Irving grew up in a time without a history. The youngest of eight surviving children, he was born on April 3, 1783, the same year British troops formally withdrew from New York. His father, William Irving, was a merchant of moderate means, whose business fluctuated with the political climate of the newly formed nation. His mother, Sarah Sanders Irving, was a devoted wife and mother, whom Irving remembered dearly throughout his life. He was the pampered favorite of his sisters, Ann, Catherine, and Sarah, and throughout his adolescence and early adulthood, his four brothers, William, Peter, Ebenezer, and John Treat, also watched over him. He was not spoiled, but latitude was allowed him conducive to his development as an artist. With four brothers already set to work in the family business, there was no need for him to be pressured into a practical education for a career. Irving showed quick intelligence in his schooling but little discipline. Instead of applying himself to Dillworth’s Arithmetic or translations of Virgil, he was more apt to bury himself in books culled from his father’s library. He found popular travel narratives especially appealing. He absorbed The World Displayed, a collection of travel narratives, along with fictional works such as The Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe. His religious upbringing also left him lukewarm. His father, a deacon in the Presbyterian Church, imposed rigorous theological training on his children. Irving later recalled that “religion was forced upon me before I could understand or appreciate it. I was forced to swallow it whether I would or not ... until I was disgusted with all its forms and observances” (Williams, vol. 1, p. 7). He never attended Columbia College (now Columbia University), as did his brothers Peter and John, and eventually decided to study law less from ambition than to escape “the risks and harassing cares of commerce” (Irving, The Complete Works of Washington Irving, vol. 25, p. 1,008).
His knowledge of the law rendered him competent to attend to some aspects of the family’s importing business, while still allowing him time to indulge his idle inclination for literature. By the time he was nineteen, he was employed in the offices of Judge Josiah Hoffman, former attorney general of New York. Irving found relief from the monotony of legal work in penning a series of letters under the pseudonym “Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.” He probably had the encouragement of his brother Peter who, as editor of the New York weekly Morning Chronicle, agreed to publish them. A light satire on the fashionable circles of New York’s emerging middle class, these letters earned the young Irving some notoriety for his wit. The narrative persona he constructed—that of an elderly gentleman nostalgic for the social mores of the pre-Revolutionary period—anticipates his later narrators, Diedrich Knickerbocker and Geoffrey Crayon. The satire of the “Letters” is light, written for humor rather than for purposes of social reform, and this contributed to their success. The new nation was not yet ready for the goading criticisms of an Emerson or a Thoreau, and Irving’s portrayal of New York manners allowed readers to laugh at themselves without feeling the sting of self-criticism. In this regard, the “Letters” initiate a pattern Irving would develop in his subsequent literary endeavors. His desire to appeal to the tastes of his audience caused him to avoid overtly controversial issues almost by instinct.
In his legal career, Irving experienced a similar mild success. He became a close friend of the Hoffman family, and especially enjoyed the company of the daughters, Ann and Matilda. He traveled with their father up the Hudson River to Albany, and then on to Montreal, through landscape he later described in “Rip Van Winkle” and “Dolph Heyliger.” Soon after his return, he became ill and worried that he might be developing tuberculosis. His brothers arranged for him to travel to Europe in the hope that the climate would improve his health. Irving took full advantage of this opportunity and traveled extensively through France and Italy. While in Rome, he made the acquaintance of the landscape painter Washington Allston and briefly considered becoming a painter himself. Language, however, would remain Irving’s chosen medium, even while he continued to experiment in his journals with scenic descriptions meant to parallel the picturesque style of his compatriot, Allston.
He returned to New York in March 1806 with a more worldly perspective on his native city of New York. That perspective narrowed to a satirical point in his contributions to Salmagundi, the series of twenty pamphlets he coauthored with his brother William and their friend James Kirke Paulding. Salmagundi was essentially a fictional newspaper complete with an editorial column and a variety of regular features, including theatrical criticism by “William Wizard, Esq.,” satirical verse by “Pindar Cockloft,” and political correspondence from “Mustapha Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan.” Joseph Addison’s Spectactor and Oliver Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World surely served as models for the substance and form of this pamphlet, but there were a number of publications closer to home that also inspired these young wits—first among them, the Philadelphia Port Folio, edited by Joseph Dennie.
The idea for Salmagundi emerged out of a social club called by various names, including “the lads of Kilkenny” and “the nine worthies.” Irving’s brothers, William, Peter, and Ebenezer, were all members, along with Paulding, Henry Brevoort, and other young bachelors of New York’s merchant class. Their gossip and banter about literary, theatrical, social, and political issues provided the raw material for the early numbers of the pamphlet, which quickly gained notoriety from New York to Philadelphia. The success of Salmagundi may have inspired Irving’s next project. Along with his brother Peter, he began to write a parody of a well-known guidebook of New York, Samuel Mitchill’s The Picture of New York; or, The Traveller’s Guide, through the Commercial Metropolis of the United States (1809). What began as a simple spoof grew into Irving’s first significant work, his Rabelaisian epic A History of New York.
The composition of A History coincided with his courtship of Matilda Hoffman, and his literary enthusiasm grew under the influence of their love. In his notebooks, Irving recalled their courtship.
I would read to her from some favorite poet ... and dwell upon his merits when I came to some tender passage [that] seemed to catch my excited feelings. I would close the book and launch forth into his praises and when I had wrought myself up into some strain of enthusiasm I would turn to her pale dark eyes beaming upon me ... I would drink in new inspiration from them—until she suddenly seemed to recollect herself—& throw them down upon the earth with a sweet pensiveness and a full drawn sigh (quoted in Williams, vol. 2, p. 195).
When Josiah Hoffman learned of the young couple’s budding relationship, he offered Irving a partnership in his law firm to ensure that the dilettante author settled into a regular career. Tragically, though, Matilda suffered from tuberculosis, the consumptive disease Irving’s brothers had sent him to Europe to escape. As their courtship progressed her health deteriorated, and on April 26, 1809, she died, at the age of seventeen. Irving was overwhelmed.
I cannot tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long time—I seemed to care for nothing—the world was a blank to me—I abandoned all thoughts of the Law—I went into the country, but could not bear solitude yet could not enjoy society—There was a dismal horror continually in my mind that made me fear to be alone—I had often to get up in the night & seek the bedroom of my brother, as if having a human being by me would relieve me of the frightful gloom of my thoughts (Williams, vol. 2, pp. 257-258).
He found solace in working on A History, spending long days in the libraries of New York and Philadelphia. The source material he gleaned from European travel narratives and early colonial histories would give his manuscript a verisimilitude that added to its popularity.
This air of realism was heightened by a promotional stunt Irving pulled off with the help of Henry Brevoort and James Kirke Paulding. In the weeks prior to publication, he published a report in the New York Evening Post that an elderly gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker had wandered off from his lodgings without paying his rent, leaving behind only a collection of papers in manuscript. In a subsequent issue, a letter to the editor report
ed that a gentleman matching Knickerbocker’s description had been seen in the Hudson River Valley, walking north toward Albany. A week and a half later, under the pseudonym “Seth Handaside, Landlord of the Independent Columbian Hotel,” Irving announced that the manuscript Knickerbocker left behind was to be published in order to “pay off his bill for boarding and lodging” (p. 374). This hoax was remarkably successful, so much so that for a time Irving’s narrator gained greater notoriety than the author himself. The historical accuracy of his narrative of New York’s history as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam made his mock-heroic epic more than a Swiftean satire. It provided the newly formed nation with a basis for history that was free of associations with British colonial rule. In so doing, A History anticipates on a grand scale the historical displacement that is a central theme of Irving’s better-known story, “Rip Van Winkle.”
America’s need to declare its cultural independence from Britain intensified in the decade following the War of 1812. In August 1814, after the British burned Washington, D.C., Irving enlisted. He served as aide-de-camp to New York’s Governor Daniel Tompkins, but the war was in its final stages and he never saw action. However, he did gain experience in politics and diplomacy that served him well later in life (he was appointed secretary to the American legation in London in 1829, and minister to Spain in 1842). Unfortunately, his political talents could not help save the family importing business. P. & E. Irving foundered after the war, largely due to Peter Irving’s mismanagement of purchasing in Liverpool. The demand for imported goods had evaporated as public sentiment became decidedly anti-British and manufacturing increased in the mid-Atlantic region. Irving sailed to Liverpool in June 1815 intending to travel through England and Europe for a second time, but he found himself caught up in the financial collapse of the firm. He remembered this period as one of the darkest of his life.
This new calamity seemed more intolerable even than [Matilda’s death]. That was solemn and sanctifying, it seemed while it prostrated my spirits, to purify & elevate my soul. But this was vile and sordid and humiliated me to the dust.... I lost all appetite, I scarcely slept—I went to my bed every night as to a grave (Williams, vol. 2, p. 259).
To drive off his despondency, Irving again turned to writing. He had the good fortune to meet up with Washington Allston who, along with his fellow American artist Charles Leslie, had been commissioned to illustrate a British edition of A History. Irving became their regular companion, and they encouraged him to pursue the literary “sketches” he had begun to write. To gain some relief from the anxieties of impending bankruptcy, he traveled to Scotland and met Sir Walter Scott, whom he had long admired. Scott invited Irving to spend a few days with him at Abbotsford, and this visit had a decisive influence on Irving’s conception of The Sketch-Book. Scott’s deep interest in folklore as the foundational element of a national culture confirmed Irving’s intuition that a legend of Sleepy Hollow might merit as much attention as Rob Roy.
When Irving returned to Liverpool to appear before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy with his brother Peter, he already had decided to pursue a career in literature. His brother William, a congressman back in Washington, D.C., made arrangements for him to serve as first clerk in the Navy Department at a comfortable salary, but Irving declined the post, for he was determined “to raise myself once more by my talents, and owe nothing to compassion” (Williams, vol. 2, p. 260). In a letter of explanation to his brother Ebenezer, he declared, “My talents are merely literary,” and pleaded “to be left for a little while entirely to the bent of my own inclination, and not agitated by new plans for subsistence, or by entreaties to come home” (Irving, vol. 23, p. 541). The brothers honored his request, and by June 1819 the first installment of The Sketch-Book was in print in America. Irving had more difficulty finding a publisher in England and eventually made arrangements to print the first volume at his own expense. The early reviews were positive, praising Irving for his style and recognizing him as that hitherto unheard of thing, a genuine American man of letters. Now confident that the book would pay for itself, London publisher John Murray agreed to take over publication of the remaining volumes, and Irving’s reputation was assured.
The Sketch-Book marks the apex of Irving’s career. Having declared his independence from his family, he was confident enough to declare independence for American literature as well, which he did overtly in “English Writers on America” (p. 91 ). More importantly, his narrator, Geoffrey Crayon, was a prototypical figure of the American individual. In the opening sketch, “The Voyage,” Crayon’s passage across the Atlantic leaves him doubly detached from family and place. Crossing the Atlantic is like opening “a blank page in existence” that “severs” the chain of memories that otherwise would “[grapple] us to home” (p. 52). His arrival in Liverpool is no joyous return of a prodigal son to the land of his forefathers. It only deepens his isolation. While preparing to disembark from the ship, he witnesses a dying sailor being carried ashore and feels himself “a stranger in the land” (p. 57). The melancholy Irving evokes from Crayon’s situation as an aimless tourist suggests a feeling of placelessness often associated with American individualism. Crayon’s alienation is the other side of Emerson’s self-reliant assertion that “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” (Emerson, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2, p. 29). The poignant detachment of Crayon’s point of view anticipates such first-person narrators as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Miles Coverdale, Herman Melville’s Ishmael, or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway. Yet it was Irving’s displacement from home that caused him to imagine Sleepy Hollow as an ideal “retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life” (p. 163).
Two-thirds of The Sketch-Book is made up of observational essays that fall into the genre of travel literature. Only five of its “sketches” are recognizably what we would call short stories (if we include “The Wife” and “The Mutability of Literature” along with “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Spectre Bridegroom,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”). Yet it is these few stories that make Irving an innovative artist whom some have called the inventor of the short story in America. As Fred Lewis Pattee observed, Irving “was the first prominent writer to strip the prose tale of its moral and didactic elements and to make of it a literary form solely for entertainment” (The Development of the American Short Story, p. 21). The short stories in The Sketch-Book are regularly interspersed among sketches of daily life and social customs in Great Britain and provide imaginative relief from what might otherwise become a mundane travel narrative. Irving actively pursued the commercialization of literature in his next two works as well, enlarging the fictional component of both Bracebridge Hall (1822) and Tales of a Traveller (1824). In Bracebridge Hall, he capitalized on the success of his descriptions of rural England, while at the same time pursuing his interest in prose fiction. The premise for Bracebridge Hall is simple. Geoffrey Crayon returns to the fictional manor he had described in some sections of The Sketch-Book to spend a few weeks there while preparations are being made for the marriage of Julia, “the daughter of a favorite college friend” of Simon Bracebridge. Like The Sketch-Book, a majority of Bracebridge Hall is made up of descriptions of the Hall and its environs and character sketches of the family, their guests, and the inhabitants of the local village. As the book proceeds, Irving regularly creates opportunities for characters to relate stories, the longest of which, “Dolph Heyliger,” Crayon presents as “a manuscript tale from the pen of my fellow-countryman, the late Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the historian of New York” (p. 214).
Irving is doing more than simply filling out the pages of his book with an occasional story set in America. He is using the conventional genres that were popular with readers of magazines and gift books—the observational essay or character sketch written in a confessional mode—as a platform for staging stories mildly Gothic in tone and content. He would take this method a step fur
ther in Tales of a Traveller, the first of his collections in which fiction predominates over travel narrative. Divided into four books, Tales lacks the unity that a common setting gives to Bracebridge Hall, but Irving compensates for this by creating tale-telling contests, or by using frame-narratives to nest a story within a story, as with the interrelated series that includes “Adventure of the Mysterious Picture,” “Adventure of the Mysterious Stranger,” and “The Story of the Young Italian.” Although Irving originally intended to use his travels through Germany and Italy as the organizational premise for Tales, he abandoned this realist narrative framework and told his stories as he would. He felt that the final manuscript was uneven but also believed it contained some of his best writing. Critics in England and America unfortunately did not agree. They found it imitative and even vulgar for its moments of sexual innuendo and for the darker psychological strain of tales such as “Adventure of the German Student.” As a critic in the October 1824 issue of the Westminster Review made painfully clear, Irving’s vogue in literary London had passed.
Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 3