Washington Irving by Charles Dudley Warner

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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 has 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 spring-time 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 theatre 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 church-yards 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, 1812, 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 $1,200 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!"

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