In 1831 Mr. Irving was thrown, by his diplomatic position, into the thick
of the political and social tumult, when the Reform Bill was pending and
war was expected in Europe. It is interesting to note that for a time he
laid aside his attitude of the dispassionate observer, and caught the
general excitement. He writes in March, expecting that the fate of the
cabinet will be determined in a week, looking daily for decisive news
from Paris, and fearing dismal tidings from Poland. "However," he goes
on to say in a vague way, "the great cause of all the world will go on.
What a stirring moment it is to live in! I never took such intense
interest in newspapers. It seems to me as if life were breaking out anew
with me, or that I were entering upon quite a new and almost unknown
career of existence, and I rejoice to find sensibilities, which were
waning as to many objects of past interest, reviving with all their
freshness and vivacity at the scenes and prospects opening around me."
He expects the breaking of the thraldom of falsehood woven over the human
mind; and, more definitely, hopes that the Reform Bill will prevail.
Yet he is oppressed by the gloom hanging over the booksellers' trade,
which he thinks will continue until reform and cholera have passed away.
During the last months of his residence in England, the author renewed
his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn
showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house,
on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent
some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of
seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great novelist, in
the sad eclipse of his powers, was staying in the city, on his way to
Italy, and Mr. Lockhart asked Irving to dine with him. It was but a
melancholy repast. "Ah," said Scott, as Irving gave him his arm, after
dinner, "the times are changed, my good fellow, since we went over the
Eildon Hills together. It is all nonsense to tell a man that his mind is
not affected when his body is in this state."
Irving retired from the legation in September, 1831, to return home, the
longing to see his native land having become intense; but his arrival in
New York was delayed till May, 1832.
If he had any doubts of the sentiments of his countrymen toward him, his
reception in New York dissipated them. America greeted her most famous
literary man with a spontaneous outburst of love and admiration. The
public banquet in New York, that was long remembered for its brilliancy,
was followed by the tender of the same tribute in other cities, an honor
which his unconquerable shrinking from this kind of publicity compelled
him to decline.
The "Dutch Herodotus, Diedrich Knickerbocker," to use the phrase of a
toast, having come out of one such encounter with fair credit, did not
care to tempt Providence further. The thought of making a dinner-table
speech threw him into a sort of whimsical panic,--a noble infirmity,
which characterized also Hawthorne and Thackeray.
The enthusiasm manifested for the homesick author was equaled by his own
for the land and the people he supremely loved. Nor was his surprise at
the progress made during seventeen years less than his delight in it.
His native place had become a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants;
the accumulation of wealth and the activity of trade astonished him, and
the literary stir was scarcely less unexpected. The steamboat had come
to be used, so that he seemed to be transported from place to place by
magic; and on a near view the politics of America seemed not less
interesting than those of Europe. The nullification battle was set; the
currency conflict still raged; it was a time of inflation and land
speculation; the West, every day more explored and opened, was the land
of promise for capital and energy. Fortunes were made in a day by buying
lots in "paper towns." Into some of these speculations Irving put his
savings; the investments were as permanent as they were unremunerative.
Irving's first desire, however, on his recovery from the state of
astonishment into which these changes plunged him, was to make himself
thoroughly acquainted with the entire country and its development.
To this end he made an extended tour in the South and West, which passed
beyond the bounds of frontier settlement. The fruit of his excursion
into the Pawnee country, on the waters of the Arkansas, a region
untraversed by white men, except solitary trappers, was "A Tour on the
Prairies," a sort of romance of reality, which remains to-day as good a
description as we have of hunting adventure on the plains. It led also
to the composition of other books on the West, which were more or less
mere pieces of book-making for the market.
Our author was far from idle. Indeed, he could not afford to be.
Although he had received considerable sums from his books, and perhaps
enough for his own simple wants, the responsibility of the support of his
two brothers, Peter and Ebenezer, and several nieces, devolved upon him.
And, besides, he had a longing to make himself a home, where he could
pursue his calling undisturbed, and indulge the sweets of domestic and
rural life, which of all things lay nearest his heart. And these two
undertakings compelled him to be diligent with his pen to the end of his
life. The spot he chose for his "Roost" was a little farm on the bank of
the river at Tarrytown, close to his old Sleepy Hollow haunt, one of the
loveliest, if not the most picturesque, situations on the Hudson.
At first he intended nothing more than a summer retreat, inexpensive and
simply furnished. But his experience was that of all who buy, and
renovate, and build. The farm had on it a small stone Dutch cottage,
built about a century before, and inhabited by one of the Van Tassels.
This was enlarged, still preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics;
it acquired a tower and a whimsical weather-cock, the delight of the
owner ("it was brought from Holland by Gill Davis, the King of Coney
Island, who says he got it from a windmill which they were demolishing at
the gate of Rotterdam, which windmill has been mentioned in
'Knickerbocker'"), and became one of the most snug and picturesque
residences on the river. When the slip of Melrose ivy, which was brought
over from Scotland by Mrs. Renwick and given to the author, had grown and
well overrun it, the house, in the midst of sheltering groves and
secluded walks, was as pretty a retreat as a poet could desire. But the
little nook proved to have an insatiable capacity for swallowing up
money, as the necessities of the author's establishment increased: there
was always something to be done to the grounds; some alterations in the
house; a greenhouse, a stable, a gardener's cottage, to be built,--and to
the very end the outlay continued. The cottage necessitated economy in
other personal expenses, and incessant employment of his pen.
But Sunnyside, as the place was named, became the dearest spot on earth
to him; it was his residence, from which he tore himself with reluctance,
and to which he returned with eager longing; and here, surround by
relatives whom he loved, he passed nearly all the remainder of his years,
in as happy conditions, I think, as a bachelor ever enjoyed. His
intellectual activity was unremitting, he had no lack of friends, there
was only now and then a discordant note in the general estimation of his
literary work, and he was the object of the most tender care from his
nieces. Already, he writes, in October, 1838, "my little cottage is well
stocked. I have Ebenezer's five girls, and himself also, whenever he can
be spared from town; sister Catherine and her daughter; Mr. Davis
occasionally, with casual visits from all the rest of our family
connection. The cottage, therefore, is never lonely." I like to dwell
in thought upon this happy home, a real haven of rest after many
wanderings; a seclusion broken only now and then by enforced absence,
like that in Madrid as minister, but enlivened by many welcome guests.
Perhaps the most notorious of these was a young Frenchman, a "somewhat
quiet guest," who, after several months' imprisonment on board a French
man-of-war, was set on shore at Norfolk, and spent a couple of months in
New York and its vicinity, in 1837. This visit was vividly recalled by
Irving in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Storrow, who was in Paris in 1853,
and had just been presented at court:
"Louis Napoleon and Eugenie Montijo, Emperor and Empress of France!
one of whom I have had a guest at my cottage on the Hudson; the
other, whom, when a child, I have had on my knee at Granada. It
seems to cap the climax of the strange dramas of which Paris has
been the theatre during my lifetime. I have repeatedly thought that
each grand coup de theatre would be the last that would occur in my
time; but each has been succeeded by another equally striking; and
what will be the next, who can conjecture?
"The last time I saw Eugenie Montijo she was one of the reigning
belles of Madrid; and she and her giddy circle had swept away my
charming young friend, the beautiful and accomplished--------,
into their career of fashionable dissipation. Now Eugenie is upon a
throne, and a voluntary recluse in a convent of one of the most
rigorous orders! Poor----! Perhaps, however, her fate may
ultimately be the happiest of the two. 'The storm' with her 'is
o'er, and she's at rest;' but the other is launched upon a
returnless shore, on a dangerous sea, infamous for its tremendous
shipwrecks. Am I to live to see the catastrophe of her career, and
the end of this suddenly conjured-up empire, which seems to 'be of
such stuff as dreams are made of'?"
As we have seen, the large sums Irving earned by his pen were not spent
in selfish indulgence. His habits and tastes were simple, and little
would have sufficed for his individual needs. He cared not much for
money, and seemed to want it only to increase the happiness of those who
were confided to his care. A man less warm-hearted and more selfish, in
his circumstances, would have settled down to a life of more ease and
less responsibility.
To go back to the period of his return to America. He was now past
middle life, having returned to New York in his fiftieth year. But he
was in the full flow of literary productiveness. I have noted the dates
of his achievements, because his development was somewhat tardy compared
that of many of his contemporaries; but he had the "staying" qualities.
The first crop of his mind was of course the most original; time and
experience had toned down his exuberant humor; but the spring of his
fancy was as free, his vigor was not abated, and his art was more
refined. Some of his best work was yet to be done.
And it is worthy of passing mention, in regard to his later productions,
that his admirable sense of literary proportion, which is wanting in many
good writers, characterized his work to the end.
High as his position as a man of letters was at this time, the
consideration in which he was held was much broader than that,--it was
that of one of the first citizens of the Republic. His friends, readers,
and admirers were not merely the literary class and the general public,
but included nearly all the prominent statesmen of the time. Almost any
career in public life would have been open to him if he had lent an ear
to their solicitations. But political life was not to his taste, and it
would have been fatal to his sensitive spirit. It did not require much
self-denial, perhaps, to decline the candidacy for mayor of New York, or
the honor of standing for Congress; but he put aside also the distinction
of a seat in Mr. Van Buren's cabinet as Secretary of the Navy. His main
reason for declining it, aside from a diffidence in his own judgment in
public matters, was his dislike of the turmoil of political life in
Washington, and his sensitiveness to personal attacks which beset the
occupants of high offices. But also he had come to a political
divergence with Mr. Van Buren. He liked the man,--he liked almost
everybody,--and esteemed him as a friend, but he apprehended trouble from
the new direction of the party in power. Irving was almost devoid of
party prejudice, and he never seemed to have strongly marked political
opinions. Perhaps his nearest confession to a creed is contained in a
letter he wrote to a member of the House of Representatives, Gouverneur
Kemble, a little time before the offer of a position in the cabinet, in
which he said that he did not relish some points of Van Buren's policy,
nor believe in the honesty of some of his elbow counselors. I quote a
passage from it:
"As far as I know my own mind, I am thoroughly a republican, and
attached, from complete conviction, to the institutions of my
country; but I am a republican without gall, and have no bitterness
in my creed. I have no relish for Puritans, either in religion or
politics, who are for pushing principles to an extreme, and for
overturning everything that stands in the way of their own zealous
career . . . . Ours is a government of compromise. We have
several great and distinct interests bound up together, which, if
not separately consulted and severally accommodated, may harass and
impair each other . . . . I always distrust the soundness of
political councils that are accompanied by acrimonious and
disparaging attacks upon any great class of our fellow-citizens.
Such are those urged to the disadvantage of the great trading and
financial classes of our country."
During the ten years preceding his mission to Spain, Irving kept fagging
away at the pen, doing a good deal of miscellaneous and ephemeral work.
Among his other engagements was that of regular contributor to the
"Knickerbocker Magazine," for a salary of two thousand dollars. He wrote
the editor that he had observed that man, as he advances in life, is
subject to a plethora of the mind, occasioned by an accumulation of
wisdom upon the brain, and that he becomes fond of telling long stories
and doling out advice, to the annoyance of his friends. To avoid
becoming the bore of the domestic circle, he proposed to ease off this
surcharge of the intellect by inflicting his tediousness on the public
through the pages of the periodical. The arrangement brought reputation
to the magazine (which was published in the days when the honor of being
in print was supposed by the publisher to be ample compensation to the
scribe), but little profit to Mr. Irving. During this period he
interested himself in an international copyright, as a means of fostering
our young literature. He found that a work of merit, written by an
American who had not established a commanding name in the market, met
very cavalier treatment from our publishers, who frankly said that they
need not trouble themselves about native works, when they could pick up
every day successful books from the British press, for which they had to
pay no copyright. Irving's advocacy of the proposed law was entirely
unselfish, for his own market was secure.
His chief works in these ten years were, "A Tour on the Prairies,"
"Recollections of Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey," "The Legends of the
Conquest of Spain," "Astoria" (the heavy part of the work of it was done
by his nephew Pierre), "Captain Bonneville," and a number of graceful
occasional papers, collected afterwards under the title of "Wolfert's
Roost." Two other books may properly be mentioned here, although they
did not appear until after his return from his absence of four years and
a half at the court of Madrid; these are the "Biography of Goldsmith" and
"Mahomet and his Successors." At the age of sixty-six he laid aside the
"Life of Washington," on which he was engaged, and rapidly threw off
these two books. The "Goldsmith" was enlarged from a sketch he had made
twenty-five years before. It is an exquisite, sympathetic piece of work,
without pretension or any subtle verbal analysis, but on the whole an
excellent interpretation of the character. Author and subject had much
in common: Irving had at least a kindly sympathy for the vagabondish
inclinations of his predecessor, and with his humorous and cheerful
regard of the world; perhaps it is significant of a deeper unity in
character that both, at times, fancied they could please an intolerant
world by attempting to play the flute. The "Mahomet" is a popular
narrative, which throws no new light on the subject; it is pervaded by
the author's charm of style and equity of judgment, but it lacks the
virility of Gibbon's masterly picture of the Arabian prophet and the
Saracenic onset.
We need not dwell longer upon this period. One incident of it, however,
cannot be passed in silence--that was the abandonment of his lifelong
project of writing the History of the Conquest of Mexico to Mr. William
H. Prescott. It had been a scheme of his boyhood; he had made
collections of materials for it during his first residence in Spain;
and he was actually and absorbedly engaged in the composition of the
first chapters, when he was sounded by Mr. Cogswell, of the Astor
Library, in behalf of Mr. Prescott. Some conversation showed that
Mr. Prescott was contemplating the subject upon which Mr. Irving was
engaged, and the latter instantly authorized Mr. Cogswell to say that he
abandoned it. Although our author was somewhat far advanced, and Mr.
Prescott had not yet collected his materials, Irving renounced the
glorious theme in such a manner that Prescott never suspected the pain
and loss it cost him, nor the full extent of his own obligation. Some
years afterwards Irving wrote to his nephew that in giving it up he in a
manner gave up his bread, as he had no other subject to supply its place:
"I was," he wrote, "dismounted from my cheval de bataille, and have never
been completely mounted since." But he added that he was not sorry for
the warm impulse that induced him to abandon the subject, and that Mr.
Prescott's treatment of it had justified his opinion of him.
Notwithstanding Prescott's very brilliant work, we cannot but feel some
regret that Irving did not write a Conquest of Mexico. His method, as he
outlined it, would have been the natural one. Instead of partially
satisfying the reader's curiosity in a preliminary essay, in which the
Aztec civilization was exposed, Irving would have begun with the entry of
the conquerors, and carried his reader step by step onward, letting him
share all the excitement and surprise of discovery which the invaders
experienced, and learn of the wonders of the country in the manner most
likely to impress both the imagination and the memory; and with his
artistic sense of the value of the picturesque he would have brought into
strong relief the dramatis personae of the story.
In 1842 Irving was tendered the honor of the mission to Madrid. It was an
entire surprise to himself and to his friends. He came to look upon this
as the "crowning honor of his life," and yet when the news first reached
him, he paced up and down his room, excited and astonished, revolving in
his mind the separation from home and friends, and was heard murmuring,
half to himself and half to his nephew: "It is hard,--very hard; yet I
must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." His
acceptance of the position was doubtless influenced by the intended honor
to his profession, by the gratifying manner in which it came to him, by
his desire to please his friends, and the belief, which was a delusion,
that diplomatic life in Madrid would offer no serious interruption to his
"Life of Washington," in which he had just become engaged. The
nomination, the suggestion of Daniel Webster, Tyler's Secretary of State,
was cordially approved by the President and cabinet, and confirmed almost
by acclamation in the Senate. "Ah," said Mr. Clay, who was opposing
nearly all the President's appointments, "this is a nomination everybody
will concur in!" "If a person of more merit and higher qualification,"
wrote Mr. Webster in his official notification, "had presented himself,
great as is my personal regard for you, I should have yielded it to
higher considerations."
No other appointment could have been made so complimentary to Spain, and
it remains to this day one of the most honorable to his own country.
In reading Irving's letters written during his third visit abroad, you
are conscious that the glamour of life is gone for him, though not his
kindliness towards the world, and that he is subject to few illusions;
the show and pageantry no longer enchant,--they only weary. The novelty
was gone, and he was no longer curious to see great sights and great
people. He had declined a public dinner in New York, and he put aside
the same hospitality offered by Liverpool and by Glasgow. In London he
attended the Queen's grand fancy ball, which surpassed anything he had
seen in splendor and picturesque effect. "The personage," he writes,
"who appeared least to enjoy the scene seemed to me to be the little
Queen herself. She was flushed and heated, and evidently fatigued and
oppressed with the state she had to keep up and the regal robes in which
she was arrayed, and especially by a crown of gold, which weighed heavy
on her brow, and to which she was continually raising her hand to move it
slightly when it pressed. I hope and trust her real crown sits easier."
The bearing of Prince Albert he found prepossessing, and he adds, "He
speaks English very well;" as if that were a useful accomplishment for an
English Prince Consort. His reception at court and by the ministers and
diplomatic corps was very kind, and he greatly enjoyed meeting his old
friends, Leslie, Rogers, and Moore. At Paris, in an informal
presentation to the royal family, he experienced a very cordial welcome
from the King and Queen and Madame Adelaide, each of whom took occasion
to say something complimentary about his writings; but he escaped as soon
as possible from social engagements. "Amidst all the splendors of London
and Paris, I find my imagination refuses to take fire, and my heart still
yearns after dear little Sunnyside." Of an anxious friend in Paris, who
thought Irving was ruining his prospects by neglecting to leave his card
with this or that duchess who had sought his acquaintance, he writes:
"He attributes all this to very excessive modesty, not dreaming that the
empty intercourse of saloons with people of rank and fashion could be a
bore to one who has run the rounds of society for the greater part of
half a century, and who likes to consult his own humor and pursuits."
When Irving reached Madrid, the affairs of the kingdom had assumed a
powerful dramatic interest, wanting in none of the romantic elements that
characterize the whole history of the peninsula. "The future career [he
writes of this gallant soldier, Espartero, whose merits and services have
placed him at the head of the government, and the future fortunes of
these isolated little princesses, the Queen and her sister], have an
uncertainty hanging about them worthy of the fifth act in a melodrama."
The drama continued, with constant shifting of scene, as long as Irving
remained in Spain, and gave to his diplomatic life intense interest, and
at times perilous excitement. His letters are full of animated pictures
of the changing progress of the play; and although they belong rather to
the gossip of history than to literary biography, they cannot be
altogether omitted. The duties which the minister had to perform were
unusual, delicate, and difficult; but I believe he acquitted himself of
them with the skill of a born diplomatist. When he went to Spain before,
in 1826, Ferdinand VII. was, by aid of French troops, on the throne, the
liberties of the kingdom were crushed, and her most enlightened men were
in exile. While he still resided there, in 1829, Ferdinand married, for
his fourth wife, Maria Christina, sister of the King of Naples, and niece
of the Queen of Louis Philippe. By her he had two daughters, his only
children. In order that his own progeny might succeed him, he set aside
the Salique law (which had been imposed by France) just before his death,
in 1833, and revived the old Spanish law of succession. His eldest
daughter, then three years old, was proclaimed Queen by the name of
Isabella II, and her mother guardian during her minority, which would end
at the age of fourteen. Don Carlos, the king's eldest brother,
immediately set up the standard of rebellion, supported by the absolutist
aristocracy, the monks, and a great part of the clergy. The liberals
rallied to the Queen. The Queen Regent did not, however, act in good
faith with the popular party she resisted all salutary reform, would not
restore the Constitution of 1812 until compelled to by a popular
uprising, and disgraced herself by a scandalous connection with one
Munos, one of the royal bodyguards. She enriched this favorite and
amassed a vast fortune for herself, which she sent out of the country.
In 1839, when Don Carlos was driven out of the country by the patriot
soldier Espartero, she endeavored to gain him over to her side, but
failed. Espartero became Regent, and Maria Christina repaired to Paris,
where she was received with great distinction by Louis Philippe, and
Paris became the focus of all sorts of machinations against the
constitutional government of Spain, and of plots for its overthrow. One
of these had just been defeated at the time of Irving's arrival. It was
a desperate attempt of a band of soldiers of the rebel army to carry off
the little Queen and her sister, which was frustrated only by the gallant
resistance of the halberdiers in the palace. The little princesses had
scarcely recovered from the horror of this night attack when our minister
presented his credentials to the Queen through the Regent, thus breaking
a diplomatic deadlock, in which he was followed by all the other
embassies except the French. I take some passages from the author's
description of his first audience at the royal palace:
"We passed through the spacious court, up the noble staircase, and
through the long suites of apartments of this splendid edifice, most of
them silent and vacant, the casements closed to keep out the heat, so
that a twilight reigned throughout the mighty pile, not a little
emblematical of the dubious fortunes of its inmates. It seemed more like
traversing a convent than a palace. I ought to have mentioned that in
ascending the grand staircase we found the portal at the head of it,
opening into the royal suite of apartments, still bearing the marks of
the midnight attack upon the palace in October last, when an attempt was
made to get possession of the persons of the little Queen and her sister,
to carry them off . . . . The marble casements of the doors had been
shattered in several places, and the double doors themselves pierced all
over with bullet holes, from the musketry that played upon them from the
staircase during that eventful night. What must have been the feelings
of those poor children, on listening, from their apartment, to the horrid
tumult, the outcries of a furious multitude, and the reports of firearms
echoing and reverberating through the vaulted halls and spacious courts
of this immense edifice, and dubious whether their own lives were not the
object of the assault!
"After passing through various chambers of the palace, now silent and
sombre, but which I had traversed in former days, on grand court
occasions in the time of Ferdinand VII, when they were glittering with
all the splendor of a court, we paused in a great saloon, with
high-vaulted ceiling incrusted with florid devices in porcelain, and hung
with silken tapestry, but all in dim twilight, like the rest of the
palace. At one end of the saloon the door opened to an almost
interminable range of other chambers, through which, at a distance, we
had a glimpse of some indistinct figures in black. They glided into the
saloon slowly, and with noiseless steps. It was the little Queen, with
her governess, Madame Mina, widow of the general of that name, and her
guardian, the excellent Arguelles, all in deep mourning for the Duke of
Orleans. The little Queen advanced some steps within the saloon and then
paused. Madame Mina took her station a little distance behind her. The
Count Almodovar then introduced me to the Queen in my official capacity,
and she received me with a grave and quiet welcome, expressed in a very
low voice. She is nearly twelve years of age, and is sufficiently well
grown for her years. She had a somewhat fair complexion, quite pale,
with bluish or light gray eyes; a grave demeanor, but a graceful
deportment. I could not but regard her with deep interest, knowing what
important concerns depended upon the life of this fragile little being,
and to what a stormy and precarious career she might be destined. Her
solitary position, also, separated from all her kindred except her little
sister, a mere effigy of royalty in the hands of statesmen, and
surrounded by the formalities and ceremonials of state, which spread
sterility around the occupant of a throne."
I have quoted this passage, not more on account of its intrinsic
interest, than as a specimen of the author's consummate art of conveying
an impression by what I may call the tone of his style; and this appears
in all his correspondence relating to this picturesque and eventful
period. During the four years of his residence the country was in a
constant state of excitement and often of panic. Armies were marching
over the kingdom. Madrid was in a state of siege, expecting an assault
at one time; confusion reigned amid the changing adherents about the
person of the child-queen. The duties of a minister were perplexing
enough, when the Spanish government was changing its character and its
personnel with the rapidity of shifting scenes in a pantomime. "This
consumption of ministers," wrote Irving to Mr. Webster, "is appalling.
To carry on a negotiation with such transient functionaries is like
bargaining at the window of a railroad-car: before you can get a reply to
a proposition the other party is out of sight."
Apart from politics, Irving's residence was full of half-melancholy
recollections and associations. In a letter to his old comrade, Prince
Polgorouki, then Russian Minister at Naples, he recalls the days of their
delightful intercourse at the D'Oubrils':
"Time dispels charms and illusions. You remember how much I was
struck with a beautiful young woman (I will not mention names) who
appeared in a tableau as Murillo's Virgin of the Assumption? She
was young, recently married, fresh and unhackneyed in society, and
my imagination decked her out with everything that was pure, lovely,
innocent, and angelic in womanhood. She was pointed out to me in
the theatre shortly after my arrival in Madrid. I turned with
eagerness to the original of the picture that had ever remained hung
up in sanctity in my mind. I found her still handsome, though
somewhat matronly in appearance, seated, with her daughters, in the
box of a fashionable nobleman, younger than herself, rich in purse
but poor in intellect, and who was openly and notoriously her
cavalier servante. The charm was broken, the picture fell from the
wall. She may have the customs of a depraved country and licentious
state of society to excuse her; but I can never think of her again
in the halo of feminine purity and loveliness that surrounded the
Virgin of Murillo."
During Irving's ministry he was twice absent, briefly in Paris and
London, and was called to the latter place for consultation in regard to
the Oregon boundary dispute, in the settlement of which he rendered
valuable service. Space is not given me for further quotations from
Irving's brilliant descriptions of court, characters, and society in that
revolutionary time, nor of his half-melancholy pilgrimage to the southern
scenes of his former reveries. But I will take a page from a letter to
his sister, Mrs. Paris, describing his voyage from Barcelona to
Marseilles, which exhibits the lively susceptibility of the author and
diplomat who was then in his sixty-first year:
"While I am writing at a table in the cabin, I am sensible of the
power of a pair of splendid Spanish eyes which are occasionally
flashing upon me, and which almost seem to throw a light upon the
paper. Since I cannot break the spell, I will describe the owner of
them. She is a young married lady, about four or five and twenty,
middle sized, finely modeled, a Grecian outline of face, a
complexion sallow yet healthful, raven black hair, eyes dark, large,
and beaming, softened by long eyelashes, lips full and rosy red, yet
finely chiseled, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. She is dressed in
black, as if in mourning; on one hand is a black glove; the other
hand, ungloved, is small, exquisitely formed, with taper fingers and
blue veins. She has just put it up to adjust her clustering black
locks. I never saw female hand more exquisite. Really, if I were a
young man, I should not be able to draw the portrait of this
beautiful creature so calmly.
"I was interrupted in my letter writing, by an observation of the
lady whom I was describing. She had caught my eye occasionally, as
it glanced from my letter toward her. 'Really, Senor,' said she, at
length, with a smile, I one would think you were a painter taking my
likeness.' I could not resist the impulse. 'Indeed,' said I, 'I am
taking it; I am writing to a friend the other side of the world,
discussing things that are passing before me, and I could not help
noting down one of the best specimens of the country that I had met
with: A little bantering took place between the young lady, her
husband, and myself, which ended in my reading off, as well as I
could into Spanish, the description I had just written down.
It occasioned a world of merriment, and was taken in excellent part.
The lady's cheek, for once, mantled with the rose. She laughed,
shook her head, and said I was a very fanciful portrait painter;
and the husband declared that, if I would stop at St. Filian, all
the ladies in the place would crowd to have their portraits taken,
--my pictures were so flattering. I have just parted with them. The
steamship stopped in the open sea, just in front of the little bay
of St. Filian; boats came off from shore for the party. I helped
the beautiful original of the portrait into the boat, and promised
her and her husband if ever I should come to St. Filian I would pay
them a visit. The last I noticed of her was a Spanish farewell wave
of her beautiful white hand, and the gleam of her dazzling teeth as
she smiled adieu. So there 's a very tolerable touch of romance for
a gentleman of my years."
When Irving announced his recall from the court of Madrid, the young
Queen said to him in reply: "You may take with you into private life the
intimate conviction that your frank and loyal conduct has contributed to
draw closer the amicable relations which exist between North America and
the Spanish nation, and that your distinguished personal merits have
gained in my heart the appreciation which you merit by more than one
title." The author was anxious to return. From the midst of court life
in April, 1845, he had written: "I long to be once more back at dear
little Sunnyside, while I have yet strength and good spirits to enjoy the
simple pleasures of the country, and to rally a happy family group once
more about me. I grudge every year of absence that rolls by. To-morrow
is my birthday. I shall then be sixty-two years old. The evening of
life is fast drawing over me; still I hope to get back among my friends
while there is a little sunshine left."
It was the 19th of September, 1846, says his biographer, "when the
impatient longing of his heart was gratified, and he found himself
restored to his home for the thirteen years of happy life still remaining
to him."