Washington Irving

by Brian Jay Jones

  The unadorned realities facing Washington were unpleasant. Peter's expenditures had far exceeded their income, and Washington wondered whether the firm would be able to pay its autumn obligations. He advised Ebenezer, who was managing affairs on the American side, to remit continually until everything had been paid. Ebenezer and William, taking a break from his duties as congressman, frantically did their best to comply. Despite the gravity of their situation, the brothers hadn't lost their sense of humor. When William joked in one letter that he had to stop remitting at least long enough to take a breath, Irving teased him right back: “This was something like the Irishman calling to his companion, whom he was hoisting out of the well, to hold on below while he spit on his hands.”17

  The brothers paid their obligations as quickly as they could, but Irving could see that the money was running out. Swallowing his pride, he appealed to James Renwick, now touring Scotland, for guidance. To his surprise and relief, Renwick immediately provided the firm with a line of credit, making it possible for the brothers to pay the remaining balance, and asked for no collateral other than Irving's word. Because of Renwick's generosity—as well as hard work on the part of both Washington and Ebenezer—Irving believed the business had turned the corner sufficiently enough for him to enjoy the Christmas holiday.

  He sprinted off to London to attend the theater, and still made it to the Van Warts’ in time for Christmas. Peter had managed to make his way down to Castle Van Tromp from the waters at Harro-gate, but he was confined to bed with rheumatism by the time Irving arrived. Washington must have sighed compassionately but regretfully at his brother's condition; the cares of business continued to be his alone.

  “We have, in common with most American houses here, had a hard winter of it in money matters… and I have been harassed to death to meet our engagements,” Irving wrote to Brevoort in March 1816. Yet he held out hope that the firm was, at last, on the road to recovery. “I have never passed so anxious a time in my life,” he wrote, “but thank heavens we have weathered the storm & got into smooth water; and I begin to feel myself again.”18

  With money tight, he wondered if he could raise some income by preparing a new edition of A History of New York. He asked Brevoort to send him a copy of the American edition, and requested copies of the Analectic that contained his Indian sketches, with an eye toward writing a larger piece.

  He sent Moses Thomas copies of English works the publisher could pirate for American editions, including Byron's “Fare Thee Well,” “A Sketch from Private Life,” and “Hebrew Melodies,” which were all the rage in London that spring. Later he sent Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Antiquary, Walter Scott's sequel to Waverly—although at the time, Scott had not confessed to penning it. There was much speculation as to the author's identity, with many guessing it was Irving's friend Thomas Moore.

  Irving returned to Liverpool in March, leaving the rheumatic Peter confined to bed rest in Birmingham. When he had sent Peter to Harrogate in September 1815, he never imagined it would turn into an extended absence of eight months. While sympathetic, Washington grew increasingly frustrated by his brother's continued poor health. He hoped Peter would recover so he could return to Liverpool and share the responsibility for the business.

  Irving followed James Renwick's progress through Europe, and wrote to Renwick's mother that the burdens of business were so heavy that he barely had time for letters. “And when leisure does come,” he told Mrs. Renwick, “I find every gay thought or genteel fancy has left my unhappy brain and nothing remains but the dry rubbish of accounts—Woe is me! How different a being I am from what I was last Summer, when the Laird [James Renwick] and I went forth Castle hunting among the Welsh mountains.”19 He was burning out.

  It was about to get worse. In May Ebenezer notified Washington that the spring market had not lived up to expectations. The brothers worried over their ability to meet new obligations. Renwick's line of credit was exhausted; their money was gone. Washington, who had worked so hard over the past nine months—learning bookkeeping, keeping creditors at bay, and going hat in hand to friends for money—began to despair.

  The first sign of collapse appeared in his May 9, 1816, letter to Brevoort—written four days after receiving Ebenezer's bad news:

  I am here alone, attending to business—and the times are so hard that they sicken my very soul. Good god what would I give to be once more with you, and all this mortal coil shuffled off of my heart.

  My dear Brevoort what would I not give to have you with me. In my lonely hours I think of the many many happy days we have passed together and feel that there is no friend in the world to whom my heart turns so completely as it does you—For some time before I left New York I thought you had grown cold and indifferent to me—I felt too proud to speak frankly on the subject but it grieved me bitterly. Your letters have convinced me that I was mistaken, and they were like cordials to my feelings.20

  This was, understandably, despair and loneliness, but was it something more? By 1816 Irving, who was thirty-three years old, had known thirty-four-year-old Brevoort for thirteen years, having met him in Montreal in 1803. Since then, each had traveled extensively, caroused with women, and dabbled in business. But they also lived together, on and off, for many years and dutifully corresponded with each other when they were apart. Separation from Brevoort was always particularly hard on Irving—when Brevoort departed for Europe on business in 1810, Irving had pined away for weeks in their rooms on Broadway.

  Irving was most at home among a close-knit circle of male friends. In that respect, he was no more unusual than other nineteenth-century gentlemen, who joined exclusive clubs and disappeared into drawing rooms in the evenings to smoke cigars and drink brandy. Even the intimacy and foppishness Irving and Brevoort displayed in their letters was not all that unusual for nineteenth-century correspondence.

  But Irving's relationship with Brevoort was very different; no one ever occupied a place in Irving's heart in quite the same way. He had adored Matilda Hoffman, but his feelings for Brevoort were more intimate. The letters the two exchanged were more heartfelt, the expressions of affection more intense, especially on Irving's part. That Irving loved Brevoort is certain; whether those feelings were as deeply reciprocated is debatable. What is undeniable is that they shared an attachment, a familiarity of feeling, unequaled in any other relationship Irving had his entire life. It was obvious from the tone of his May 9 letter that Irving could play the rejected suitor when he perceived he was being snubbed: “I thought you had grown cold and indifferent!” Such hurt feelings only intensified later, when Irving feared he would lose Brevoort to marriage.

  For now, Irving was stuck in Liverpool, without Peter's company, watching the money slowly trickle away. Brevoort graciously arranged for a loan to Ebenezer to help meet the mounting obligations, but it was never enough.

  As the situation worsened, the Irving brothers drew closer. Irving worried for himself, but he was even more concerned about Ebenezer, who, unlike Peter or Washington, had a family to support. “The difficulties he must experience give me more uneasiness than any thing else,” he confided to Brevoort in July. “I hope he may be able to surmount them all, and that we may work through the present stormy season without any material injury.” His brothers had looked out for him for much of his life; Washington felt he was at last repaying some of their generosity with the sweat of his own brow. It pained him that they couldn't make things right for Ebenezer, no matter how hard they worked. Peter had seen to that with his overspending, though the brothers never censured him outright for their woes, blaming instead the war, the winds, or the market… anything but each other.

  The loneliness of the burden was overpowering, as Washington sat up nights in Peter's empty apartment, writing letters urging Ebenezer to continue remitting by any means necessary and wondering how he was going to do it without any cash. “I have been harassed and hagridden by the care and anxieties of business for a long time past that I
have at times felt almost broken down in health and spirits,” he wrote despairingly to Brevoort.21

  Peter finally hobbled back to Liverpool in June, and Washington gratefully retreated to Birmingham for an extended stay. “Peters return to Liverpool enabled me to crawl out of the turmoil for a while,” he told Brevoort, “and I have for some time past [been] endeavoring to renovate myself in the dear little circle of my sister's family.”22

  Unfortunately, writing remained a chore. He scratched lamely at A History of New York—at this pace, the revision would take two years to complete—and flipped through the pages of his journals for inspiration, but the words refused to flow. “My mind is in a sickly state and my imagination so blighted that it cannot put forth a blossom nor even a green leaf,” he wrote wearily. “Time and circumstances must restore them to their proper tone.”23

  When that time or what that circumstance might be, he wasn't sure—but he was becoming increasingly certain that it wasn't going to happen while he was in England. He wanted to go home, but waved off requests from friends in New York for specifics. “I must wait here a while in a passive state, watching the turn of events, and how our affairs are likely to turn out,” he wrote enigmatically in July in response to Brevoort's queries. “I will make no promises or resolutions at present, as I know they would be like those formed at Sea in a storm, which are forgotten as soon as we tread the shore.” He said only one thing for certain: “all my ideas of home and settled life centre in New York.”24

  In late July he left Birmingham to meet Peter for an excursion through Derbyshire. Traveling always made him feel better. As they ventured into the countryside, Irving relaxed for the first time in months.

  Irving enjoyed watching people as much, if not more, than he enjoyed the scenery. At an inn in Buxton, he delighted in observing three “queer old ladies” who were so difficult that even a pastor called them “damned ugly bitches.” He stared in fascination at the assortment of English noses and chins that passed by. “I no longer wonder at the english being such excellent caricaturists,” he wrote Brevoort with amusement, “they have such an inexhaustible number and variety of subjects to study from.”25

  He worried at first whether Peter was fit enough to travel—nothing frustrated him more than a fellow traveler who couldn't keep up—but his mind was put at ease when his brother easily descended the 110 steps into the Speedwell mine, while Washington and the son of their tour guide traded turns blowing tunes on the fife. They climbed the hills in Castleton near Peak Cavern, with its impressive forty-two-foot arched entrance that Daniel Defoe had once unofficially dubbed “The Devil's Asshole in the Peak.”26 Irving could barely contain himself when he described their visit in a letter to his mother, though he couldn't bring himself to write the name of the archway.

  Near Bakewell, he took careful notes on medieval Haddon Hall, copying the inscriptions on its bow windows and adding detailed notes on people and scenery. In Dovedale, a sudden cloudburst forced Irving and his fellow tourists to seek shelter in a nearby cave, where they picnicked and traded stories to pass the time. As thunder rumbled overhead, an old woman in the group told a story about a ghost she had seen when she was a girl of twelve. “The ghost was on horseback,” Irving scratched in his journal, “without a head but with bright spurs. He used to haunt their neighborhood.”

  When the trip ended, an energized Irving returned to Birmingham, leaving Peter in Liverpool. Writing to his mother in October, he reported that Peter “is in good health at present, though I think he is more delicate in Constitution than he used to be.” As for himself, he “never was heartier and am only afraid of growing too fat.” He must have felt he had at last put his worries behind him, with Peter back in what was his proper and rightful place at the head of the Liverpool office.27

  A sudden financial downturn in late autumn sent Irving galloping frantically back to Liverpool to assist his brother. “My heart is torn every way by anxiety for my relatives,” he wrote in near panic to William. “My own individual interests are nothing. The merest pittance would content me if I could crawl out from among these troubles and see my connections safe around me.”28

  Though things continued to be shaky, he still believed they would soon have the business turning a profit again, and wrote to Brevoort in early December that he was “now confident that my Brothers in N[ew] York will be able to weather the storm and spread their sails cheerily on the return of fair weather. I shall not let present difficulties give me any uneasiness.”29

  Actually, there had been one bit of business that caused him considerable anguish that autumn. In December 1816 he learned that James Renwick had married Brevoort's sister Margaret Ann; earlier in the year, James Paulding had announced his engagement to Gouverneur Kemble's sister, Gertrude. Irving must have felt his circle of bachelor friends beginning to fray, but that wasn't what was worrying him. What bothered him most was the rumor that Henry Brevoort might also be getting married.

  Trying his best to contain his black mood, Irving had written Brevoort a supportive letter in July encouraging the marriage. He would miss the links that bind together bachelors, he had explained to Brevoort, but said he would regret asking his friend to miss out on an opportunity “which would give you so large an accession of domestic homefelt enjoyment.”30

  As it turns out, Brevoort had no intention of marrying—at least not yet—and Irving's relief when he learned of the news that winter was obvious. Unable to contain himself any longer, he poured out his feelings to Brevoort. The brave face he had put on in his earlier letter had been a mask, he told his friend; he was actually selfishly pleased that Brevoort would not be forsaking him for a wife:

  You will smile when I tell you that, after all the grave advice I once gave you about getting married, I really felt regret on fancying, from the purport of one of your letters, that you had some serious thoughts of the kind; and that I have indulged in selfish congratulation on finding nothing in your subsequent letter to warrant such an idea… 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… it is a consoling and a cherished thought with me, under every vicissitude; that I shall still be able to return home, nestle comfortably down beside you, and have wherewithal to shelter me from the storms and buffetings of this uncertain world.31

  Brevoort's response, if any, to this rather presumptuous missive is unknown. Most of Brevoort's letters to Irving at this time have been conveniently lost. He likely regarded it as more of the same from his highly strung friend, and appreciated the candor, even if he couldn't return the sentiment. Nor does he seem to have resented Irving's remarks, as the two continued in their correspondence as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.

  Peter managed to make it to Birmingham in time for Christmas dinner, and then returned to Liverpool just after the New Year, allowing Washington to continue his self-imposed domestic exile with the Van Warts. He merrily played his flute for his nieces and nephews to dance to. “They are but pigmy performers,” Irving wrote to Brevoort in January 1817, “yet they dance with inimitable grace, and vast good will, and consider me as the divinest musician in the world: So thank heaven I have at last found auditors who can appreciate my musical talents.”32

  On February 23 Irving returned to Liverpool, a town he had begun to loathe, to assist Peter. The days passed slowly, and his spirits continued to sag. He was too busy even to socialize. “I have been a month in Liverpool—and count the days as they lag heavily by,” he wrote Brevoort. “Nothing but my wish to be with Peter and relieve the loneliness of his life would induce me to remain an hour in this place… the good folks here are both too busy and too dissipated to be social, and a Stranger who has not business to employ his time will find it a dead weight on his hands.”33

  To employ his time, Irving was slowly revising A History of New York, and asked both Allston and Leslie in London if they would provide artwork for
engravings for the new edition. Both agreed. By mid-April Allston had completed his drawing, and asked Irving to come to London to see it.

  Irving declined the invitation. He had learned his mother was seriously ill, and was determined to return home to tend to her. His friends were stunned. “Your sudden resolution of embarking for America has quite thrown me, to use a sea-phrase, all a-back,”34 wrote Allston. Thomas Campbell, still trying to shake the lethargy his wife had told Irving of in 1815, sent Irving a long, desperate letter—along with the printed sheets of the first two volumes of his new work, Specimens of British Poets—begging him, once he was stateside, to see if he could get the work published in America.

  Allston's disbelief and Campbell's pleading met with silence. Irving's mother had died on April 9, 1817, probably around the time Irving learned of her illness. Irving was shocked into silence; letters went unanswered for some time, until he finally responded to Allston in late May to inform him that he would not be returning to America. “I have been much discomposed since last I wrote to you by intelligence of the death of my mother. Her extreme age made such an event constantly probable, but I had hoped to have seen her once more before she died, and was anxious to return home soon on that account. That hope is now at an end—and with it my immediate wish to return, so that I think it probable I shall linger some time longer in Europe.”35 As for Campbell's project, Irving forwarded the manuscript to Brevoort, who had no luck finding any takers.

  Looking back years later, Irving was still distraught that he had not had the opportunity to bid his mother a proper farewell. “She died without a pang,” he wrote. “She talked of me to the last, and would not part with a letter which she received a few days before from me.”36 He guiltily admitted that he was glad his mother did not live to see him and his brothers fail at business, failing to consider that she would have been overjoyed to witness his later successes.