IRVING GOES TO SPAIN
When Irving went to Liverpool in 1815, it was his intention to travel
on the continent of Europe. As we have seen, business reasons made
that impossible. But after the publication and success of the "Sketch
Book" he was free. He was now certain of an income, and his reputation
was so great that he attracted notice wherever he went.
In 1820, after having spent five years in England, he at last set out
on his European journey. We cannot follow him in all his wanderings;
but one country that he visited furnished him the materials for the
most serious, and in one way the most important part of his literary
work. This was Spain. Here he spent a great deal of time, returning
again and again; and finally he was appointed United States minister
to that country.
He first went to Spain to collect materials for the "Life and Voyages
of Christopher Columbus." This was a much more serious work than
anything he had before undertaken. It was, unlike the history of New
York, a genuine investigation of facts derived from the musty old
volumes of the libraries of Spanish monasteries and other ancient
collections. It was a record of the life of the discoverer of America
that was destined to remain the highest authority on that subject.
Murray, the London publisher, paid him over fifteen thousand dollars
for the English copyright alone.
In his study among the ruins of Spain, Irving found many other things
which greatly interested him--legends, and tales of the Moors who had
once ruled there, and of the ruined beauties of the Moorish palace of
the Alhambra. His imagination was set on fire, he was delighted with
the images of by-gone days of glittering pageantry which his fancy
called up. Before his history of Columbus was finished, he began the
writing of a book so precisely to his taste that he could not restrain
himself until it was finished. This was the "Chronicle of the Conquest
of Granada"--a true history, but one which reads more like a romance
of the Middle Ages than a simple record of facts.
This was followed by four other books based on Spanish history and
legend. It seemed as if Irving could never quite abandon this
entrancing subject, for during the entire remainder of his life he
went back to it constantly.
When his great history of the life of Columbus was published and
proved its merit, Irving was honored in a way he had little expected
in his more idle days. The Royal Society of Literature bestowed upon
him one of two fifty-guinea[+] gold medals awarded annually, and the
University of Oxford conferred the degree of L.L.D.
[Footnote +: Two hundred and fifty dollars.]
The "Life of Columbus" was followed in 1831 by the "Voyages of the
Companions of Columbus." In the following year Irving returned to the
United States after an absence of seventeen years.
He was no longer an idle young man unable to fix his mind on any
serious work; he had become the most famous of American men of
letters. When he reached New York his countrymen hastened to heap
honors upon him, and almost overwhelmed him with public attentions.