Washington Irving

(1783–1859)

A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener by constant use. (“Rip Van Winkle”)

The youngest of 11 children, Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, to a merchant family residing in New York City. His father, William, derived from a wealthy Scottish family whose ancestry could be traced back to the secretary and armor bearer of William Bruce. Because of the family’s declining circumstances, William left Scotland and took to the sea. During service in the French War, William met Sarah Sanders, and the two married in 1761 and departed two years later for New York, where William took up work as a merchant. As a testament to the family’s loyalties to the American cause of the Revolutionary War, they named their youngest son after the nation’s founding father and first president, George Washington. The biographer Charles Dudley Warner reports that the family’s Scottish maid, following General Washington into a shop, presented the baby named after him, and that the young Irving received a blessing from his namesake. Little did the Revolutionary War hero know that he was meeting one of his future biographers.

Irving’s childhood education is described as barely adequate, chiefl y because of the young boy’s desires to be outdoors, reading travel and adventure books such as Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad. Owing to his lack of engagement with a formal education, he was allowed to complete his schooling at age 16, when his family insisted that he enter into the pursuit of law, following the career choice of two of his older brothers. In 1806, Irving completed his study of law with Judge Hoffman and successfully passed the bar. As a lawyer, Irving joined his brother John in a partnership (Warner 44). His association with the Hoffman family would endure throughout his lifetime and be the source of much joy and sorrow. Judge Hoffman’s daughter, Matilda, soon became enamored of Washington, as he did of her. Their families both embraced the possibility of marriage, but young Matilda contracted a disease and died a short time after at the age of 17. Irving’s grief was palpable and a central reason, as he explained to the Foster family while in Dresden, Germany, years later, why he never entertained the thought of marriage again. His biographer Warner reports that Irving slept for months with Matilda’s Bible prayer book beneath his pillow, and after his death, a locket of her hair, together with a sketch of her, were found among his possessions.

Matilda’s death occurred while Irving was still composing The History of New York. Irving writes of the incongruity of the two events in his memorandum: ‘When I became more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of occupation, to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close, as well as I could, and published it; but the time and circumstances in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it with satisfaction. Still it took with the public, and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in America. I was noticed, caressed, and, for a time, elevated by the popularity I had gained.

Irving began his literary career as a commentator on American life and character at the age of 19. In a series of pseudonymous letters signed Jonathan Oldstyle, Irving published his comments on America’s desires to emulate France and Britain in the arts and fashion, among other subjects. The letters appeared in his brother Peter Irving’s Morning Chronicle, which circulated in their hometown of New York City. All of Irving’s critics who read the Oldstyle letters recognize the budding author’s parody of Addison and Steele, British writers famous for their satirical articles in the newspapers the Spectator and the Tattler. Nevertheless, many critics see in Irving’s early writings the hallmarks of what would be honed into his own style and subject matter in subsequent years.

His view of society was signifi cantly widened when he embarked on the fashionable trend of the grand tour, leaving home for 21 months on travels through Italy, France, Switzerland, England, and the “Low Countries.” The biographers William Hedges and Charles Dudley Warner reason that Irving’s “respiratory ailment” was a central cause of his journey. Just years before, Irving made several trips along the Hudson with the sole purpose of alleviating his pulmonary weakness, and when symptoms erupted again, his brothers determined to send him to Europe. Hedges notes the trip’s dual purpose: As his health improved, so too did Irving’s aesthetic sense. In Rome, Irving’s focuses on the ruins and “sense of inevitable decay were to be his substitute for a theory of history or a philosophy”. It was also in Rome that he met Washington Allston, a painter whose passion for the art and enthusiasm for the city’s landscapes nearly persuaded Irving to remain in Rome and take up the profession of painting. It is quite likely that some of his attention to landscape, seen most particularly in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, ” where the landscape appears as a character, derives from his association with Allston. In direct contradiction to Hedge’s reading of a growing aesthetic in Irving, Warner argues that the young traveler enjoyed the finer aspects of society such as theater, salons, and fine dining, but “there is little prophesy that Irving would be anything more in life than a charming ‘flaneur.’ ”

While attending to his affairs as a lawyer, which included acting as a minor aide during Aaron Burr’s trial for treason, Irving stole away to write and begin publishing a semimonthly periodical entitled Salmagundi, which means “hash, ” a parody of British periodicals such as Addison and Steele’s Spectator. He delineated its purpose: “simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age.” Irving received support from his brother William and the publisher David Longworth (45). Irving’s recent journey to Europe appears to have influenced his subject matter for Salmagundi as Hedges states that travelers and traveling “manifest a great deal of interest.” He turns the lens on Europeans and their views of America: “trying to read European meanings into America” (Hedges 53). Warner notes that Salmagundi struck a cord with readers: “From the frst it was an immense success; it had circulation in other cities, and many imitations of it sprung up.”

Irving followed the two years of Salmagundi with The History of New York, a satire in which he introduces readers to the highly unreliable historian Diedrich Knickerbocker. He was 26 years old at the time of History ’s publication. Warner writes that Irving’s brother Paul was central to the earliest imaginings and drafts of the text, which originally offered “a mere burlesque upon pedantry and erudition.” When Paul had to leave for Europe to attend to business, however, Irving took it upon himself to complete the manuscript. In this text, Irving explores a relativistic concept of history, which is highly dependent upon point of view. He achieves such an end by offering readers a host of confl icting opinions on any given subject, ranging from the superstitious and absurd to the most rational and studied. As a result, the latter seems just as likely, or unlikely, as the former. The creative advertisement of the book bears mention, as it adds another layer to Irving’s treatment of legend. In local newspapers, Irving advertised for a missing person named Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was described as an old man clad in knee breeches and wearing a cocked hat. In subsequent weeks, the tale of Knickerbocker had grown, including the fact that he had left without paying his landlord, and that all that remained of his personal effects was an odd book. The book, of course, was Irving’s The History of New York.

As testament to the book’s success, Sir Walter Scott wrote praise for Irving’s creation, comparing his wit to that of Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, and Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy: “I have never, ” Sir Walter Scott 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.”

In 1848, when Irving issued a new edition of The History of New York, he expresses his main aim in penning the book: “to embody the traditions of our city in an amusing form; to illustrate its local humors, customs, and peculiarities; to clothe home scenes and places and familiar names with those imaginative and whimsical associations so seldom met with in our new country, but which live like charms and spells about the cities of the old world, binding the heart of the native inhabitant to his home.” Here, Irving expresses a desire to yoke the enviable qualities of the Old World, its charms and spells, to the sights of New York. And yet, when Irving does include legends in his tales, their grandeur is severely undercut and critiqued by the banal, the man who dreams such wonderful stuff while napping at the dinner table, or the figure who is just as prone to enjoying the more sophisticated elements of culture as he is the most crude. Irving’s artistry, developed with this text, lies in his ability to create and explore further his own contradictions.

One such area of contradiction that continues to baffle critics involves Irving’s own political views, and his class-oriented sensibilities. The Irvings’ patriarch was a merchant, and the rather large family was populated by lawyers. Indeed, one of the judges under whom Washington Irving first worked became a member of the Supreme Court, and he was then forced to take up with another judge. Even then, Irving himself reports his doubts about his abilities to have passed the bar without a certain predisposition in his favor among those determining his examination results. Thus, Irving recognizes how his family name and infl uential associations have worked in concert to gain him his career as a lawyer. It is clear, then, that Irving arrives at the subject of his native soil from a privileged point of view, and yet he does not categorically look with disdain or condescension on the lesser elements of America. Indeed, they are celebrated, as they compose the primordial mass of the nation. However, in 1816, when the family fell on misfortune, particularly with the law fi rm, Irving worried whether he could make a living as a writer. In a letter to his friend Brevoort, Irving expresses a less elite sense of himself and his joys in life: “Thank Heaven I was brought up in simple and inexpensive habits, and I have satisfi ed myself that if need be, I can resume them without repining or inconvenience.” The international success of The Sketch Book proved that he could. Warner includes as an anecdote to support Irving’s fame that an English family, upon viewing a bust of George Washington, mistakenly identifi ed him as the author of The Sketch Book.

Despite Irving’s declarations that he could economize without grousing, he expresses a genuine disgust with the masses with whom he spoke and caroused while involved in the election campaign of a Federalist. “Oh, my friend, I have been in such holes and corners; such fi lthy nooks and fi lthy corners; sweep offi ces and oyster cellars! I have sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life, —faugh! I shall not be able to bear the smell of small beer and tobacco for a month to come.... Truly this saving one’s country is a nauseous piece of business, and if patriotism is such a dirty virtue, —prythee, no more of it.” Despite these professed feelings of distaste for the masses, Irving proved himself too malleable than to be constricted by party lines, for although a Federalist and thus a loyalist to Alexander Hamilton, Irving expresses sincere sympathy for Aaron Burr, who killed Hamilton in a duel. Further evidence of his ability to cross party lines appears in a letter in which he expresses his surprise when dining with the very men who the night prior had been excoriated by “honest furious Federalists” as “consummate scoundrels, ” as Irving discovers them to be “equally honest [and] warm” as those the previous night.

During the War of 1812, Irving became editor of the Analectic, a position that exposed him to British periodicals as the organ reprinted leading reviews and articles from England, as well as original material from America. He issued a second edition of The History and wrote letters to his friend Brevoort about town gossip and his profound sense of lethargy and ennui. In 1814, Irving enlisted in the army and became Governor Tompkin’s aide and military secretary. This is yet another example of the contradictory nature of Irving, who had a deep affi nity for Britain, but whose patriotism for America was riled with the burning of the capitol. Soon after his enlistment, in February 1815, peace was brokered between the two nations and Irving left for what was to be a brief trip to England to visit his brother Peter. He remained in Europe for the next 17 years.

With Peter’s poor health, the future of the failing law fi rm fell to Irving, who spent 1815 and 1816 in Liverpool, engaged in attempting to buoy the family business. Critics and biographers of Irving all point to his dislike for the profession of law, as well as his predisposition, somewhat like his character Rip Van Winkle’s, to avoid profi table labor at all costs. The two years thus employed were odious to Irving, as his letters home to his friend Brevoort prove. In a bit of a reversal of the very patriotism he had just recently expressed for America in his military enlistment, Irving writes to Brevoort of his general distaste for the breed of American he spied while in Liverpool: “Nothing can surpass the dauntless independence of all form, ceremony, fashion, or reputation of a downright, unsophisticated American. Since the war, too, particularly, our lads seem to think they are ‘the salt of the earth’ and the legitimate lords of creation.”

Despite his reluctant work for the law firm, Irving managed to find time for one of his favorite pastimes, enjoying the theater. When on a trip to visit his sister Sarah, who had married Henry Van Wart of Birmingham, he came across a character of whom a sketch would soon appear in his next and most famous book, The Sketch Book. In a draft of what would become “The Angler, ” Irving writes of a veteran angler who had spent some of his youth in America. “What I particularly liked him for was, that though we tried every way to entrap him into some abuse of America and its inhabitants, there was no getting him to utter an ill-natured word concerning us.” In comparison with Irving’s general critique of the Americans he had recently spied in Liverpool, readers witness another in the author’s series of contradictions. While he was quick to judge his fellow Americans abroad harshly, he seems quite defensive about hearing any disparaging words from Britons.

While in England, Irving met such notable literary figures as Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, and Isaac D’Israeli (father of Benjamin Disraeli, an author and later prime minister of England). He renewed his friendship with Sir Walter Scott. In the first part of 1818, all attempts to secure the family fi rm were exhausted, and Peter and Washington entered into bankruptcy. Although the process was excruciating for Irving, his biographer Warner characterizes the end of his family obligations to the firm as liberating, for it allowed the author to pursue his craft and allow nothing to distract him. This meant that the efforts of his brothers to procure him political and military posts, as secretary of legation and chief clerk in the navy, were declined. Likewise, Irving turned down the generous offers of Walter Scott and Mr. Murray to act as editor for various periodicals.

Instead, Irving dedicated himself exclusively to The Sketch Book, whose first number appeared in America in May 1819, with the series completing in September the following year. “Rip Van Winkle” was one of the two pieces that appeared in the first installment. Of the success and instant fame he received on both sides of the Atlantic with the publication of The Sketch Book, Irving writes humbly: “I feel something as I suppose you did when your picture met with success, —anxious to do something better, and at a loss what to do.” To his friend Brevoort he expresses his intended aesthetic goal: “I have attempted no lofty theme, nor sought to look wise and learned, which appears to be very much the fashion among our American writers at present. I have preferred addressing myself to the feelings and fancy of the reader more than to his judgment.”

On the success of his latest work, Irving traveled to Paris, returned to England, and, in search of a cure for an unknown illness that plagued his ankles and prevented him at times from walking, toured Germany. He later returned to England and published “Tales of a Traveler.” Soon after, in February 1826, Irving journeyed to Madrid, Spain, and began work on his famous biography of Christopher Columbus, which was published in 1828. Warner considers this three-year period in Irving’s life to be his most productive, as he also wrote The Alhambra, The Conquest of Granada, and The Legends of the Conquest of Spain. These works came about through Irving’s access to primary sources and other documents, including Columbus’s journals. He returned to England when he received, and reluctantly accepted, an appointment as secretary of legation to the Court of St. James. In April 1830, the Royal Society of Literature awarded him a gold medal in honor of his literary works. He died shortly after the final volume of his last work, a biography of his namesake, George Washington, was in press. He was buried overlooking Sleepy Hollow.