Washington Irving by Charles Dudley Warner

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But the work had an immediate, continued, and deserved success. It was
critically contrasted with Robertson's account of Columbus, and it is
open to the charge of too much rhetorical color here and there, and it
is at times too diffuse; but its substantial accuracy is not questioned,
and the glow of the narrative springs legitimately from the romance of
the theme. Irving understood, what our later historians have fully
appreciated, the advantage of vivid individual portraiture in historical
narrative. His conception of the character and mission of Columbus is
largely outlined, but firmly and most carefully executed, and is one of
the noblest in literature. I cannot think it idealized, though it
required a poetic sensibility to enter into sympathy with the
magnificent dreamer, who was regarded by his own generation as the fool
of an idea. A more prosaic treatment would have utterly failed to
represent that mind, which existed from boyhood in an ideal world, and,
amid frustrated hopes, shattered plans, and ignoble returns for his
sacrifices, could always rebuild its glowing projects, and conquer
obloquy and death itself with immortal anticipations.

Towards the close of his residence in Spain, Irving received
unexpectedly the appointment of Secretary of Legation to the Court of
St. James, at which Louis McLane was American Minister; and after some
hesitation, and upon the urgency of his friends, he accepted it. He was
in the thick of literary projects. One of these was the History of the
Conquest of Mexico, which he afterwards surrendered to Mr. Prescott and
another was the "Life of Washington," which was to wait many years for
fulfillment. His natural diffidence and his reluctance to a routine life
made him shrink from the diplomatic appointment; but once engaged in it,
and launched again in London society, he was reconciled to the
situation. Of honors there was no lack, nor of the adulation of social
and literary circles. In April, 1830, the Royal Society of Literature
awarded him one of the two annual gold medals placed at the disposal of
the society by George IV., to be given to authors of literary works of
eminent merit, the other being voted to the historian Hallam; and this
distinction was followed by the degree of D.C.L. from the University of
Oxford,--a title which the modest author never used.

CHAPTER VIII.

RETURN TO AMERICA: SUNNYSIDE: THE MISSION TO MADRID.

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 my
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 thralldom
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 weathercock, 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 green-house, 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, surrounded 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 to
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 life-time. 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
with 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 was as a man of letters 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 he also 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 life-long
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."

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