity I had gained. I found myself uncomfortable in my
feelings in New York, and traveled about a little. Wherever I went,
I was overwhelmed with attentions; I was full of youth and
animation, far different from the being I now am, and I was quite
flushed with this early taste of public favor. Still, however, the
career of gayety and notoriety soon palled on me. I seemed to drift
about without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart
wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form
other attachments, but my heart would not hold on; it would
continually recur to what it had lost; and whenever there was a
pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into
dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject of this
hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image
was continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly."
This memorandum, it subsequently appeared, was a letter, or a transcript
of it, addressed to a married lady, Mrs. Foster, in which the story of
his early love was related, in reply to her question why he had never
married. It was in the year 1823, the year after the publication of
"Bracebridge Hall," while he sojourned in Dresden, that he became
intimate with an English family residing there, named Foster, and
conceived for the daughter, Miss Emily Foster, a warm friendship and
perhaps a deep attachment. The letter itself, which for the first time
broke the guarded seclusion of Irving's heart, is evidence of the tender
confidence that existed between him and this family. That this intimacy
would have resulted in marriage, or an offer of marriage, if the lady's
affections had not been preoccupied, the Fosters seem to have believed.
In an unauthorized addition to the, "Life and Letters," inserted in the
English edition without the knowledge of the American editor, with some
such headings as, "History of his First Love brought to us, and
returned," and "Irving's Second Attachment," the Fosters tell the
interesting story of Irving's life in Dresden, and give many of his
letters, and an account of his intimacy with the family. From this
account I quote:
"Soon after this, Mr. Irving, who had again for long felt 'the
tenderest interest warm his bosom, and finally enthrall his whole
soul,' made one vigorous and valiant effort to free himself from a
hopeless and consuming attachment. My mother counseled him, I
believe, for the best, and he left Dresden on an expedition of
several weeks into a country he had long wished to see; though, in
the main, it disappointed him; and he started with young Colbourne
(son of general Colbourne) as his companion. Some of his letters on
this journey are before the public; and in the agitation and
eagerness he there described, on receiving and opening letters from
us, and the tenderness in his replies,--the longing to be once more
in the little Pavilion, to which we had moved in the beginning of
the summer,--the letters (though carefully guarded by the delicacy
of her who intrusted them to the editor, and alone retained among
many more calculated to lay bare his true feelings, even fragmentary
as they are), point out the truth.
"Here is the key to the journey to Silesia, the return to Dresden,
and, finally, to the journey from Dresden to Rotterdam in our
company, first planned so as to part at Cassel, where Mr. Irving had
intended to leave us and go down the Rhine, but subsequently could
not find in his heart to part. Hence, after a night of pale and
speechless melancholy, the gay, animated, happy countenance with
which he sprang to our coach-box to take his old seat on it, and
accompany us to Rotterdam. There even could he not part, but joined
us in the steamboat; and, after bearing us company as far as a boat
could follow us, at last tore himself away, to bury himself in
Paris, and try to work . . . .
"It was fortunate, perhaps, that this affection was returned by the
warmest friendship only, since it was destined that the
accomplishment of his wishes was impossible, for many obstacles
which lay in his way; and it is with pleasure I can truly say that
in time he schooled himself to view, also with friendship only, one
who for some time past has been the wife of another."
Upon the delicacy of this revelation the biographer does not comment, but
he says that the idea that Irving thought of marriage at that time is
utterly disproved by the following passage from the very manuscript which
he submitted to Mrs. Foster:
"You wonder why I am not married. I have shown you why I was not
long since. When I had sufficiently recovered from that loss,
I became involved in ruin. It was not for a man broken down in the
world, to drag down any woman to his paltry circumstances. I was
too proud to tolerate the idea of ever mending my circumstances by
matrimony. My time has now gone by; and I have growing claims upon
my thoughts and upon my means, slender and precarious as they are.
I feel as if I already had a family to think and provide for."
Upon the question of attachment and depression, Mr. Pierre Irving says:
"While the editor does not question Mr. Irving's great enjoyment of
his intercourse with the Fosters, or his deep regret at parting from
them, he is too familiar with his occasional fits of depression to
have drawn from their recurrence on his return to Paris any such
inference as that to which the lady alludes. Indeed, his memorandum
book and letters show him to have had, at this time, sources of
anxiety of quite a different nature. The allusion to his having to
put once more to sea evidently refers to his anxiety on returning to
his literary pursuits, after a season of entire idleness."
It is not for us to question the judgment of the biographer, with his
full knowledge of the circumstances and his long intimacy with his uncle;
yet it is evident that Irving was seriously impressed at Dresden, and
that he was very much unsettled until he drove away the impression by
hard work with his pen; and it would be nothing new in human nature and
experience if he had for a time yielded to the attractions of loveliness
and a most congenial companionship, and had returned again to an
exclusive devotion to the image of the early loved and lost.
That Irving intended never to marry is an inference I cannot draw either
from his fondness for the society of women, from his interest in the
matrimonial projects of his friends and the gossip which has feminine
attractions for its food, or from his letters to those who had his
confidence. In a letter written from Birmingham, England, March 15,
1816, to his dear friend Henry Brevoort, who was permitted more than
perhaps any other person to see his secret heart, he alludes, with
gratification, to the report of the engagement of James Paulding, and
then says:
"It is what we must all come to at last. I see you are hankering
after it, and I confess I have done so for a long time past.
We are, however, past that period [Irving was thirty-two] when a man
marries suddenly and inconsiderately. We may be longer making a
choice, and consulting the convenience and concurrence of easy
circumstances, but we shall both come to it sooner or later.
I therefore recommend you to marry without delay. You have
sufficient means, connected with your knowledge and habits of
business, to support a genteel establishment, and I am certain that
as soon as you are married you will experience a change in your
ideas. All those vagabond, roving propensities will cease. They
are the offspring of idleness of mind and a want of something to fix
the feelings. You are like a bark without an anchor, that drifts
about at the mercy of every vagrant breeze or trifling eddy. Get a
wife, and she'll anchor you. But don't marry a fool because she his
a pretty face, and don't seek after a great belle. Get such a girl
as Mary----, or get her if you can; though I am afraid she has
still an unlucky kindness for poor-----, which will stand in the
way of her fortunes. I wish to God they were rich, and married, and
happy!"
The business reverses which befell the Irving brothers, and which drove
Washington to the toil of the pen, and cast upon him heavy family
responsibilities, defeated his plans of domestic happiness in marriage.
It was in this same year, 1816, when the fortunes of the firm were daily
becoming more dismal, that he wrote to Brevoort, upon the report that the
latter was likely to remain a bachelor: "We are all selfish beings.
Fortune by her tardy favors and capricious freaks seems to discourage all
my matrimonial resolves, and if I am doomed to live an old bachelor, I am
anxious to have good company. I cannot bear that all my old companions
should launch away into the married state, and leave me alone to tread
this desolate and sterile shore." And, in view of a possible life of
scant fortune, he exclaims: "Thank Heaven, I was brought up in simple and
inexpensive habits, and I have satisfied myself that, if need be, I can
resume them without repining or inconvenience. Though I am willing,
therefore, that Fortune should shower her blessings upon me, and think I
can enjoy them as well as most men, yet I shall not make myself unhappy
if she chooses to be scanty, and shall take the position allotted me with
a cheerful and contented mind."
When Irving passed the winter of 1823 in the charming society of the
Fosters at Dresden, the success of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge
Hall" had given him assurance of his ability to live comfortably by the
use of his pen.
To resume. The preliminary announcement of the History was a humorous
and skillful piece of advertising. Notices appeared in the newspapers of
the disappearance from his lodging of "a small, elderly gentleman,
dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of
Knickerbocker." Paragraphs from week to week, purporting to be the
result of inquiry, elicited the facts that such an old gentleman had been
seen traveling north in the Albany stage; that his name was Diedrich
Knickerbocker; that he went away owing his landlord; and that he left
behind a very curious kind of a written book, which would be sold to pay
his bills if he did not return. So skillfully was this managed that one
of the city officials was on the point of offering a reward for the
discovery of the missing Diedrich. This little man in knee breeches and
cocked hat was the germ of the whole "Knickerbocker legend," a fantastic
creation, which in a manner took the place of history, and stamped upon
the commercial metropolis of the New World the indelible Knickerbocker
name and character; and even now in the city it is an undefined patent of
nobility to trace descent from "an old Knickerbocker family."
The volume, which was first printed in Philadelphia, was put forth as a
grave history of the manners and government under the Dutch rulers, and
so far was the covert humor carried that it was dedicated to the New York
Historical Society. Its success was far beyond Irving's expectation.
It met with almost universal acclaim. It is true that some of the old
Dutch inhabitants who sat down to its perusal, expecting to read a
veritable account of the exploits of their ancestors, were puzzled by the
indirection of its commendation; and several excellent old ladies of New
York and Albany were in blazing indignation at the ridicule put upon the
old Dutch people, and minded to ostracize the irreverent author from all
social recognition. As late as 1818, in an address before the Historical
Society, Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, Irving's friend, showed the deep
irritation the book had caused, by severe strictures on it as a "coarse
caricature." But the author's winning ways soon dissipated the social
cloud, and even the Dutch critics were erelong disarmed by the absence of
all malice in the gigantic humor of the composition. One of the first
foreigners to recognize the power and humor of the book was Walter Scott.
"I have never," he wrote, "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. S. 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 power of a different kind, and has some touches which
remind me of Sterne."
The book is indeed an original creation, and one of the few masterpieces
of humor. In spontaneity, freshness, breadth of conception, and joyous
vigor, it belongs to the springtime of literature. It has entered into
the popular mind as no other American book ever has, and it may be said
to have created a social realm which, with all its whimsical conceit, has
almost historical solidity. The Knickerbocker pantheon is almost as real
as that of Olympus. The introductory chapters are of that elephantine
facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is
exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book
occasionally has a breadth that is indelicate to our apprehension, though
it perhaps did not shock our great-grandmothers. But, notwithstanding
these blemishes, I think the work has more enduring qualities than even
the generation which it first delighted gave it credit for. The world,
however, it must be owned, has scarcely yet the courage of its humor, and
dullness still thinks it necessary to apologize for anything amusing.
There is little doubt that Irving himself supposed that his serious work
was of more consequence to the world.
It seems strange that after this success Irving should have hesitated to
adopt literature as his profession. But for two years, and with leisure,
he did nothing. He had again some hope of political employment in a
small way; and at length he entered into a mercantile partnership with
his brothers, which was to involve little work for him, and a share of
the profits that should assure his support, and leave him free to follow
his fitful literary inclinations. Yet he seems to have been mainly
intent upon society and the amusements of the passing hour, and, without
the spur of necessity to his literary capacity, he yielded to the
temptations of indolence, and settled into the unpromising position of a
"man about town." Occasionally, the business of his firm and that of
other importing merchants being imperiled by some threatened action of
Congress, Irving was sent to Washington to look after their interests.
The leisurely progress he always made to the capital through the
seductive society of Philadelphia and Baltimore did not promise much
business dispatch. At the seat of government he was certain to be
involved in a whirl of gayety. His letters from Washington are more
occupied with the odd characters he met than with the measures of
legislation. These visits greatly extended his acquaintance with the
leading men of the country; his political leanings did not prevent an
intimacy with the President's family, and Mrs. Madison and he were sworn
friends.
It was of the evening of his first arrival in Washington that he writes:
"I emerged from dirt and darkness into the blazing splendor of Mrs.
Madison's drawing-room. Here I was most graciously received; found a
crowded collection of great and little men, of ugly old women and
beautiful young ones, and in ten minutes was hand and glove with half the
people in the assemblage. Mrs. Madison is a fine, portly, buxom dame,
who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. Her sisters, Mrs.
Cutts and Mrs. Washington, are like two merry wives of Windsor; but as to
Jemmy Madison,--oh, poor Jemmy!--he is but a withered little apple john."
Odd characters congregated then in Washington as now. One honest fellow,
who, by faithful fagging at the heels of Congress, had obtained a
profitable post under government, shook Irving heartily by the hand, and
professed himself always happy to see anybody that came from New York;
"somehow or another, it was natteral to him," being the place where he
was first born. Another fellow-townsman was "endeavoring to obtain a
deposit in the Mechanics' Bank, in case the United States Bank does not
obtain a charter. He is as deep as usual; shakes his head and winks
through his spectacles at everybody he meets. He swore to me the other
day that he had not told anybody what his opinion was, whether the bank
ought to have a charter or not. Nobody in Washington knew what his
opinion was--not one--nobody; he defied any one to say what it was
--anybody--damn the one! No, sir, nobody knows;' and if he had added nobody
cares, I believe honest would have been exactly in the right. Then
there's his brother George: 'Damn that fellow,--knows eight or nine
languages; yes, sir, nine languages,--Arabic, Spanish, Greek, Ital---And
there's his wife, now,--she and Mrs. Madison are always together. Mrs.
Madison has taken a great fancy to her little daughter. Only think, sir,
that child is only six years old, and talks the Italian like a book,
by---; little devil learnt it from an Italian servant,--damned clever
fellow; lived with my brother George ten years. George says he would not
part with him for all Tripoli,'" etc.
It was always difficult for Irving, in those days, to escape from the
genial blandishments of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Writing to Brevoort
from Philadelphia, March 16, 1811, he says: "The people of Baltimore are
exceedingly social and hospitable to strangers, and I saw that if I once
let myself get into the stream, I should not be able to get out under a
fortnight at least; so, being resolved to push home as expeditiously as
was honorably possible, I resisted the world, the flesh, and the devil at
Baltimore; and after three days' and nights' stout carousal, and a
fourth's sickness, sorrow, and repentance, I hurried off from that
sensual city."
Jarvis, the artist, was at that time the eccentric and elegant lion of
society in Baltimore. "Jack Randolph" had recently sat to him for his
portrait. "By the bye [the letter continues] that little 'hydra and
chimera dire,' Jarvis, is in prodigious circulation at Baltimore. The
gentlemen have all voted him a rare wag and most brilliant wit; and the
ladies pronounce him one of the queerest, ugliest, most agreeable little
creatures in the world. The consequence is there is not a ball,
tea-party, concert, supper, or other private regale but that Jarvis is
the most conspicuous personage; and as to a dinner, they can no more do
without him than they could without Friar John at the roystering revels
of the renowned Pantagruel." Irving gives one of his bon mots which was
industriously repeated at all the dinner tables, a profane sally, which
seemed to tickle the Baltimoreans exceedingly. Being very much
importuned to go to church, he resolutely refused, observing that it was
the same thing whether he went or stayed at home. "If I don't go," said
he, "the minister says I 'll be d---d, and I 'll be d---d if I do go."
This same letter contains a pretty picture, and the expression of
Irving's habitual kindly regard for his fellow-men:
"I was out visiting with Ann yesterday, and met that little
assemblage of smiles and fascinations, Mary Jackson. She was
bounding with youth, health, and innocence, and good humor. She had
a pretty straw hat, tied under her chin with a pink ribbon, and
looked like some little woodland nymph, just turned out by spring
and fine weather. God bless her light heart, and grant it may never
know care or sorrow! It's enough to cure spleen and melancholy only
to look at her.
"Your familiar pictures of home made me extremely desirous again to
be there . . . . I shall once more return to sober life,
satisfied with having secured three months of sunshine in this
valley of shadows and darkness. In this space of time I have seen
considerable of the world, but I am sadly afraid I have not grown
wiser thereby, inasmuch as it has generally been asserted by the
sages of every age that wisdom consists in a knowledge of the
wickedness of mankind, and the wiser a man grows the more
discontented he becomes with those around him. Whereas, woe is me,
I return in infinitely better humor with the world than I ever was
before, and with a most melancholy good opinion and good will for
the great mass of my fellow-creatures!"
Free intercourse with men of all parties, he thought, tends to divest a
man's mind of party bigotry.
"One day [he writes] I am dining with a knot of honest, furious
Federalists, who are damning all their opponents as a set of
consummate scoundrels, panders of Bonaparte, etc. The next day I
dine, perhaps, with some of the very men I have heard thus
anathematized, and find them equally honest, warm, and indignant;
and if I take their word for it, I had been dining the day before
with some of the greatest knaves in the nation, men absolutely paid
and suborned by the British government."
His friends at this time attempted to get him appointed secretary of
legation to the French mission, under Joel Barlow, then minister, but he
made no effort to secure the place. Perhaps he was deterred by the
knowledge that the author of "The Columbiad" suspected him, though
unjustly, of some strictures on his great epic. He had in mind a book of
travel in his own country, in which he should sketch manners and
characters; but nothing came of it. The peril to trade involved in the
War of 1812 gave him some forebodings, and aroused him to exertion.
He accepted the editorship of a periodical called "Select Reviews,"
afterwards changed to the "Analectic Magazine," for which he wrote
sketches, some of which were afterwards put into the "Sketch-Book," and
several reviews and naval biographies. A brief biography of Thomas
Campbell was also written about this time, as introductory to an edition
of "Gertrude of Wyoming." But the slight editorial care required by the
magazine was irksome to a man who had an unconquerable repugnance to all
periodical labor.
In 1813 Francis Jeffrey made a visit to the United States. Henry
Brevoort, who was then in London, wrote an anxious letter to Irving to
impress him with the necessity of making much of Mr. Jeffrey. "It is
essential," he says,--"that Jeffrey may imbibe a just estimate of the
United States and its inhabitants; he goes out strongly biased in our
favor, and the influence of his good opinion upon his return to this
country will go far to efface the calumnies and the absurdities that have
been laid to our charge by ignorant travelers. Persuade him to visit
Washington, and by all means to see the Falls of Niagara." The impression
seems to have prevailed that if Englishmen could be made to take a just
view of the Falls of Niagara, the misunderstandings between the two
countries would be reduced. Peter Irving, who was then in Edinburgh, was
impressed with the brilliant talent of the editor of the "Review,"
disguised as it was by affectation, but he said he "would not give the
Minstrel for a wilderness of Jeffreys."
The years from 1811 to 1815, when he went abroad for the second time,
were passed by Irving in a sort of humble waiting on Providence.
His letters to Brevoort during this period are full of the ennui of
irresolute youth. He idled away weeks and months in indolent enjoyment
in the country; he indulged his passion for the theater when opportunity
offered; and he began to be weary of a society which offered little
stimulus to his mind. His was the temperament of the artist, and America
at that time had little to evoke or to satisfy the artistic feeling.
There were few pictures and no galleries; there was no music, except the
amateur torture of strings which led the country dance, or the martial
inflammation of fife and drum, or the sentimental dawdling here and there
over the ancient harpsichord, with the songs of love, and the broad or
pathetic staves and choruses of the convivial table; and there was no
literary atmosphere.
After three months of indolent enjoyment in the winter and spring of
1811, Irving is complaining to Brevoort in June of the enervation of his
social life: "I do want most deplorably to apply my mind to something
that will arouse and animate it; for at present it is very indolent and
relaxed, and I find it very difficult to shake off the lethargy that
enthralls it. This makes me restless and dissatisfied with myself, and
I am convinced I shall not feel comfortable and contented until my mind
is fully employed. Pleasure is but a transient stimulus, and leaves the
mind more enfeebled than before. Give me rugged toils, fierce
disputation, wrangling controversy, harassing research,--give me anything
that calls forth the energies of the mind; but for Heaven's sake shield
me from those calms, those tranquil slumberings, those enervating
triflings, those siren blandishments, that I have for some time indulged
in, which lull the mind into complete inaction, which benumb its powers,
and cost it such painful and humiliating struggles to regain its activity
and independence!"
Irving at this time of life seemed always waiting by the pool for some
angel to come and trouble the waters. To his correspondent, who was in
the wilds of Michilimackinac, he continues to lament his morbid
inability. The business in which his thriving brothers were engaged was
the importation and sale of hardware and cutlery, and that spring his
services were required at the "store." "By all the martyrs of Grub
Street [he exclaims], I 'd sooner live in a garret, and starve into the
bargain, than follow so sordid, dusty, and soul-killing a way of life,
though certain it would make me as rich as old Croesus, or John Jacob
Astor himself!" The sparkle of society was no more agreeable to him than
the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything of the
----s since your departure; business and an amazing want of inclination
have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher, however,
prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the furnace of their
charms. I accompanied him there on Sunday evening last, and found the
Lads and Miss Knox with them. S----was in great spirits, and played the
sparkler with such great success as to silence the whole of us excepting
Jim, who was the agreeable rattle of the evening. God defend me from
such vivacity as hers, in future,--such smart speeches without meaning,
such bubble and squeak nonsense! I 'd as lieve stand by a frying-pan for
an hour and listen to the cooking of apple fritters. After two hours'
dead silence and suffering on my part I made out to drag him off, and did
not stop running until I was a mile from the house." Irving gives his
correspondent graphic pictures of the social warfare in which he was
engaged, the "host of rascally little tea-parties" in which he was
entangled; and some of his portraits of the "divinities," the "blossoms,"
and the beauties of that day would make the subjects of them flutter with
surprise in the churchyards where they lie. The writer was sated with
the "tedious commonplace of fashionable society," and languishing to
return to his books and his pen.
In March, 18122, in the shadow of the war and the depression of business,
Irving was getting out a new edition of the "Knickerbocker," which
Inskeep was to publish, agreeing to pay $1200 at six months for an
edition of fifteen hundred. The modern publisher had not then arisen and
acquired a proprietary right in the brains of the country, and the author
made his bargains like an independent being who owned himself.
Irving's letters of this period are full of the gossip of the town and
the matrimonial fate of his acquaintances. The fascinating Mary Fairlie
is at length married to Cooper, the tragedian, with the opposition of her
parents, after a dismal courtship and a cloudy prospect of happiness.
Goodhue is engaged to Miss Clarkson, the sister to the pretty one. The
engagement suddenly took place as they walked from church on Christmas
Day, and report says "the action was shorter than any of our naval
victories, for the lady struck on the first broadside." The war colored
all social life and conversation. "This war [the letter is to Brevoort,
who is in Europe] has completely changed the face of things here. You
would scarcely recognize our old peaceful city. Nothing is talked of but
armies, navies, battles, etc." The same phenomenon was witnessed then
that was observed in the war for the Union: "Men who had loitered about,
the hangers-on and encumbrances of society, have all at once risen to
importance, and been the only useful men of the day." The exploits of
our young navy kept up the spirits of the country. There was great
rejoicing when the captured frigate Macedonian was brought into New York,
and was visited by the curious as she lay wind-bound above Hell Gate.
"A superb dinner was given to the naval heroes, at which all the great
eaters and drinkers of the city were present. It was the noblest
entertainment of the kind I ever witnessed. On New Year's Eve a grand
ball was likewise given, where there was a vast display of great and
little people. The Livingstons were there in all their glory. Little
Rule Britannia made a gallant appearance at the head of a train of
beauties, among whom were the divine H----, who looked very inviting,
and the little Taylor, who looked still more so. Britannia was
gorgeously dressed in a queer kind of hat of stiff purple and silver
stuff, that had marvelously the appearance of copper, and made us suppose
that she had procured the real Mambrino helmet. Her dress was trimmed
with what we simply mistook for scalps, and supposed it was in honor of
the nation; but we blushed at our ignorance on discovering that it was a
gorgeous trimming of marten tips. Would that some eminent furrier had
been there to wonder and admire!"
With a little business and a good deal of loitering, waiting upon the
whim of his pen, Irving passed the weary months of the war. As late as
August, 1814, he is still giving Brevoort, who has returned, and is at
Rockaway Beach, the light gossip of the town. It was reported that
Brevoort and Dennis had kept a journal of their foreign travel, "which is
so exquisitely humorous that Mrs. Cooper, on only looking at the first
word, fell into a fit of laughing that lasted half an hour." Irving is
glad that he cannot find Brevoort's flute, which the latter requested
should be sent to him: "I do not think it would be an innocent amusement
for you, as no one has a right to entertain himself at the expense of
others." In such dallying and badinage the months went on, affairs every
day becoming more serious. Appended to a letter of September 9, 1814,
is a list of twenty well-known mercantile houses that had failed within
the preceding three weeks. Irving himself, shortly after this, enlisted
in the war, and his letters thereafter breathe patriotic indignation at
the insulting proposals of the British and their rumored attack on New
York, and all his similes, even those having love for their subject, are
martial and bellicose. Item: "The gallant Sam has fairly changed front,
and, instead of laying siege to Douglas castle, has charged sword in
hand, and carried little Cooper's' entrenchments."
As a Federalist and an admirer of England, Irving had deplored the war,
but his sympathies were not doubtful after it began, and the burning of
the national Capitol by General Ross aroused him to an active
participation in the struggle. He was descending the Hudson in a
steamboat when the tidings first reached him. It was night, and the
passengers had gone into the cabin, when a man came on board with the
news, and in the darkness related the particulars: the burning of the
President's house and government offices, and the destruction of the
Capitol, with the library and public archives. In the momentary silence
that followed, somebody raised his voice, and in a tone of complacent
derision "wondered what Jimmy Madison would say now." "Sir," cried Mr.
Irving, in a burst of indignation that overcame his habitual shyness,
"do you seize upon such a disaster only for a sneer? Let me tell you,
sir, it is not now a question about Jimmy Madison or Jimmy Armstrong.
The pride and honor of the nation are wounded; the country is insulted
and disgraced by this barbarous success, and every loyal citizen would
feel the ignominy and be earnest to avenge it." There was an outburst of
applause, and the sneerer was silenced. "I could not see the fellow,"
said Mr. Irving, in relating the anecdote, "but I let fly at him in the
dark."
The next day he offered his services to Governor Tompkins, and was made
the governor's aid and military secretary, with the right to be addressed
as Colonel Washington Irving. He served only four months in this
capacity, when Governor Tompkins was called to the session of the
legislature at Albany. Irving intended to go to Washington and apply for
a commission in the regular army, but he was detained at Philadelphia by
the affairs of his magazine, until news came in February, 1815, of the
close of the war. In May of that year he embarked for England to visit
his brother, intending only a short sojourn. He remained abroad
seventeen years.