William had pulled considerable strings—approaching first Clay, then Decatur—and had managed to find this exceptional post in the navy. It was an ideal opportunity, yet the letter must have sat heavy in Irving's hands.
Had the same arrived fourteen months earlier, before the visit to Scott, or even six months prior, before the all-night writing session that produced Rip Van Winkle, Irving's decision—and American literature—might have been very different indeed. But now, despite the unfinished sketches in his notebooks, the uncertainty of his endeavor, and the certain disappointment of his brothers, which was perhaps the heaviest weight of all, he was finally resolved.
“Flattering as the prospect undoubtedly is, which your letters hold out,” he explained to Ebenezer later that month, “I have concluded to decline it for various reasons, some of which I have stated to William. The principal one is, that I do not wish to undertake any situation that must involve me in such a routine of duties as to prevent my attending to literary pursuits.”40
He remembered his advice to Brevoort. He would not link his fortunes with others. He would earn his own way with his pen.
The answer to William was no. It was all or nothing.
8
Sensation
1819–1821
I am astonished at the success of my writings in England, and can hardly persuade myself that it is not all a dream. Had any one told me a few years since in America, that any thing I could write would interest such men as… Byron, I should have as readily believed a fairy tale.
—Washington Irving to John Murray II, October 31, 1820
HOME HAS LOST ITS CHARMS to…[Peter] and Washington,” William Irving wrote sadly to Ebenezer. “It is as well to accommodate the heart to its loss, and to consider them, as to all but epistolary correspondence, dead to us.”1
As terrible as having no job, no money, and no prospects might be, nothing depressed Washington more than the thought that he had disappointed William. He spent the next several weeks brooding and second-guessing his decision, so upset he could barely pick up his pen.
“Fancy, humor—all seemed to have gone from me,” he said. “I had offended the best brothers a man ever had; given over the chance Providence seemed to have opened, and now my writing-hand was palsied; a more miserable, doubting creature than I was in the two following months can hardly have lived.” He didn't even have Peter to commiserate with. Citing only “confidential business,” Peter departed for France in early January. He, too, had refused assistance from William, waving aside an offer of a post for settling claims under the Treaty of Spain in favor of chasing get-rich-quick schemes in Europe.2
As always, Irving sought relief in the company of friends, plunging into London's social scene with Newton, Leslie, and other American expatriates. American minister Richard Rush was a constant companion, and decidedly more reputable than another friend, the actor and playwright John Howard Payne, who was working hard to stay one step ahead of his creditors. Irving and his Lads dined at the York Chop House with John Allan, a Richmond tobacco merchant traveling in London with his foster son, Edgar Poe, or with Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, just beginning a nearly forty-year stint as United States consul in London. Between tours of the surrounding countryside and shows at the Drury Lane Theatre, Irving's writing hand finally steadied. Through late January and early February 1819, the draft sketches in his trunks were revised and polished. Suddenly, five essays were ready.3
On March 1, 1819, Irving handed a package to the captain of the ship Rosalie, leaving for New York on March 11. “This letter is accompanied by a small parcel containing some manuscript for publication,” Washington wrote Ebenezer. “It will form the first number of a work to be continued occasionally should this specimen meet with sufficient success.”4 He directed Ebenezer to secure its copyright and make arrangements with Moses Thomas for immediate publication. With business out of the way, Washington—who still feared his brothers disapproved of his career choice—launched into a long defense of his decision to refuse William's job offer. He was sending his manuscript, he told Ebenezer, “more for the purpose of showing you what I am about, as I find my declining the situation at Washington has given you chagrin…. It would have led to no higher situations, for I am quite unfitted for political life…. It is a mistake also to suppose I would fill an office there, and devote myself at the same time to literature. I require much leisure and a mind entirely abstracted from other cares and occupations, if I would write much or write well.”5 No longer satisfied to rest on the laurels he had earned as Oldstyle or Knickerbocker, Irving closed on a bold note, sounding like an independent adult for perhaps the first time in his thirty-five years:
I have but one thing to add. I have now given you the leading motive of my actions—it may be a weak one, but it has full possession of me, and therefore the attainment of it is necessary to my comfort. I now wish 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…. Do not, I beseech you, impute my lingering in Europe to any indifference to my own country or my friends. My greatest desire is to make myself worthy of the good-will of my country…. I am determined not to return home until I have sent some writings before me that shall, if they have merit, make me return to smiles, rather than skulk back to the pity of my friends.6
At the same time, Irving appealed to Brevoort for assistance, tapping his friend to act as his literary agent and business manager—one of the smartest career decisions Irving ever made. “If the work is printed in NYork,” he implored Brevoort, “will you correct the proof sheets, as I fear the Mss: will be obscure and occasionally incorrect, & you are well acquainted with my handwriting.”7
It had been nearly ten years since Irving had dazzled the public with A History of New York. “I feel great diffidence about this reappearance in literature,” he confessed to Brevoort. “I am conscious of my imperfections—and my mind has been for a long time past so preyed upon and agitated by various cares and anxieties, that I fear it has lost much of its cheerfulness and some of its activity.”8
He was more anxious in his letters to Ebenezer. “Do not show the Mss. to any one, nor say any thing about it,” Washington begged. “Write to [Moses] Thomas confidentially. It is better to awaken no expectations.”9
Reading Washington's letter and manuscript in mid-April, Ebenezer shared his brother's uneasiness. The voice in the essays, while clear and confident, was different from Washington's earlier tone. Despite his brother's pleas for discretion, an uncertain Ebenezer held a private reading in his parlor for Brevoort, Renwick, and a few others before sending the manuscript to Moses Thomas. After a hoarse Ebenezer finished reading aloud the final sentence, there was stunned silence; then, the room erupted in applause. Ebenezer, relieved, burst into tears.10
In London Washington was oblivious to its reception. As Ebenezer and Brevoort attended to the manuscript in New York, Washington paced the floor nervously in Leslie's flat. Given the time it took for correspondence to cross the Atlantic, he wouldn't know until late summer how his essays had been received. All he could do was wait.
And still he kept writing. On April 1 Irving sent Brevoort a packet containing another four essays. Irving also indicated he wasn't above pandering to the masses, and asked Brevoort to let him know “what themes &c would be popular and striking in America.” Another four essays were dropped in the mail, in duplicate, to John Treat and Brevoort on May 13. “I hope by the time this arrives some of them may be in print & the question settled whether they are profitable,” he told John Treat.11
While the copyright for the first installment had been secured, it hadn't yet appeared in print. Strapped for cash, Washington asked Brevoort for a loan of $1,300—about $20,000 today—against any future profits he might secure on publication. If his work landed with a thud, Irving was finished—and he knew it. “My fate hangs on it,” he told Brevoort, “for I am now at the end of my fortune.”12
Brevoort had balked at publishing The Sketch Book through the financially struggling Moses Thomas, but found a willing publisher in a Greenwich Street printer with the serendipitous name of Cornelius S. Van Winkle. Two thousand copies of the first installment had been printed, and the price on the volume was relatively steep—75 cents, or about $11 today, for ninety-three pages—but Irving had mandated both the print run and the price. “A large edition must be struck off,” he told Ebenezer, “and the price must be pretty high. If it is known to be my work I presume it will have a quick sale.”13 Irving's name appeared nowhere on the book, but there was little doubt that Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman, and Washington Irving, Esquire, were one and the same. Just to be safe, Brevoort was working to make sure readers saw right through Irving's latest pseudonym.
Irving had included a “Prospectus” at the beginning of the volume. The sentiment was straight out of Salmagundi, but the tone was less defiant: “The following writings are published on experiment; should they please they may be followed by others…. Should his writings, however, with all their imperfections, be well received, he cannot conceal that it would be a source of the purest gratification… it is the dearest wish of his heart to have a secure and cherished, though humble corner in the good opinions and kind feelings of his countrymen.”14
His countrymen were more than willing to oblige him. There were five essays in the first installment, and the public responded enthusiastically to the first four: “The Author's Account of Himself,” in which Irving introduced Geoffrey Crayon; “The Voyage,” detailing Crayon's ocean voyage to England; “Roscoe,” Irving's tribute to an English writer and historian he had met in Liverpool; and “The Wife,” a sentimental piece in which the new wife of an impoverished gentleman teaches her husband that money can't buy happiness. But it was the final tale in the volume, “Rip Van Winkle”—a tale “found among the papers of Diedrich Knickbocker,” Crayon claimed—that readers loved best, and kept the volume selling briskly.
The response from critics was equally encouraging, though Irving had Brevoort to thank for his first positive reviews. Just three days after the book's release, Brevoort placed an anonymous review in the Evening Post, lauding The Sketch Book and letting readers know that it was Irving's work: “The graces of style; the rich, warm tone of benevolent feeling; the freely-flowing vein of hearty and happy humour, and the fine-eyed spirit of observation, sustained by an enlightened understanding and regulated by a perception of fitness—a tact—wonderfully quick and sure, for which Mr. Irving has been heretofore so much distinguished, are all exhibited anew in the Sketch Book, with freshened beauty and added charms.”15
It was a bit excessive, but even critic Gulian Verplanck—who had earlier complained that Irving was wasting his talents on the “coarse” Knickerbocker16—publicly admitted that he too was a fan. “It will be needless to inform any who have read the book, that it is from the pen of Mr. Irving,” Verplanck wrote. “His rich, and sometimes extravagant humour, his gay and graceful fancy… betray the author in every page; even without the aid of those minor peculiarities of style, taste, and local allusions, which at once identify the travelled Geoffrey Crayon with the venerable Knickerbocker.”17
Positive notices continued to roll in. “When the first number of this beautiful work was announced,” one American reviewer gushed, “it was sufficient to induce an immediate and importunate demand, that the name of Mr. Irving was attached to it in the popular mind.”18 Geoffrey Crayon was a hit. Back in London, Irving fretfully paced the floor, distracting himself by reading rough drafts of Payne's play Virginius, awaiting the latest news from Brevoort.
The longer Brevoort remained silent, the more nervous Irving became. When he received a letter in early July in which Brevoort expressed his own high opinion of Irving's five essays, Irving only became more agitated. He didn't want Brevoort's opinion; he wanted to know how his work had taken with the public. He also worried that his perilous financial position had forced him into print before he was ready, and that his work had suffered for it. “Had I been able to save but a pittance from the wrecks of our concerns, so as to keep me above the fear of a positively empty purse,” he told Brevoort, “I should have felt more ease of mind and been able the better to have matured my plans.”19 That was doubtful; just as the need for financial stability had, at least in part, driven Irving to pen A History of New York, impending poverty spurred Irving to write The Sketch Book. Nothing in his life would ever spark his pen into action quite as quickly as an empty pocketbook.
By July 28 Irving at last had a copy of the first installment of The Sketch Book. “The work is got up in a beautiful style,” he told Brevoort appreciatively. All he required now was assurance that the effort had been worthwhile. “My spirits have revived recently and I trust, if I receive favourable accounts of the works taking in America, that I shall be able to go on with more animation.”20
On July 31, as Irving watched the mail for reviews, Van Winkle's presses churned out two thousand copies of the second installment of The Sketch Book. Again, Brevoort had taken steps to ensure the work was released to good press, placing another flattering review in the August 3 Evening Post. It was unnecessary—the strength of the essays ensured the success of the second volume.
Priced at 62½ cents, the second volume featured four essays: “English Writers on America,” Irving's magnanimous call for a ceasefire of “the literary animosity daily growing between England and America”; “Rural Life in England,” a fond description of English countryside and character; “The Broken Heart,” a story about a young Irish woman who wasted away “in a slow but hopeless decline” following the death of her true love; and “The Art of Book Making,” a humorous piece in which literature is created as easily as a cook might make a stew.
Readers leaned toward the syrupy “The Broken Heart,” while critics preferred “English Writers on America.” Irving had walked a fine line on the latter, favorably comparing British writers to their American counterparts, but the writing was so elegant, even patriotic, that readers with staunchly anti-British sentiments—like Paulding—were impressed.
That same week Irving finalized his manuscript for another installment of The Sketch Book, sending Ebenezer four new essays: “The Mutability of Literature,” in which Crayon discusses evolving literary tastes with a talking book; “John Bull,” a tip of the hat to English character and custom; “The Inn Kitchen,” a description of the hospitality Irving enjoyed during his 1805 tour of the Netherlands, which set up the final piece, “The Spectre Bridegroom,” a ghost story—or is it?—with a happy ending.
Despite his earlier buoyancy, Irving was sinking into a depression. “I send the present number with reluctance,” he wrote, “for it has grown exceeding stale with me, part of it laid out by me during a time that I was out of spirits and could not complete.” Yet two weeks later, he sent Brevoort a new sketch, “Rural Funerals,” describing English funeral traditions, and asked that it be inserted in place of the more irreverent “John Bull,” fearing volume four would otherwise have “too great a predominance of the humorous.”21
Irving gave Brevoort considerable leeway in preparing the book for publication, instructing him only to “look sharp that there are not blunders and tautologies” that might garble it. “I will not apologize to you for all the trouble I give you,” he told Brevoort, “for there is something delightful to me in the idea that my writings are coming out under your eye and that you in a manner stand godfather to all my children. I feel as if it is a new tie that binds us together.” Their relationship had suffered through mood swings, silent treatments, and bruised feelings over the past few years, but with these words, Irving assured Brevoort that all was f
orgiven. The Sketch Book was the offspring of their renewed friendship.22
In the second week of August—about six weeks after The Sketch Book’s American debut—came the news from Brevoort that Irving had been waiting for: The Sketch Book was a hit! Irving replied in measured tones. “The favourable reception it has met with is extremely encouraging, and repays me for much doubt & anxiety.”23 However, until he actually had copies of the critics’ reviews in his hands, he wasn't going to let the news go to his head—at least not yet. Besides, he was bothered by something else Brevoort had mentioned in his letter: some were protesting that Irving's books were too expensive.
Irving bristled at the complaint. “If the American public wish to have literature of their own,” he scolded, “they must consent to pay for the support of authors.”24 Prices on later issues varied from 62½ cents to 87 cents, but Irving never wavered from his view that he was worth it. The public, despite its grumbling, seemed to agree; each installment of The Sketch Book sold out and went back for multiple reprintings.
His copyright secure in America, Irving focused on protecting himself from any British publisher who wished to pirate his work. “I am fearful some [British] Bookseller in the American trade may get hold of it,” Irving told Henry Van Wart, “and so run out an edition of it without my adapting it for the London public—or participating in the profits.”25 If Irving wanted to protect his copyright in Britain, he would have to find a British publisher himself.
As he considered his options, his writing slowed. Sketches he hoped to have published by Christmas lay unfinished on the table in his room in September. Even an invitation to attend the baptism of the Van Warts’ newest child—christened Washington Irving Van Wart—was declined, as Irving insisted he had to be in London at the very moment a copy of the second volume of The Sketch Book arrived, so he could whisk it off to a potential publisher.
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