Complete Fictional Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)

by Washington Irving

  “Bracebridge Hall” was well received; and confirmed its author’s reputation, especially in England. He had only to be passive to find himself overwhelmed with social engagements. A more liberal diet and plenty of exercise had improved his condition, and for a month or so after getting rid of “Bracebridge Hall,” he gave himself up to the engagements of a London season. But his ankles soon began to trouble him again, and in July, 1822, he set out for Aix-la-Chapelle, where he hoped to get permanent relief from his distressing complaint. He found nothing to keep him long at Aix. The baths and waters were well enough, but he was too dependent upon cheerful companionship to endure life among a company of invalids. He began a leisurely round of the Continental watering-places, staying a few weeks here and a few days there, and gradually improving in condition. Toward the close of the year he brought up at Dresden.

  The only touch of mystery which belongs to the story of Irving is connected with this six months’ stay at Dresden. He made many friends there, and grew especially intimate with an English family named Foster, a mother and two daughters. It is said — and denied — that he would have liked to marry the youngest daughter, Emily. His biographer insists that there was nothing in the affair but friendship. To Mrs. Foster he wrote the only account he ever gave of his early love and loss; and his nephew quotes the closing passage as proof that he had no thought of marrying Emily Foster, however fond of her he may have been: “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 had already a family to think and provide for.”

  But this might be the modest speech of a middle-aged lover. Years later the written reminiscences of the two daughters unmistakably impute the attentions of the brilliant American to something more than friendliness. It is certain that he had a very warm feeling for somebody or something in Dresden, which led to a temporary return of his youthful delight in society. For his time was by no means given up to the Fosters. He was received into the life of the little German court, and evidently derived such pleasure as is proper to a Republican from dancing with princesses, and acting in private theatricals with Highnesses and Excellencies. On the whole it seems to have been a peaceful, idle, rather trivial time of sojourn among congenial people. He danced, he strolled, he wrote verses to little Miss Emily; in short, he enjoyed himself as a youngish man may, whether the muse is waiting for him, or some less high-flown customer. “I wish I could give you a good account of my literary labors,” he wrote his sister after several months in Dresden, “but I have nothing to report. I am merely seeing, and hearing, and my mind seems in too crowded and confused a state to produce anything. I am getting very familiar with the German language; and there is a lady here who is so kind as to give me lessons every day in Italian [Mrs. Foster], which language I have nearly forgotten, but which I am fast regaining. Another lady is superintending my French [Miss Emily Foster], so that if I am not acquiring ideas, I am at least acquiring a variety of modes of expressing them when they do come.” Very likely the confusion of his mind was not lessened by the frequency of those French lessons. There really seems to be no reason for doubting the testimony of the elder sister’s journal; “He has written. He has confessed to my mother, as to a dear and true friend, his love for E —— , and his conviction of its utter hopelessness. He feels himself unable to combat it. He thinks he must try, by absence, to bring more peace to his mind.... He has almost resolved to make a tour in Silesia, which will keep him absent for a few weeks.” The tour in Silesia was certainly made; and during the brief absence Irving wrote sundry sentimental letters to Mrs. Foster. There are occasions when he seems to imagine a pretty daughter looking over the admirable mother’s shoulder, and being much affected by the famous author’s tenderness for Dresden. Presently he comes back to be their escort, for they are going home to England; and at Rotterdam the good-bys are said. They met afterward in England, but the old intimacy was gone.

  More than thirty years after, Irving had a letter from a Mrs. Emily Fuller, whose name he did not know. Pleasantly and discreetly it recalled those happy Emily Foster days in Dresden. “She addresses him because she hopes that her eldest boy Henry may have the happiness and advantage of meeting him.” Poor Irving! Her eldest boy Henry.... Well, the sting was all gone by that time, fortunately. His reply is all that it ought to be, and nothing more.

  Those first days in Paris were not cheerful ones for Irving. His pleasant dream was over, and he had forgotten what to do with waking moments. His memorandum-book records that he felt oppressed by “a strange horror on his mind — a dread of future evil — of failure in future literary attempts — a dismal foreboding that he could not drive off by any effort of reason.” “When I once get going again with my pen,” he wrote to Peter, “I mean to keep on steadily, until I can scrape together enough to produce a regular income, however moderate. We shall then be independent of the world and its chances.” But he could not manage to get going. For some time he could write nothing at all. Fortunately, after an unprofitable month or two, he fell in with John Howard Payne, now remembered only for his “Home, Sweet Home,” but then esteemed as an actor and dramatist. Irving had met him several years before, and now became associated with him in some dramatic translating and adapting. The results were nearly worthless from a literary point of view, but served to keep him busy, and to put him once more in the writing vein.

  For some time Murray had been pressing him hard for copy, and in the spring of 1824 the “Tales of a Traveler” were completed and sent to press. After the task of proof-reading came a reaction of high spirits which expressed itself in the most amusing letter Irving ever wrote: —

  “Brighton, August 14, 1824.

  “My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea.

  “I forget how the song ends, but here I am at Brighton just on the point of embarking for France. I have dragged myself out of London, as a horse drags himself out of the slough, or a fly out of a honey-pot, almost leaving a limb behind him at every tug. Not that I have been immersed in pleasure and surrounded by sweets, but rather up to the ears in ink and harassed by printers’ devils.

  “I never have had such fagging in altering, adding, and correcting; and I have been detained beyond all patience by the delays of the press. Yesterday I absolutely broke away, without waiting for the last sheets. They are to be sent after me here by mail, to be corrected this morning, or else they must take their chance. From the time I first started pen in hand on this work, it has been nothing but hard driving with me.

  “I have not been able to get to Tunbridge to see the Donegals, which I really and greatly regret. Indeed I have seen nobody except a friend or two who had the kindness to hunt me out. Among these was Mr. Story, and I ate a dinner there that it took me a week to digest, having been obliged to swallow so much hard-favored nonsense from a loud-talking baronet whose name, thank God, I forget, but who maintained Byron was not a man of courage, and therefore his poetry was not readable. I was really afraid he would bring John Story to the same way of thinking.

  “I went a few evenings since to see Kenney’s new piece, the Alcaid. It went off lamely, and the Alcaid is rather a bore, and comes near to be generally thought so. Poor Kenney came to my room next evening, and I could not believe that one night could have ruined a man so completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting for the owner to get up; or that it was one of those frames on which clothiers stretch coats at their shop doors; until I perceived a thin face sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like the axe in a bundle of fasces. He was so thin, and pale, and nervous, and e
xhausted — he made a dozen difficulties in getting over a spot in the carpet, and never would have accomplished it if he had not lifted himself over by the points in his shirt-collar.

  “I saw Rogers just as I was leaving town. I had not time to ask him any particulars about you, and indeed he is not exactly the man from whom I would ask news about my friends. I dined tête-à-tête with him some time ago, and he served up his friends as he served up his fish, with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was very piquant, but it rather set my teeth on edge....

  “Farewell, my dear Moore. Let me hear from you, if but a line; particularly if my work pleases you, but don’t say a word against it. I am easily put out of humor with what I do.”

  Surely no more delicious bit of nonsense was ever written than the description of poor Kenney. Moore read it to a group of friends in the presence of the victim — a situation which would have been too “piquant” for Irving’s taste.

  Moore had only the desired praise for the “Tales of a Traveler,” but elsewhere it did not fare so well. Irving considered it on the whole his best work; but though it had a large sale, its reception in England was not quite what he had hoped for; and in America it was received by the press with something like hostility. Unfortunately some busybody in America made it his concern to forward to Irving all the ill-natured flings which could be gleaned from American notices of the new book. The incident — with all its unpleasantness — was trifling enough, but to Irving’s raw sensitiveness it was torture. He was overwhelmed with an almost ludicrous melancholy, could not write, could not sleep, could not bear to be alone. This petty outburst of critical spleen, backed as it evidently was by personal antagonism on the part of a few obscure journalists, actually left him dumb for more than a year.

  Of course the public was right in its general estimate of the “Tales of a Traveler”: they are not as good as the “Sketch Book.” In kind they are similar — that in itself would be enough to excite prejudice against new work from an author who had been so long before the public; but they are also undeniably inferior in quality. One or two of the stories are distinctly morbid in tone, several give the impression of being long drawn out. In some way the collection lacks atmosphere; Italian scenery is painted with accuracy, but not Italian life or character. Irving could draw the early Dutch in America, or the mediæval Moors in Spain, or the Englishman in England or Italy: the modern Italian on his own soil he did not know except in his melodramatic exterior.

  Irving had now given his brother Peter a place in his little ménage. The steamboat scheme had failed utterly, and he had from this time on no sort of regular employment. Irving set himself cheerfully to provide for both. His goal at this time was less fame than fortune—”by every exertion to attain sufficient to make us both independent for the rest of our lives.” Not for many years did he come to perceive that a life of leisure was not only impossible, but undesirable for him, and to express it as his fondest wish that he might “die in harness.” The profits of the “Tales of a Traveler” went the way of most of his earnings — this time to help develop a Bolivia copper mine.

  He had been studying Spanish for a year or two, and had an increased desire to see Spain. As a mere aid in traveling, he asked for the nominal post of attaché to the American legation at Madrid. Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, at once granted the request, and in replying suggested a possible literary task — the translation of a new Spanish work, Navarrete’s “Voyages of Columbus,” which was shortly to make its appearance. Murray, who was then in some difficulties, did not think favorably of the project.

  Irving went to Madrid, and by good fortune got lodgings with the American consul Rich, who had made an extensive private collection of documents dealing with early American history. Presently Navarrete’s work was published, and found to be “rather a mass of rich materials for history than a history itself.” This was in February, 1826. Irving at once began to take notes and sift materials for an original history of Columbus. For six months he worked incessantly. “Sometimes,” says his biographer, “he would write all day and until twelve at night; in one instance his notebook shows him to have written from five in the morning until eight at night, stopping only for meals.”

  IV. MAN OF LETTERS — SECOND PERIOD

  There is something interesting, and in a sense pathetic, in this sudden steady diligence from the man of desultory habits, who had never written but by whim, whose finger had always been lifted to catch the lightest literary airs. Here, at last, was the firm trade wind, and the satisfaction of steady and methodical progress. The qualified success of the “Tales of a Traveler” had led him to feel that his vein was running out. The prospect of producing a solid work gave him keen pleasure. One cannot be always building castles in the air; why not try a pyramid, if only a little one? Since the world is perfectly delighted with our pretty things, very well, let us show that we can do a sublime thing. As for history—”Whatever may be the use of this sort of composition in itself and abstractedly,” says Walter Bagehot, “it is certainly of great use relatively and to literary men. Consider the position of a man of that species. He sits beside a library fire, with nice white paper, a good pen, a capital style — every means of saying everything, but nothing to say. Of course he is an able man; of course he has an active intellect, besides wonderful culture: but still, one cannot always have original ideas. Every day cannot be an era; a train of new speculation very often will not be found: and how dull it is to make it your business to write, to stay by yourself in a room to write, and then to have nothing to say! It is dreary work mending seven pens, and waiting for a theory to ‘turn up.’ What a gain if something would happen! then one could describe it. Something has happened, and that something is history.”

  There is no doubt that Irving’s early delicate sallies in literature represent his best. In a single department of belles-lettres he had shown mastery. During the remainder of his life he continued to work at intervals in that field with similar felicity; and, for the rest, to write amiably and respectably upon many topics foreign to his natural bent. But his greatest work was done in odd moments and at a heat; all the method in the world could not increase his real stature by a cubit.

  A word may perhaps be said here of Irving as an historian and biographer. Of course he could not write dully; his histories are just as readable as Goldsmith’s, and rather more veracious. But he plainly had not the scholar’s training and methods which we now demand of the historian; nor had he the larger view of men and events in their perspective. Generalization was beyond him. Fortunately to generalize is only a part of the business of the historian. To catch some dim historic figure, and give it life and color, — this power he had. And it was evidently this which gave him the praise of such men as Prescott and Bancroft and Motley. Washington had begun to loom vaguely and impersonally in the mind, a mere great man, when Irving with a touch turned him from cold bronze into flesh and blood again.

  During the years of Irving’s stay abroad other American writers had come into notice. Bryant’s poetry had become well known. Cooper had produced “The Spy,” “The Pilot,” “The Pioneers,” and “The Last of the Mohicans.” In 1827 appeared the first volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe. In this year, too, Irving’s diary records a meeting with Longfellow, who was then twenty-one, and came abroad to prepare himself for his professorship at Bowdoin. Longfellow’s recollection of the incident is worth quoting: “I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Irving in Spain, and found the author, whom I had loved, repeated in the man. The same playful humor; the same touches of sentiment; the same poetic atmosphere; and, what I admired still more, the entire absence of all literary jealousy, of all that mean avarice of fame, which counts what is given to another as so much taken from one’s self —

  “‘And trembling, hears in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades.’”

  In the following summer the “History of Columbus” was finished, and sold to Murray. It won high praise from the reviewers, especially fr
om Alexander H. Everett, his former diplomatic chief, and at this time editor of the “North American Review.”

  Early in the following year he made his first visit to Andalusian Spain. In the course of his grubbing among the Columbus archives, he had found a good deal of interesting material about the Moorish occupancy. The beauty of the country and the grandeur of its Moorish relics took strong hold upon him. In April, 1828, he settled in Seville, and there the “Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada” were written. By this time the market price of his wares had gone up very much. There is no doubt that his historical work had increased his temporary reputation. Murray gave him 2000 guineas for the “Conquest of Granada;” he further offered him £1000 a year to edit a new literary and scientific magazine, as well as £100 an article for any contribution he might choose to make to the “London Quarterly.” He refused the first offer on the ground that he did not care to be tied in England, the second because the “Quarterly” had always been hostile to America. He continued to take an interest in affairs at home. Impatient as he was of political methods, he had opinions of his own as to candidates and measures. The election of Jackson called forth the following comment in a letter to Mr. Everett: “I was rather sorry when Mr. Adams was first raised to the presidency, but I am much more so at his being displaced; for he has made a far better president than I expected, and I am loth to see a man superseded who has filled his station worthily. These frequent changes in our administration are prejudicial to the country; we ought to be wary of using our power of changing our chief magistrate when the welfare of the country does not require it. In the present election there has, doubtless, been much honest, warm, grateful feeling toward Jackson, but I fear much pique, passion, and caprice as it respects Mr. Adams.